Datasets:

emozilla

/

story-summary-training-mistral-9k-1_4_24

like 1

- Genre: Young Adult, Coming of Age - Title: Going Places - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: Working class Ireland, 20th Century - Character: Sophie. Description: Sophie is the story's teenaged protagonist who, despite her dismal working-class life, spends much of her time fantasizing about a glamorous and wealthy future. She dreams of being a shop-owner and actress, or maybe a fashion designer, despite how unlikely those careers are, since she has no money and is expected to one day work at the local biscuit factory to help make ends meet. While Sophie is vocal and exuberant about her dreams, her family members and her friend Jansie actively discourage her, seeming offended by Sophie's audacity and whimsy. Sophie appears adrift in her home, alienated from all her family members except, perhaps, her older brother Geoff, whom she sees as a potential ally, somebody who might have an interesting life into which he could invite her, thereby helping her escape their reality. To impress Geoff and the rest of her family, Sophie concocts an elaborate fantasy that she met Geoff's favorite football player, Danny Casey, who also wants to open a boutique. She claims that Danny Casey asked her on a date, and on the night she said they were to meet, she goes to wait for Danny Casey on a bench, seeming to believe he might actually appear. As she realizes that Danny Casey isn't coming, her heart is broken—not because she feels romantically jilted, or because she even wanted to meet Danny Casey, but because she knows she will have to confess to her family that he didn't come, and they will have one more reason to dismiss her. As she walks back to her dismal life, Sophie fantasizes about Danny Casey scoring a goal in front of a roaring crowd—but in the fantasy, Danny Casey seems like Sophie (he is "no taller" and "no bolder" than Sophie). All along, it seems, Sophie's fantasy of Danny Casey was really a fantasy of her own success. - Character: Geoff. Description: Geoff is Sophie's older brother, the oldest child in the family. He is a mechanic who has a motorcycle, and (to Sophie, at least) this appears to give him freedom and a glamorous life. Sophie imagines that Geoff knows interesting people and travels to unknown parts of the city, and she hopes that he will bring her with him, helping her to escape her own life. However, the story presents details about Geoff that suggest that Sophie is projecting onto him: he is shy, for instance, so it's unlikely that he has lots of secret friends, and he spends a lot of time at home. He does not share Sophie's interest in aesthetics, fame, or fortune, and while Sophie imagines Geoff in stylish clothes, in real life his clothes are unfashionable. Geoff's main interest seems to be the football player Danny Casey, which leads Sophie to claim that she is going on a date with him. She hopes that this will make Geoff admire her, and while it does pique his interest, the scheme ultimately fails. Presumably, she and Geoff will not get closer and he will not rescue her from her life, since Geoff seems not to be the person Sophie hopes that he is. - Character: Jansie. Description: Jansie is a friend of Sophie's. They are both working class, and their families appear to be friends with one another. Josie is considerably more realistic and pessimistic than Sophie. She knows that the two of them are "earmarked for the biscuit factory" a truth which makes her feel "melancholy". She is also noted as a gossip who is unable to keep secrets. - Character: Sophie's Father. Description: Sophie's father, who is not named, is the story's antagonist. He works in some kind of manual labor, returning home each night dirty and sweaty and shoveling food into his mouth. He treats Sophie with disdain, chastising her for telling "wild stories" and dismissing her ambitions and desires. Through the reactions of his children (who all seem scared of him), the reader learns that he is an imposing figure with a drinking problem and a temper. Barton describes him in a rather unfavorable way, using words such as "grimy" and pointing out the fat rolls on his neck. - Character: Danny Casey. Description: Danny Casey is a famous football star who is greatly admired, most importantly by Sophie's older brother Geoff. He is described as a young, bright, beloved "prodigy." Sophie tells her family a story that she has met Danny Casey and he asks her on a date, which is meant to impress them and make them admire her. However, she seems to believe her own fantasy, and is disappointed when Danny Casey doesn't appear on the night she said they would meet. The version of Danny Casey that Sophie creates is gentle, has soft eyes, and is kind towards her. She says that Casey plans to open a boutique (which is also Sophie's ambition), and she describes Casey as being her own height and "no bolder" than her. Clearly, then, the Danny Casey of Sophie's fantasy is meant as a stand-in for her, someone living Sophie's own dreams of success and acclaim who she imagines to be not meaningfully different from her (thereby making her own dreams seem more in reach). - Character: Mother. Description: Sophie's mother. She appears to be a homemaker who is resigned to a dreary life, and is not particularly interested in or close to her children or husband. Very little information is provided about her aside from the "delicate" looking bow on her apron, and the overwhelming amount of housework she appears to be in charge of. - Theme: Fantasy vs. Reality. Description: In "Going Places," teenaged Sophie is full of unrealistic dreams for her future. She talks of wanting to open a boutique or become an actress, and—most importantly—she tells her brother Geoff that she has met famous footballer Danny Casey and that the two have planned a date. While her brother and father are skeptical that she has met Danny Casey, and her best friend Jansie is constantly pulling her back to earth about her dreams for the future, Sophie maintains a commitment to her fantasies, believing in them to the extent that she waits for Danny Casey one night and feels heartbroken when he never arrives. This heartbreak is a looming danger of Sophie's refusal to live in reality: presumably, at some point, she will become adult enough to realize that her dreams won't come true. However, Barton does not simply depict fantasy as a prelude to disappointment. For Sophie, a lonely and ambitious girl from a troubled working-class family, fantasy is perhaps the only way not to be broken by her circumstances. From the beginning, Barton depicts Sophie as immersed in fantasy and impervious to the reality of her situation. For example, the story's opening line is Sophie's proclamation that she will someday own a boutique—a dream that she maintains, even as her pragmatic friend Jansie attempts to bring her back to earth. When Jansie says that owning a boutique requires money, Sophie responds that she'll start as manager, but Jansie notes that nobody would make Sophie manager without experience and that shop work doesn't pay enough anyway. In response, Sophie says that she'll become an actress or a fashion designer on the side in order to support her boutique, brushing off all of Jansie's practical concerns. Jansie, who knows that "they were both earmarked for the biscuit factory," urges Sophie to "be sensible"—a sentiment that Sophie's family shares, as her father, her little brother Derek, and her mother all seem exasperated by Sophie's talk of wealth when she comes home. From this opening, it's clear that Sophie isn't sheltered from practical concerns—in fact, almost everyone in her life seems committed to making her abandon her unrealistic dreams. Sophie's fantasies, then, seem less like naïve pipe dreams here, and more like a deliberate commitment to resisting a life she doesn't want. Barton shows the danger of living in a fantasy world when Sophie falls prey to her own imagined tale of meeting her family's football hero, Danny Casey. In what might be a ploy to impress her brother Geoff (who she imagines has an exciting life that he doesn't share with her), Sophie tells him that she met Danny Casey at the store. In response to his skepticism, Sophie does not abandon her tale and instead adds more detail to the fantasy and raises the stakes by claiming that he asked her on a date. As she adds detail, she seems herself to believe the fantasy, feeling proud the following Saturday when Danny Casey scores a goal, as though she does actually know him. This belief in her own fantasy crests when Sophie finds herself on "a wooden bench beneath a solitary elm where lovers sometimes came" waiting for Danny. While waiting, she imagines her excitement at seeing him emerge from the canal, and Barton writes that "not until some time had elapsed did she begin balancing against this the idea of his not coming." The level of Sophie's delusion is startling. She not only finds herself physically waiting for a date she has invented (one which she seems genuinely to believe will happen), but also she is heartbroken when he doesn't arrive, and still doesn't acknowledge reality even then (she comforts herself by telling herself "we know how it was…Danny and me"). This is a moment in which her fantasy seems dangerous and pathological, either an emotional disturbance or an imaginative excess that has now crossed the line from harmless to negatively affecting her life. However, as Sophie leaves the bench where she has been waiting, she notices the bleak reality around her and anticipates the bleak reality that awaits her at home, which propels her back into her fantasies. In this way, Barton suggests that the fantasies—while potentially harmful—also help Sophie to bear her life. For example, once she realizes that Danny isn't coming, Sophie immediately thinks of how horrible it will be to tell her family, noting that they will "doubt me, as they have always doubted me, but I will have to hold up my head remembering how it was." From this, readers see just how much it hurts Sophie that her family doesn't take her seriously and how much effort it requires to maintain her dignity and spirit in the face of their cruelty. Furthermore, Barton describes Sophie climbing "crumbling steps" and noticing her father's bike outside the pub. While this bleak detail indicates that her father is (as is often the case) out drinking, Sophie is actually relieved because it means she won't have to face him at home. On this horrible night, her family is not a source of comfort, but rather of torment. In the moment of seeing her father's bike, Sophie retreats into one last reverie, which ends the story: imagining meeting Danny Casey again, and then remembering him playing football the Saturday before. In these fantasies, Sophie feels happy and triumphant: his eyes "shimmer" and she is "breathless" as he looks at her, and as he scores his goal, she imagines the crowd's "thunderous eruption of exultant approbation." Throughout the story, these moments of fantasy are when Sophie feels happiest and most herself. While Sophie's disappointment over Danny Casey failing to appear perhaps foreshadows more devastating disappointments to come, the ending paints Sophie's reveries as a (likely temporary) way to survive a difficult life that is bent on constricting her. In this way, Barton shows fantasy and imagination to be powerful tools, even if they cannot change reality. - Theme: Family vs. Individuality. Description: In "Going Places," Sophie's ambition and personality are continually at odds with her family's expectations of her. While Sophie dreams of owning a boutique or becoming an actress, her family members mock and reject her goals, treating her without warmth, care, or understanding. Throughout the story, however, Sophie remains fixated on living the life she fantasizes about and does not cave to her family's attempts to make her more like them. She nonetheless fails to bring them around to her way of thinking—she neither proves herself to them nor earns their respect. By showing Sophie trapped in an unresolvable conflict between who she feels she is and who her family wants her to be, Barton shows the crushing weight of situations in which being loved and accepted by family is at odds with individual expression and fulfillment. Sophie feels distinctly isolated at home, as her attempts express herself provoke her family's mockery and dismissal. This is shown quite clearly with her father, a primary source for her feelings of isolation. He speaks harshly to Sophie, accusing her of telling "wild stories" or "aggressively" saying that, "One of these days you're going to talk yourself into a load of trouble." Sophie takes his words seriously, as she cautions her older brother Geoff that their father would "murder" her if he found out about her alleged meeting with Danny Casey, and she later expresses fear of her father instigating a "right old row." Sophie does not feel accepted and cared for by her father; on the contrary, she believes any further signs of her whimsical personality will result in him erupting into physical violence. Sophie's interactions with her mother and Derek, her younger brother, appear to follow a similar pattern. When made aware of her ambitions, Derek chastises her about financial practicalities, while her mother lets out an exasperated sigh. Rather than validating Sophie's individuality, her family ridicules or passive aggressively ignores her. It's no wonder, then, that Sophie is uncomfortable in her home; at the sight of her father and her mother in the kitchen, Sophie experiences "a tightening in her throat" and quickly leaves them to find Geoff. Later, she's happy to notice her father's bicycle propped outside a pub, indicating he won't be at the house to mock her when she returns from her failed "date" with Danny Casey. Sophie has clearly resigned herself to her parents and little brother being unable or unwilling to foster her individuality. Despite this invalidation, Sophie clearly still longs for a sense of connection with her family. She holds out hope that Geoff, the only family member who has not explicitly rejected her, will become her ally, and perhaps even radically change her life for the better. Initially, Sophie imagines that Geoff has an exciting life that he keeps secret from her, a world that he might one day invite her into, thereby rescuing her. However, Sophie's vision of Geoff seems at odds with who he really is. In her fantasy, Geoff is wearing "shining black leathers," but Sophie later admits that Geoff is not fashionable—she only "wish[es] he cared more about clothes." Furthermore, while she imagines that he knows "exotic, interesting people" to whom he might introduce her, she concedes that he is "quiet and didn't make new friends easily." This dissonance between the Geoff of her vision and the real Geoff suggests that Sophie might be projecting her own desires onto her brother, rather than seeing him for who he is. This mirrors the way her family treats her and undermines her hopes for finding an ally in the family. Sophie continues to project her needs onto Geoff by creating a fantasy about Danny Casey, the star whose photographs adorn her brother's room. This fantasy is an attempt to get closer to her brother by emphasizing a shared interest—and by creating a story in which someone Geoff respects thinks that Sophie is worth spending time with and knowing. This, in turn, is something Sophie clearly wants all of her family members to feel. Indeed, Sophie's story is never really about Danny Casey—rather, it's her attempt to prove to her family that she as an individual has merit. Sophie initially approaches the meeting place with naïve optimism, thinking that it is "the perfect place" and "she knew he would approve." Barton is notably ambiguous here, providing the reader with a pronoun rather than a name and leaving room for the possibility that it is not necessarily Casey's approval she is seeking, but rather that of her brothers and father. It soon becomes clear that she is, in fact, more concerned with the opinions of her family than she is with Casey's arrival, as she thinks back to "Geoff saying he would never come, and how none of them believed me." Finally, after passing a point of "resignation" that Casey won't be coming, she turns to "sadness," acknowledging that "she can see the future" and her family will likely lord this over her for years to come: "they of course will doubt me, as they have always doubted me." She sees that her plan to prove her worth has failed, and that her family will continue to consider the traits that make her an individual to be character flaws. Ultimately, Sophie proves unable to create a world, even in her own head, in which she receives praise and acceptance from her family. Instead, she is only able to project her needs onto Danny Casey himself. In her fantasy, she asks for Danny Casey's autograph, but neither of them "have a pen"—leading her to muse that "my brothers will be very sorry." Even the fantasy version of herself, it seems, is unable to live up to her family's expectations. Barton further shows that Sophie is projecting herself and her needs onto Casey by having her emphasize to her father that Casey is planning to "buy a shop"—that is, to pursue the same ambition Sophie set for herself at the beginning of the story. As she loses herself entirely in fantasy at the end of the story, Sophie imagines Danny "ghost past the lumbering defenders" as the crowd holds its breath and then erupts in "exultant approbation" over his athletic success. Clearly, this is Sophie's dream for herself, and Danny has been a way to imagine her own unimaginable future all along. - Theme: Class vs. Ambition. Description: Each of the characters in "Going Places" reacts differently to being poor: Sophie's father seems to drink and be cruel, her mother seems resigned and depressed, and her little brother, Derek, is already old enough to roll his eyes at Sophie and tell her that money doesn't grow on trees. Sophie, meanwhile, responds to her restrictive circumstances by imagining opening a boutique or becoming an actress. Though these ambitions help propel her through the world with some semblance of optimism, her family and friends dismiss her ambitions altogether. To some extent, this is out of simple unkindness, but the real reason that Sophie's dreams seem so wild to those around her is that she is working class. For even a middle-class family, becoming a shop owner or manager would presumably not be out of the question, but Sophie's dreams are categorically shut down by others because they're so alien to their class background. Through this, Barton illustrates the immense weight and reach of class hierarchy—which is so rigid and seemingly impassable that those of Sophie's class can't imagine, let alone hope for, a better life. When Sophie attempts to share her fantasies of future jobs with others, she is quickly rejected. Upon declaring that she wants to open—or even just be a manager of—a boutique, her friend Jansie peppers her with pragmatic concerns (opening a shop "takes money" and "They wouldn't make you manager straight off"). Even her little brother makes fun of this fantasy: "She thinks money grows on trees, don't she, Dad?" Her father seems almost primed to cut down Sophie's "wild stories" and he threatens that she will "talk [her]self into a load of trouble." Ambitions for a life beyond that of a factory worker are apparently so unrealistic as to be laughable in Sophie's world, subtly underscoring the incredible difficulty of overcoming poverty. Sophie's refusal to accept her poverty, meanwhile, appears not just to perplex, but to anger those around her. While bitter resignation may help Sophie's family and friends get through the day, Sophie's vivid imagination is a reminder of the things they will never have, and spending any time dwelling on such things is perhaps too painful to handle. Jansie, for instance, wants Sophie to stop fantasizing because Jansie has already accepted the reality of the situation—that is, that they are both "earmarked for the biscuit factory." Trying to imagine anything else makes Jansie "melancholy," suggesting her awareness that, for people of their background, grander aspirations are impossible. When Sophie's father hears of the Danny Casey story, he looks at her in disdain and grimaces at her words. Exposure to his child's creativity results in him behaving as though he has been wounded, showing this has somehow hit a nerve. That he reacts "aggressively" towards her suggests that he views Sophie's dreams as an affront to his own life and choices. The title of "Going Places" can be read ironically, as its characters are not going anywhere. Instead, Barton illustrates that they are so trapped by their socio-economic circumstances that they cannot even imagine a better future. In a class system with so few opportunities for upward mobility, Sophie's relatively harmless penchant for, essentially, going places in her head to escape her bleak reality is received with utter disdain by those around her. Being confronted with the thought of something better, no matter how unlikely, is simply a reminder of their limitations. - Theme: Limitations of Gender Roles. Description: In "Going Places," the men and women fit rigidly within gendered expectations. Sophie's father is the family's breadwinner, while her mother appears to be in charge of household duties. As for Sophie's generation, her brother Geoff (a mechanic who loves football) is associated with traditionally masculine objects and pursuits, while her friend Jansie (a known gossip who is destined for a life making biscuits) is more traditionally feminine. Sophie is unique in displaying both feminine and masculine characteristics, as she has interests in fashion and acting, but she is ambitious and independent. Unfortunately, her inability to identify a satisfying model of womanhood to which she can aspire leaves her adrift and disappointed, projecting her own ambitions onto a man, Danny Casey, in whom her dreams seem more at home. This shows how restrictive rigid gender roles are, even to the most imaginative and defiant of people. Throughout her life, Sophie has been exposed only to traditional gender roles. Her father is "grimy" due to his work outside of the home, and he appears to fit well within the masculine archetypes of "distant father" and "angry drunk." While Sophie does not like her father, she still wants to impress him, which acknowledges his power and suggests a desire for male validation. Sophie also associates her brother Geoff—a sports-obsessed mechanic—with traditionally masculine items, activities, and concepts. When she fantasizes of him helping her escape her dreary life, he is on a motorcycle wearing "shining black leathers." It's clear that she associates him with a freedom she assumes he is afforded due to his gender, as she imagines him being able to go "places beyond in the surrounding city" and meet "exotic, interesting people." By contrast, the women in Sophie's life seem restricted and embittered. Barton depicts Sophie's mother as "stooped over the sink" with her "crooked back," keeping house for her "heavy-breathing" husband with the "dirty washing piled up in the corner." She appears resigned, submissive, and docile, which are all traditionally feminine traits. As the only adult woman in the story, Sophie's mother paints a bleak picture of femininity. And while Barton suggests that the next generation of women might have slightly more freedom (Sophie and Jansie are expected to work outside the home, unlike Sophie's mother), Jansie is also gendered strictly female and seems resigned to her life and depressed. Sophie points out that Jansie is "nosey" and that providing her with information means "the whole neighbourhood would get to know it," implying that Jansie is a gossip, which is a traditionally feminine archetype. Readers also learn that her future job will be making biscuits at the factory, which is slightly less traditional than cooking at home, but not much. However, that is not to say that Jansie is optimistic about her fate; in fact, she is "melancholy" about Sophie's ambitious talk of shop-owning, because to her it's only a reminder of a life she will never have. Since Sophie has trouble seeing herself in either a feminine or masculine role, she struggles to imagine her own future. Sophie's reaction to seeing her mother working in the kitchen is to feel a "tightening in her throat" and leave the room, which shows how viscerally repellent her mother's life is to her. She also refuses to let Jansie bring her back to earth about her likely future at the biscuit factory, showing her unwillingness to resign herself to even a less-extreme female fate. However, as a woman, Sophie can't imagine herself in the masculine roles she clearly admires. Her own fantasies of power and independence are exaggeratedly feminine: becoming an actress or fashion designer. Furthermore, when she pictures herself running away with Geoff, he is the one driving the motorcycle while she rides along in an extravagant, fashionable dress and cape, and she imagines Danny Casey rescuing her from drudgery by taking her on a date. In both of these scenarios, Sophie is putting herself in the role of the damsel in distress, which suggests a gendered limitation on her imagination. She wants to have the freedom of a man, but she cannot imagine seizing it for herself—instead, a man must give it to her. This is unsurprising, since she has no female role models besides her mother, whose femininity she actively rejects. The gendered limitations on Sophie's imagination are clearest in her Danny Casey fantasy. While at first glance, Sophie's fantasy of dating a celebrity may seem stereotypically feminine, it soon becomes clear that she is not imagining herself as his date, but rather as him. In describing Danny Casey, she feminizes him to make him seem more like her, commenting on his "gentle eyes" and noting that he is "not as tall as you'd think" and has a "soft melodious voice." She later makes the parallel between herself and Danny Casey more explicit, saying to herself that he is "No taller than you. No bolder than you. A prodigy," which suggests that she is seeing Danny as being just like her in order to imagine the possibility of herself being successful and admired like Danny. Significantly, this fantasy is not meant for her own satisfaction—she is also using it to try to gain power and respect from the men in her life. This fantasy, surrounding a footballer her brother adores, is meant to impress him and to increase her own value in his eyes. She also projects her own ambition onto Danny Casey, telling her brother and father that Danny wants to open a boutique, which suggests that she believes her family might respect her own ambition more if it is shared by a man they admire. At the end of the story, when the possibility of winning her family's admiration through Danny Casey has dissipated, Sophie retreats into one last fantasy: she visualizes Danny sinking the ball "crisply into the goal" to "exultant approbation" from the crowd. Despite her impressive creativity and vocabulary, she is living in a society so restrictive she cannot even imagine success for herself in her own mind. Clearly, Sophie herself wants to be powerful, successful, and celebrated like Danny Casey, but the world she lives in is so restrictive to women that, at the story's end, she cannot even imagine her own desires for herself—she imagines them for a man instead. - Climax: Sophie realizing her fantasy about Danny Casey will not come true - Summary: "Going Places" follows teenaged Sophie as she uses her vivid imagination to try to escape her dreary home life. On the way home from school, Sophie tells her schoolmate Jansie of her future aspirations to own a boutique or be an actress, and Jansie responds that Sophie's ambitions are unrealistic and that she needs to be practical. When Sophie arrives home, she announces that if she ever comes into money, she will buy a boutique, but her father, mother, and little brother Derek all ridicule and dismiss this dream, suggesting that Sophie is constantly impractical about money and the future. Looking at her small house, in which her worn-down mother washes piles of dirty dishes and cooks for her "grimy" husband, Sophie feels a "tightening" in her throat and leaves the room to find her older brother Geoff. She believes that Geoff might free her from the drudgery of her life, as she imagines that he lives an exotic and mysterious life, traveling to unknown parts of the city and meeting interesting people. However, it doesn't seem that Geoff actually lives the life that Sophie imagines—he appears to be a shy homebody whose passion is the footballer Danny Casey. To impress Geoff, Sophie tells him that she met Danny Casey and he asked her on a date. While Geoff initially rejects the story, her tale gains some traction as she reiterates it to her father and Jansie. The more she tells this story, the more elaborate it becomes, but still nobody seems to truly believe her—except, perhaps, Sophie herself. On the night she said they would meet, Sophie waits on a bench for Danny Casey, seemingly believing that he might appear. However, Sophie's sense of reality is not entirely lost and she briefly comes to terms with the reality of her situation, acknowledging that Danny Casey isn't coming and that this is upsetting not because she wanted to see him, but because she will have to confess to her family that he never arrived, and they will be able to dismiss her once again. They "doubt me, as they have always doubted me," she thinks, and there is little she can do to rectify that. As she walks back home to her dismal life, Sophie sees her father's bicycle near the pub and she retreats back into fantasy, imagining Danny Casey scoring a goal in front of a roaring crowd. In this fantasy, Casey is much like Sophie—he is "no taller" and "no bolder" than she.

- Genre: Short story - Title: Going to Meet the Man - Point of view: Close third-person - Setting: A small town in the American South - Character: Jesse. Description: Jesse, the protagonist of "Going to Meet the Man," is a racist 42-year-old white police officer who lives with his wife Grace in the American South in the early 1960s. Part of Jesse's job involves squashing civil rights protests alongside his coworker Big Jim C. After arresting several members of a voting rights protest, Jesse is tasked with making them stop singing and almost beats the protest leader to death in the process. Jesse hates the protest leader and all of the young Black people trying to make change, but he was not always full of racist rage. As a child, he had a Black friend named Otis whom he cared for and respected. He started to embrace violence against Black people after his father and mother took him to witness a lynching. Watching the lynching victim be castrated and killed as hundreds of white people shouted in glee, Jesse was informally inducted into his racist white community. As an adult, Jesse has trouble staying erect while having sex with Grace, but he becomes aroused thinking about violence against Black men. Though he sometimes feels shame about this, by the end of the story he does not, having aggressive sex with Grace and telling her, "I'm going to do you like a nigger." After feeling angry and powerless, Jesse suddenly feels optimistic and free. - Character: Protest Leader. Description: The protest leader is a college-aged Black man who lives in the same town as Jesse and has been leading protests in the area for at least the past year. He first met Jesse around ten ago when he was a child, since his grandmother (Julia Blossom) was one of Jesse's customers when he was working for a mail-order business. As a child, the protest leader refused to allow Jesse to refer to his grandmother as "Old Julia" and, as an adult, he asks Jesse if he has learned to call Black women by their real names yet. Jesse almost beats the protest leader to death trying to get him to instruct the other jailed protestors to stop singing, but the protest leader refuses. In this way, he represents the lasting power of the civil rights movement, a force that racist white men like Jesse cannot stop. - Character: Jesse's Father. Description: Jesse's father, married to Jesse's mother, raised Jesse to become a racist like him. In an extended flashback, he mocks Black peoples' singing in front of Jesse and teaches him to mistrust his Black friend Otis. He ultimately takes Jesse to witness a brutal lynching, putting Jesse onto his shoulders so he can watch the entire event unobstructed. After watching the lynching victim be castrated and killed, Jesse feels deep love for his father and thinks that he "had revealed to [Jesse] a great secret which would be the key to his life forever." In this way, Jesse's father's presence in the story shows how racism is passed on from one generation to the next. - Character: Lynching Victim. Description: The lynching victim is a Black man who lived in Jesse's town when Jesse was a child and was accused of attacking (and, mostly likely, raping) a white woman named Miss Standish. He tries to flee but is captured, castrated, and lynched in front of Jesse, Jesse's father, Jesse's mother, and hundreds of cheering white people. His lynching is particularly brutal in that he is lowered into and raised out of fire several times before being castrated, stoned, and burned once more. How Jesse feels in relationship to the lynching victim demonstrates his shift from caring about Black people to dehumanizing them. - Character: Jesse's mother. Description: Jesse's mother attends the lynching with a young Jesse and Jesse's father, dressing up for the occasion. She is not as important as Jesse's father in teaching Jesse how to be overtly racist—in fact, she discourages her husband from mocking the singing of the Black people in town as they mourn the coming death of the lynching victim. Still, by dressing up for the lynching, watching it in awe, and casually laughing with her friends afterward, she represents a passive acceptance of the racist status quo. - Character: Grace. Description: Grace is a white Southern woman married to Jesse. Jesse is unable to stay erect while having sex with her and wishes he could ask her to do what he would ask a "nigger girl" to do, but he can't because she's his wife. Grace tells him to go to sleep and falls asleep herself. After reflecting on memories of racial violence, Jesse wakes her up to have aggressive sex with her and Grace moans, but it is unclear if she wants to be having sex or is another victim of his sexual compulsions. - Character: Otis. Description: Otis is a Black child and one of Jesse's friends when he was eight years old. Before the lynching, in a flashback, a young Jesse worries that he has not seen Otis for a couple mornings and wishes that he could ask Otis what was happening since "Otis knew everything." Otis does not directly appear in the story, but Jesse's care and respect for him as a child shows how white people are not born racist but taught to be so. - Character: Julia Blossom ("Old Julia"). Description: Julia Blossom is the grandmother of the protest leader and was one of Jesse's customers when he worked for a mail-order business. Julia does not appear in the story, but she is a point of contention between the protest leader and Jesse; her grandson takes issue with the fact that Jesse would refer to her as "Old Julia" rather than by her full name. This is further evidence of Jesse's consistent disrespect for and dehumanization of Black people. - Theme: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Racial Violence. Description: Set in the South of the 1960s, "Going to Meet the Man" opens with Jesse, a 42-year-old white police officer, trying to have sex with his wife. But as he struggles to become erect and Grace drifts off to sleep, Jesse starts remembering scenes from his past, including beating a Black protest leader nearly to death earlier that day and witnessing a brutal lynching as a child. What those moments have in common is his sexual arousal while watching racial violence against Black men. Recalling these events, Jesse becomes erect and is finally able to have sex with Grace. By having Jesse experience pleasure while witnessing or enacting violence, Baldwin subverts the idea that anti-Black racism is simply a matter of white people hating Black people, suggesting that it also involves white people envying and desiring Black people. This is particularly true, Baldwin suggests, for white men (like Jesse) who crave the sexual prowess they project onto Black men. Baldwin establishes early on that Jesse, like most racists, feels deep hatred toward Black people. While lying in bed with his wife at the beginning of the story, Jesse says, seemingly out of the blue, "Goddamn the niggers," before referring to Black people as "black stinking coons." His comfortable use of slurs demonstrates the depth of his anti-Black racism. In addition to using slurs, Jesse dehumanizes Black people at several points in the story. Of Black people, he thinks, "They were animals, they were no better than animals," and about the protest leader, he thinks "this ain't no nigger, this is a goddamn bull." Beyond simply using violent language to refer to Black people, Jesse also imagines and enacts violence against them, thinking about how much easier it would be to bomb all of the Black people in town if they all lived in one place, and also violently beating a Black protestor almost to death. Despite his conscious rejection of Black people, Jesse unconsciously experiences pleasure in his interactions with them, demonstrating that racism is also about sexualization and desire. After being unable to stay erect while having sex with his wife, Jesse reflects that he doesn't have this problem with the Black women he picks up or arrests. This memory of being with Black women causes a "distant excitement" in him. Later in the story, in a flashback to beating a Black protest leader nearly to death earlier that day, Jesse "began to hurt all over with that particular excitement" and later shouts at the protestor that he is lucky that white men like him "pump some white blood" into "Black bitches." To his horror, this moment of uncontrollable sexualized rage leads him to become erect. Furthermore, in a flashback to witnessing a lynching as a child, Jesse watches a crowd of white people laugh and cheer in pleasure as the lynching victim is tortured and Jesse himself starts to feel "a joy he had never felt before." The story explicitly connects white racial violence against Black men to the sexual prowess that white people like Jesse project onto Black men. While witnessing the lynching, a young Jesse notices the lynching victim's penis and thinks about how it is "much bigger than his father's…the largest thing he had ever seen till then." In having Jesse compare the size of the penis to his father's (a stand in for his own adult penis), Baldwin shows that white men's anger toward Black men stems from envy about not measuring up sexually. Then, after thinking about the lynching, Jesse has aggressive sex with Grace, telling her, "I'm going to do you like a nigger," and exerting himself more than he ever had before. The fact that Jesse is only able to sustain an erection while channeling the sexual vitality he believes a Black man to have underlines his envy of that perceived sexual prowess. By zeroing in on the sexual undertones of racial violence, Baldwin suggests that racism is not simply about hatred or rage. Jesse, unable to accept or name his jealousy of Black men, acts out in violence toward them while also, at least in bed with his wife, wanting to be them. Jesse's sense of power and relief at the end of the story will not be sustainable, Baldwin suggests, since he is unable to reconcile these underlying feelings. - Theme: Civil Rights, Progress, and Resistance. Description: Throughout "Going to Meet the Man," Jesse responds resentfully to the gains of the civil rights movement. While lying in bed next to his sleeping wife, he remembers the excitement of jailing and beating a young Black civil rights protest leader, reflects on how white people have lost the camaraderie and sense of ease they had before the civil rights movement began, and thinks fondly of witnessing a brutal lynching as a child. After becoming aroused by these memories, Jesse has sex with his wife Grace, thinking of the new day to come. Despite Jesse's optimism at the end of the story, Baldwin is careful to establish that Jesse—and other Southern whites like him—are fighting a losing battle; the progress of the civil rights movement cannot be stopped. On the surface of the story, it seems like Jesse, as a white male police officer, has all of the power in this society. As becomes clear in a brief reflection at the start of the story, Jesse can arrest and rape Black women with no accountability; when he "wanted more spice than Grace could give… he would drive over yonder and pick up a black piece or arrest her, it came to the same thing." Later in the story, Jesse beats the protest leader "until he looked as though he were dead," torture that is sanctioned by his fellow police officers like Big Jim C. Jesse also proves that he has power not only in relation to Black people but also power over his wife; at the end of the story, he moves her body and starts having aggressive sex with her while she is still asleep. But Jesse's power and privilege are being challenged by the progress of the civil rights movement. Jesse notes, while torturing the protest leader, that he has seen the man at several other protests over the past year, hinting that the civil rights movement has significant momentum and has not been affected by any of Jesse and Big Jim C.'s attempts to squash it. Furthermore, though Jesse and Big Jim C. are able to break up that day's protest and jail many of the protestors, they are unable to stop them from singing their songs of resistance even while jailed. The power of the songs signifies the power of the movement itself. And just before the bloodied protest leader passes out, he tells Jesse that he and his fellow activists won't stop singing until white men like him lose their minds, suggesting that intimidation strategies will not work. Jesse also worries about the protestors in town gaining access to weapons because "the whole world was doing it, look at the European countries and all those countries in Africa." This is a reference to the successful revolutionary and decolonial resistance movements that were happening worldwide in the early 1960s, showing that the civil rights movement was part of something much larger and could not easily be squelched. Jesse's anxious internal reflections also demonstrate that he is aware, on some level, that he is fighting a losing battle. After Jesse is unable to force the protest leader to make the other protestors stop singing, he thinks about how he and his white male friends are soldiers outnumbered in a racial war and that "It would have been a help…or at least a relief, even to have been forced to surrender." This shows how tired he is of fighting a losing battle; he's on the brink of giving up, secretly hoping to be defeated. And such a forced surrender seems imminent; when thinking about searching all of the homes of Black people in town to strip them of their weapons, Jesse decides against it since "this might have brought the bastards from the North down on their backs," again suggesting the power of the movement and its ability to mobilize resistance. At the end of the story, after recalling a lynching he witnessed as a child, Jesse is able sustain an erection during sex with Grace and thinks excitedly of the morning to come. Though this suggests a newfound optimism about his power, the fact that Jesse has to think about an event that happened over 30 years ago to feel secure suggests he is living in denial and will only be disappointed by the continued progress of the movement. By having Jesse wield his power against Black people and women, Baldwin demonstrates that, at this point in history, white men like Jesse (especially police officers) did have a real advantage. At the same time, by having the civil rights protestors demonstrate their own power and by showing Jesse's deep anxieties about losing his, Baldwin shows that the gains of the civil rights movement would continue. Men like Jesse could, Baldwin suggests, try to repress or deny this reality, but sooner or later they would have to face the truth. - Theme: Learning Racism. Description: Jesse—the white Southern police officer at the center of the story—reflects bitterly on all aspects of Black culture and Black life, sometimes out loud to his sleeping wife and sometimes within his own mind. In a memory that comes near the end of the story, Jesse is eight years old and does not yet possess the same racist rage. In fact, his closest friend at the time is a Black child named Otis, whose intellect he respects. It is not until Jesse's father and Jesse's mother take him to witness a brutal lynching, surrounded by hundreds of other white people, that he transforms from an open-minded child to an overtly racist young man. By allowing readers a glimpse of Jesse before having internalized a racist ideology, Baldwin implies that racism is a learned response white children adopt in order to be accepted by their community, not an inherent part of a person's character. Further, by closing their hearts and minds, Baldwin suggests that racism hurts white people, too. Despite Jesse's extreme racism as an adult, eight-year-old Jesse sees Black people as human, implying that white people are not born racist. In the flashback to Jesse as a child, he thinks fondly of Otis, a Black friend he cares for deeply. He has not seen Otis for two days and, based on his parents' strange behavior leading up to the lynching, he worries for Otis's safety. Jesse does not understand what is happening and wishes he could ask Otis because Otis "knew everything," showing that Jesse not only cared for Otis but also respected his intellect—signs that he saw him much more fully than the Black people he meets as an adult. On the way to the lynching, Jesse notices that all of the Black people he normally sees in the fields along the road are missing. Rather than celebrate their absence the way adult Jesse might, young Jesse feels worried and reflects fondly on memories of them tipping their hats and smiling, "their eyes as warm as the sun." It is not until witnessing the way that his father, mother, and hundreds of other white people respond to the lynching that Jesse learns how to dehumanize Black people. While watching the lynching victim hanging by his hands, still alive, Jesse sees him as a person at first, noticing, for example, how he had a widow's peak in his hair just like Jesse and Jesse's father. He wonders, "What did the man do? What did he do?" suggesting that he has not yet accepted the racist belief that Black people inherently deserve to be mistreated. He also feels that the spectators' delight is "more acrid than smoke." But after Jesse notices his parents' and the crowd's positive reactions to the lynching—his mother's eyes are "very bright" and his father's are "peaceful"—he starts to embrace the violence as well, even wishing that he were the man castrating the victim. He has recognized that he will be celebrated by his community for engaging in racist violence, rather than belittled for caring about Black people as he had in the past. Jesse feels full of love for his father, reflecting on how he "had revealed to [Jesse] a great secret which would be the key to his life forever." The secret, Baldwin suggests, is embracing racism. Though Jesse has clearly materially benefited from embracing racism, Baldwin hints that, at an emotional level, learning to be racist hurts white people, too. Early in the story, Jesse remembers how he offered candy to a Black child (a younger version of the civil rights protest leader he beats up in jail) who told him, "I don't want nothing you got, white man." Through this child, Baldwin suggests that white people are not actually in an enviable position, despite all their privilege. Jesse also unconsciously senses his own racial wound. While recalling moments of watching Black people singing, he reflects on how, looking into their eyes, he sensed that some of them "were singing for mercy for his soul, too." In other words, they saw that, through dehumanizing them, he had lost a part of himself. Jesse is also unable to connect with people in his life the way he could with Otis—certainly not Black people, but not white people either. What he and his white male friends had in common was a shared commitment to upholding the racist status quo and, without that, he no longer trusts anyone in his life. By juxtaposing an open-hearted eight-year-old Jesse with a bitter 42-year-old Jesse, Baldwin demonstrates how white people in the early twentieth century were granted power and privilege by embracing racism, but it came at an emotional cost, especially as the world around them was rapidly advancing. White people are not born racist, Baldwin suggests, but taught by parents and elders how to be so, and stopping that cycle will benefit all. - Climax: Near the end of the story when, in a flashback, Jesse witnesses a lynching - Summary: "Going to Meet the Man" takes place in an unnamed town in the American South in the early 1960s. Jesse—a 42-year-old white police officer—is unable to stay erect while having sex with his wife Grace. As she falls asleep, Jesse tells her about his difficult day at work, using racist slurs and degrading language when referring to Black people. He explains how civil rights protestors blocked traffic while standing in line to register to vote, and how, even in the face of arrests from his fellow officer Big Jim C., they refused to move. Jesse's job was to make the jailed protestors stop singing, so he targeted the protest leader, feeling both disgust and excitement as he tortured the man. Despite nearly passing out, the protestor refused to ask the others to stop singing. Jesse stops speaking and the story becomes a flashback. The protestor reminds Jesse that they met years ago when Jesse worked for a mail-order business. In another flashback, Jesse remembers meeting the protestor as a boy when coming to collect payment from the boy's grandmother. The boy subtly chides Jesse for not using his grandmother's full name (referred to her only as "Old Julia"). Back in the jailhouse, Jesse is full of rage and beats the protestor more aggressively, appalled to find himself sexually aroused. He leaves the cell and thinks about how the times have changed with all of this protesting—Black people used to be agreeable and keep to themselves, while white people used to feel safe and in control. Back in the present, Jesse suddenly remembers lines from a Black spiritual. In a new flashback, Jesse is an eight-year-old boy driving home with his mother and father, hearing Black people in town singing the song from across the fields. His father suggests that they are singing for an unnamed "him." The next day, several cars full of white neighbors pull up to Jesse's house and Jesse's father asks if "they got him." The neighbors say yes, laughing, and Jesse's family joins them on the road to witness the lynching. Jesse asks if they are "going to see the bad nigger—the one that knocked down old Miss Standish?" His mother implies the answer is yes, and Jesse wishes that he could ask his Black friend Otis what was happening, since Otis knew everything. At their destination, hundreds of excited white people are watching a naked Black man being dropped into a fire while hanging from his hands. At first, Jesse feels the spectators' delight is "more acrid than smoke," but, moments later, he begins "to feel a joy he had never felt before." One of Jesse's father's friends castrates the lynching victim and then he is dropped into the fire for the last time. Suddenly Jesse feels deep love for his father, sensing that he carried Jesse through an important test. Back in the present, Jesse finds himself aroused by the memories of watching the lynching and beating the protest leader. Unashamed this time, he has aggressive sex with Grace, whispering, "I'm going to do you like a nigger" and he thinks excitedly of the morning to come.

- Genre: Southern Gothic Short Story - Title: Good Country People - Point of view: Third person limited - Setting: 20th Century Rural Georgia - Character: Hulga Hopewell (Joy). Description: The daughter of Mrs. Hopewell, Hulga is intelligent, intellectual, and cynical. The shallowness of daily life and the pointless conversations between Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman cause her constant annoyance. Limited by a weak heart and an artificial leg, her life has largely been restricted to the home where she grew up. As a result, she has always kept mostly to herself and prefers reading books to spending time with others. Her heart condition and artificial leg, too, have made her more reflective: facing her own mortality and disability forced her to question the religious thinking that dominates the world around her. Instead, she has built a life defined by philosophy. As she states to the Bible Salesman, she has "a number of degrees," including a Ph.D. in philosophy. When she turned twenty-one, Joy turned her name to "Hulga," taking pride in turning a symbol of what she saw as her mother's naïve worldview and turning it into something ugly. To Hulga, religion is a waste of time. She sees herself as above the typical Christian believers around her, who she sees as blind hypocrites. When she meets the Bible Salesman, she plans to seduce him, assuming that with what she believes is her "realistic" view of the world that she is more worldly and savvy. Yet when the Bible Salesman asks to see her artificial leg, Hulga seems to have an almost-religious epiphany, a moment where she feels more deeply connected to the world around her and to him by allowing him access to her vulnerabilities. To her surprise, it turns out that the Bible Salesman is a scam artist, travelling with alcohol, condoms, and pornography inside a hollowed-out Bible. When the Bible Salesman takes the leg and abandons Hulga, Hulga must face the truth that she is not so savvy as she believes. And yet, for the reader if not for Hulga herself, the power of her near-religious experience when giving up her artificial leg is no less real or powerful despite the fact that the Bible Salesman used it to take advantage of her. - Character: Mrs. Hopewell. Description: Hulga's mother, Mrs. Hopewell's name is a pun on the breezy outlook she has of the world. Her conventional worldview is based on a simplistic assessment of herself at the top and the classes "beneath" her as either made up of "good country people," meaning rural people who work hard and are honest, and "trash," dishonest people who, Mrs. Hopewell believes, are strictly untrustworthy and live in filth. She believes herself to be able to easily distinguish between these classes, a sense that of course reaffirms her own belief in her superiority. Meanwhile, Mrs. Hopewell gossips regularly with her employee and tenant, Mrs. Freeman. Mrs. Hopewell recognizes that Mrs. Freeman is nosy, but prides herself on putting that to good use: if Mrs. Freeman wants to be in charge everything, Mrs. Hopewell believes, then let her. It is clear, though, that Mrs. Freeman's habit of telling Mrs. Hopewell whatever she wants to hear gives Mrs. Hopewell a false sense of her own good judgment. Though skeptical of Hulga's philosophical tendencies, Mrs. Hopewell is at times sympathetic toward her daughter and has allowed her a relaxed and intellectual life. Ultimately, Mrs. Hopewell is not a bad person, but her easy sense of superiority and conventional morality makes her hypocritical (as Hulga sees her) and easily manipulated by the Bible Salesman, who Mrs. Hopewell sees as being one of the "good country people." - Character: Mrs. Freeman. Description: Mrs. Freeman is Mrs. Hopewell's tenant and employee, largely in charge of running the farm. She is described as efficient and like a machine, so focused on everything being just right that her previous employer warned Mrs. Hopewell of her nosiness. Mrs. Hopewell puts this to her advantage, reasoning that if Mrs. Freeman wants to be in charge of everything, then let her. Mrs. Freeman often gossips with Mrs. Hopewell about superficial things, or about her daughters, Carramae and Glynese Freeman. These conversations involve frequent use of platitudes and clichés, with Mrs. Freeman typically agreeing with whatever her employer says. When interacting with Hulga, Mrs. Freeman shows an interest in Hulga's artificial leg, asking repeatedly for details about how the accident happened. Mrs. Freeman thinks of herself as more in touch with reality than Mrs. Hopewell, as being superior in her own way. But the events of the story shows that she isn't: at the story's end, Mrs. Freeman watches the Bible Salesman walk out of the woods, and, not realizing what has transpired between the Bible Salesman and Hulga, reflects that, "Some can't be that simple…I know I never could." - Character: The Bible Salesman. Description: The Bible Salesman, who introduces himself as Manley Pointer, appears at first to be a devout and humble Christian selling bibles out of a large valise. He is extremely good at figuring out other characters' viewpoints, insecurities, and false senses of superiority and exploiting them to get what he wants. He plays into Mrs. Hopewell's idea of "good country people" to get her to sit with him for two hours as he tries to sell bibles to her. He pretends to have a heart condition, which catches Hulga's attention, and then allows Hulga to indulge in her own sense of superiority to let her think that she is seducing him. He tells a story, likely fabricated, that he lost his father when he was ten years old. Even further, he senses Hulga's hidden (even from herself) desire to allow herself to be vulnerable to and give herself to another in order to steal her artificial leg. Ultimately, before abandoning Hulga in the loft, he reveals that he has tricked many similar women in this way, and that his own viewpoint of the world is even more hard-bitten than Hulga's atheism. He describes himself as a nihilist, saying "I been believing in nothing since I was born." He then tells her that Manley Pointer is not his real name and leaves. We do not know much for certain about the Bible Salesman's life, as it is impossible to separate fact from fiction in what he says, but it is clear that he is a liar who takes pride in his nihilism, moving through the country taking advantage of people's trust. - Character: Carramae and Glynese Freeman –. Description: Glycene and Carramae are Mrs. Freeman's daughters. Carramae is fifteen and pregnant by her husband. Glynese is eighteen and unmarried. Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman often gossip about the girls, discussing the pregnancy and a marriage proposal Glynese receives. Hulga, who dislikes the sisters, has nicknamed them to herself Glycerin and Caramel, mocking what she sees as their sugary-sweet, conventional nature. - Theme: Class, Identity, and Superiority. Description: In "Good Country People", Mrs. Hopewell sees the people of her world as falling into a clear hierarchy. At the bottom is a group of people she calls "trash," whom she describes as poor, uncultured, and essentially criminal. Next is a group she identifies as "good country people." These people are poorer than landowners like Mrs. Hopewell and her daughter Hulga, as well as less educated. Mrs. Hopewell champions these people as "the salt of the earth," as people who are vital to the functioning of the world, since "it takes all kinds to make the world." Yet, her regard for "good country people" is essentially condescending—she views such people, including her maid Mrs. Freeman and the Bible Salesman, as "good" only in the context of also seeing them as inferior to her and her daughter. Further, there is a sense that it makes Mrs. Hopewell feel even more powerful and "enlightened" that she is willing and able to differentiate between the "good" and "trash" people beneath her on the social ladder.By shifting into other characters' perspectives, however, O'Connor suggests the folly of seeing the world in terms of such hierarchy, as well as how subjective it can be. Because Hulga is more educated than everyone else in the story, she sees herself as wiser and able to see things as they truly are. She feels able to define herself (she even renames herself from her given name of Joy to Hulga), and therefore as sitting at the top of the hierarchy. Meanwhile, Mrs. Freeman constantly attempts to express her superiority over her husband and to prove her equality with Mrs. Hopewell and thus considers herself atop the stack. Thus, every character tries to understand herself in terms not only of her social class — how much education or money she has — but also how she compares to the people around her and the attributes she thinks make her stand out. Nearly every character in the novel sees the world, and themselves, in a way that places them at the top of the hierarchy. The story pushes even further, though, and suggests that seeing the world in terms of hierarchies actually makes one blind to the realities of the individuals in the world. While Mrs. Hopewell, Hulga, and Mrs. Freeman strive to make their identities known and concrete—Hulga, for example, shouts to her mother: "'If you want me, here I am—LIKE I AM"—the Bible Salesman takes a different approach. He takes advantage of his low social position to get people to sympathize with him. He allows others to see him as they like and then plays into their class-based stereotypes. Mrs. Hopewell sees him as simple, blameless, "good country people," and he presents himself as such. However, the final revelation of his corruption and shamelessness demonstrates how one cannot assume based on class or even on one's outward appearance what a person is really like. Ultimately, the Bible Salesman even outsmarts the highly educated Hulga, who assumes he's a complete dimwit at the start. Through his deceit and cunning, the Bible Salesman manages to con the other three women, each of whom thought she was better than him, and in fact is able to (and motivated to) pull off his con because they assumed they were better than him. In this way, the Bible Salesman further proves both the fragility and danger of believing in any kind of class-based or intelligence-based social hierarchy. - Theme: Appearances and Realities. Description: The way characters understand other characters in "Good Country People" is often the opposite of how these characters truly are. Moreover, the way characters present themselves in "Good Country People" is often the very opposite of how they are. The title of the story, "Good Country People," is meant to be read ironically. Both of the characters whom Mrs. Hopewell describes as being "good country people" turn out not to fit that description at all. The Bible Salesman, who claims to identify with the phrase and presents himself as simple and pious, turns out to be an irreverent womanizer, and he steals Hulga's artificial leg. Mrs. Freeman, meanwhile, is somber, superior, judgmental, and self-centered throughout the story—not simple and kind-hearted, as Mrs. Hopewell assumes. Mrs. Hopewell's entire idea of "good country people" depends on her self-conception as being superior to those people, and yet in the story it is very clear that Mrs. Hopewell is no more intelligent, sophisticated, or cultured than the other characters. The very phrase "Good Country People" and the way that it defines reality becomes meaningless and suspect.Hulga is the centerpiece character of the story, and O'Connor uses her exterior and interior lives to comment on the way that looks can be deceiving. Though outwardly a disabled, grumpy, and short-tempered character, her short and absurd tryst with the Bible Salesman, during which O'Connor enters her complicated mind, reveals Hulga to be a person seeking love and acceptance even as she struggles to master her emotions in a world that has often been cruel to her. Further, to entice the Bible Salesman Hulga tries to modify her own appearance, pretending to be younger than she is, never realizing that the Bible Salesman is hiding who he is in a much more fundamental way.By the end of "Good Country People," O'Connor literally illustrates the distance between appearance and reality. The Bible Salesman's valise appears quite early on in the story, and throughout the story both the characters and we, as readers, believe that it contains Bibles. In fact, at the end of the story the man opens the valise up to reveal just two Bibles, one of which is actually hollow and contains alcohol, playing cards, and pornography. The man who seemed innocent and harmless suddenly becomes a villain, and Hulga must not only deal with the loss of her leg but also the fact that her conception of her own superior intelligence is not as definitive as she had believed. - Theme: Authentic Faith and Vulnerability. Description: "Good Country People" offers few glimpses of true, authentic faith. More often, the characters demonstrate false claims of devotion. Mrs. Hopewell lies about keeping a Bible at her bedside to give the impression that she is religious. The Bible Salesman, who claims to be devout, turns out to be hiding alcohol, condoms, and pornography inside a hollowed-out Bible. And the protagonist, Hulga, is condescending toward any religious sentiment. There is one moment in the story, however, that seems to involve authentic faith—when Hulga has an epiphany while removing her artificial leg in front of the Bible Salesman. O'Connor writes that "It was like surrendering to him completely...it was like losing her own life and finding it again, miraculously in his." She even fantasizes about a life with the Bible Salesman in which "every night he would take the leg off and every morning put it back on again." Clearly, she is having a spiritual moment that goes beyond everyday experience. Despite her cynicism and her intellectual education, for a moment she considers the possibility of a better, more meaningful existence.But as soon as Hulga makes herself vulnerable, the Bible Salesman takes advantage of her. He takes the leg and refuses to give it back. He takes out the condoms and the whiskey, making clear that he has been the one tricking her, whereas she believed she was seducing him. This flash of insight Hulga experiences is thus intertwined with her vulnerability and suffering. As Flannery O'Connor has written elsewhere, "Grace changes us and change is painful." For O'Connor, faith comes with vulnerability and pain—it is the handing over of one's self, and the acceptance of whatever comes after. Hulga thus gets her first glimpse of authentic faith and pays a high price for it. This unsentimental view of faith permeates O'Connor's writing, and yet the story also offers the suggestion that there is value in that moment of authentic, vulnerable faith—that there is a worth in such faith regardless of the pain it can expose you to. - Theme: Disease and Disability. Description: Flannery O'Connor lost her father to systemic lupus erythematosus at the age of fifteen. This same disease was then diagnosed in O'Connor herself, debilitating her for many years and causing her death at age 39. Disease is present throughout much of O'Connor's work, and she uses it to show how true hardship and an awareness of one's own mortality can transform people. While Mrs. Hopewell lives in a world of clichés and conventional morality, Hulga's awareness of her own death makes her a more contemplative and introspective person. Hulga seems to see her missing leg, the result of a childhood accident, as the very core of her identity. As the story puts it: "She was as sensitive about the artificial leg as a peacock about his tail…she took care of it as someone else would his soul." She is intimately familiar with the limitations of her own body. Each day, also, she is aware of the frailty of her heart and the possibility that she might die. Together, her missing leg and her heart condition have defined her life: they have forced her to stay close to home and led her to seek refuge from the world, to give up religion, and to devote herself instead to the study of books and philosophy. Her disabilities haven't just defined what Hulga has done with her life, they have also defined her views of life and the world. Because of her intellectual pursuits, and because of her disabilities, Hulga believes that she sees the world as it really is—that she sees through the lies of religion and complacency to the truth of the deceit, greed, and lust beneath. As Mrs. Hopewell puts it, Hulga avoids a romantic life because she is practically able to smell the stupidity of boys around her. And it is certainly possible to infer that Hulga started to call herself Hulga, as opposed to her given name of Joy, precisely because of the "true vision" of the world that she feels her disabilities have given her. Her disease and disability have fundamentally changed her identity to one that is cynical of the "joy" in the world and instead sees ugliness.In another story, one of O'Connor's characters says "She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." In "Good Country People," Hulga's disease serves that role, making her constantly aware of her own mortality. While Hulga may not be a perfectly moral person, she is certainly more concerned with living an ethical life and seeing things clearly than her insulated and convention-obsessed mother, and O'Connor makes it clear that these qualities stem from her own disease and disability. - Theme: Hypocrisy. Description: Every character in "Good Country People" believes he or she has the moral high ground, but none of them leads the ethical life they claim to. In different ways, they are all hypocrites, claiming to honor and to have higher moral standards than they actually do.Mrs. Hopewell, for example, speaks with authority about the difference between "good country people" and "trash." Throughout the story, she projects an air of moral superiority, but it's unclear what exactly makes her so much better than the people she looks down upon. When the Bible Salesman visits her home, Mrs. Hopewell says that she keeps a Bible at her bedside—but she's lying. She views herself as treating Mrs. Freeman with respect, but in actuality looks down on her. For his part, the Bible Salesman espouses Christian values in order to sin. He lies about being religious to take advantage of others, exactly the opposite of what a devout Christian should do. This reversal is encapsulated in his supposedly Bible-filled valise, which turns out to contain a hollowed-out Bible filled with whiskey and condoms. As Hulga tells the Bible Salesman: "You're just like them all — say one thing and do another. You're a perfect Christian." Hulga's comment suggests that she sees hypocrisy as connected to religion, but the story as a whole indicates that Hulga's view of hypocrisy is too limited. It suggests this most powerfully, in fact, with the revelation that Hulga is a hypocrite too. Hulga claims and believes that she has risen above conventional morality by shedding religion and pursuing philosophy in a meaningful way, and she thinks of herself as living a more ethical life than the religious people around her, and yet all of her knowledge only makes her look down on others and scorn them. For all Hulga's awareness of the hypocrisy of others, she cannot see her own.Importantly, all of these characters seem righteous and morally consistent when seen from afar. Mrs. Hopewell, for example, strictly follows social norms that make her seem moral and kind (like sitting with the Bible Salesman, because he is one of the "good country people" and it's polite to welcome a guest), but she does not act this way out of genuine kindness—rather from a sense of obligation and keeping up pretenses. The thin veneer of politeness and social convention masks Mrs. Hopewell's judgmental and immoral nature, even from herself. This, then, is another form of hypocrisy: she pretends to be genuinely kind and generous, but only is insofar as it gives her the appearance of following social norms.O'Connor makes clear that this hypocrisy is well hidden, and that everyday life makes it easy to believe that most people are righteous and consistent. At the end of the story, when Mrs. Hopewell sees the Bible Salesman walking by, she thinks to herself that he has been selling Bibles, when in fact he just stole her daughter's artificial leg and abandoned her. From a distance, all of these characters are ethical members of upstanding society—but when examined more closely, none of them has the integrity they espouse. As Hulga points out, hypocrisy is everywhere, and O'Connor, by also revealing Hulga's own hypocrisy, reveals that she is even more correct than she realizes. - Climax: The Bible Salesman steals Hulga's artificial leg - Summary: The story begins with a description of Mrs. Freeman, a woman who works on a farm in rural Georgia. Mrs. Hopewell, who employs Mrs. Freeman, begins the morning routine: she lights the gas heater, then her daughter Hulga goes into the bathroom and slams the door, staying in there until Mrs. Freeman has arrived and her small talk with Mrs. Hopewell is almost done. Hulga experiences "constant outrage" in the presence of her mother and Mrs. Freeman's constant small talk. The banality of Mrs. Hopewell's conversation is characterized by one of her favorite phrases, "that is life!" No matter what Mrs. Hopewell says, Mrs. Freeman agrees with her. Mrs. Hopewell considers Mrs. Freeman one of the "good country people," a group that she contrasts with the "trash" who have given her trouble as employees in the past. Whenever Mrs. Hopewell has tried to make her daughter work, Hulga's attitude has been so negative and unpleasant that Mrs. Hopewell gave up. Mrs. Hopewell accepts her daughter's negative attitude because Hulga lost her leg when she was ten years old in a hunting accident. Her artificial leg makes it so that Hulga "never danced a step or had any normal good times." Hulga's original name, at birth, was "Joy", but when she turned 21 she changed it to Hulga to spite her mother. Hulga takes pride in ruining anything that her mother thinks is beautiful. Mrs. Hopewell regrets allowing Hulga to return to school for a PhD. Hulga is thirty two years old, but because of a heart condition she is only expected to live to forty-five. She would like to go travel and lecture at universities, but cannot do so because of her illness. She is frustrated with her ordinary surroundings, demanding of her mother, in response to being told to smile more, "Woman! do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God!" Having studied philosophy as a graduate student, Hulga spends much of her time reading and taking long walks. She has little interest in men, regarding most of them as unintelligent and uneducated. We learn that a Bible Salesman arrived at the Hopewell home the previous day, and the narrator then recounts what transpired: the Bible Salesman arrived, seeming earnest and well-mannered. Mrs. Hopewell invited him inside, and he explained that he was there to sell bibles that he kept in a valise. He commented that there was no bible in their parlor, for which Mrs. Hopewell blamed Hulga. Mrs. Hopewell then lied to the Bible Salesman, telling him that she keeps a bible by her bedside. He insisted that every family should have a bible in the parlor, but Mrs. Hopewell refused and suggested that it was time for him to leave. But she was then guilted into letting him stay by his insistence that he is "just a country boy" and that "People like you don't like to fool with country people like me." He introduced himself as Manley Pointer, and Mrs. Hopewell insisted that she appreciated "good country people." When Hulga arrived ready for dinner and demanded that her mother get rid of the Bible Salesman, the Bible Salesman mentioned that he has a heart condition, and Hulga began to cry, believing that the two of them must have the same condition. She insisted that he stay for dinner. At dinner, Hulga pretended not to hear whenever the Bible Salesman spoke to her. He told his hosts about his childhood, mentioning that his father was crushed by a tree when he was eight. Hulga left the table, but Mrs. Hopewell spent two hours listening to the Bible Salesman talk about his life before telling him that she must be going. Outside, as the Bible salesman left, Hulga was waiting for him in the road and they spoke. Mrs. Hopewell saw them but could not hear what they said. She did watch Hulga walk him to the gate. Back in the present, Saturday morning, Hulga waits for the Bible Salesman to arrive. The night before, they had made a plan to meet at 10am. She told him that she was seventeen. On the way to the gate the night before, he explained that he considered himself a serious person who is keenly aware of his own mortality. Hulga said she was the same, and felt a connection with him. Then he proposed that they have a picnic the next day. During the night, she imagined seducing him. When Hulga shows up to the gate at 10am, nobody is there. She begins to wonder if he will ever show up, but then he appears. He is carrying his valise full of bibles. As they walk, he asks where her artificial leg joins to her body, and Hulga is offended. He then expresses disbelief when she says she is an atheist. At the edge of the woods, he kisses her. Hulga has never been kissed before and reflects that it is an "unexceptional experience." They enter the barn and the Bible Salesman laments that they cannot go up to the loft because of Hulga's missing leg. She is offended and immediately climbs up. They kiss, and the Bible Salesman tells Joy he loves her. He insists that she say the same of him. She explains that love is "not a word I use. I don't have illusions. I'm one of those people who see through to nothing." She expresses pity for the Bible Salesman. Finally, on his insistence, she admits that she loves him "in a sense" and tells him that she is thirty years old and well-educated. The Bible Salesman asks her to prove that she loves him by showing where her artificial leg connects to the rest of her body. When she says no, he accuses her of leading him on. Hulga then lifts up the sleeve of her pants and shows him, then taking the leg off and putting it back on again. The Bible Salesman then takes it off, and despite Hulga's demand that he put it back on, he does not. The Bible Salesman then begins to kiss her again. When she pushes him off, he takes out one of his bibles from the valise and opens it, revealing it to be hollowed out. It contains a flask of whiskey, pornographic playing cards, and a box of condoms. He offers her a drink of the whiskey, and Hulga is shocked. She repeatedly demands to be given her leg back. She says that, in all his hypocrisy, he is a "perfect Christian." He ridicules her for thinking that he was an actual Christian, grabs the leg and, as he descends from the loft, tells Hulga that he has a whole collection of things he's stolen in a similar way, and that his real name is not Manley Pointer. He proclaims "you ain't so smart. I been believing in nothing ever since I was born." Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman, busy working, watch the Bible Salesman walk from the woods toward the highway. Mrs. Hopewell recognizes him and presumes that he had been selling bibles. Both she and Mrs. Freeman reflect that they could never be as "simple" as the Bible Salesman seems to be.

- Genre: Children's Novel, Historical Fiction - Title: Good Night, Mr. Tom - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: England during World War II - Character: William Beech. Description: - Character: Tom Oakley. Description: - Character: Zach Wrench. Description: - Character: Carrie Thatcher. Description: - Character: Mrs. Beech/William's Mother. Description: - Character: George Fletcher. Description: - Character: Ginnie Thatcher. Description: - Character: Mrs. Hartridge. Description: - Character: Geoffrey Sanderton. Description: - Character: Nancy Little. Description: - Character: Rachel. Description: - Theme: Biological Family vs. Chosen Family. Description: - Theme: Civilians in Wartime. Description: - Theme: Grief and Healing. Description: - Theme: Talent and Community. Description: - Theme: Religion. Description: - Climax: Tom "kidnaps" William from the hospital in London. - Summary: At the beginning of September 1939, just after World War II begins, a government official brings William Beech, a child evacuated from London, to stay with widower Tom Oakley in the rural English village of Little Weirwold. Tom notices that William's growth seems stunted and that he has bruises on his legs. That night, Tom searches William's bag for his pajamas and finds a letter from William's mother, Mrs. Beech, telling Tom that William is "full of sin" and to beat William with a belt if he misbehaves. Tom informs William that he has never hit a child and that he won't be beating William with a belt. Then he puts William to bed in a cozy attic room. In the middle of the night, William wakes up, having wet the bed, and vomits. When Tom finds William the next morning, he's frightened and keeps apologizing—but Tom just takes the sheets and mattress down for washing. Then he takes William to the local doctor, Dr. Little, who diagnoses William with malnutrition. Afterward, Tom runs more errands with William tagging along. William expresses a desire to go into the local art store. Tom, who hasn't gone inside since his artistic wife Rachel died about 40 years prior, will only let him look in the window. Yet after dropping William off at the local library to get some picture books from librarian Miss Emilia Thorne, Tom hesitatingly enters the art store. Later, Tom is carrying a package when he picks up William from the art store. At home, Tom reads to William before bed and remakes his bed with rubber sheets so the mattress won't get soaked if William wets himself again. The next day, the whole village of Little Weirwold gathers to hear Prime Minister Chamberlain announce over the radio that England is declaring war on Nazi Germany. Later that day, Tom, his neighbor Mr. Fletcher, Mr. Fletcher's two older sons, and William dig a bomb shelter in Tom's garden. After Tom and the Fletchers have constructed a shelter within the pit they've dug, William stays behind in the garden to cover the shelter with earth. At dusk, a boy appears and introduces himself as Zach. Zach explains that he is a fellow evacuee and suggests that he and William become friends. The next day, Tom and William are covering the shelter with more earth when Zach swings by again. When one of Mr. Fletcher's younger sons, George, comes by to invite William to pick blackberries, Zach invites himself along. A few hours later, Zach and William meet up with George and his friends, twin sisters Carrie and Ginnie Thatcher. Though initially the girls are annoyed to have tagalongs, the children begin talking while they pick berries and become friendly. On the first day of school, William hopes to enter Mrs. Hartridge's class with his new friends, but he ends up in class with the younger children because he can't read or write. When William gets home, Tom asks him why he looks upset and, upon learning the reason, volunteers to help teach him to read and write. That evening, William learns to write his own name. September 7, 1939, is William's ninth birthday. That morning, various Little Weirwold villagers send him presents, and Tom gives him art supplies. Later that evening, Zach helps Tom surprise William with a party, which George, Carrie, and Ginnie also attend. William, who has never had a birthday party before, is overwhelmed with happiness. A couple months pass. Tom and Miss Thorne give William lessons in reading and writing, while William continues his friendships with Zach, George, Carrie, and Ginnie. One night, William's friends come over, and Zach announces that Miss Thorne plans to direct a children's Christmas show. He convinces all the friends to participate—even William, who agrees to paint the sets. When George also tries to recruit Zach and William for the choir, Carrie complains that girls are excluded from the choir—and from the academic high school in town, which she longs to attend. Meanwhile, Zach says that he can't join choir because he's Jewish. William, to his own surprise, volunteers to join the choir. The next morning, he wakes and realizes that for once, he didn't wet the bed. In December, William has painted the sets for the Christmas show, Dickens's A Christmas Carol, and is recruited to be a line prompter. Unexpectedly, he reveals himself to be a talented actor. When the mother of the evacuee boy cast as Scrooge takes him back to London, Miss Thorne asks William to play Scrooge. To his friends' delight, William agrees. Later in the winter, William, having learned to read and write, moves up to Mrs. Hartridge's class. Carrie asks Mrs. Hartridge whether she can take the entrance exam for the academic high school in town, even though Little Weirwold has only sent boys before. Mrs. Hartridge says she'll ask around. In the spring, Tom receives a letter from Mrs. Beech, in which she claims to be ill and asks William to come visit her in London. Seeing William off at the train station, Tom asks him to write. After William arrives at the London train station, he and Mrs. Beech ride several buses back to Mrs. Beech's apartment, where Mrs. Beech reveals that she has a new baby, which she claims was a gift from Jesus. William is alarmed to see that Mrs. Beech has taped the baby girl's mouth shut. When he unpacks his bags, Mrs. Beech refuses to believe that he didn't steal or beg for the presents that the Little Weirwold villagers sent home with him. He says the gifts were from friends. When she quizzes him about his friends, asking whether they attend church, he mentions that he has female friends and that his friend Zach is Jewish. Mrs. Beech, viciously horrified, beats William until he loses consciousness. He wakes up in pain, locked in a dark cupboard. For the next four weeks, Tom waits for a letter from William but receives nothing. After he has a nightmare where he hears William calling for help, he abruptly decides to travel to London and make sure William is all right. Eventually, he finds Mrs. Beech's locked apartment. When he tells a passing police officer he's worried about the woman and child who live inside, the men force the door. They find William tied to a pipe inside the cupboard, sitting in his own urine and holding a dead baby girl. After the police officer calls an ambulance, Tom rides with William to the hospital. William spends a day in the hospital, where the nurses sedate him whenever he screams. When Tom learns that the authorities plan to put William in an orphanage rather than letting him go home with Tom, Tom asks himself what Rachel would do—and he "kidnaps" a sedated William, taking him by train, cart, and foot back to Little Weirwold. It takes William a long time to recover emotionally and physically. One day, after Zach explains to him how babies are made, William asks Tom why Mrs. Beech would lie to him and say that men and women socializing was evil when she did it herself. Tom explains that Mrs. Beech was likely mentally ill. When William says that he wants to stay with Tom and never return to Mrs. Beech, Tom says the authorities wouldn't let Mrs. Beech take him anymore. William asks why Tom "kidnapped" him, in that case. Tom explains that the authorities wanted to put him in an orphanage, but Tom wanted William to come home with him. William says that he loves Tom—and Tom, gruff and embarrassed, admits that he loves William, too. In the summer of 1940, Tom, William, and Zach go on a vacation to the seaside. During the vacation, Zach becomes worried about his parents back in London, as Nazi German bombings of London have intensified. When the vacationers return to Little Weirwold, Carrie joyously informs Zach that she has passed the high school entrance exams. One night, several authorities show up at Tom's and inform Tom and William that Mrs. Beech has died by suicide. One of the authorities, who runs an orphanage, says she would be willing to take William. William insists that he wants to stay at Tom's. After the adults talk alone, Tom informs William that Tom will be allowed to adopt him. As the school year begins, Zach receives news that his father, a member of the Auxiliary Fire Service, has been injured in London and is in the hospital. He travels to London to see his father—and is killed in the Nazi Luftwaffe's brutal September 1940 bombings of London. For months afterward, William is numb with grief. But then, one day, he decides to teach himself to ride Zach's abandoned bicycle. The act makes him feel feels as though Zach is still with him in spirit, and he begins to heal as a result. One day, he and Carrie bicycle down to the riverside, both wearing some of Zach's clothes. When William returns home that evening, he notices for the first time that Tom looks old. Yet he also realizes that vulnerability is not the same in weakness. Recognizing the importance of this revelation, he says in surprise, "I'm growing!"

- Genre: Short Story; Frame Tale - Title: Gooseberries - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: 19th-century rural Russia - Character: Ivan Ivanych. Description: Ivan is a middle-aged veterinarian who spends most of the story telling his friends Alekhin and Burkin about his younger brother, Nikolai. For decades, Ivan has been dismayed by Nikolai's dream of owning land, as he finds this lifestyle isolating, meaningless, and spiritually deadening. He tells Alekhin and Burkin about his recent visit to Nikolai's country estate, where he found that his brother had become fat, lazy, and pompous. When the two dined on gooseberries that Nikolai grew on his land, Ivan found them too "tough and sour" to eat and believed that Nikolai's enjoyment of the berries was delusional. This is a symbolic parallel to how Ivan views Nikolai's lifestyle and demeanor: he believes that Nikolai is deluding himself into being happy, when he's actually arrogant and entitled and lives a sheltered, unfulfilling life. Yet, as Ivan tells this story, it becomes obvious that he's somewhat hypocritical: he admits that he isn't happy living in a town, and he fails to clearly define what, exactly, constitutes the meaningful life that he believes Nikolai should be living. Ivan comes off as an old man who's been embittered by his own unfulfilling life and now resents people who've found happiness. He urges his younger friend Alekhin to "Do good!" and take advantage of his youth and strength while he can—but it seems like Alekhin is already doing that, and that perhaps Ivan is the one who's wasted his life. Ivan is also adamant that people should avoid comfort and embrace the suffering and chaos of the outside world, yet the story ends with Ivan sleeping in Alekhin's comfortable guest bedroom, safely sheltered away from a rainstorm. Readers are thus left with the impression that Ivan is in denial of his own actions, a man who believes he knows the path to fulfillment yet fails to pursue that path himself. - Character: Nikolai Ivanych. Description: Nikolai is Ivan's brother. He's two years younger than Ivan, and he becomes a government employee at 19 while Ivan is studying to become a veterinarian. Nikolai and Ivan had an idyllic childhood in the countryside on their father's modest estate, and Nikolai desperately wants to return to this lifestyle in adulthood—he's totally fixated on owning a country estate, and the ability to grow gooseberries on his own land symbolizes this dream for him. Nikolai spends over 20 years living an extremely frugal lifestyle to save as much money as possible, to the point that he marries a widow for her money and then deprives her of enough food to eat until she dies. When Nikolai is in his forties, he finally achieves his dream, buying a rural estate called Himalayskoe. This estate isn't what Nikolai imagined (it's covered in dense shrubbery and backs up against a polluted river), yet he still seems proud and fulfilled. But his land ownership also makes him lazy and arrogant: though Nikolai comes from humble peasant roots, he now refuses to do any work, demands to be addressed as a nobleman, and mistreats the local peasants. When Ivan visits Himalayskoe, and the brothers dine on the gooseberries from Nikolai's garden, Ivan finds them bitter, while Nikolai finds them sweet. And just like Ivan believes that Nikolai deludes himself into enjoying the berries, so too does he believe that Nikolai deludes himself into enjoying a meaningless, sheltered, and overly indulgent life. Nikolai's character more broadly represents the rising landowning class in Russia in the late 19th century (when the story is set), implying that wealthy landowners tend to be complacent, entitled, and self-deluding. - Character: Alekhin. Description: Alekhin is Ivan and Burkin's friend whom they visit at his estate, Sofyino, to seek shelter from the rain. Alekhin is a landowner and farmer of about 40 who has an intelligent and artistic air about him. Yet he's also notably humble, dresses like a peasant, and spends all of his time doing manual labor—he even forgets to bathe for months at a time. Like Ivan's brother Nikolai, Alekhin is successful and affluent; his estate is even more sprawling and impressive than Nikolai's. But unlike the selfish and entitled Nikolai, Alekhin is very kind and generous. When Ivan and Burkin arrive unexpectedly at Sofyino to seek shelter from a rainstorm, he greets them warmly and spends the rest of the day making them feel welcome and engaging them in conversation. In this way, Alekhin serves as a foil to Nikolai's character—and to 19th-century Russia's landowning class more generally—providing an example of how wealthy landowners don't necessarily have to be greedy or morally corrupt. - Character: Burkin. Description: Burkin is a high school teacher who's friends with Ivan and Alekhin. At the beginning of the story, he and Ivan are walking the fields outside their village when it begins to rain, and Burkin suggests that they take shelter at their mutual friend Alekhin's estate. Not much is revealed about Burkin's character; he fades into the background and remains mostly silent while Ivan tells him and Alekhin a story about his brother Nikolai. After Ivan ends up ranting about Nikolai's sheltered, meaningless life and urging Alekhin not to let himself befall the same fate, Burkin seems bored and fed up, declaring that it's time for bed. He and Ivan turn in for the night in Alekhin's guest bedroom, but Burkin is unable to sleep because he's distracted by the odor of stale tobacco in Ivan's pipe on the nightstand. That the story ends with Burkin, seemingly one of Ivan's closest friends, put off by this smell suggests that Burkin is similarly put off by Ivan's staleness in his old age. Ivan's exhortations about how to live a good life have offended and repelled his friends (and perhaps readers, too) rather than inspiring them to live meaningfully. - Character: Pelageya. Description: Pelageya is Alekhin's young maid. When Ivan and Burkin arrive at Alekhin's country estate to take shelter from the rain, Pelageya is the one who greets the men at the door of the main house, and they're stunned by how beautiful she is. Pelageya doesn't play a particularly active role in the story, simply completing domestic tasks and serving the men with whatever they need. Nevertheless, her youthful beauty is mentioned several times, which characterizes her as an embodiment of the youth and potential that Ivan wishes he still had—and that he urges his friends not to waste. - Theme: Happiness, Suffering, and Meaning. Description: In "Gooseberries," Ivan Ivanych is highly skeptical of those who pursue happy, comfortable lives—he believes that suffering is the precursor to a meaningful life, and that chasing happiness is the wrong path because it leads to stagnation and complacency. Most of the story is a frame tale (a story within a story) in which Ivan and tells his friends Alekhin and Burkin about his brother Nikolai, who spent decades of his life saving up for a country estate where he could live an easy, comfortable lifestyle. Ivan, however, thinks that settling into a happy life in this way is selfish and delusional, since it merely insulates a person from the realities of the outside world. Instead, he argues that one should embrace suffering and pursue the most meaningful life possible. But, in the end, Ivan is the one who is unhappy, suggesting that the key to a fulfilling life is actually subjective—and perhaps even impossible to define. Ivan thinks that Nikolai's version of happiness is selfish, misguided, and delusional. For Nikolai, ultimate happiness means owning a secluded estate in the countryside. When Nikolai finally achieves this decades-long dream, Ivan goes to visit him—and although his brother is clearly happy, Ivan doesn't believe that this happiness is genuine. He tells his friends Burkin and Alekhin, "To leave town, quit the struggle and noise of life, go and hide in your country place, isn't life, it's egoism, laziness, it's a sort of monasticism, but a monasticism without spiritual endeavor." In other words, he doesn't think that Nikolai's new lifestyle is conducive to genuine happiness—it merely insulates him from "the struggle and noise of life," which Ivan seems to think is the root of meaningful, spiritually fulfilling life. When Ivan goes to visit Nikolai, the two brothers eat gooseberries that Nikolai has grown on his land—the ability to grow and eat gooseberries has, over the course of Nikolai's adulthood, symbolized his dream of becoming a landowner. Nikolai delights in how delicious they are, whereas Ivan find them "tough and sour." He thinks of writer Alexander Pushkin's quote, "Dearer to us than a host of truths is an exalting illusion," implying that Nikolai's happiness and fulfillment is an illusion (represented by his enjoyment of the bitter gooseberries). Again, Ivan thinks that the comfortable lifestyle Nikolai enjoys is nothing but stagnation and self-delusion. According to him, happy people are only able to stay contented because unhappy people (like the peasants who live near Nikolai's estate) suffer in silence. Ivan believes that "At the door of every contented, happy man somebody should stand with a little hammer, constantly tapping, to remind him that unhappy people exist," emphasizing his disdain for people who sacrifice a life full of meaningful ups and downs for a life that's always comfortable. But Ivan is the one who's dissatisfied with his life, suggesting that the definition of a meaningful life is more subjective than he'd like to admit. Both Nikolai and Ivan's friend Alekhin are well-off landowners who lead the very lifestyle that Ivan condemns, yet they seem fulfilled—whether this fulfillment is illusory or not. Nikolai "had attained his goal in life, had gotten what he wanted, who was content with his fate and with himself," and Alekhin seems similarly at peace and content in his role as a wealthy farmer. Their achievements and lifestyles are certainly meaningful to them, even if they don't seem that way to Ivan. Ivan, meanwhile, says that he's miserable in the city, which he previously claimed was where the meaningful "struggle and noise of life" happens. What's more, he admits to Alekhin and Burkin that he, too, enjoys a comfortable lifestyle while lecturing others about patiently enduring their suffering. Ivan, in other words, is somewhat hypocritical: he claims to know what constitutes a meaningful life, yet he seems to think that he's wasted his own, lamenting over his old age and exclaiming, "If only I were young!" He also tells Alekhin to "Do good!"—that is, to avoid wasting his own youth and energy, and to pursue "something more intelligent and great" than a peaceful country life. Yet, crucially, Ivan never gives a solid definition of what that "something" is. He clearly views suffering and immersing oneself in a wide variety of experiences as more meaningful than pursuing wealth and stability—yet he doesn't seem to find meaning in his own suffering or his own life in the city. This suggests that Ivan is perhaps just as misguided as he believes Nikolai is, and that meaning and happiness aren't mutually exclusive. At the end of the story, Ivan and Burkin go to bed in Alekhin's guest bedroom for the night. Before falling asleep, Ivan leaves his pipe on the nightstand; from the other bed, Burkin lies awake, wondering where the strong smell of stale tobacco is coming from. That the story ends with Ivan fast asleep, blissfully unaware of this "heavy odor" of staleness at his bedside, conveys the sense that Ivan himself emanates a stale and unpleasant quality to those around him. Rather than inspiring his friends to embrace suffering and pursue meaningful lives, he has aired his own misery out into the open, leaving readers questioning whether Ivan's rejection of an idyllic country life is rooted not in genuine concern but in resentment of other people's happiness. Further, the story seems to suggest through the character of Alekhin—who primarily thinks about working on his farm and doesn't understand what Ivan is talking about through his long rant—that it is the focus on "practical matters" rather than ideals or illusions that offers real contentment, though one might argue that even that sort of contentment is focused narrowly and could therefore itself be construed as somewhat insular and selfish. Ultimately, the story offers no conclusion about what does offer a meaningful, happy life—the story captures the mystery and tragedy of the search for meaning and happiness, rather than offer easy answers. - Theme: Wealth and Status. Description: In "Gooseberries," Ivan Ivanych tells his friends the story of Nikolai Ivanych, his younger brother who lives an extremely frugal lifestyle for decades in order to save up for a plot of land in the countryside. Nikolai does this at the expense of his own well-being and his relationships, and once he's achieved his goal, he becomes pompous and entitled. Watching his brother transform from a civil servant of modest means to a "fat landowner" who not only eschews his peasant roots but also treats other peasants badly leads Ivan to believe that upward mobility—that is, increased wealth and social status—tends to corrupt people, making them arrogant and insensitive. However, the story also offers up Ivan's wealthy but kind and generous friend Alekhin as a foil to Nikolai's character, showing that a person's attitude toward what they have is more indicative of their character than money and status themselves. As Ivan tells Nikolai's story to his friends Burkin and Alekhin, he makes the case that money has a morally perverse or even maddening effect on people. "Money, like vodka, does strange things to a man," Ivan says. He gives the example of a man in his village who desperately ate all of his money and lottery tickets before he died, so that no one else could have them. Ivan also shares an anecdote of a man who lost his foot in a train accident—but rather than being concerned about his bleeding wound, he begged his rescuers (Ivan among them) to find his amputated foot, so that he wouldn't lose the 20 rubles he hid in his boot. In both cases, the men in question were so possessed by money that they were driven to irrational behavior, valuing wealth above all else. Furthermore, Ivan shares how Nikolai deprived himself for over 20 years: he lived so frugally that he dressed in rags and rarely ate, and he married a widow for money rather than love. He proceeded to deprive his wife of basic needs (like enough food to eat), to the point that she died three years into their marriage. Ivan bitterly reflects that Nikolai "never thought for a moment that he was guilty of her death." In this way, Nikolai is so single-mindedly obsessed with saving money for his future estate that he sacrifices his wife's well-being in the process, prioritizing wealth over relationships to a deadly degree. After decades of saving, when Nikolai is finally able to purchase the country home of his dreams, his newfound wealth and higher status among the local peasants makes him pompous and out of touch with his own peasant-class roots. Ivan tells Burkin and Alekhin about his recent visit to Nikolai's estate: his brother had become fat and lazy, a stark contrast to the scarcity and undernourishment that defined his life for so long. He was now "living like a landowner," suggesting that a gluttonous, indolent lifestyle is characteristic of everyone wealthy enough to own land. Nikolai is so immersed in this newfound identity as a nobleman that he becomes angry when local peasants fail to address him as "Your Honor"—conveniently forgetting the fact that "[Nikolai and Ivan's] grandfather was a peasant and our father a soldier." Indeed, Nikolai is adamant that "I know the people and know how to handle them […] The people like me. I have only to move a finger, and the people do whatever I want." He's convinced that he's inherently superior to the peasant class despite his own common roots, and he alternately abuses his power over them and bribes them with alcohol to keep their favor. Wealth, in Nikolai's case, has indeed gone to his head. But Ivan's friend Alekhin is also a well-off landowner, yet he's the exact opposite of Nikolai—suggesting that wealth and high social status aren't inherently corruptive. Alekhin seems to be even wealthier than Nikolai: his estate features multiple barns, a large pond, a bathing house, and a large two-story main house. It's also situated on a clean river, whereas the one bordering Nikolai's land is contaminated by factory runoff. Yet despite being a man of means, Alekhin is notably modest. While Nikolai is too lazy to do manual labor, Alekhin is doing the hard, messy work of processing grain when Ivan and Burkin arrive at his estate. He shows his humility when he admits to his friends that "I don't think I've bathed since spring." Alekhin is also kind, welcoming, and generous, greeting his friends warmly and allowing them to bathe, change into clean clothes, and sleep at his home—a stark contrast to Nikolai's selfishness and entitlement. Indeed, after Ivan tells Nikolai's story, Alekhin doesn't even understand the point Ivan is trying to make about landowners: "Whether what Ivan Ivanych had said was intelligent or correct, [Alekhin] did not try to figure out; his guests were not talking of grain, or hay, or tar, but about something that had no direct bearing on his life, and he was glad and wanted them to go on." Although Alekhin is certainly successful and affluent, he lives more like a peasant than the "squire" Nikolai has become, working hard and not concerning himself with anything but practical matters of farming. With this, the story seems to suggest that, while money can certainly do "strange things" to people, achieving wealth and land ownership doesn't guarantee that a person will become morally corrupt. Alekhin's generosity and modesty, in contrast with Nikolai's arrogance and cruelty, indicates that whether one has more or less than others, their attitude toward what they have is what matters. - Theme: Modernity, Isolation, and Nature. Description: City-dweller Ivan Ivanych feels plagued by the isolation that he believes is inherent to modern lifestyles. In late 19th-century Russia, where the story is set, it was becoming increasingly common for people to live in cities or to be able to own land. And while Ivan rails against the idea of rural living—that is, relegating oneself to an insular plot of land in the countryside—throughout the story, he also reveals that he's miserable with his own lifestyle in a town, as he feels alienated from the other people there. The only instances in the story when Ivan seems truly happy are fleeting moments when he's able to be out in nature without the trappings of modern life. This suggests that the lifestyles of both rural landowners and city-dwellers are isolating and unnatural—instead, Ivan favors complete freedom and an unbridled immersion in nature. Ivan's brother Nikolai owns a country estate, the very idea of which Ivan finds limiting and isolating. When Nikolai first shares his dream of becoming a landowner, Ivan is skeptical: he thinks that "I never sympathized with this desire to lock himself up for life in his own country place. It is a common saying that a man needs only six feet of earth. But it's a corpse that needs six feet, not a man." In likening rural living to a kind of symbolic death, Ivan suggests that the modern tendency to resign oneself to a confined swath of land is unnatural and restrictive. Furthermore, as Ivan recounts Nikolai's story to his friends Burkin and Alekhin, he's adamant that "To leave town, quit the struggle and noise of life, go and hide in your country place, isn't life, it's egoism, laziness, it's a sort of monasticism, but a monasticism without spiritual endeavor. Man needs, not six feet of earth, not a country place, but the whole earth, the whole of nature, where he can express at liberty all the properties and particularities of his free spirit." With this, Ivan makes the case that to leave the city for an isolated rural lifestyle is to leave behind the richness that makes life worth living. And just because people who live in the countryside are closer to nature doesn't mean they're truly immersed in it—one needs "the whole earth, the whole of nature," not a limited piece of land that's manicured and cultivated to the owner's liking. But for all of Ivan's complaints about rural landowners, he also admits that he isn't satisfied with city life. After Ivan goes to visit Nikolai at his estate, Ivan returns to his town and finds it miserable and isolating. He tells Burkin and Alekhin that "it has become unbearable for me to live in town. I'm oppressed by the peace and quiet, I'm afraid to look in the windows, because there's no more painful spectacle for me now than a happy family sitting around a table and drinking tea." Having experienced Nikolai's isolated life in the countryside, Ivan seems to find that the city isn't all that different in comparison—there's more "peace and quiet" than "the struggle and noise of life," as even city-dwellers tend to live insular lives within family units rather than immersing themselves in the outside world. With this, Ivan implies that living in a city isn't any better than owning land in the country—in his estimation, both of these versions of modern life are lonely, limiting, and depressing. Instead, the story suggests that Ivan's reverence for "the whole earth, the whole of nature" is preferable: people should experience nature in a free, unbridled way rather than trying to avoid it (in the city) or trying to mold and control it (in the country). There are only two points in the story when Ivan seems genuinely happy: the first occurs in the opening paragraph, when he and Burkin are wandering through the vast fields outside of a village. Ivan and Burkin are "imbued with love for these fields, and both thought how great, how beautiful this land was." In this instance, the two friends are able to experience nature in a way that's spiritually uplifting rather than deadening—they're not limited to an isolated "six feet of earth" and are therefore able to feel free and happy and to appreciate the natural beauty around them. The second time Ivan seems happy occurs when Burkin suggests that they seek cover from the rain at Alekhin's house, and Alekhin invites them to wash up in his bathing house. Rather than joining Burkin and Alekhin, though, Ivan chooses to swim in Alekhin's pond in the rain, repeatedly diving under the water and exclaiming "Ah, my God." The lighthearted way Ivan swings his arms, dives to touch the bottom of the pond, and cries out in delight indicate that interacting with nature in this way is preferable to sheltering oneself from it. But even Ivan falls victim to the human tendency to buffer oneself against the elements and indulge in the comforts of modern life—for instance, he takes comfort in the warmth of Alekhin's house, clean clothing, and tea served by Alekhin's beautiful maid Pelageya. And at the end of the story, when Ivan and Burkin go to sleep in Alekhin's guest bedroom, Ivan says, "Lord forgive us sinners!" before pulling the bed covers over his head. This exclamation seems to suggest that he sees himself as a hypocritical "sinner" for decrying modern comforts yet taking solace in the amenities of Alekhin's home. The story's final line, "Rain beat on the windows all night," leaves readers with an image of Ivan and Burkin insulated from the harsh outside world as they sleep—suggesting that even though it's more freeing and fulfilling to immerse oneself in nature, the comforts of a sheltered life are often too tempting to resist. - Climax: Ivan pleads with Alekhin to "Do good!" - Summary: Ivan and Burkin are enjoying a long walk in the vast fields outside their village when it begins to rain. The two decide to take cover at their mutual friend Alekhin's sprawling estate, Sofyino, where they find the humble and modestly dressed Alekhin processing grain in one of his barns. Alekhin ushers Ivan and Burkin to the main house, where Alekhin's beautiful maid Pelageya greets them. Alekhin then invites his friends to clean up in his bathing house, but Ivan decides to swim in Alekhin's pond in the rain instead. He repeatedly dives to the bottom and swings his arms delightedly, only emerging when Burkin beckons him back to the house. The three friends, now clean and dry, settle into Alekhin's drawing room, and Ivan begins to tell Burkin and Alekhin a story about his younger brother Nikolai. He and Nikolai were raised in the countryside, and Nikolai longed to return to this life throughout his adulthood. Ivan loves nature as well, but he never understood the desire to own a confined piece of land—to Ivan, leaving the city for a country estate is a sheltered, indulgent, and spiritually unfulfilling way to live. He believes that one should freely experience all the world has to offer, which means experiencing the whole of nature. Nevertheless, for over 20 years, Nikolai worked as a civil servant while living a miserly lifestyle to save up for an estate. He even married a widow for her money and proceeded to deprive her of basic necessities (like enough food to eat) until she passed away—something that Ivan says Nikolai never felt guilty about. Nikolai remained obsessed with the goal of owning land, and the ability to grow gooseberries on his estate became a kind of symbol of this dream for him. Finally, in his forties, Nikolai was able to buy an estate called Himalayskoe. When Ivan recently went to visit, he found it unimpressive: the land was covered in dense brush and ditches, and the river alongside it was polluted. What's more, land ownership had seemingly made Nikolai lazy, entitled, and arrogant. When the two brothers ate some gooseberries that Nikolai had grown, Ivan found them bitter and inedible, while Nikolai found them sweet and delicious—a delusion on Nikolai's part, in Ivan's view. Seeing Nikolai content with such an indulgent and meaningless lifestyle made Ivan miserable. He reflects to Alekhin and Burkin that happy people like Nikolai are only able to maintain their happiness because others suffer in silence. Indeed, Nikolai had become cruel and controlling toward local peasants, abusing his authority over them and demanding they address him as a nobleman. This disturbed Ivan, and when he arrived back home, he felt similarly miserable and alienated in the city. Having concluded his story, Ivan begins to openly lament his old age. He pleads with Alekhin neither to waste his youth nor to pursue happiness, since doing so only means settling for complacency and comfort—Ivan believes that happiness is the enemy of a meaningful, fulfilling life. By this time, Burkin and Alekhin are bored. Alekhin is growing tired—he doesn't really understand what Ivan is talking about, but he doesn't want to go to sleep in case his friends say something interesting. Burkin announces that it's time for bed, however, and he and Ivan settle into Alekhin's guestroom. Ivan sets down his pipe on the nightstand before falling asleep—and from the other bed, Burkin lies awake, wondering where the offensive smell of stale tobacco is coming from. Meanwhile, the rainstorm persists, beating on the windows all night.

- Genre: Realistic Fiction - Title: Gorilla, My Love - Point of view: First Person - Setting: New York, New York - Character: Hazel. Description: The protagonist of the story, Hazel is a young girl who values family loyalty and integrity. She insists on being referred to by her "real" name rather than nicknames like "Precious" and "Peaches" because she feels these are demeaning and threaten her control over her identity. She is "the smartest kid P.S. 186 ever had in its whole lifetime" but, being a child, also harbors irrational fears of the dark and rats in the bucket of pecans. She likes causing trouble by blowing up and popping bags of potato chips in the movie theater to annoy the matrons, but she is also observant and insightful. She is particularly indignant about the uneven power dynamic between children and adults, especially when adults exploit children by lying "just cause they little and can't take em to court." When she realizes that she has been cheated into seeing King of Kings, a religious movie, rather than the advertised Gorilla, My Love, Hazel confronts the manager and burns down the concession stand because this seems like a just response to betrayal according to how she was raised. Family solidarity forms an important part of Hazel's support network. She has faith in her parents to back her up when she speaks her mind, because they encourage her to act with integrity and her Mama frequently advocates for her when her teachers treat her unfairly. She harbors close relationships with everyone in her family, but she is particularly close with her uncle Hunca Bubba. She is deeply hurt when he decides to marry another woman—even though, years ago, he had (jokingly) promised to marry her when she grew up—and stop using the nickname she gave him when she was a child, viewing this as yet another example of adults betraying children. - Character: Hunca Bubba / Jefferson Winston Vale. Description: Hazel's uncle. Hunca Bubba is planning on getting married soon and can't stop talking about his future wife. He is also planning on changing his name from Hunca Bubba, a nickname Hazel gave him when she was a child, back to his given name, Jefferson Winston Vale. The latter sounds much more formal and mature, and signals that he is ready to move on to a new phase in his life—one that potentially means drifting away from Hazel as he prepares to start his own family. He adores Hazel but is deeply confused when she gets upset and accuses him of breaking his promise to marry her (something he had said to her as a joke years prior), reminding her, "you just a little girl." Granddaddy chimes in and adds that it was Hunca Bubba who promised to marry Hazel, and now her uncle is Jefferson Winston Vale, a new man. "That was somebody else. I'm a new somebody," he agrees. This betrayal wounds Hazel deeply because it comes from someone she loves and trusts—and, of course, she does not yet understand that she cannot actually marry her uncle. Hunca Bubba's actions cement her belief that children like Hazel and Baby Jason must act in solidarity with each other in order to endure adults' dishonesty. - Character: Granddaddy. Description: Hazel's grandfather. He calls her "Scout" while he's driving to remind her that she is supposed to help him with directions. He means well but is out of touch; in Hazel's fantasy about what her family would do if Big Brood was on the cross like Jesus, Granddaddy tells everyone to "leave the boy alone, if that's what he wants to do with his life we ain't got nothing to say about it," but Aunt Daisy calls him a "damn fool old man." Hazel also recalls a real scenario when one of her relatives came home from the army missing a leg. Granddaddy's response was "that's life," which infuriated all her other family members (presumably because of Granddaddy's insensitivity). He becomes agitated at the end of the story when Hazel abandons her navigating duties because she is upset with Hunca Bubba. He tries to soothe her by calling her "Precious" and explaining that Hunca Bubba was a different person when he promised to marry her, but this only makes Hazel feel condescended and lied to. - Character: Baby Jason. Description: Hazel's youngest brother. According to Granddaddy, Baby Jason is so blindly loyal to Hazel that he would follow her "into the fiery furnace" if she beckoned, highlighting the theme of family solidarity that runs throughout the story. He loves kicking the seats in the movie theater while Hazel causes trouble and putting potato chips in her hair. At the end of the story, when Hazel cries at Hunca Bubba's betrayal, Baby Jason starts crying too. Although Jason is very young, Hazel believes he understands the importance of solidarity between children in the face of adults "turnin you round every which way so bad." - Character: Big Brood. Description: Hazel's older brother. He accompanies her and Baby Jason to the theater to see Gorilla, My Love, although he is apprehensive about the "my love" part of the title. He likes talking about all the "fiercesome" things the siblings are going to do—which really means all the things Hazel is going to do, as she loves causing trouble and fighting bullies. Hazel is very protective of Big Brood and stands up to the boys who steal his ball at the park. When she is forced to watch King of Kings, Hazel imagines how her family would react if it were Big Brood up on the cross rather than Jesus, which leads her to believe that her family members have more sense than Christ. Big Brood clearly loves Hazel, but has a bit of a cowardly streak—he conveniently has to go to the bathroom when she confronts the manager. Later, it is his "big mouth" that reveals to Mama and Daddy that Hazel set fire to the concessions stand at the movie theater. - Character: Thunderbuns. Description: The "colored matron" who the movie theater sends to control particularly rowdy audiences because "she do not play. She do not smile." She is "big and bad" and carries a flashlight "like she gonna use it on somebody." When the children in the audience loudly rebel at being tricked into paying to see King of Kings, the theater staff sends in Thunderbuns, and the kids get quiet as soon as she enters the room. Hazel never reveals her given name, but her nickname is meant to indicate the fear and respect she evokes as an example of black female power. Even though Hazel is wary of other adults and the power they have over children, she seems to respect Thunderbuns. - Character: Mama. Description: Hazel's mother. She "specially" won't stand for anyone mistreating her children, according to Hazel, who imagines her hitting Romans with her pocketbook while watching King of Kings. Mama uses her power to "hypnotize" her children when they misbehave and to reprimand Hazel's teachers when they treat Hazel unfairly. When Mama walks in the room, "teacher be comin undone cause she know this could be her job and her behind cause Mama got pull with the board and bad by her own self anyhow." Mama inspires Hazel's adoration and respect, but she also is willing to admit when her daughter is right. Hazel feels empowered to speak her mind because Mama advises her to "speak up and let the chips fall where they may. And if anybody don't like it, tell em to come see your Mama." She raises her daughter to act with integrity and forms an important part of her support network. She exemplifies working class black female power, and her influence is one of the main reasons Hazel has so much faith in her family's loyalty. - Character: Daddy. Description: Hazel's father. Daddy is strict but fair, and he encourages Hazel to behave with integrity. Hazel introduces him by imagining what he would do if Big Brood was up on the cross like Jesus. In her mind, Daddy is "yellin to Granddaddy to get him a ladder cause Big Brood actin the fool, his mother side of the family showin up." Later, he decides not to hit Hazel with his belt to punish her for setting fire to the concession stand because she argues that she was acting based on his values and responding appropriately to someone who did not keep his word—"Cause if you say Gorilla, My Love, you suppose to mean it," Hazel explains. Later, she feels empowered to confront Hunca Bubba for breaking his promise to her because she remembers that both her parents vowed to support her if anyone gave her a hard time for speaking her mind. - Character: The Manager. Description: The man in charge of the Washington movie theater is sleazy and lies to the children about the movie that is playing, advertising something called Gorilla, My Love while actually playing a religious movie called King of Kings. Hazel thinks he is a "crook" and dislikes him because "he oily and pasty at the same time, like the bad guy in the serial." He is her prime example of betrayal, an adult "messin over kids just cause they little and can't take em to court." He speaks condescendingly to Hazel when she demands her money back and tries to rush her out the door, but she stands firm and channels her Mama, who "ain't backin up" when she confronts teachers at Hazel's school about mistreating their students. Ultimately, the manager refuses to give Hazel and her brothers a refund, so she takes matches from his ashtray and sets fire to the movie theater concessions stand. She sees this as a logical and fair response to someone who doesn't keep his word. - Character: Aunt Jo. Description: Hazel's aunt, who is "the hardest head in the family" and worse than Aunt Daisy. Aunt Jo calls Hazel "Miss Muffin" when she concedes to her during an argument and wants to get her to calm down. This name comes from the time Hazel got a painful vaccine and wouldn't get off the couch cushions afterward. Hazel finds it frustrating and irritating when adults like Aunt Jo call her by childish nicknames rather than her given name. - Theme: Trust, Solidarity, and Betrayal. Description: "Gorilla, My Love," which follows a young and independent-minded girl named Hazel, is a story about a child's sense of betrayal at the duplicity of adults. As Hazel grows up, her parents and extended family members encourage her to speak her mind and be true to her word. Trust and honesty are thus so integral to Hazel's upbringing that she becomes furious when she encounters betrayals from other adults and disconsolate when she perceives betrayal within her own family: namely, when her uncle announces that he intends to get married and go by his given name, Jefferson Winston Vale, rather than "Hunca Bubba," the nickname she gave him when she was a child. Hazel's anguish following Hunca Bubba's announcement shows betrayal is most painful when it occurs in a close relationship and destroys previously held bonds of trust and solidarity. Hazel makes it clear early in the story that solidarity is important to her sense of self and her relationships with her family. Her little brother, Baby Jason, is so devoted to her, "he'd follow me into the fiery furnace if I said come on." The devotion is reciprocated, and Hazel is determined to support her siblings in every scenario, even to "jump on they back and fight awhile," if bullies steal her older brother Big Brood's toy at the park. When the film at the theater depicts Jesus's suffering, Hazel notes, "My daddy wouldn't stand for nobody treatin any of us that way. My mama specially." Here, Hazel's respect and reverence for her parents' determination to stand up for their children even overshadows her respect and reverence for Jesus. She recalls her Mama using her powerful personality and "pull with the Board" to confront teachers who mistreated Hazel and "start playin the dozens behind colored folks"—that is, use racist insults. Hazel was raised with a deep sense of trust in her loved ones and takes pride in being reliable herself. Hazel becomes angry when she realizes that she can't always trust other people, adults in particular, to stay true to their word. When she realizes that the movie theater is playing King of Kings, a film about Jesus's life, ministry, and death, rather than the advertised Gorilla, My Love, she feels "ready to kill, not cause I got anything gainst Jesus. Just that when you fixed to watch a gorilla picture you don't wanna get messed around with Sunday School stuff." After the movie, Hazel goes to the manager "who is a crook in the first place" to demand their money back, but he treats her like a child and refuses to bend to her request. Her awareness of the power dynamics between powerful adults and vulnerable children aggravates her sense of betrayal, so much so that she feels justified in setting fire to the concessions stand when the manager refuses to offer a refund. She later avoids getting a beating from her Daddy when she explains that she was just being true to how she was raised, and "if you say Gorilla, My Love, you suppose to mean it." When Hazel senses betrayal in her own family, the sense of solidarity she treasures shatters. She becomes extremely upset when she learns her uncle, Hunca Bubba, is getting married and changing his name back to Jefferson Winston Vale, which he used before Hazel was born. Her family members do not understand her indignation about this news, because "It wasn't like Hunca Bubba had gone back on his word or anything. Just that he was thinkin bout gettin married and was usin his real name now." However, Hazel reminds Hunca Bubba that, when she was much younger, he had promised to marry her when she grew up. Her uncle meant it as a joke, but Hazel doesn't understand this—all she sees is a family member who broke his promise and, to add insult to injury, changed his name from a title he used for her benefit since she couldn't pronounce his real one. Even worse, her other family members, including Granddaddy, take his side, depriving her of the sense of solidarity they have always provided. When her uncle protests and doesn't apologize, she accuses him of being "a lyin dawg" and cries passionately. Her only consolation is that Baby Jason joins her crying out of loyalty, signifying that she can still trust him. Hazel feels empowered to challenge adult betrayal when she trusts her family to back her up, like in the case of her racist teachers. However, when Hunca Bubba decides to marry another woman and discards the name Hazel gave him, she feels as though the people she trusted the most have collaborated in the greatest betrayal of all. With this, the story suggests that although solidarity with one's loved ones can be a source of incredible empowerment, the loss of these bonds is a greater source of heartbreak than mistreatment from a stranger. - Theme: Family. Description: "Gorilla, My Love" examines the benefits and limitations of Hazel's family ties. Mama, Daddy, Granddaddy, Hunca Bubba, Aunt Daisy, and Hazel all have strong opinions and outspoken personalities, making them a collective force to be reckoned with. However, the story highlights how family can be both a help and a hindrance. Although Hazel's intense devotion to her family values provides her with support and moral guidance, her strict adherence to their values also limits her perspective and makes it difficult for her to accept new people into the family's fold. Hazel's family provides her with a strong sense of security, whether they're giving her emotional support or backing her up in a fight. The depiction of a suffering Christ in King of Kings causes Hazel to reflect, "just about anybody in my family is better than this god they always talkin about." She muses about what her family would do if her brother Big Brood were up on the cross, which in her imagination is more like being stuck in a tree than being gruesomely tortured. She imagines Daddy calling for a ladder, Mama and Aunt Daisy "jumpin on them Romans beatin them with they pocketbooks," and Hunca Bubba "tellin them folks on they knees they better get out the way and go get some help or they goin to get trampled on." The fantasy ends with her brother in the park and her family in the kitchen yelling and "throwin dishes," but it gives Hazel a greater sense of security than religion. She has more faith in her family to support her in a crisis than in any religious doctrine, which makes her even more exasperated with the religious film that replaces Gorilla, My Love. Hazel's parents advise her to act and speak with integrity, and Hazel clings to the strong moral compass they've given her. "If anybody don't like it," her mother says, "tell em to come see your mama." Hazel's mother is always ready to advocate for her children when they face problems with racist teachers at school. "She stalk in with her hat pulled down bad and that Persian lamb coat draped back over one hip on account of she got her fist planted there so she can talk that talk which gets us all hypnotized," Hazel recalls. Hazel's mother is also willing to admit when Hazel is right when they are having an argument. Hazel's father echoes this behavior when he decides not to beat her for setting the movie theater on fire. Hazel explains she only got into trouble because she was acting out of the integrity they instilled in her: the movie theater dishonestly showed the wrong movie and the manager refused to refund her, so she took matters into her own hands. Hazel feels a sense of security knowing that her parents listen to her and raised her with strong values. While Hazel's family is a positive force in her life because they provide her with moral guidance and support, her unflinching devotion to her family also has some drawbacks, as she is deeply suspicious of outsiders and anyone who threatens the family dynamic. When Hunca Bubba announces his intention to marry a young woman, Hazel feels jealous of his attention and resentful that he is not keeping the joking promise he made to marry her when she was little. She believes his excitement about his future wife "aint enough to keep the mind alive" and dismisses the photo he shows her and her brother as just "some skinny woman in a countrified dress with her hand shot up to her face like she shame fore cameras." Hazel does not register this woman as a future family member and views her with the same contempt she reserves for grownups who "think they can treat you just anyhow," including her teachers and the cheating cinema manager. Hazel, of course, is too young to understand that she can't marry her uncle and is thus even more infuriated when her uncle explains that he "was just teasin'" about wanting to marry her. Her oversimplified views of family loyalty transform the joyous occasion of an upcoming wedding into a tragedy, and she and Baby Jason begin to cry. Not only does Hunca Bubba's impending marriage threaten Hazel's faith in her support network, but it also challenges her sense of self. She has always identified as a member of a family that values integrity, and this betrayal leaves her worldview in tatters. With this, the story suggests that identifying too closely with family can actually be harmful, even if that family is usually a source of support and solidarity. - Theme: Childhood and Adulthood. Description: Most of the narrative tension in "Gorilla, My Love" arises from conflicts between children and adults. Hazel is skeptical—if not outright disdainful—of most adults and feels as though children must stick together to endure adults' dishonesty and patronization. Bambara uses Hazel's confrontations with various adults throughout the story to emphasize that although the young girl's perspective is flawed by inexperience, she has a keen sense of justice and her indignation at being mistreated by adults is valid. Like many children, Hazel is both intelligent and immature. She is proud of being "the smartest kid P.S. 186 ever had in its whole lifetime" but refuses to sit in the back of the truck next to the pecans because their movement unnerves her, "like maybe a rat in the buckets." She sleeps with the lights on and blames her young brother, Baby Jason, for needing them at night. Although she is very smart, she is still motivated by these irrational fears. Her immaturity manifests in her behavior towards others as well. She gets into physical fights with the bullies at the park who "take Big Brood's Spaudeen away from him." When she goes to the movie theater, she buys Havmore potato chips because the bags are good for "blowing up and bustin real loud," and generally making a scene, "which I love to do, no lie." These details establish Hazel's childlike nature, but they do not legitimize or excuse her mistreatment from adults. The righteousness of Hazel's anger is established at the Washington movie theater when the children in the audience realize they have been tricked into watching King of Kings, a religious film, instead of the advertised Gorilla, My Love. Hazel, Baby Jason, Big Brood, and the other children start "yellin, booin, stompin and carryin on" and the man in the projection booth tries to drown them out by raising the volume of the movie. When a staff member ropes off the children's section and tries to restore order, some kids start running up and down the aisles to show "it take more than some dust ole velvet rope to tie us down." While Hazel and her siblings' previous disruptive behavior could be chalked up to immaturity, this scene is an act of resistance against being cheated by the theater. Hazel fumes, "I get so tired grownups messin over kids just cause they little and can't take em to court." When the movie ends and Hazel goes to the manager's office to try to get her money back, the man speaks to her "like I lost my mittens or wet on myself." Hazel resents his condescension and recognizes that she and her fellow audience members have been exploited due to their age. In her view, childhood and adulthood are in a constant state of tension, where vulnerable children must resist being manipulated by adults who abuse their power. Hazel's confrontation with Hunca Bubba about his marriage and name change further legitimizes her sense of injustice at the way adults treat her. When Hunca Bubba affirms that he intends to marry the woman in his photograph, Hazel reminds him angrily that, when she was little, he promised to marry her when she grew up. Hunca Bubba is confused and reminds her that she is "just a little girl" and that he was "just teasin." Hazel becomes upset because of his condescension, which is reminiscent of the way the theater manager treated her. Hunca Bubba's joke was likely well-intended, but his dismissive comments make Hazel feel invalidated and disrespected simply for being a child. Granddaddy then calls Hazel "Precious" in an attempt to placate her, but this patronizing nickname just infuriates her more. In the end, she and Baby Jason start crying together and she feels they must stick together "what with grown-ups playin change-up and turnin you round every which way." The fact that she and her brother are both crying emphasizes that they are equals—he idolizes her and would never treat her with such disrespect. Bambara, it seems, wants readers to feel sympathy for Hazel despite her immaturity. Her examination of the way adults mistreat children encourages her audience to view both groups in a more nuanced light—children are capable of wisdom and justice despite their immaturity, and adults are capable of mistreatment and wrongdoing despite their supposed maturity. - Theme: Names and Identity. Description: In "Gorilla, My Love," Bambara investigates the link between one's name and their identity. Hazel is referred to by five alternate names throughout the story. Each time this occurs, she bristles and makes a point of noting that her "real" name isn't actually "Scout" or "Peaches" or whatever name an adult has chosen for her, implying that she prefers to be called Hazel, and that her name is a key part of her identity. Her uncle Hunca Bubba also decides to use his "real" name, Jefferson Winston Vale, to prepare for his upcoming marriage. Ultimately, characters' desires to choose names for themselves—and nicknames for others—represent their desires to exert control over their identities. Hazel's irritation at her various nicknames stems from a need to maintain control of her sense of self in the face of other people's attempts to influence her. At the beginning of the story, Hazel's Granddaddy calls her "Scout" as he asks her for directions, using the nickname to remind her that she is supposed to help him navigate. Hazel's Mama calls her "Badbird" in order to calm her daughter down when "she tired arguin and know I'm right." Her Aunt Jo says "You absolutely right, Miss Muffin," in similar situations. Each of these names stems from an adult trying to influence her behavior in some way, and Hazel's insistence on using her "real" name thus reads like an act of asserting her agency and individuality. When Hunca Bubba is confused about why she is so upset that he is getting married, he asks, "Watcha mean, Peaches?" and uses the nickname as an attempt to make her calm down. The condescending nickname has the opposite impact—it emphasizes Hazel's inferior status as a child, which infuriates her. Hunca Bubba also uses his name as a method of asserting his identity. He decides he is going to use his given name, Jefferson Winston Vale, now that he is going to be getting married soon. According to Hazel, this is not "a change up, but a change back, since Jefferson Winston Vale was the name in the first place." He started going by Hunca Bubba when Hazel was young and she couldn't pronounce the word "uncle." Hazel dislikes her uncle's given name and believes it sounds "very geographical weatherlike to me." The use of the more formal-sounding name points to the way that Hunca Bubba is preparing to move forward into a new stage of life, one that demands maturity and responsibility. He is ready to be a husband and possibly a father, rather than just Hazel's fun uncle. Granddaddy tries to justify this to Hazel, pointing out that it was Hunca Bubba who promised to marry her, and now he is a new person. "This here," he says, referring to the uncle, "Jefferson Winston Vale." This statement greatly upsets Hazel, because the name change signifies that her uncle is shifting his focus away from their relationship and setting his sights on starting his own family. The new old name has transformed the identity of her loved one into someone she doesn't recognize. Bambara's characters also use nicknames to assert racial and class identities, which further highlights how names reflect one's broader identity. "Gorilla, My Love" is narrated using conversational speech, which informs names like "Big Brood," "Thunderbuns," and "Granddaddy." The audience can assume that none of these are "real" or given names, but they act as shorthand for working-class black identity. Bambara was very active in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and saw that this perspective was lacking in literature. The use of these nicknames expresses affiliation with the black working class and presents an opportunity for these individuals and their community to assert their cultural backgrounds. For example, Hazel expresses begrudging respect for Thunderbuns, the "colored matron" who is dispatched to diffuse the chaos in the movie theater because "she do not play." Thunderbuns earns her fearsome nickname by being an example of working-class black female power, which inspires both the admiration and fear of Hazel and her friends. The children's use of the nickname not only establishes race and class, it is also an expression of pride in these identities. Bambara's use of names in "Gorilla, My Love" suggests that identity is highly mutable and subject to interpretation. Names can be an opportunity for self-expression or an opportunity for the community to project onto the individual. Names are both a tool for character development and a crucial part of the conversational tone of the story, enabling the reader to be fully immersed in Hazel's world. - Climax: Hazel confronts her uncle for lying by reminding him that he promised to marry her when she was a little girl. He protests that he was only teasing, and she calls him a "lyin' dawg." - Summary: Hazel is sitting in the front seat during a drive with her Granddaddy, uncle Hunca Bubba, and little brother Baby Jason. Granddaddy calls her "Scout" because she is holding the map and navigating, although Hazel informs the reader that this is not her real name. She is sitting in the front because she is unnerved by the sliding motions of the pecans in their bags in the back. As they drive, Hunca Bubba—who is changing his name back to Jefferson Winston Vale, much to Hazel's dismay—gushes about the young woman he is going to marry. He shows Hazel and Baby Jason the woman's photograph, but Hazel finds the whole conversation boring and irritating. However, she becomes fascinated by the movie theater in the background of the picture, which triggers a memory of her visit to a different theater, the Washington. Hazel recalls going to the movies with Baby Jason and Big Brood, her other brother, to see a film called Gorilla, My Love. In her memory, Hazel and her siblings buy Havmore potato chips, and because Hazel loves blowing up and popping the bags to annoy the matrons. When the movie starts, Hazel realizes that the theater is playing a film about the life of Jesus—King of Kings—not the advertised Gorilla, My Love. She is furious at the adults who run the theater and has no patience for their trickery. She and the other children in the audience start yelling and running around in protest, but the theater staff sends out their most intimidating matron, whom the children referr to as Thunderbuns, and the children quiet down immediately. Seething silently, Hazel watches the film about Jesus's life and death and thinks about how her family would save Big Brood if he were up on the cross. She imagines her Daddy calling for a ladder while her Mama and aunts hit the Romans with their pocketbooks. After the movie ends, Hazel marches to the manager's office with her siblings to demand their money back—though Big Brood suddenly decides he has to go to the bathroom and leaves his siblings. Hazel confronts the manager, who reminds her of a television villain. He tries to usher her out of his office but she stands firm, thinking of her Mama confronting her racist schoolteachers. The manager does not offer a refund, so Hazel swipes some of his matches and sets fire to the concession stand, which forces the theater to shut down for a whole week. Later, Big Brood's "big mouth" gets Hazel in trouble with their parents, but Hazel convinces Daddy not to beat her for setting fire to the theater by pointing out that he and Mama raised her to be true to her word—and "if you say Gorilla, My Love, you suppose to mean it." She was simply acting out of integrity and not letting the theater "get away with nothin." Hazel's father puts his belt back on, and she reveals that her parents often allow her to argue her point of view and concede when she is right. After looking at the photograph of Hunca Bubba's girlfriend, Hazel asks him if he intends to marry this woman; he answers yes. Angry, Hazel reminds her uncle that he promised to marry her years ago. She reminds him how one day when was babysitting and her parents got held up in a storm, he told her that she "was the cutest thing that ever walked the earth," and how he was going to marry her once she grew up. Hunca Bubba is confused for a moment, then protests that she is "just a little girl," and he was "just teasin" all those years ago when he promised to marry her. This makes Hazel even more upset. Granddaddy points out that it was Hunca Bubba who promised to marry her, while the man she sees now is Jefferson Winston Vale. Feeling betrayed, Hazel starts crying, and Baby Jason joins in. She derives some comfort from his show of support and thinks about the importance of their bond in the face of traitorous adults.

- Genre: Short Story - Title: Grace - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: Dublin, Ireland - Character: Tom Kernan. Description: Once a successful traveling salesman, middle-aged Tom Kernan has developed a binge drinking problem in recent years, which has led to a personal and professional decline. At the beginning of the story, Kernan has drunkenly fallen down the staircase in a pub, which symbolizes his more figurative fall from grace. When he returns home in his bloodied state, his wife, Mrs. Kernan, is upset—the Kernans don't have a particularly happy marriage, especially in light of Kernan's self-destructive habits. A couple of days later, Kernan's close friends—Jack Power, Martin Cunningham, and Mr. M'Coy—decide to intervene. Together, they conspire to take Kernan (who was raised Protestant and only begrudgingly became a nominal Catholic when he married his wife) to a Catholic retreat. They hope that this will help him become more devout and inspire him to reform his behavior. As his friends discuss the particulars of the Catholic Church and the divisions between Catholicism and Protestantism (though they get many details wrong), Kernan becomes more open-minded about religion. However, he almost refuses to participate in the retreat because he's so put off by the ritualistic nature of Catholicism—but he ultimately agrees to go. At the retreat, he listens to Father Purdon preach from raised pulpit—a position that's both literally and symbolically elevated compared to Kernan's fall to the bottom of the stairs—which implies that religion could indeed offer Kernan the salvation he's looking for. But Father Purdon's sermon turns out to be lackluster and businesslike, and the story ends before the reader knows what effect it has on Kernan. In the end, then, Kernan's character represents the idea that self-improvement is always possible if one is open to it—but his mixed feelings about religion (combined with Purdon's disappointing sermon) hints that Catholicism may not be the only path to redemption. - Character: Jack Power. Description: Power is one of Tom Kernan's closest friends; he's employed in the Royal Irish Constabulary Office in Dublin Castle. After Kernan drunkenly falls in the pub and is about to be arrested by a constable, Power emerges from the back of the pub and offers (along with the man in the cycling-suit) to take Kernan home. After helping Kernan into his home and promising to Mrs. Kernan to help him "turn over a new leaf," Kernan is appalled by the lower-class accents of the Kernan children and resolves to bring the household back to its former reputation. Power then rallies his friends Martin Cunningham and Mr. M'Coy to help him bring Kernan to a Catholic retreat in the hopes that he will reform his behavior and be redeemed. Power is largely the ringleader of the friend group and he steers their conversation throughout the story, as the four men discuss details of the Catholic faith in Ireland (many of which they get wrong). Ultimately, Power's quest to get Kernan to the retreat is successful; the story ends with the four men in the Jesuit Church. Power is the director of the action in "Grace"; the retreat is his idea, and it is he who sets Kernan on the possible, though by no means assured, path to redemption. - Character: Martin Cunningham. Description: Cunningham is the eldest and most esteemed of the story's main friend group (consisting of himself, Jack Power, M'Coy, and Tom Kernan). While Jack Power proposes the plan to bring Kernan to a Catholic retreat to remedy his binge-drinking problem, Cunningham takes the lead from him for two reasons: first, he is seen as the most "influential and intelligent" of the men (his friends even believe that he looks like Shakespeare). Second, he himself is married to "an incurable drunkard" who has pawned off their furniture repeatedly, so he has firsthand knowledge of the effects that a drinking problem can have on a household. As the four men sit in Kernan's house discussing the upcoming retreat, Cunningham acts as the authority during the ensuing conversation: whether the topic is the history of the Jesuit Order or various papal mottos, Cunningham answers definitely and inspires the other men. However, he is frequently incorrect, mistaking small historical details or mixing up the languages of the papal mottos. Cunningham exemplifies the hypocrisy of those who make a big deal of their religious devotion yet lack any actual moral superiority to those who are less devout. - Character: Mr. M'Coy. Description: Mr. M'Coy is one of the four men—in addition to Jack Power, Martin Cunningham, and Tom Kernan—who make up the main friend group in the story. Power and Cunningham enlist him to help convince Kernan to attend a Catholic retreat aimed at bringing him out of his downward spiral. M'Coy was once a semi-famous singer along with his wife, but he's since had trouble holding down a job, bouncing between a clerkship for a railroad company, an advertising sales job, and a private inquiry agent job, before becoming secretary to the City Coroner. He has also engaged in some less legitimate ways of making money, such as pawning off old suitcases "borrowed" from friends such as Power—something that leads to resentment between Power and himself. He joins in the long discussion about Catholic history and Irish religion that takes up the majority of the story, asking questions and stating facts (usually incorrect) in turn. Among his friends, M'Coy occupies a lower station than Power and Cunningham, but he's more successful than the troubled Kernan. - Character: Mrs. Kernan. Description: Mrs. Kernan has been married to Tom Kernan for 25 years, and they have five children together. She is a lifelong Catholic and remains faithful, though she also believes in some pagan elements of Irish folklore, such as the banshee. It's implied that she remains a Catholic largely because she was raised in the religion, rather than because of any deep faith she holds. Three weeks after she married her husband, Mrs. Kernan grew deeply unhappy with their marriage. Though she hoped that having children would help in that regard, she remains dissatisfied with her marriage and life. Part of that unhappiness comes from her husband's refusal to address his binge-drinking problem and how it has negatively impacted their life. Mrs. Kernan has tried repeatedly to break her husband's drinking habit by being strict and even sometimes unforgiving with him, but she has had little success. When her husband's friends Jack Power, Martin Cunningham, and Mr. M'Coy conspire to bring Kernan to a Catholic retreat in the hopes that he will reform his behavior, she is supportive of the endeavor since she believes the men to be strong in their religious devotion and committed to Kernan's well-being. Mrs. Kernan's character serves to challenge her husband's less-savory impulses, though her role in the story (much like her role as Kernan's wife) is mostly passive: she only appears when she's helping a drunken Kernan to bed or greeting guests and serving them drinks. - Character: Father Purdon. Description: Father Purdon is the priest at a Catholic retreat that Kernan attends with his friends Power, Cunningham, and M'Coy in the hope that he will find redemption from his heavy drinking and general misdeeds in life. Purdon is very business-like and transactional, comparing sin and redemption to debt and credit, respectively, and calling himself the "spiritual accountant" of his congregants. In his sermon, there is none of the spirituality and professions of faith that one might expect from a priest. Furthermore, his name is a subtle pun that reveals author James Joyce's distrust of the Catholic Church: "Purdon" was also the name of Dublin's prostitution district undermines his credibility as a religious authority figure and more generally associates his focus on the transactional nature of religion with the similarly transactional realm of prostitution. - Theme: Morality, Redemption, and the Catholic Church. Description: "Grace" begins with Tom Kernan bleeding at the bottom of a staircase in a bar, having fallen down it during his latest drinking binge. Following this event, three of Mr. Kernan's friends come together to stage an intervention for him, arranging for the four of them to attend a Catholic retreat where Kernan can make a fresh start. It's understandable that they would assume the Catholic Church is the answer to Kernan's problems: in early 20th-century Dublin, where the story is set, Catholicism was the dominant belief system and was widely regarded as the moral framework of Irish society. But although the reader may initially expect that Kernan will be redeemed by becoming a more devout Catholic, the story undermines the moral authority of Catholicism, thus forcing the reader to question whether embracing Catholicism would be an improvement to Kernan's life at all. In doing so, the story casts doubt onto the Irish Catholic Church and suggests that following its tenets may not be a surefire path to redeeming oneself or living a moral life. Initially, it seems like "Grace" will be an archetypal Christian redemption story, in which Kernan will be saved from his alcohol abuse by embracing Catholicism. The story deliberately invokes the Christian trope of humanity's "fall" from innocence and eventual redemption through Jesus Christ. In the Bible, Adam and Eve bring original sin upon all of humanity when they eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge against God's prohibition, prompting God to throw them out of the Garden of Eden (paradise). This "fall" is eventually redeemed by Christ dying for humankind's sins. The "fall" part of this trope is presented quite literally in the story: it opens with Kernan having fallen down and injured himself because he drank too much. And indeed, Kernan has recently experienced a figurative "fall from grace" as well: the reader later learns that Kernan has developed a drinking problem and has begun to falter in his once-successful career. Here, his moral descent into self-destructive behavior is reflected by his physical descent down in the stairs. In the aftermath of this incident, Kernan's close friends Martin Cunningham, Jack Power, and Mr. M'Coy stage an intervention for Kernan, believing that taking him to a Catholic retreat will inspire him to be more devout and consequently save him from his own-self-destructive behavior. They hope that a traditional Christian (and specifically Catholic) redemption journey is what will save Kernan: if he devotes himself to Christ, he can atone for his mistakes and redeem himself in the eyes of God. However, Kernan's Catholic friends and family are not particularly good Catholics themselves, which implies that the Church isn't free of hypocrisy or arrogance—and its practitioners shouldn't necessarily be seen as the moral authority over non-believers. Martin, Power, and M'Coy make a big show of their knowledge about the Church to impress one another and convince Kernan to accompany them to the retreat. However, they get most of the facts wrong: they incorrectly cite the history of the Jesuits, for instance, and they make up nonsensical papal mottoes. By presenting these foolish men as the model churchgoers for Kernan to follow, the story questions whether they have any moral authority over the down-on-his-luck Kernan, and whether Catholicism can truly save Kernan from himself. Mr. Kernan's wife, Mrs. Kernan, is also a lifelong Catholic—in fact, Mr. Kernan converted in order to marry her. But Mrs. Kernan also believes in "the banshee," a fairy-like creature from Irish folklore whose wails predict the death of a loved one. By believing in the banshee, Mrs. Kernan is committing the cardinal sin of idolatry, or having faith in a pagan creature. Even as the Catholic authority in the Kernan household, Mrs. Kernan is a sinner, which complicates Kernan's friends' conviction that the Catholic Church is a surefire path to a moral life. At the Catholic retreat that Kernan and his friends attend, the priest (and the sermon he gives) are further indicators that the Church may not be the moral institution in claims to be. The primary target of satire in "Grace" is not churchgoers—it is the Catholic Church itself. The main priest in the story is named Father Purdon, which is a reference to Purdon Street, where Dublin's red-light (prostitution) district was located at the time the story is set. This sly double-meaning of the priest's name suggests that Father Purdon is far from the moral authority that Kernan needs to guide him toward redemption. "Purdon" can also be read as a bungled version of the word "pardon," which is the term for a priest's absolution of a congregant's sins. This play on words calls into question the priest's ability to pardon Kernan of his sins, since his name is a botched version of that critical role. Purdon's sermon itself also signals that he's perhaps untrustworthy or immoral, as it features little of the spirituality that one might expect from a religious speech. Rather, Purdon leans heavily on soulless business metaphors, calling himself the "spiritual accountant" for the retreat attendees and stating that "Jesus Christ was not a hard taskmaster"—a strangely blunt choice of words to describe the central figure of Christianity. The priest's metaphors present the Catholic Church as a bank where one "deposits" sin and "withdraws" redemption, rather than a place of spiritual growth and care. This transactional banking metaphor further suggests that the Catholic Church is a hypocritical institution: instead of actually making devotees into better people, the Church just facilitates a shallow, unthinking exchange of sin for redemption. Although Kernan's friends are hopeful that bringing Kernan to this retreat will help him better himself and recover from alcohol abuse, the story ends mid-sermon, before readers get to see whether or not this actually happens. And because "Grace" presents the Catholic Church in such condemnatory terms—making it out to be a largely hypocritical and arrogant institution—the reader is left wondering if becoming a strict Catholic wouldn't do more harm than good for Kernan. In doing so, the story takes a provocative stand against the unquestioned dominance of Catholicism in Irish society at the beginning of the 20th century. - Theme: Catholicism vs. Protestantism. Description: Religion heavily underpins the characters' motivations in "Grace"—in order to save their friend Tom Kernan from spiraling into alcohol abuse, Jack Power, Martin Cunningham, and Mr. M'Coy decide to take him to a church retreat where he will hopefully find God and reform his ways. However, Christianity in "Grace" is strictly divided into two strains of belief: Catholicism and Protestantism. On a broader scale, the opposition between these two belief systems has brought about centuries of sociopolitical conflict and war in Europe—and this rift in particular created a significant social division in 20th-century Ireland, where the story is set. In "Grace," however, the Catholic versus Protestant struggle isn't one rooted in deeply held tradition and intractable belief—rather, it's a superficial conflict between two groups that the story suggests have more in common than they tend to acknowledge.   The main characters in the story are all Catholics—though with differing degrees of faithfulness and belief—which speaks to the prevalence and cultural importance of Catholicism in Irish society. Kernan was born in a family of "Protestant stock" and is "fond […] of giving side-thrusts at Catholicism." However, he converted to Catholicism when he got married (presumably so that his wife, Mrs. Kernan, could get married in a Catholic church). Even though he isn't particularly devout, then, Catholicism remains important to him in a social and cultural context as an Irishman. Although Mrs. Kernan is a serious enough Catholic to have her husband convert, she is not the purest of Catholics—"religion for her [is] a habit." She also believes in elements of Irish paganism like the banshee (a folkloric figure), which are in direct conflict with the Catholic faith. However, Mrs. Kernan is still a devout Catholic in many ways, since she "believe[s] steadily in the Sacred Heart" (a specifically Catholic devotion) and "approve[s] of the sacraments." The other main characters in the story—Kernan's friends Power, Cunningham, and M'Coy—are all clearly Catholic as well, given that they hope to save Kernan through bringing him to a Catholic retreat. They also spend most of the story trying to impress one another with their knowledge of Catholic history and theology, demonstrating their desire to prove that they're sufficiently devout. Catholicism, then, is central to the characters in "Grace"—and, by implication, to Irish society more broadly. However, a crucial way that the Catholic characters establish themselves as such is by denouncing Protestantism—in other words, their Catholicism is rooted not so much in Catholic belief, but rather in anti-Protestant belief. One of the main topics of conversation in the story revolves around Father Tom Burke, a 19th-century Catholic priest who was popular for his bombastic style but didn't preach accurate Catholic theology. Burke was so popular, in fact, that Power says there used to be "crowds of Protestants in the chapel when Father Tom was preaching." Although the men initially discuss Burke with admiration, after Power mentions the presence of Protestants in his sermon, the discussion quickly turns sour as Cunningham asserts that "our religion is the religion, the old, original faith," implying that Protestantism is merely a poor imitation. Amid the discussion about Burke, M'Coy tries to find some common ground between Catholics and Protestants—but he's hardly able to, stating, "we both believe in…the Redeemer. Only they don't believe in the Pope and in the mother of God." The ellipsis (…) here implies hesitance in M'Coy's speech as he struggles to come up with a similarity. He does eventually come up with something, which is that both groups believe in Christ the Redeemer—not a particularly meaningful overlap, since belief in Christ is the definition of Christianity. He is ultimately unable to reconcile the two, however, concluding by emphasizing differences in their belief (that Catholics follow the Pope and place more emphasis on the Virgin Mary's role). In fact, the Catholic men in the story get so bogged down in trying to differentiate themselves from Protestants that they lose track of the underlying scripture and principles of their faith (namely, devotion to Christ). Much of the conversation between the four men revolves around two Catholic institutions: the Order of the Jesuits and the papacy. The men make frequent mistakes in this discussion as they try to show off their Catholic knowledge—and in obsessing over these minutiae of Catholic history and theology, they essentially miss the forest for the trees. There is little discussion of the fundamental Christian tenets of salvation and redemption that are most relevant to helping Kernan, which is their primary goal in speaking with him and taking him to the retreat. Later, as the friends prepare to go to the retreat, Mr. M'Coy mentions that they need to bring candles with them in order to participate in the Catholic ritual. Kernan balks, declaring, "No, damn it all, I bar the candles! [...] I bar the magic-lantern business." For Kernan, candles symbolize the elements of Catholic worship that are more mystical than Protestant worship—and he almost doesn't attend the ritual because of this superficial difference in ceremony, meaning that his close-mindedness about Catholicism nearly causes him to miss out entirely on what the retreat might have to offer. With this, the story suggests that perhaps ceremonial or ritualistic differences between Catholicism and Protestantism are what divide them more so than the underlying scripture and principles of Christian faith. The idea that Catholicism and Protestantism are more alike than they are different carries profound political and social implications when one takes into account the history of Christianity in Ireland. Ireland is a predominantly Catholic country, but following centuries of English colonialism, many Irish intellectual elites were Anglican Protestants. For that reason, religion is particularly tied to politics and class in Ireland, and in the early 20th century (at the time James Joyce was writing "Grace"), Ireland was moving toward a predominantly Catholic nationalist uprising against the Anglo-Protestant ruling class. Thus, in downplaying the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, the story makes a profound statement in favor of reconciliation and peace in Joyce's home country. - Theme: Community, Isolation, and Gender. Description: "Grace" begins with Tom Kernan lying bloodied and alone at the bottom of a flight of stairs, having fallen down them during a bout of heavy drinking. Eventually, a kind stranger in a cycling-suit comes to his rescue and helps bring him home, along with Kernan's friend Jack Power. Beginning from this initial rescue, the story emphasizes the importance of community to support individuals and their particular struggles. However, Mrs. Kernan's character also draws attention to how communal support often falls along gender lines and does not actually encompass everyone in a community. Mr. Kernan's binge-drinking sets up how struggling in isolation isn't just lonely—it can be downright dangerous. It is heavily implied that Kernan's drunken fall at the beginning of the story happens because he is alone. When the bar manager asks who he is and if he was alone, a bartender answers that he was with "two gentlemen" who seem to have disappeared and abandoned Kernan. Later in the story, once Kernan is with his friends, they, too, ask him what happened to the men who accompanied him to the bar—to which Kernan can only respond, "I wonder where he did go to." After Kernan's accident, a constable enters to investigate the property damage incurred by Kernan's fall. The only reason why Kernan escapes arrest is because a stranger (the young man in the cycling-suit) offers to help him home—and Power, whom they happen to run into on the way, helps as well. This implies that it is only through the care of his community that Kernan is able to make it home safely and evade jail. As the story progresses, it becomes even clearer that struggling individuals like Kernan need a community to support them. Most of "Grace" is written in dialogue form—as Kernan, Power, Martin Cunningham, and Mr. M'Coy speak, the men's voices overlap and respond to one another. The free-flowing dialogue in the story brings the reader into this community of men, making the reader feel included and understand the value of that inclusion and support for Kernan. Following Kernan's drunken fall, his friends eventually conspire to bring him to a Catholic retreat (with the goal of helping him become a better Catholic and reform his behavior)—and the fact that the men are going as a group rather than sending Kernan alone makes it clear that they want to support him in his self-improvement journey. The retreat itself is also communal in nature: in the church, Kernan only begins to feel comfortable and supported once he realizes how many individuals he recognizes in the pews. It is the community-oriented aspect of worship that carries value for him, not the spiritual side. However, Kernan's social circle is highly gendered—only men are included in it, and Kernan's wife, Mrs. Kernan, is the antithesis of this community. The communal scenes in the story consist entirely of men, who seem to intentionally separate themselves from women and converse only amongst themselves. Moreover, the men never mention a single woman in their long conversation that takes up most of the story, further emphasizing the lack of female representation in their spaces and conversations. Mrs. Kernan functions as the antithesis of Kernan's all-male community: she finds her life as a wife and mother "unbearable" and is "bounded by her kitchen" for much of life. Furthermore, her own attempts to pull Kernan out of his drinking problem are presented as comically annoying, harsh, and unsuccessful. For instance, when Mrs. Kernan comes into the living room to offer drinks to Kernan's friends, he asks her, "And have you nothing for me, duckie?," to which she shoot back "O, you! The back of my hand to you!" To this, Kernan sarcastically replies "Nothing for poor little hubby!" Kernan's sharp response indicates that he doesn't take his wife's refusal to contribute to his alcohol consumption seriously—in fact, given Mrs. Kernan's dissatisfaction with her marriage, it doesn't seem like Kernan takes her seriously in any context. Mrs. Kernan's alienation from Kernan and the other men speaks to the role of gender in community spaces: the community of men supporting Kernan saves him from the dangers of isolation, but is also itself exclusionary, given the story's lack of women in the story and its negative portrayal of Mrs. Kernan and her unhappiness. Kernan is relatively successful at improving his outlook on life, despite his fall from grace professionally and his descent into alcohol abuse, but Mrs. Kernan remains seemingly alone by the end of the story. In this way, Kernan and his wife offer contrasting examples of the negative effects of isolation. But while Kernan is able to benefit from community support from his male friends, Mrs. Kernan does not appear to have an equivalent female friend group and so continues to find her "wife's life irksome" and "unbearable." Through these parallel examples, the story underscores the importance of close friendships and communities—but also how these support systems can be exclusionary, particularly on the basis of gender. - Climax: Father Purdon delivers his sermon at the religious retreat. - Summary: Tom Kernan lies on the floor, unconscious and bleeding from the mouth, having drunkenly fallen down a flight of stairs in a pub. No one in the pub knows who Kernan is or where his drinking companions went. One bystander, a young man in a cycling-suit, manages to force brandy down Kernan's throat to wake him up. Then, a police constable arrives and tries to discern who Kernan is, but Kernan refuses to engage and insists that he's fine. Suddenly, one of Kernan's close friends, Mr. Power, joins the crowd of onlookers, and he and the young man help Kernan into a cab. Mr. Power joins Kernan on the cab ride home, and Kernan shows him that he bit off a piece of his tongue when he fell. Kernan is a once-successful traveling salesman who has experienced personal and professional decline, while the much-younger Mr. Power is rising up in life. Upon arriving at the Kernans' house, Mrs. Kernan puts her husband to bed. Mr. Power explains to the angry Mrs. Kernan what happened, and that he himself wasn't involved—but Mrs. Kernan reassures him that she knows he's a good influence. Before leaving for the night, he assures Mrs. Kernan that he and Martin (another of Kernan's friends) will come over soon and help Kernan change his ways. As Mrs. Kernan watches Mr. Power leave in the cab, she reflects on how dissatisfying her and her husband's 25 years of marriage have been. Two days after Kernan's fall, Jack Power arrives again at the Kernans' home, this time accompanied by two more of their friends, Martin Cunningham and Mr. M'Coy. Power has organized the friends to stage an intervention for Mr. Kernan by bringing him to a Catholic retreat where he can repent and start anew. Kernan was raised Protestant and only became a Catholic when he married Mrs. Kernan, but neither of the Kernans are particularly devout. While Kernan is skeptical about his friends' proposition, he doesn't outright refuse to go to the retreat. As they wait to leave for the retreat, the four friends get into a long conversation about the history of the Catholic Church and Irish religion in particular, discussing everything from the influence of the Jesuit order, to the Protestant Orangemen, to the mottos of previous popes. Eventually, Fogarty (a grocer) arrives to deliver Kernan some whiskey, and he joins in the conversation as well. The men make many factual errors throughout this discussion. As the conversation comes to an end, Kernan seems more open to attending the retreat, and his friends remind him to bring a candle with him. Kernan, however, objects to the ritualistic use of candles in the Catholic service. When Kernan, Power, Cunningham, M'Coy, and Fogarty arrive at the Gardiner Street Jesuit Church for the retreat, they recognize many of their acquaintances in the pews. Father Purdon, the priest, launches into a business-like sermon in which he describes religion in terms of credit accounts and calls himself their "spiritual accountant." The story ends during the sermon as Purdon encourages the congregants to balance their accounts.

- Genre: Literary fiction; short fiction; realism; Americana - Title: Greasy Lake - Point of view: First person - Setting: New York State - Character: The Narrator. Description: The unnamed narrator of "Greasy Lake" is nineteen and "cultivates decadence like a taste." Desperate to appear "bad" and "dangerous," he tries to seem passive and cool, but he actually reveals himself to be nervous and indecisive in the face of real danger. Just like his friends Jeff and Digby, the narrator is understood to be firmly middle-class, though he is desperate to shake that uncool identity. He floats through his days and nights acting like he doesn't "give a shit about anything" and hoping that exciting things will happen to him. From an unknown point in the future, the narrator tells the story of a night when he and his friends drove their parents' cars up to Greasy Lake. After an encounter with a Bad Character goes awry, the narrator hides at the edge of Greasy Lake, where he finds a dead body. Between the physical fight with the Bad Character and the horror of discovering the body, the narrator is shaken and changed. In the light of morning, he and his friends recognize their shameful behavior and the stark reality of their foolish dreams of danger. Boyle has noted, in past interviews, the autobiographical tilt of "Greasy Lake," and with his own history of pursuing "badness," it's possible that Boyle uses the narrator as a conduit for expressing the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of his own teenage years. - Character: Digby. Description: Along with Jeff, Digby is one of the narrator's two best friends. The narrator describes him as a "dangerous character." Digby, who is nineteen, wears an earring and "allow[s] his father to pay his tuition at Cornell." Comfortably middle-class and "bad" in the same false way the narrator is bad, Digby represents the three boys' foolish desire for danger. - Character: Jeff. Description: One of the narrator's two best friends, Jeff's primary characteristic is his inaction. He is lazy, uncertain, and is "thinking of quitting school to become a painter/musician/head-shop proprietor." At nineteen, Jeff has big ideas, but is unwilling to act on them, content to laze about with his friends and waste his time up at Greasy Lake. Both Digby and Jeff, the narrator says, are "slick and quick [and] bad," though his criteria for "badness" is little more than someone who "wears mirror shades at breakfast and dinner, in the shower, in closets and caves." - Character: The "Bad Character" (Bobbie). Description: When the narrator, Digby, and Jeff arrive at Greasy Lake, they spot a metallic blue '57 Chevy, and assume it is their friend Tony Lovett's car. As they honk their horn and hoot at "Tony," a "very bad character in greasy jeans and engineer boots rip[s] out of the driver's door." He immediately starts attacking the three boys. They attempt to subdue him with lame "kung-fu" moves, but it isn't until the narrator attacks the Bad Character with a tire iron that the Bad Character drops to the ground. The boys' defeat of the Bad Character makes plain to them the horrific reality of being "bad," and the fact that their torn leather jackets and fake karate cannot prepare them for the realities of the "greasy" underworld of their hometown. The Bad Character is the human embodiment of danger; he is "a man of action," according to the narrator, and his dangerous clothing and fearsome bearing are sharp in the narrator's mind as he recounts their brawl. - Character: "The Fox". Description: The Fox emerges from The Bad Character's Chevy after the narrator has knocked The Bad Character unconscious with a tire iron. She is in "panties and a man's shirt," and wears a silver anklet. Her painted toenails signal to the narrator, Digby, and Jeff, in their intoxicated, frightened state, that she is "already tainted," and they attack her, "tearing at her clothes, grabbing for flesh." When a Trans-Am pulls into the lot, the boys abandon her, and she cries to the two blond men driving the approaching car that the three boys tried to rape her. The Fox brings out the boys' true badness and represents their descent into actual danger and violence—when they attack her, they are no longer playacting at being a cool kind of bad, but instead they have descended into true moral decay. - Character: The Blond Men. Description: The Blond Men are a pair of men in "fraternity jackets" who drive up to the lake in a Trans Am just as the narrator, Digby, and Jeff are about to attack The Fox. Though the boys are hidden by the time the Blond Men arrive, they can hear one of the men as he screams into the night, threatening (in a Midwestern accent) to "kill" the attackers. The Blond Men help the Bad Character (once he regains consciousness) to destroy the narrator's mother's Bel Air, and then all three return to their respective cars and drive away. - Character: Older Girl. Description: The morning after the boys' fateful night at Greasy Lake, as they clean up the narrator's mother's car and prepare to leave, two girls pull up in a Mustang. They both wear "tight jeans, stiletto heels, [and have] hair like frozen fur." The older one looks about 25 and seems to be strung out on something, though whether it's drugs or alcohol, the narrator is unsure. She tells the boys she is looking for "Al," whom the narrator believes to be the dead body he stumbled upon down at the lake's edge, and she tells the boys that they "look like some pretty bad characters" and offers them a handful of pills, which they refuse. The older girl is exactly the kind of girl that the narrator had hoped to meet on his way up to Greasy Lake the previous night; in the light of day, though, it's clear that her "badness" is unglamorous, pathetic, and destructive. - Theme: Danger. Description: The narrator of "Greasy Lake" describes a world in which "courtesy and winning ways [are] out of style," and in which he and his friends "cultivate decadence like a taste." To put it bluntly, the narrator and his friends think it's cool to be bad. This story explores the allure of danger through the narrator's retelling of a truly dangerous night that he and his friends passed at Greasy Lake, ultimately concluding that the cool sheen of danger they sought is far different from the reality of danger, which can be depraved and terrifying. In the story's opening passages, the narrator describes the way he and his friends moved through their world at the time: "We were all dangerous characters then," he says. "We wore torn-up leather jackets, slouched around with toothpicks in our mouths, sniffed glue and ether and what somebody claimed was cocaine." This description captures how the narrator and his friends are, in many ways, just playacting at being dangerous. They don't have a clue of what they're doing: they're not even sure if whatever they're sniffing is cocaine, but they sniff it anyway to cement their "badness" and reaffirm their so-called commitment to living dangerously. The absurdity of their charade only increases when the narrator and his friends think they are playing a prank on one of their acquaintances, only to find themselves face-to-face with a truly Bad Character, fighting a serious fight by doing ineffectual kung-fu moves against someone who actually intends to harm them. The fight leads to the narrator running away from the danger only to encounter an actual dead body. These experiences of real, physical danger and the sight of the body (a representation of the consequences of living dangerously) shatter the narrator's idea that danger is cool and alluring. Danger, it turns out, is not thrilling, but terrifying and awful, leading to death and despair. Witnessing the bad characters behaving dangerously at Greasy Lake is terrifying enough for the narrator, but when he and his friends dip into depraved, dangerous behavior themselves, they really come to recognize that they are in moral and physical peril. Though it's never stated explicitly, the narrator and his friends seem to understand that their "badness" is just a phase—Digby's father pays for his education at Cornell, and the narrator drives his mother's station wagon, both of which point to their ability to return to their middle class lives. But when they end up in a fight with the Bad Character and bring him down together, the fear that they have actually committed murder forces them to realize how quickly their posturing can slip into true badness. When The Fox, the Bad Character's companion, emerges from the car, the boys attack her and are only stopped from raping her when another car arrives. There is every reason to believe that they would have followed through with the atrocious act had no one else come to the lake. Because of this, when the narrator, fleeing all of this danger and badness, encounters the dead body, he faces a double horror: the horror that his "badness" could have gotten him killed, as well as the deeper horror that he, too, has the capacity to behave unforgivably. The morning after these events, the narrator and his friends find their missing car keys and attempt to drive away, but a silver Mustang pulls up to Greasy Lake and two "stoned or drunk" women approach the boys, ready to "party." This—the prospect of girls and drugs—was exactly the sort of thing that the boys had been looking for and even dreaming of on their way up to the lake. Now, though, the narrator and his friends are so shaken by their experience that they are "rigid as catatonics." They turn the women down and drive away, and as the narrator looks back, he sees one woman "watching [them], her shoulders slumped, hand outstretched." She is just another casualty of the "badness" the boys so desperately wanted to embody. She is pathetic and destroyed, her allure stripped away entirely. - Theme: Nature vs. Development. Description: At the start of the story, the narrator explains that Greasy Lake has gone from being a remarkable natural landmark (noted for the "clarity" of its waters) to a complete cesspool. "Glittering broken glass" and "beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires" line the lake's edge. As Greasy Lake has grown more and more physically polluted, the behavior of those who live around it and visit it has grown polluted, too. Where once people might have gone to the lake to experience the beauty of nature, now the narrator and those like him go because of the prospect of "a girl tak[ing] off her clothes and plung[ing] into the festering murk," or the possibility of getting drunk, high, and "howl[ing] at the stars." The narrator states that "this [was] nature." His comment—that doing drugs and partying at a polluted, "festering" lake is "nature"—highlights just the opposite: that the narrator is so estranged from nature that he can't even recognize it. Through the way that the narrator and his friends and acquaintances treat and regard the lake, as well as through the physical descriptions of its decline, T.C. Boyle makes Greasy Lake into a visual and emotional metaphor for the struggle between nature and industry. Even though the narrator doesn't provide a detailed physical description of the town, the limited description he does provide gives the sense that overdevelopment and industrial runoff have sunk into the town's physical and psychic landscape. For instance, the narrator describes the town as being little more than "housing developments and shopping malls" that line the main "strip." The story also subtly connects this polluted and despoiled version of nature to the "pollution" of the people who live within it. The narrator describes himself and his friends as being surrounded by places to spend money and have fun but being unable to enjoy them—the characters are enclosed within a town that features strip malls, plentiful housing, and many bright attractions, yet they still feel an inescapable sense of boredom, emptiness, and aimlessness. In other words, the town's developments provide amusement but not fulfilment, and it is implied that the resulting emptiness and the need to fill it are what drive the characters in "Greasy Lake" toward "badness." The price of industry is the destruction of nature, and the dark undercurrent of that tradeoff lurks just beneath the surface of "Greasy Lake." The lake's physical condition—frequented by various "greasy characters," such as women strung out on drugs, or the dead body rotting at its edge—mirrors and symbolizes the moral and social condition of the town in which the story is set. Further, in connecting the degradation of the lake to the degradation of the town around it as clearly as he does, Boyle suggests the ill effects that unfettered development and industry can have on a place. Though such development is seen as important in America, Boyle seems to be arguing that development does not necessarily equal improvement. - Theme: Action vs. Inaction. Description: Emotional weariness, stagnancy, and dissatisfaction plague the characters of "Greasy Lake." The narrator and his friends present themselves as "bad characters" who prize indifference. They "strike elaborate poses to show that [they don't] give a shit about anything," and they are each completely passive individuals in their own ways. Digby "allow[s] his father to pay his tuition at Cornell;" Jeff is aimless, only "thinking" about opening up a shop; and the narrator describes himself and his friends as being lethally bored and desperate for "action." On the night the story takes place, the three of them have been out driving around for some time already, having "cruised the strip sixty-seven times, been in and out of every bar [they] could think of, stopped twice for bucket chicken" before they declare that "there [is] nothing to do but [go] up to Greasy Lake." It is the inescapable "inaction" of their lives, then, that pushes them to Greasy Lake and to the violence that occurs there. While the narrator feigns indifference, he also fetishizes action. Of brawling with the Bad Character, the narrator recalls that "there was no reasoning with this bad greasy character—clearly he was a man of action." The narrator, even as he's being pummeled, seems to admire the Bad Character's ability to act, and he refers to the blows the Bad Character strikes against him in almost loving terms, as "lusty Rockette kick[s]" and "whistling roundhouse blow[s.]" There is an implication here that the Bad Character is who the narrator and his friends want to be. Not only is the Bad Character bad, but he is committed to action—whereas the narrator and his friends can't even make up their minds about what to do on a Saturday night. At the same time, the narrator's description of the Bad Character as a "man of action" is clearly meant to be ironic (or at least it's ironic from the point of view of the adult narrator, not the teen version of him present during the events of the story). The sheer ridiculous brutality of what the Bad Character does in retaliation for a mistaken teenage prank clearly indicates that there is no honor or glory in simply being a man of action—the content of that action matters. Further, the Bad Character—despite his willingness to "act"—is clearly headed toward a dead end in life, symbolized by the body. The story, then, portrays inaction, wrongheaded action, and "badness" as being inextricably linked. Notably, no characters in the story provide examples of "good" actions, which seems echoed in Boyle's descriptions of the town. Greasy Lake has been allowed to fall into deep and despoiled disrepair, and that disrepair represents the entire town's stagnancy. In such a place, where the "bad" actions of pollution and environmental destruction have been meant with indifference, good action seems not only pointless but beyond comprehension entirely. - Theme: Memory, Reminiscence, and the Pull of the Past. Description: "Greasy Lake" is set in the past: it's a story from the narrator's memory, and there is a distance between the older narrator who tells the story and the younger version of himself who is at the story's center. This distance is evident from the way that the narrator's over-the-top tone seems to mock his younger self and his friends, as well as through the narrator's perspective on the night's events. For instance, he doesn't just say that he dropped his car keys; he describes dropping the keys as his "first mistake," suggesting consequences to come. The narrator has clearly spent a lot of time thinking through that moment, or else he wouldn't have been able to diagnose dropping the keys as his "first mistake." At the same time, the urgent clarity of detail throughout the story emphasizes that even though this moment is far in the narrator's past, he still lives with it. The visuals and visceral feelings of the night at Greasy Lake leap off the page—the narrator's fear as he drops his jingling car keys into the dark grass; The Fox's "tainted" red toenails, which provoke the narrator and his friends to attack her; the narrator's horrific discovery of the dead body. As all of this hyper-vivid detail builds and builds, the story suggests that the memory of this night has come to consume the narrator, even in his adulthood—the detail is so vivid because the narrator has relived it, powerless to change it, over and over. In the story's concluding paragraph, the narrator hovers even more sensuously over every detail surrounding his final moments at Greasy Lake, describing the lingering specter of the strung-out girl reaching for the narrator and his friends as they drive away. This is the very kind of girl the narrator and his friends had hoped to meet at Greasy Lake, but she is now made horrific in the light of day, just as the entire incident is made horrible for the narrator in the bright clarity of his adult memory. The narrator recalls "inch[ing the car] forward with a groan, shaking off pellets of glass like an old dog shedding water after a bath," and he remembers "a sheen of sun on the lake." The specifics of the narrator's memory of this experience are intense and vivid, which makes clear that this night, more than possibly any other night of the narrator's life, has made him into whoever he might be in the present day. - Climax: After brawling with a "bad character" on a visit to Greasy Lake, the unnamed narrator, hiding at the lake's edge finds a dead body. - Summary: An unnamed narrator, looking back on his past, recalls "a time when it was good to be bad," when he and his friends, at nineteen years old, were desperate to be seen as "dangerous characters." In order to do so they "wore torn-up leather jackets, sniffed glue and ether and what somebody claimed was cocaine, [and] went up to Greasy Lake." Once a clear, glistening lake, it has now become a murky and "festering" place, but it is still all the boys know of nature. It is the third night of summer vacation, and the boys are dreadfully bored—Greasy Lake offers the possibility of danger, intoxication, and sex. The narrator and his friends Digby and Jeff (who, like the narrator, are teenagers benefiting from a comfortable, middle-class adolescence) take the narrator's mother's Bel Air out "past the housing developments and shopping malls" to the lake. When they arrive, a mint-condition '57 Chevy is parked in the dirt lot at the lakefront, and on the other side of the lot there is an abandoned motorcycle. Digby recognizes the Chevy as belonging to their friend Tony Lovett; they decide to play a "hilarious" joke on "Tony," and flash their brights, honk the car's horn, and jump out to go "press [their] witty faces" against the Chevy's window." As they do, the narrator drops his keys in the grass. The narrator and his friends quickly realize that the car does not belong to Tony Lovett, but rather to a "very bad character in greasy jeans and engineer boots." The Bad Character, infuriated, begins attacking the narrator while Digby attempts to fight back with moves he learned in "a course in martial arts for phys-ed credit." Digby is quickly "laid out" by the Bad Character, so Jeff attacks the man while the narrator retrieves a tire iron from beneath the front seat of his mother's car and uses it to bring the Bad Character down in one fell swoop. As the three boys stand over the Bad Character's unconscious body, his companion, The Fox, emerges from the car screaming. She's barefoot, "dressed in panties and a man's shirt," and she calls the boys "animals." The narrator notes her "blow-dried hair, silver [anklet, and] flash[ing] toenails." The boys descend upon her, "tearing at her clothes, grabbing for flesh." A car pulls into the lot and the boys scatter. Their car keys are lost and so, unable to drive away, they "bolt" for cover elsewhere. The narrator runs to the lake's edge, planning to "swim for it," but he feels something in the water—realizing it is a dead body, the narrator stumbles away horrified. The narrator hears The Fox tell the two blond drivers of the car that the boys "tried to rape [her]" and then two voices (one of which the narrator recognizes, with relief, to be the Bad Character's) call threats against the boys into the night. The narrator hears the three men "turn to [his mother's] car," and he peeks through the weeds to watch as the Bad Character and the two blond men destroy the Bel Air. The Fox, calling the Bad Character "Bobbie," implores him to stop so that they can leave. They do, and are soon followed by the two blond men. The narrator lies in "the primordial ooze" at the lake's edge for a long time, bemoaning his bad fortune. He recalls the dead body, and realizes that it belongs to "the owner of the chopper, no doubt, a bad character come to this." Thankful for his life, and for the approaching dawn, the narrator returns to his mother's car, inspecting the damage. Digby and Jeff join the narrator, noting that "at least" the tires are intact, and they'll be able to drive home. The three boys clean up the car in silence. The narrator reaches into his pocket for his keys, but remembers that they're missing; he spots them in the grass, "no more than five feet" from the car. He retrieves them and starts the car. A silver Mustang covered in flame decals pulls into the dirt lot and two girls step out of it. They inspect the lone motorcycle in the corner of the lot and begin calling for "Al." One of the girls approaches the boys—she is "stoned or drunk," and asks if they've seen Al, the owner of the bike. The boys tell her they have not. The girl tells the boys that they look like "pretty bad characters" and offers them pills; the boys refuse, and the narrator drives away. He looks back in his rearview mirror and sees the older girl "still standing there, her shoulders slumped, hand outstretched."

- Genre: - Title: Great Expectations - Point of view: First person (Pip is the narrator) - Setting: Kent and London, England - Character: Pip Pirrip. Description: The novel's hero, Pip is an orphan who lives with his harsh and selfish sister Mrs. Joe and serves as the apprentice of her gentle blacksmith husband Joe. Pip is sensitive and intellectually curious, but he is also extremely ambitious and, when he unexpectedly comes into money as a teenager, Pip grows haughty and extravagant in pursuit of a lifestyle genteel enough to meet the refined standards of Estella, the woman he loves. Confusing personal integrity with public reputation, Pip is cruelly disloyal to Joe and Biddy, avoiding them because of their lower class. Still, by novel's end, Pip learns to judge people by internal rather than superficial standards and redeems himself by repenting sincerely and reforming his personal values. - Character: Provis (a.k.a. Abel Magwitch) (a.k.a. the convict). Description: The escaped convict Pip helps in the novel's opening scenes, Provis' gratitude towards Pip inspires him to devote his life-savings to Pip, becoming Pip's anonymous patron. Born an orphan on the streets and cruelly swindled by Compeyson, Provis has lived a life in and out of prison. Still, his criminal record is largely the result of unfortunate circumstances, not character, for Provis is kind, good-hearted, and immensely generous. - Character: Estella Havisham. Description: The adopted daughter of Miss Havisham, Estella is proud, refined, beautiful, and cold, raised by Miss Havisham to wreak revenge on the male sex. Though her beauty and elegance attract countless suitors (including Pip), Miss Havisham has raised her to lack a true human heart and she is unable to love. - Character: Joe Gargery. Description: As Mrs. Joe's husband, Joe is a father figure for Pip throughout Pip's childhood and his tender kindness protects Pip from Mrs. Joe's harsh parenting. Joe is the village blacksmith and has no formal education but possesses a deep sense of integrity and an unfailing moral compass. Joe is loyal, generous, and kind, and acts lovingly towards Pip even when Pip's is ungrateful. - Character: Biddy. Description: An orphan Pip meets at the village school, Biddy moves into the forge to help out after Mrs. Joe's attack and later becomes a schoolteacher. She is humble, kind, moral, and fiercely intelligent, absorbing knowledge without any formal education. She is also sharply perceptive and sees through everyone's pretensions, calling Pip out on his delusions and snobbery long before Pip can recognize them. - Character: Miss Havisham. Description: The wealthy daughter of a brewer, Miss Havisham was abandoned on her wedding day by her fiancée (Compeyson) and, traumatized. She preserves herself and her house in wedding regalia, shutting out the world for over twenty years. To exact her revenge on men, Miss Havisham adopts and raises Estella to be beautiful and desirable but completely heartless. Miss Havisham is capricious, manipulative, bitter, and, until novel's end, unable to recognize anyone's pain but her own. - Character: Wemmick. Description: As Mr. Jaggers' clerk, Wemmick models his character on Mr. Jaggers while in the office where he is rational, unemotional, and money-minded. Yet when Wemmick is at home, his personality changes dramatically and he is warm, empathetic, domestic, and nurturing towards his elderly father, the Aged. Pip and Wemmick are good friends outside of the office but maintain a strictly professional relationship in front of Mr. Jaggers. - Character: Mrs. Joe Gargery. Description: Pip's older sister and guardian after his parents' die, Mrs. Joe is fiery, tyrannical, and false, harping on her own victimhood even as she abuses Pip and Joe. She is obsessed with social status and reputation. Yet, after the attack by Orlick that gives her brain damage, Mrs. Joe's personality changes completely and she becomes patient, compassionate, and docile. - Character: Compeyson (a.k.a. the other convict). Description: A cruel, scheming villain, Compeyson is a forger and counterfeiter who uses his educated, upper-class appearance to trick people into thinking he is more honorable and less guilty than the lower-class criminals (like Provis) whom he manipulates. Though Compeyson may possess the trappings of gentility, he is ignoble to the core. - Theme: Social Class. Description: Great Expectations is set near the end of Industrial Revolution, a period of dramatic technological improvement in manufacturing and commerce that, among other things, created new opportunities for people who were born into "lower" or poorer classes to gain wealth and move into a "higher" and wealthier class. This new social mobility marked a distinct break from the hereditary aristocracy of the past, which enforced class consistency based solely on family lines. Great Expectations is set in this new world, and Dickens explores it by tracing Pip's ascent through the class system, a trajectory that would not have been possible within the rigid class hierarchy of the past.The novel ranges from the lowest classes of convicts and orphans to the poor working class of Joe and Biddy up to the wealthy Miss Havisham, whose family made its fortune through the manufacture of beer. Notably, the novel spends virtually no time focused on the traditional aristocracy, and when it does it makes those who still believe in the inheritance of class look ridiculous through the absurd character of Mrs. Pocket, whose blind faith in blood lineage has rendered her utterly useless to society.Yet in the world of Great Expectations where the nobility and gentility that were once associated with the aristocracy are no longer seen as founded on birthright, characters continually grapple with the question of what those traits are based on. Can they be taught? Can they be bought? Pip tries both: he educates himself in order to gain "good" manners and also spends prodigiously on luxury goods, outfitting himself with the trappings of aristocracy as if to purchase aristocracy itself.These tensions come to a head when Provis arrives in London, ignorantly confident in his power to use his wealth to buy gentility. Provis' misguided trust in money awakens Pip to his own misunderstanding. Meanwhile, Dickens constantly upends the old equation between nobility and class: most of the novel's heroes (Joe, Biddy, and Provis) are in the lower class while most of its villains (Compeyson and Drummle) are upper class. Ultimately, Pip comes to learn that the source of true gentility is spiritual nobility rather than either great knowledge or wealth. - Theme: Ambition and Self-Improvement. Description: A "pip" is a small seed, something that starts off tiny and then grows and develops into something new. Pip's name, then, is no accident, as Great Expectations is a bildungsroman, a story of the growth and development of its main character. Dickens presents the ambition to improve oneself that drives Pip along with many of the novel's secondary characters as a force capable of generating both positive and negative results. Pip's early ambitions focus on elevating his social class, on making himself into someone who seems worthy of Estella, but in the process he turns himself into someone who feels like a sham, is unkind to those who were kindest to him such as Joe and Provis, and ruins himself financially. Through these humbling experiences, Pip eventually comes to understand self-improvement as a more complex process involving moral and spiritual development as well. Pip's own ambitions are echoed by the self-improvement efforts of secondary characters like Joe and Ms. Havisham, who learn to write and to empathize, respectively, at Pip's encouragement. - Theme: Integrity and Reputation. Description: In Great Expectations, Dickens explores pride as both a positive and a negative trait by presenting various types of pride ranging from Estella and Bentley Drummle's snobbery to Joe and Biddy's moral uprightness. The crucial distinction between these different varieties of pride is whether they rely on other people's opinions or whether they spring from a character's internal conscience and personal sense of accomplishment. Characters who espouse the former variety are concerned with reputation, not with integrity. Among them are Mrs. Joe, Uncle Pumblechook, Estella, and Bentley Drummle. Because these characters measure themselves according to public opinion, they are constantly comparing themselves to the people around them and denigrating others in order to make themselves seem superior by comparison. Yet because it's impossible to be sure of other people's opinions, they are never satisfied. Mrs. Joe and Bentley Drummle are sour-tempered and Pip is deeply unhappy for the majority of the novel. Characters like Joe and Biddy, on the other hand, possess integrity and thus value themselves according to their own standards of success. Because they are self-sufficient rather than dependent on others for affirmation, these characters are at peace with themselves and can actually experience contentment. Over the course of the novel, Pip evolves from being a person invested in reputation to being a person with integrity. Estella first triggers Pip's obsession with reputation and he spends many miserable years frantically trying to inflate Estella's opinion of him. Yet eventually, Pip learns to listen to his internal conscience and stops placing so much value on others' views.Shame plays an integral role in this education. For most of the novel, Pip suppresses his shame at mistreating Joe and Biddy and avoids apologizing to them. This behavior prioritizes reputation, refusing to acknowledge shame so that the public will not see it. A person with integrity, by contrast, apologizes because he has prioritized his conscience over controlling how others see him. Only after being humbled by financial loss and by Provis' misfortune does Pip develop the integrity to admit his own errors and apologize to Joe and Biddy. Along the way, Wemmick's respect for domestic life and Herbert's virtuousness point Pip in the right direction. - Theme: Parents. Description: As the novel distrusts British culture's traditional blind faith in family lines, it also looks skeptically at the traditional family unit. Great Expectations includes very few models of healthy parent-child relations. Many of the novel's characters—including Pip, Provis, and Biddy—are orphans, and those that aren't orphans come from broken or dysfunctional families like Herbert's, Miss Havisham's, Estella's, Clara's, and Joe's. Though Wemmick's relationship with the Aged Parent seems like an exception, it's important to note that Dickens introduces us to them at a stage of their lives when their dynamic has inverted and Wemmick parents his father rather than being cared for by him. Not until the last few pages do we encounter the functional traditional family newly started by Joe and Biddy.Instead of showcasing traditional mothers and fathers, Dickens chooses to feature adoptive parents, mentors, and guardians. Among these characters, Joe epitomizes selfless kindness, protecting and nurturing Pip throughout his life in spite of Pip's teenage ingratitude. Though Provis doesn't participate in raising Pip, he too exemplifies steadfast devotion as he dedicates his life's fortune to Pip's future. Guardians like Mrs. Joe and Miss Havisham demonstrate more selfish modes of child-rearing as they use their charges to fulfill their own needs: Mrs. Joe to better her public image and Miss Havisham to avenge her betrayal. As in his treatment of social class, Dickens challenges a system organized by blood and presents a model of parentage determined by love and care, regardless of the genetic relation between parent and child. - Theme: Justice. Description: From Pip's encounters with escaped convicts at the beginning of Great Expectations, to the grotesque courts and prisons in parts II and III, the novel casts the British legal system in a dubious light. Though Mr. Jaggers functions as an upstanding force in Pip's life by checking Pip's extravagance, it is questionable whether his law practice truly serves the law. After all, Mr. Jaggers built his reputation on successfully acquitting a murderer. Likewise Wemmick's separate moral codes—one for the law firm, one for home—highlight the legal mindset's inadequacy in matters of the heart or family. Most distressing of all, some of the novel's most heinous crimes slip right through the legal system.The law treats Orlick and Compeyson much more lightly than they deserve. A number of characters attempt to make up for the law's blind spots by taking the law into their own hands and seeking revenge, but revenge justice proves just as faulty: Provis' wrestling match with Compeyson on the marsh is futile and lands them both back in prison, Miss Havisham's perverse plot to torture Estella's suitors robs everyone of the chance at love, and, while Orlick may be content with clubbing Mrs. Joe for scolding him, it's clear to the reader that this revenge is deeply horrific, leaving Mrs. Joe handicapped for life.Ultimately, through Pip's development and that of the characters around him, the novel suggests that the only true and enduring scale of justice is the human conscience. As Pip becomes more compassionate, he inspires empathy among previously stoic characters like Wemmick and Miss Havisham as well. In the end, the novel's most fulfilling portraits of justice are the sincere apologies and forgiveness exchanged between Pip and Miss Havisham and between Pip, Joe and Biddy. - Theme: Generosity. Description: Dickens explores many different understandings of generosity in Great Expectations. Though Pip's initial generosity towards Provis is mostly motivated by fear, Provis understands it as true generosity and responds by selflessly devoting his life's savings towards Pip's future. Meanwhile, Mrs. Joe and Uncle Pumblechook understand generosity as a status marker and are much more interested in being considered generous than in actually acting generously. They thus constantly take credit for Joe's generosity to better their own reputations in town.Later, Pip believes that the best kind of generosity is anonymous and claims that his life's only good deed was his secret donation to Herbert's career. Indeed, many of the novel's most generous acts—including Provis', Joe's, and Pip's—are not recognized for a long time, implying that the truly generous give without expecting immediate recognition. Yet, despite the delay, every gift's giver is eventually discovered and thanked, which suggests that true generosity is always rewarded in the end. Pip's ability to recognize generosity shifts over the course of the novel and his early ingratitude towards Joe and Provis evolves into deep appreciation. These men also inspire magnanimousness in Pip himself, who selflessly devotes himself to Provis in part III. - Climax: Pip discovers his patron is the convict - Summary: Pip is an orphan living in southeast England with his foul-tempered sister, Mrs. Joe, and her gentle husband, Joe Gargery, the village blacksmith. On Christmas Eve, Pip encounters an escaped convict in a leg-iron who scares Pip into stealing food and a metal file for him. Pip steals the food and file from his sister's pantry and Joe's blacksmith shop. The next day, Pip and Joe see soldiers capture the convict on the marshes where he wrestles bitterly with another escaped convict. The convict Pip helped protects Pip by confessing to the theft of the food and file, and Pip's involvement in the theft goes undiscovered. Soon after, Pip is invited to start visiting wealthy Miss Havisham and her snobby adopted daughter, Estella, at Satis House. Miss Havisham was abandoned by her fiancée twenty years prior and seeks revenge on men by raising Estella to mercilessly break hearts. Estella's disdain for Pip's "commonness" inspires Pip's dissatisfaction with life as an apprentice blacksmith. He grows infatuated with Estella and assesses himself by her standards long after his Satis House visits come to an end. Pip is apprenticed to Joe and grows increasingly despondent at his low status, seeking to elevate himself through independent study. When Mrs. Joe is brain damaged by the blows of an intruder at the forge, Pip suspects Orlick, Joe's cruel journeyman helper. Biddy moves in to run the household and becomes Pip's confidante, trying in vain to help Pip get over Estella. One night, Mr. Jaggers tells Pip that he has an anonymous patron who wishes Pip to be trained as a gentleman. Pip assumes that this patron is Miss Havisham and that Estella is secretly betrothed to him. Unsympathetic to Joe and Biddy's sadness at losing him, Pip snobbishly parades his new status and goes to study with Matthew Pocket. Pip lives part time with Matthew's sweet-tempered son Herbert Pocket in London, where the two become fast friends. Pip's study mates are Startop and Bentley Drummle, the foul-tempered heir to a baronetcy who becomes Pip's nemesis when he pursues Estella, now an elegant lady. Pip also befriends Wemmick, Mr. Jaggers' clerk, who is stoic and proper in the office and warm and friendly outside of it. Pip spends extravagantly and puts on airs, alienating Joe on Joe's trip to London. Pip wishes Joe were more refined and fears association with him will jeopardize his own social status. He doesn't return to the forge until he hears Mrs. Joe has died. Even then, his visit is brief. Back in London, Pip enlists Wemmick's help to invest secretly in Herbert's career, a gesture Pip considers the best result of his wealth, or "expectations." One night, Pip's patron finally reveals himself: he is Provis, the convict Pip helped on the marshes who has saved up a fortune while in exile and sailed back to England illegally just to see Pip. Pip is appalled by Provis's manners and devastated to realize Estella can't possibly be betrothed to him. When he confronts Miss Havisham, she admits she led Pip on regarding Estelle simply to make her selfish relatives jealous, and that Estella will be married to Bentley Drummle. When heartbroken Pip professes his love for her, Miss Havisham realizes her error in depriving Estella of a heart. She pleads for Pip's forgiveness, which Pip readily grants. Back in London a few days later, Pip realizes that Estella is the daughter of Provis and Mr. Jaggers' maid Molly. Provis' rival on the marshes was Compeyson, Miss Havisham's devious former fiancée. Compeyson is looking for Provis in London and Pip plans to get Provis out of England by boat. Before they escape, Orlick manages to lure Pip to the village marshes and tries to kill him, but Herbert intervenes. Pip nearly succeeds in escaping with Provis but Compeyson stops them, then drowns, wrestling with Provis in the water. Provis is arrested and found guilty of escaping illegally from the penal colony of New South Wales, but dies from illness before his execution. Pip falls ill. Joe nurses him and pays his debts. Healthy again, Pip returns to the village hoping to marry Biddy only to stumble upon her happy wedding with Joe. Pip goes abroad with Herbert to be a merchant. When he returns eleven years later, he finds an spitting image of himself in Joe and Biddy's son Pip II and runs into Estella on the razed site of Satis House. Suffering has made Estella grow a heart and she and Pip walk off together, never to part again.

- Genre: Novel - Title: Grendel - Point of view: First person, from Grendel's perspective (with some passages narrated in third person) - Setting: Scandinavia, in the mythic past - Character: Grendel. Description: Grendel is the protagonist and narrator of the novel. He is a terrifying monster who kills and eats humans, but he is also a lonely, isolated creature, who craves a friend or companion. Grendel is a relentlessly thinking and questioning character. As he grows and experiences new things, Grendel constantly theorizes about the world and ponders deep questions about time and space, formulating laws and drawing grand conclusions about the universe. Persuaded by the ideas of the dragon, Grendel accepts that the universe is meaningless and mechanical, but he is also deeply frustrated by the stupidity and indifference of nature and its inhabitants, as particularly shown through his interactions with the ram, bull, and goat. It is through Grendel's eyes that we see the humans, and Grendel's perspective emphasizes the cruelty and senseless violence of the humans. From Grendel's point of view, the grandiose ideas of heroism, justice, and religion upon which the humans found their society are simply false, foolish ideas. Unlike his monstrous mother, Grendel has the ability to speak, and although he despises the Danes, he is also to some degree jealous of their community and feels a special bond with them, especially Hrothgar. He takes care not to wipe out all of the Danes, so that he still has people to frighten and toy with. - Character: Grendel's Mother. Description: Unlike Grendel, his mother neither speaks nor questions the world. She spends most of her time in her underground lair and generally experiences the world in a purely physical way. Similarly, she is only able to express any affection for Grendel through physical gestures. Grendel expresses disdain for his mother, but when he is danger he calls for her, and it is her that rescues him when he first encounters humans. - Character: Hrothgar. Description: Hrothgar is the king of the Danes. After rising gradually to power, Hrothgar created a vast kingdom. As the leader of the Danes, Hrothgar is Grendel's main rival. His kingdom flourishes on ideals of justice and heroism, which the Shaper's glorifying (and propagandistic) songs help establish. As he ages, though, Hrothgar faces numerous threats—from rival kingdoms and from unhappy inhabitants of his own, such as his nephew Hrothulf and his scheming adviser Red Horse, to Grendel himself. In the end, Hrothgar must rely on the help of the Geats to defeat Grendel. - Character: The Dragon. Description: Though he is dismissive of Grendel, the dragon is the closest thing Grendel has to a mentor or intellectual companion. Able to see the past, present, and future, the dragon attempts to teach Grendel about the humans, time, space, and the universe. He gives Grendel the idea that the humans actually need him in order to better define and improve themselves, and tells Grendel that all things perish and that when considered in relation to all of eternity, all life is essentially meaningless. The dragon presents the most coherent and persuasive philosophical system in the novel, but can also be seen as selfish and greedy: all he does is stay in his cave and count his hoard of treasure. The dragon also grants Grendel invulnerability against the humans' weapons, which allows Grendel to terrorize the humans easily but also takes some of the joy out of it for Grendel. - Character: The Shaper. Description: The Shaper is an old, blind man who comes to Hrothgar offering to sing for money. He is the character through whom the novel most deeply explores ideas about language, art, and beauty. His skillful songs inspire Hrothgar's men to greatness and propagate ideas of heroism, justice, and religion. He also inspires Hrothgar to construct his great meadhall, Hart. For Grendel, the Shaper has the unique ability to shape and change the world, creating a sense of order, meaning, and beauty out of a chaotic universe. Grendel is fascinated and enticed by the beauty of the Shaper's art, but he is also enraged by it, since he knows that it false and full of lies. However, underlying Grendel's dislike of the Shaper is at least some jealousy, as Grendel wishes he could be a part of the community that is unified by the Shaper's stories. The dragon sees the shaper's songs as simply illusion, a tool that helps the humans deal with an irrational universe. While this may be true, the Shaper does possess real power and is able to make things actually happen in the real world (such as the construction of Hart). - Character: Unferth. Description: One of Hrothgar's men, Unferth is a strong, proud hero. When he attempts to fight Grendel, though, he is humiliated. Grendel mocks his ideas of heroism and refuses to allow Unferth to die a heroic death. Grendel's toying with Unferth reveals that a hero needs a cooperating monster in order to be heroic. By refusing to play the part of the monster for Unferth, Grendel denies him his heroic identity and robs Unferth's life of purpose. - Character: Wealtheow. Description: Wealtheow is Hrothgar's queen, given to him in marriage as a gesture of peace by a rival king. Wealtheow's presence at Hart exerts a calming power, easing tensions and resolving disputes between men. Her beauty and grace fascinate Grendel and torment him just as the beauty of the Shaper's songs first did. Grendel spends much time spying on her and sees that she is often homesick and sad, but in the presence of Hrothgar she maintains a positive, graceful appearance. Grendel's interest in Wealtheow causes him to stop raiding Hart temporarily, until he finally breaks into her bedroom and picks her up. Grendel plans to kill Wealtheow but ultimately lets her live. She is the only human character for whom Grendel perhaps feels pity and is merciful. Unlike with Unferth, he does not appear to let her live for any devious purpose. - Character: Ork. Description: Ork is an old priest, who encounters Grendel at a sacred religious site one night. He cannot see who Grendel is and so believes him when he says he is The Destroyer, the king of Ork's gods. Pretending to be a god, Grendel teases Ork but is put off by his intense, earnest faith. The ease with which Ork is tricked demonstrates the fallacy of the Danes' religious practices, which Grendel sees as particularly foolish. - Character: Beowulf. Description: Beowulf is never named in the novel, but his identity can be inferred from context. He is the leader of the Geats and brings a band of men to come to Hrothgar and defeat Grendel for him. Beowulf's strength and commanding presence frighten Grendel when he first arrives. When he fights and defeats Grendel, he attempts to force his radical ideas upon him, telling Grendel that his mind makes the world what it is. After showing his physical and intellectual mastery over Grendel, he tears off Grendel's arm, causing his death. While Grendel dies denying that Beowulf is a real hero (since he defeated Grendel through chance and trickery), Beowulf is the best example of a hero that the novel offers. - Theme: Monsters and Humans. Description: The most striking thing about Grendel is that the novel is narrated by a monster. Gardner takes the oldest story in English literature of a hero defeating a monster (Beowulf) and turns it on its head by seeing the tale through the eyes of the monster Grendel. The novel thus continually asks what it means to be a monster and how monsters and humans differ or are related. When Grendel and the humans first meet, both recognize each other as a different kind of creature, but the two are actually rather similar. Significantly, they speak the same language. And the Shaper's use of the Biblical story of Cain and Abel to mark Grendel as a descendant of the evil Cain points to a distant shared ancestry of both humans and Grendel. While Grendel goes on murderous rampages to satisfy his desire for blood, the humans also murder each other for, as Grendel sees it, no real purpose. At many points during the novel, the distinction between monster and human seems to blur, as Grendel seems more human than the Danes, and the Danes more monstrous than Grendel.But while Grendel and the humans often seem similar, both find it very important to stress their difference from each other. Both Grendel and the Danes use each other as an "other" against which they can better define themselves, as is most clearly expressed by the dragon. The dragon tells Grendel that he is "the brute existent by which [the Danes] learn to define themselves." The Danes use the monster-figure of Grendel to make themselves civilized, honorable, and human by contrast. After his meeting with the dragon, Grendel also recognizes that the same is true for him: his identity as a fearsome monster is dependent upon having human rivals to raid and terrorize. Grendel does not kill all of the Danes or wipe out their city entirely, because, as he himself says, "What will we call the Hrothgar-Wrecker when Hrothgar has been wrecked?" The relationship between monster and humans can be seen as one of mutual dependence—both rely on the other as a contrast to their own identity, even though in the end they may not really be so different. - Theme: Language. Description: Grendel explores the power, consequences, seductions, and deceptions of various forms of language. Language is what separates Grendel from nature and from his mother. His ability to speak marks him as different from the rest of the natural world that cannot respond to him. The very language that enables Grendel to tell his own story actually isolates him within what Grendel calls a "pale skin of words that closes me in like a coffin." His use of language connects him to the Danes, but even they are often unable (or unwilling) to understand him.Through the character of the Shaper, the novel displays both the power and deception of language. The Shaper is able to make the lies of heroism seem true and alluring. His very name implies that his artful language has the power to shape and change things. In making a comprehensible order out of the chaos of the world and in presenting a glorified narrative of the history of the Danes, the Shaper holds a central place in Hrothgar's kingdom. Grendel is both intrigued and outraged by the Shaper's songs, which he often goes to hear. He knows that the songs are lies, but is also carried away by the beauty and pleasure of the Shaper's art. As the novel progresses, Grendel's own narration is even influenced by the Shaper's language, as it becomes self-consciously poetic and interspersed with passages of verse.The novel's stance on language is thus deeply ambiguous. On the one hand, language allows Grendel to communicate with the dragon and the Danes, but on the other hand it isolates him from his mother and from nature. As wielded by the Shaper, language is a powerful social force, uniting the Danes under a set of shared stories, and is able to attain a kind of order and beauty not found elsewhere in the world. But, as Grendel knows, this powerful use of language is built upon a series of lies and is ultimately deceitful and false. - Theme: Loneliness and Isolation. Description: For much, if not all, of the novel, Grendel is simply looking for someone to talk to. His mother cannot communicate with him, and the various animals he addresses cannot respond. Utterly alone and isolated, he can talk only to himself. When he finally encounters humans, he tries to communicate with them, but they misunderstand him and brand him as a terrifying monster. The closest thing Grendel has to a friend or companion is perhaps the dragon, whom he meets only once. But the dragon is condescending and dismissive of Grendel. Grendel's most significant relationship with anyone else in the novel is with his rivals Hrothgar and Unferth. By leaving Unferth alive and by never killing all of the Danes, Grendel plays a kind of game with his rivals that leaves him someone to interact with.Gardner's rewriting of the character of Grendel makes the monster sympathetic largely through his pathetic loneliness. His violent outbursts and antagonistic relationship with humans can be seen as the result of a lonely creature's misunderstood attempts to reach out and communicate with someone else. - Theme: Nature and Time. Description: Throughout the novel, Grendel and other characters attempt to answer large questions concerning nature and time. Grendel speaks to nature and at times wonders if there is some kind of spirit in nature (as the Danes believe), but ultimately concludes that the world is made up of a series of mindless, mechanical processes. But then where do Grendel and the Danes fit into this understanding of nature? Is Grendel also simply carrying out a natural process, driven to act by his desires, or can he choose to act in a particular way that might mean something? The answer to this question depends greatly on one's perspective of time. Having been around for much longer than the Danes, Grendel is able to laugh at their narrative of history and understanding of the world.But the dragon—who can see past, present, and future—finds Grendel's perspective equally laughable. From the dragon's grand perspective, the world is simply "a swirl in the stream of time," and "a temporary gathering of bits." In the big picture, there is no order or meaning to the random chaos of nature. Regardless of whether one agrees with the ideas of the dragon, the novel ultimately suggests that one's understanding of nature is greatly dependent on one's perspective in time. How someone perceives his or her relation to the rest of the world depends on whether he or she is considering the world in terms of an individual's lifetime, the history of a particular people, the history of the entire human race, or all of eternity. - Theme: Heroism. Description: In the background of the novel is perhaps English literature's most significant text about heroism: Beowulf. Whereas the epic poem Beowulf builds up the idea of a hero, much of Grendel criticizes and pokes fun at the very idea of heroism. From Grendel's perspective, the heroic feats celebrated by the Shaper are all lies. The Danes' exploits are simply examples of "violence no more legitimate than a wolf's." Hrothgar's amassing of riches and tribute is perhaps no different from the dragon's selfish hoarding of treasure. Grendel is especially able to mock ideals of heroism through his interactions with Unferth. By refusing to fight Unferth and instead throwing apples at him, he humiliates the hero and turns what should be a noble fight into a kind of pathetic slapstick comedy. By refusing to kill Unferth, Grendel denies him a heroic death and demoralizes him, showing him the emptiness of his ideas of heroism.When Beowulf finally arrives and defeats Grendel, the novel presents the closest thing to a true hero. Stronger and cleverer than all the Danes, Beowulf overcomes Grendel in dramatic combat. But even as he dies, Grendel painstakingly maintains that his death is not the result of a heroic deed. With his dying breaths, Grendel insists that Beowulf defeated him through trickery and by sheer chance. Even as the novel seems to give an example of a true hero defeating an enemy, Grendel goes to the grave insisting that there is no such thing as real heroism, that Beowulf simply got lucky in one act of violence as meaningless as any other. - Theme: Philosophy, Theory, and Belief. Description: Grendel can be seen as a novel of competing ideas. Different characters try to make sense of the world in different ways, and as Grendel progresses through the novel, he must choose which set of theories or beliefs he adheres to. On one end of the spectrum, Grendel's mother experiences the world in purely physical, sensual way, and does not question or theorize at all. Grendel rejects this simplistic approach to the world early in the novel, and develops his own theories—for example, the idea that the world consists entirely of Grendel and not-Grendel. The humans, noted by the dragon for their "crackpot theories", offer another system of beliefs with their ideas of heroism, religion, and logic. Grendel rejects the ideas of the humans, mocking their religion, and is generally persuaded by the dragon, who offers the novel's most complete system of philosophy.The dragon believes in the ultimate meaninglessness of the universe and takes a self-centered approach to the world, advising Grendel to "seek out gold and sit on it." Grendel's various struggles with the world and with other characters can be seen as a struggle with different sets of ideas and different philosophies. When Beowulf defeats Grendel, he not only physically overcomes him, but also overcomes him with his "lunatic theory" that the world is only what Grendel's mind makes it. Whereas the dragon claimed that the world was meaningless, Beowulf goes as far as to assert that the world only exists because Grendel perceives it, that there is no way to separate its existence from Grendel's own, suggesting that even the notion of history or time beyond Grendel's own existence is immaterial. As Grendel struggles to maintain his belief in the dragon's philosophy, Beowulf's ideas are almost as painful to him as the tearing off of his arm. Grendel repeats, "[Beowulf's] syllables lick at me, chilly fire." The novel thus culminates not only with the physical conflict between Beowulf and Grendel, but also with the conflict of their competing beliefs. - Climax: Grendel's fight with Beowulf - Summary: Grendel is a fearsome monster who lives underground in a cave with his mother. As spring begins, he encounters a ram and, irritated at the stupidity of the creature, tries to scare it away. The ram doesn't move. Grendel talks angrily to himself and heads for the meadhall of Hrothgar, whose kingdom he habitually raids.Grendel recalls his youth. Once, he got his foot stuck in between two tree trunks in the forest. A bull found him and charged at him, though unable to harm Grendel significantly. The bull charged again and again to no avail until, tired, it simply left. Then, a group of humans led by Hrothgar found Grendel, and were unsure what kind of creature he was. Grendel tried to talk to them, but they were frightened at his monstrous voice and attacked him. Grendel's terrifying mother came and rescued him from the humans, who fled.Grendel describes how the humans eventually developed agriculture and created settlements. As communities expanded, wars began to erupt and Hrothgar gradually gained power. The humans were relentless in their destruction of nature and of their human enemies. One night, once Hrothgar's power was firmly established, an old blind man arrived at his meadhall and offered to sing for pay. This man, the Shaper, sang beautiful songs that glorified Hrothgar and his people. His songs enraged but also enchanted Grendel, who was swept away by their beauty. Once, when Grendel was spying on Hrothgar and the humans, the Shaper sang of two ancient brothers who feuded: one killed the other and so was cursed for eternity. According to the Shaper, Grendel is the descendant of the cursed brother. Greatly upset, Grendel rushed into the meadhall and tried to tell the Danes that he meant them no harm. But they were terrified at him and attacked him, so he fled.After his encounter with the Shaper, Grendel visited the dragon, a wise but fearsome creature obsessed with his hoard of treasure. The dragon instructed Grendel about the humans, time, space, and the universe. Though Grendel had trouble following his abstract, philosophical ideas, he took away the main idea that all of life is meaningless when considered in the grand scheme of eternity. The dragon put a charm on Grendel, rendering him invulnerable to weapons. Shortly after, Grendel began his habitual raids on Hrothgar's meadhall. On one raid, he encountered a particularly strong Dane named Unferth, who thought of himself as a noble hero. Grendel teased and toyed with Unferth, denying the existence of real heroes. Grendel let Unferth live, and so Unferth followed Grendel back to his lair in order to die nobly. Grendel refused to kill him, though, and brought him safely back to Hrothgar.Grendel then remembers the arrival of Hrothgar's queen, Wealtheow. Hrothgar was preparing for war with a rival king, but the king presented his sister Wealtheow as a gift in order to ensure peace between the two kingdoms. Grendel was fascinated by Wealtheow's grace and beauty and tormented by her just as he once was by the Shaper's art.After Hrothgar's brother dies, his nephew Hrothulf comes to Hart. Hrothulf is highly critical of Hrothgar's rule. He and his adviser, an old man named Red Horse, theorize about the justice or injustice of revolution. Hrothulf takes no action, though, and continues to live under the care of Hrothgar, while still plotting to eventually overthrow Hrothgar. One night, Grendel decides to "impute" a dream to Hrothgar involving two trees that have grown so that they wind around each other. Another night, while spying on the Danes, Grendel sits down in a religious area with icons of the Danes' gods. An old priest named Ork comes to the area, but cannot see Grendel. Grendel speaks to him and pretends to be his god, toying with the human and his religious beliefs. Grendel becomes bored with his continued raids. The Shaper dies and Grendel goes to watch his funeral. A group of strangers arrive at Hrothgar's kingdom, calling themselves the Geats. The unnamed leader of their group, who can be identified as the hero Beowulf, frightens and excites Grendel. Beowulf tells Hrothgar and his men that he has come to defeat Grendel for them. At Hrothgar's meadhall, he impresses the Danes with stories of his heroic accomplishments.After all the humans fall asleep, Grendel breaks into the meadhall, looking for Beowulf. He grabs a sleeping man to eat him, but it turns out to be Beowulf, who was only pretending to sleep. Beowulf grabs Grendel and begins to overpower him. He forces his extreme ideas—in particular, the idea that Grendel's mind makes the world what it is—upon Grendel, who finds Beowulf's words as painful as his unrelenting grasp on Grendel's arm. Beowulf tears off Grendel's arm and Grendel flees, defiantly shouting that Beowulf's victory was mere chance and meaningless. Grendel dies in the forest, surrounded by animals.

- Genre: Realist Short Fiction - Title: Guests of the Nation - Point of view: 1st person - Setting: Ireland circa 1920 - Character: Bonaparte. Description: Bonaparte is the thoughtful, sensitive first-person narrator, telling the story in past tense from some unspecified point in the future. He's a young soldier in the Irish Republican Army who, along with Noble and Jeremiah, is responsible for guarding two British prisoners behind the frontlines. Bonaparte grows attached to Belcher and Awkins, and he protests the decision to execute the prisoners, even daydreaming about confronting his fellow soldiers to protect them. At the critical moment, Bonaparte fails to intervene as Jerimiah kills the British prisoners, and the memory of the execution haunts him for long afterward. - Character: Noble. Description: Noble is a young soldier of comparable rank to Bonaparte who also takes a liking to the British prisoners. His brother is a priest, so he's a religious believer. This puts him at odds with Awkins, who needles him constantly about his belief in god and the afterlife, which he's unable to fully defend. - Character: Belcher. Description: Belcher is a British prisoner of war. He's a tall, quiet, and kind man whose wife and children left him years ago. As a result, he's eager to make a home even out of his stint as a prisoner, helping the old woman with chores, suggesting card games to bring the group together, and warming himself by the fireplace. He's calm and bemused even in the face of death, and he seems not to blame his captors for their actions. - Character: 'Awkins. Description: 'Awkins is a British prisoner of war, who, unlike Belcher, is outspoken and quick-tempered. He is constantly sparring with the old woman and Noble over religion or global capitalism. He doesn't put much faith in ideas of patriotism or even the justness of the war he's fighting, as he thinks faraway elites are the main drivers of war. - Character: Jeremiah Donovan. Description: Jeremiah is Bonaparte and Noble's superior officer in the Irish army. Jeremiah is stern, quiet, and awkward, and Bonaparte privately looks down on him for his rural manners and accent. He avoids getting too friendly with the British prisoners, knowing that they're hostages who may have to be killed at any moment. Jeremiah is more in touch with the stakes of the war and his duty than either Bonaparte or Noble. - Character: The Old Woman. Description: The woman Bonaparte refers to as "the old woman" is never named. She opens up her home to the Irish soldiers and their British prisoners but doesn't seem happy about the arrangement. Her religious beliefs are a mix of Catholic and pagan, and she blames events on obscure deities or the desecration of temples. She's surly towards all except Belcher, who is keen to help her with housework. - Theme: National Identity. Description: "Guests of the Nation" is set during the Irish War for Independence in the early 20th century, during which Ireland attempted to secede from the United Kingdom and form a sovereign country. As such, the story is concerned with what it means for people to be from different countries, even if that difference in national identity springs from a border that was drawn only recently. The story dramatizes this distinction in identity by putting a pair of British prisoners in the charge of two members of the Irish army—this group of men were, until recently, countrymen, but they are now at war. The men's difference in national identity becomes blurred by the camaraderie between them until the Irish soldiers carry out orders to execute the British prisoners who have become their friends. "Guests of the Nation" therefore suggests that while national identity is a somewhat arbitrary construction, its effects are real and important. Throughout the story, O'Connor foregrounds the camaraderie between the men, obscuring the fact that they are on opposing sides of a war. The group appears at first as four fellow soldiers on an uneventful posting, playing a friendly game of cards with Irish Jeremiah Donovan berating English 'Awkins "as if he was one of our own." Awkins even has friends and acquaintances in common with Bonaparte, who is Irish. O'Connor thus misleads readers about the nature of their relationship, presenting them as friends rather than as captors and captives. This friendly dynamic often seems more important than the facts of war. At multiple points, for example, Bonaparte wonders about the need to guard Belcher and Awkins and it isn't long before the captors "gave up all pretense of keeping a close eye on their behavior." Furthermore, the revelation that the Englishmen aren't guests but hostages horrifies Bonaparte, and he even contemplates trying to prevent his own army from shooting them. He puts these personal relationships on the same plane as his relationship with his new nation. Even to the last, Belcher punctuates his sentences with "chum," almost showing sympathy towards his friends who have to execute him, and Awkins offers to desert and join the other side as long as he can be with his "chums." The friendships between the men, then, overwhelm the terms of the larger conflict at times. Just as O'Connor confuses the terms of the national conflict in his description of the men's friendship, he also creates ambiguity about national identity (and therefore the stakes of the war) by suggesting that national identity is not particularly significant to the personal identities of the British prisoners and their Irish guards. For example, the men's affection for one another does not break down on national lines: Bonaparte and Noble are colder towards Jeremiah, their own countryman, than they are to their British enemies, and Bonaparte looks down on Jeremiah for his rough country manners, suggesting that, in everyday life, regional differences are more important than national ones. The British prisoners also seem to adapt naturally to life in Ireland, which undermines the significance of their nationality. Bonaparte notes, for instance, that Awkins and Belcher seem so comfortable in their country that they take to it like a "native weed. Furthermore, the Irish soldiers take on some aspects of British speech, while Awkins demonstrates his knowledge of Irish dance. Overall, this mixing of cultures suggests that the difference in nationality between British and Irish men is trivial and even arbitrary, despite that they are fighting a war to reify this difference. Once Jeremiah delivers the news that Belcher and Awkins must be executed in retaliation for the execution of Irish hostages, however, the easy dynamic between the men changes and their national origins begin to seem more important. Bonaparte imagines defying his fellow soldiers but recoils from it, recalling that "in those days disunion among brothers seemed to me an awful crime." As the execution draws closer, O'Connor foregrounds details of Irish names and landscapes, further suggesting the increasing importance of nationality. The arrival of the intelligence agent Feeny introduces the first unequivocally Irish name, as contrasted to the ambiguous nationality suggested by names like Noble and Bonaparte. Furthermore, Jeremiah, once referred to only by his first name, is increasingly identified simply by his Irish-sounding surname Donovan, suggesting that the decision to execute the prisoners and participate in the larger war roots him more firmly in his Irish identity. Finally, the bog, a beloved feature of Irish landscape and a romantic symbol of national greatness, becomes a grim symbol of the atrocities committed in the name of nationalism when the prisoners are buried there. While the Irish characters keenly feel these national obligations, the British characters grow, if anything, more committed to their friends over their country. Facing execution, 'Awkins offers to switch sides and fight for the Irish, and it's clear that he offers this not just to save his own life, but also out of genuine affection for Noble and Bonaparte. In contrast, while Bonaparte may secretly wish to let his friends escape into the countryside, he does nothing to make that happen. O'Connor implies that by fighting for their country, Bonaparte and Noble have lost true friends and even essential traits of mercy and compassion that transcend nationhood. - Theme: Religion, Spirituality, and Materialism. Description: 'Awkins is a strident atheist and materialist (someone who believes that economic structures drive world events). He thinks that the capitalist class predates the priesthood, and that capitalists use priests as a method of social control. The old Irish woman who houses the prisoners, however, has more spiritual beliefs. With a blend of Catholicism and paganism, she explains momentous world events, such as the First World War, as a consequence of disturbing "hidden powers." While 'Awkins and the woman fiercely debate their beliefs, O'Connor suggests that neither prayer nor atheism is up to the task of grappling with death or the realities of wartime, as both spirituality and materialism seem meaningless in the face of the executions at the end of the story. Instead of a fatalistic ending in which meaning and belief are shown to be absurd, however, O'Connor leaves room for a more ambiguous spiritual truth, one that can only be grasped by those who have passed on to the "next world." 'Awkins makes a sport of arguing with Noble and the old woman that there is no life after death, a belief he holds with a religious intensity. O'Connor, in fact, is clear that 'Awkins' commitment to materialism is essentially religious in nature; 'Awkins argues for his beliefs "as if he was preaching a sermon." The parallel between 'Awkins' nonbelief and traditional religion is made stronger by the fact that 'Awkins explains both his individual fate and global conflict through the lens of the afterlife: he believes that the capitalist class that backs religion and encourages belief in heaven also instigates international wars like the one that has taken him prisoner. Presumably, belief in the afterlife makes better soldiers—for religious men who believe that they won't lose everything in death, the stakes of fighting are lower. Therefore, 'Awkins thinks that religion manipulates men into fighting harder, and that his own life has become collateral damage. 'Awkins's extreme and somewhat nonsensical belief that both heaven and war are capitalist conspiracies mirrors, in a way, the old woman's belief that World War I began when a Japanese temple was plundered. However, O'Connor shows that neither explanation of war is satisfying when the real horrors of war come to them in the form of the executions. While arguing for his life, for example, 'Awkins seems to utterly disregard his beliefs about class warfare, making individual appeals to personal friendship instead. In the face of death, the appeal of materialism vanishes, its ideas seeming suddenly irrelevant. Likewise, spirituality doesn't seem to provide much comfort. Belcher and 'Awkins both refuse the invitation to say a final prayer, with Belcher specifically noting that he doesn't see the point of prayer in this moment. Bonaparte "tries to say a prayer" while witnessing 'Awkins' death, though it doesn't seem to do much good. In the end, the men are killed and they transform from human beings to objects that fall "like a sack of meal." With both religion and politics failing to provide meaning for the characters, O'Connor acknowledges that people can never fully make sense of tragic events. Belcher seems to support this view when he describes the dead 'Awkins as possessing knowledge he could never have gained while alive. He muses that "'e knows as much about it as they'll ever let 'im know, and last night 'e was all in the dark.'" After Belcher is killed, Bonaparte remains in the dark, as well, and images of darkness and obscurity accumulate as they return through "pitch blackness" to the old woman's kitchen, which is also cold and dark. This emphasizes that, if there's certainty to be had about this world, it's not to be found until the next one, if at all. - Theme: War and Duty. Description: The Irish War for Independence is only one conflict in a long and bitter struggle for Irish independence which would last for decades to come. Despite that, Bonaparte, Noble, Belcher, and 'Awkins have to be reminded that there's a war on when Jeremiah darkens their door. The battlefield seems very distant from the old woman's house, and the only thing O'Connor depicts that resembles armed conflict is the quick flash of violence against the unarmed prisoners at the close of the story. This act, instead of invoking patriotism, seems to be a fulfillment of an immoral duty mandated by unseen authorities, which casts doubt on the morality of war and its ability to achieve justice. The war doesn't seem to reach the old woman's house where the two British prisoners are kept, and everyone involved seems just fine with that. The early parts of the story focus on recreation, including card games and stories about trips into town where "seeing they were such decent fellows, our lads couldn't well ignore the two Englishmen." Awkins and Belcher have even reverted to civilian dress, as they "wore khaki tunics and overcoats with civilian pants and boots…" Although O'Connor does briefly mention that the English are searching for Belcher and Awkins, "Guests of the Nation" is a war story without much talk of battles or maneuvers. The relative peacefulness sharpens the moral dilemma of the executions at the end, which might seem less violent or immoral in the context of an active battlefield, but is especially grotesque in a civilian environment. In addition to the story's peaceful setting, O'Connor downplays the conflict at the story's heart through his language. Characters rarely mention the war, and when they do speak of war or violence, it's through terms that soften the reality of it. For instance, when Jeremiah reports that the British have killed four Irish prisoners, he says that the prisoners "went west," a euphemism for death that makes their fates abstract. Jeremiah also softens the truth when arranging for the execution of the prisoners. Instead of acknowledging that they're being led to their death, Jeremiah says to "tell [Awkins and Belcher] they're being shifted again." It's not clear whether this is out of expediency or sympathy for the prisoners, but it speaks to Jeremiah's discomfort with the morality of the executions. Even the title of the story is a soothing euphemism for what Belcher and Awkins really are: prisoners of war. In this way, O'Connor drives home the way soldiers use language to distance themselves from the real acts of violence in which they participate. Until ideas of patriotism can fully take hold and prepare them to kill for their country, these soldiers comfort themselves by trying to depict the war as abstract or far away. Doing one's duty or serving the country in war is one of the noblest callings for a young man in the popular imagination. Earlier on in the story, Bonaparte tells Jeremiah he "would rather be out with a column," or fighting directly on the frontlines, but this is his sole reference to actual fighting and it seems halfhearted from someone so comfortable with civilian life. The Irish make multiple references to duty and revenge, but they can't even convince themselves, much less the condemned British prisoners, that they mean it. 'Awkins, for instance, initially doesn't believe they'll go through with the execution and accuses them of "pl[a]ying at soldiers." In doing so, he denies them the dignity and self-seriousness associated with soldiers at war. When Jeremiah first refers to duty, 'Awkins says only "cut it out," forestalling any speeches on the subject. Similarly, when Jeremiah insists that the execution is "not so much our doing. It's our duty, so to speak," Belcher rejects that out of hand. He says, "I never could make out what duty was myself…but I think you're all good lads, if that's what you mean…" Belcher forces the Irish soldiers to acknowledge how little they understand duty and how inadequately it justifies their actions, and still further, how much they took the morality of the larger war for granted. Instead, he appeals to simple civilian morality, claiming they're "good lads" despite what they're doing. But "good lads" can do awful things. The traumatized reactions of Bonaparte and Noble to the executions show that this violence was a duty tragedy forced them into, rather than a grim but necessary service to their country, as wartime violence is depicted in many other war stories. - Theme: Home. Description: Despite being set in wartime, much of the story focuses on domestic simplicity, if not bliss. Belcher is the focal point for this theme, as he reveals his shattered domestic situation and his desire to cobble together a new one. "Guests of the Nation" suggests that home is not merely one's birthplace, but rather a feeling that can be found or built in unlikely places. Here, even a stint as a prisoner in a foreign land can be a sort of home. But that can also work in the other direction, as it does for Bonaparte, when the trauma of the executions makes him feel like a stranger in his homeland. The image of the hearth, or fireplace, is threaded throughout the story to symbolize the pull of home and domestic life. It also emphasizes how successful this hodgepodge of soldiers, prisoners, and a civilian have been in creating a home. Belcher, the character most drawn to domestic life, always has his legs in the "ashes," meaning he's trying to warm himself by the hearth. Furthermore, the religious argument between 'Awkins, Noble, and the old woman is a feature of a family gathering, rather than an assembly of strangers. The power of this domestic imagery is especially felt when it's taken away. After the execution, the old woman's house is cold and dark in contrast to its earlier liveliness. Noble even kneels by the fireplace, drawn to that symbol of the home that was lost. Additionally, the Irish find it strange that Belcher is so eager to assist the old woman with her chores, anticipating her movements to ease her burdens. They don't know then that Belcher's wife and child left him eight years ago, and that his time at the old woman's house is a chance for him to "start again." 'Awkins has a similar longing, revealed when he complains that he's being moved "just as a man mikes a 'ome of a bleeding place." But while 'Awkins loafs and squabbles and expects a home to spring up around him, Belcher is willing to build one. When Jeremiah informs him that he's moving back to the Second Battalion, Belcher expresses his gratitude to the old woman for the opportunity to create a home with her, behaving like a grateful son to an elderly mother. Even at the brink of execution, Belcher, who's normally so quiet, babbles about "being so 'andy abaout a 'ouse." His last thoughts turn to simple household chores and the "feeling of a 'ome" they bring. As the execution approaches, images of domesticity are twisted in Bonaparte's mind, as he thinks "I began to perceive in the dusk the desolate edges of the bog that was to be their last earthly bed." The word choice of "bed" marks a haunting contrast between the bed—a core feature of home—and the lonely swamp they'll rest in. The idea of that final resting place for two former friends haunts Bonaparte, and he becomes estranged from the land he thought he knew. Bonaparte describes the aftermath of the execution as "mad lonely" and the bog as the "treacherous bog," as if the landscape not only betrays his footing but also his trust. When the old woman and Noble fall to their knees by the fire, Noble pushes past them as if sickened by the effort to recreate a lost home. He describes a feeling of receding from his homeland, "as though the patch of bog where the two Englishmen were was a thousand miles away…" Instead of twittering, the birds shriek and even the stars seem alone. O'Connor emphasizes that just as home can be built anywhere, it can be lost anywhere. - Climax: The execution of Awkins and Belcher - Summary: In "Guests of the Nation," an Irish soldier named Bonaparte recalls his time guarding two British prisoners of war. Bonaparte remembers how, in the early evening, Belcher (one of the British prisoners) would warm his legs by the fireplace. Afterward, he would suggest a game of cards and 'Awkins (the other British prisoner), as well as Bonaparte and Noble (another Irish soldier), would agree. Jeremiah Donovan, the Irish superior officer, would often come by to observe and chide 'Awkins on his poor play. Bonaparte notes that the two prisoners were handed over to their care by the Second Battalion because British authorities were searching for them. He thinks that it's pointless to even guard the prisoners, as they seem to have taken so well to the country that they're perfectly happy to stay put wherever they're placed. Bonaparte, Noble, Belcher, and 'Awkins are all staying in the home of someone referred to only as the old woman. The old women is normally surly, but Belcher gets along well with her, as he's unfailingly polite and assists her with all her household chores. 'Awkins, by contrast, argues endlessly with Noble and prods the old woman on the subject of religion, but she shuts him down by expressing certainty in strange beliefs about gods who control the rain and thefts from Japanese temples. One evening, the five soldiers are playing cards while 'Awkins is railing against religion, which he believes is a tool of the capitalist class to control the masses. When Noble disagrees, 'Awkins becomes even more fiery in his condemnation, which rises to the level of a sermon. Bonaparte leaves to walk into town with Jeremiah to avoid the argument. On their walk, they discuss the prisoners, and Bonaparte wonders why they keep them at all. Jeremiah explains that Belcher and 'Awkins are actually hostages, and the Irish plan to shoot them unless the English release their Irish prisoners. Bonaparte expresses dismay that he wasn't informed of this sooner. When Bonaparte returns to the house, the argument about religion is still raging between Noble and 'Awkins. After the Englishmen are locked up for the night, Bonaparte tells Noble what Jeremiah told him, and they resolve that it would be kinder not to tell the British prisoners that they might be killed. Bonaparte spends a restless night worrying about whether he could defy his own countrymen to save Belcher and 'Awkins. The next morning, Bonaparte and Noble find it difficult to interact with the British prisoners because they know they may have to die. That day, Belcher suggests a card game in his usual way, but Bonaparte has an ominous feeling. Jeremiah appears at the door asking for the two prisoners, and Bonaparte immediately understands that they are to be executed. Four Irish soldiers were killed by the British, so Belcher and 'Awkins will be killed in retaliation. Feeny, an Irish intelligence officer, accompanies to assist with the execution. Jeremiah tells Belcher and 'Awkins that they're being returned to the Second Battalion. 'Akwins complains loudly and the old woman also protests, wanting the two to stay. Belcher cooperates and thanks the old woman profusely before they leave. Noble and Feeney leave for the bog to dig graves for the British prisoners. Meanwhile, Jeremiah, Bonaparte, Belcher, and 'Awkins march to the edge of the bog. On the way, Jeremiah informs them that they'll be killed because the British killed their Irish prisoners. 'Awkins doesn't believe him at first, thinking it's some cruel joke. He continues to complain and appeal to Bonaparte as his friend as they walk down to the bog. All the while, the finality of the execution is dawning on Bonaparte, and he silently resolves not to shoot the prisoners if they try to escape. The groups meets Noble and Feeny, and 'Awkins tries to appeal to Noble as well. Jeremiah asks 'Awkins if he has any last words to share. 'Awkins responds by offering to desert the British army and join up with the Irish. He doesn't much care about which side he's on as long as he can be with his friends. But Jeremiah ignores this and shoots him. Belcher begins to tie a handkerchief around his eyes so that he won't witness his own execution. He notes that 'Awkins isn't dead yet and requests that 'Awkins be shot again to release him from pain. Bonaparte reluctantly agrees, shooting 'Awkins and killing him. Belcher begins to laugh, remarking that 'Awkins was just recently arguing about the afterlife, and now he's in a position to know whether it's real. As Jeremiah helps him secure the handkerchief around his eyes, Belcher asks Bonaparte and Jeremiah to find a letter on 'Awkins's body and deliver it to his mother. He notes that he doesn't have a family anymore, as his wife left him years ago and took his child. Beginning to babble, he talks about how he likes to feel at home and that explains why he was always helping around the house. When Jeremiah prompts him for a last prayer, Belcher refuses because he doesn't see the point of it. Jeremiah tries to excuse himself from responsibility for the killing by claiming that he's only doing his duty, but Belcher says he doesn't understand what duty means. Belcher says he doesn't blame them, though, and calls them "good lads." Then, Jeremiah shoots Belcher once and kills him. Noble finds the letter on 'Awkins's body and the four carry the corpses to the bog and bury them. Afterwards, Noble and Bonaparte return the tools they used and go back to the old woman's house. The old woman had waited up for them, and, clearly distressed, presses Noble about what they did with the two prisoners. Noble doesn't answer her directly, but she gathers that they were killed all the same. Both the old woman and Noble sink to their knees, but Bonaparte is overwhelmed and runs out of the house. Outside, he describes feeling estranged from everything, as the bog, the prisoners, Noble, and the old woman feel very far away. The story closes with Bonaparte in the present noting that he was forever changed by the experience.

- Genre: Satire - Title: Gulliver's Travels - Point of view: First person - Setting: England and the imaginary nations of Lilliput, Blefuscu, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the land of the Houyhnhnms - Character: Lemuel Gulliver. Description: A married English surgeon, Gulliver wants nothing to do with domestic life and leaves England repeatedly to have adventures in far-off lands. He is resourceful, open-minded, adamant about his own truthfulness, and a remarkably fast learner of new languages. Though Gulliver is glad to return to England after his first three adventures in Lilliput, Brobdingnag and Laputia, his time among the Houyhnhmns permanently darkens Gulliver's perspective on humankind and he ends the novel disgusted by the society around him and longing for the company of Houyhnhmns. - Character: The Laputian King. Description: Lacking all common sense and utterly pre-occupied by abstractions, the Laputian King rules the land of Lagado from a floating island that never touches ground. He is by law not allowed to descend to the Earth and thus spends his life with his body hovering in space and his mind hovering amidst elaborate theories. - Character: The Houyhnhnms. Description: Rational, peaceful, generous, and civilized horses, the Houyhnhnms are ideal beings (at least from Gulliver's perspective). They are so honest and virtuous that they don't even have words for things like "evil" and "falsehood." They live content in their egalitarian and placid society troubled only by the question of how to constrain the Yahoos that live among them. - Theme: Perspective. Description: Above all, Gulliver's Travels is a novel about perspective. While the story is abundant with potential morals, the strongest and most consistent message is a lesson in relativism: one's point of view is contingent upon one's own physical and social circumstances and looking at people's circumstances explains a lot about their respective viewpoints. Gulliver explicitly lectures the reader on relativism, explaining how England's ideas of beauty, goodness, and fairness are radically different from notions of those qualities possessed by the beings he visits in other lands. Until novel's end, Gulliver is able to see merit in his own country's perspective as well as in the perspectives of other nations, a fair-mindedness which he acquires from immersing himself in different cultures and adopting their opposite points of view. Indeed, his travels possess a perfect symmetry: he goes from being a giant among the Lilliputians to being a tiny person among the Brobdingnagians; he exploits the world of tiny people for his own profit (by showing off Lilliputian animals for profit in England) and is in turn exploited in the world of the giants (by the Brobdingnagian Farmer who charges people to gawk at Gulliver); he goes from Laputa, where the Laputians ignore their bodies to concentrate on abstract knowledge and science, to the land of the Yahoos, who are exclusively absorbed by their bodies and the pursuit of crude physical pleasures. Though Gulliver continually marvels at the otherness and strangeness of the foreign people he's landed among, he is also constantly comparing them to people back home in England, finding analogues or points of comparison for even the least familiar customs. The novel ultimately suggests that one's perspective on reality is even more powerful than reality itself. When Gulliver returns to England from Brobdingnag, he encounters "normal" human-sized life but sees everyone and everything as miniature. He thus misgauges size, misjudges people's health, and generally misunderstands his situation until enough time passes for his perspective to adjust. Likewise, Gulliver's time spent among the Houyhnhmns enables him to see his own society in a new way. Though he has been eager to go home after all his prior adventures, he no longer wants to return to England after living amongst the Houyhnhmns, for he has so internalized their perspective that he sees all human beings as Yahoos. He is disgusted even by his own reflection and starts affecting the manner of a horse. Though he is, from a biological standpoint, still fully human, his new perspective has transformed him into a Houyhnhmn and he can no longer function in human society. - Theme: Moral vs. Physical Power. Description: By placing Gulliver amongst people of extremely different physical circumstances than his own, Gulliver's adventures dramatize the distinction between moral and physical power. In Lilliput, Gulliver's huge size advantage over the Lilliputians would make it easy for him to treat them like inhuman vermin and to assert himself against them by physical force (he even imagines squashing them by the handfuls during their initial encounter on the beach). But Gulliver's willingness to empathize, reason with, and respect the Lilliputians despite their diminutive size yields a much more meaningful, rewarding experience (at least until the prince turns against him). Conversely, in Brobdingnag, the Brobdingnagians could easily dehumanize and squash Gulliver, but Gulliver is impressed by their kindness and willingness to listen and empathize with him (though they do treat Gulliver a little more like a cute clown than he would like). Through the example of the Lilliputians' ridiculous, futile battles over how best to crack an egg, the novel suggests the absurdity of all warfare as a means to settle matters of the mind and faith. Through the example of the Laputian king and the Luggnaggian king, the novel presents a parody of tyrannical excess and shows the dangers of rulers who assert themselves through physical power. In Laputa, the king is totally out of touch with his people and maintains his hold over the people simply by making himself "taller" than they are by floating above them on his island. In Luggnagg, the king demands grotesque demonstrations of physical supplication, making subjects crawl on their stomachs licking the dirty floor before him. As the novel considers the dangers of physical power in society, it also considers the physical character of the individual and reflects on how best to handle one's body. The Laputians' and Lagadans' obsession with reason and knowledge has rendered them utterly out of touch with their bodies. Their inability to function in the practical, physical world has in turn destroyed their society, and their example indicates that ignoring physical reality inevitably leads to suffering. Among the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver learns that the possession of a human body does not automatically elevate a person over the animals. The Yahoos, it turns out, are much more bestial than the animal Houyhnhnms. This directly contradicts the common European assertion of the time that human bodies were automatically superior to animal bodies because the human form necessarily contained moral and rational power. Indeed, the Houyhnhnms possess a stronger moral compass and sense of reason than the Yahoos and the Europeans alike. At each instance, the novel thus shows that true superiority and worthy power come from a moral, rational mind in harmony with the body it inhabits. - Theme: Society and the State. Description: As Gulliver travels from society to society, he observes each one's organization in detail and compares and contrasts it with the English state. Though all of the societies visited are flawed, several possess some admirable qualities and almost all of them play out the consequences of a particular utopian ideal. Their admirable qualities include the peaceful Brobdingnagian king's disgust at the thought of gunpowder and rule by violent force; the Lilliputian king's initial generosity and warmth towards the foreign Gulliver; the Houyhnhnms' reason-driven peace and order. But the societies also demonstrate the unfortunate outcome of certain utopian ideals. Lilliput separates its children from their birth parents (as Plato himself advised in), but the practice does not end up yielding very mature or reasonable adults. The Lilliputian king and his court are petty grudge-holders, no better than the monarchs of Europe. Laputa dedicates itself to reason and scientific progress but its devotion produces only trivialities and useless inventions, leaving the useful parts of society to decay. The Houyhnhnms practice strict family planning, but the plans leave no room for the passionate and beautiful parts of love and marriage. The Houyhnhnms' also transcend humanity's ills and evils, but this, too, ends up stripping them of personal identity so that their society lacks humanity's rich vividness and seems to the reader a bit too robotic, even as Gulliver professes to love it. Gulliver himself attempts to live the ideal of uniting with nature by living among the Houyhnhnms, but this commitment only dooms him to dissatisfaction and insanity in the human life he must inevitably return to. Swift never draws up a formula for an ideal state and society because he does not believe that one exists. However, by showing the goods and ills of the vastly different societies Gulliver visits, Swift implicitly points out the errors of human society while also cautioning against the embrace of certain "utopian" solutions. - Theme: Knowledge. Description: Gulliver's Travels also considers the value of knowledge and its best applications in life. The novel surveys many different kinds of knowledge and examines the effect they have on the people possessing them. Gulliver's worldly knowledge about other societies and lifestyles makes him tolerant and open-minded person, able to see both sides of most stories while many of the minds around him are more rigid. Still, it's unclear if this knowledge actually serves Gulliver well—it ends up, after all, leaving him dissatisfied and lonely, estranged from his family and his society and wishing futilely that he was one of the Houyhnhmms. In Brobdingnag and the land of the Houyhnhnms, the novel considers the kind of political knowledge that both the Brobdingnagian king and the Houyhnhnms lack. Yet, while both are ignorant of gunpowder, Machiavellian strategies, and the use of fear and violence to keep people in line, both organize successful, happy societies that seem much more functional than those governed by the more "sophisticated" political knowledge of Europe. The novel also compares practical scientific knowledge, as practiced to valuable effect by the Lilliputians and the Houyhnhnms, to abstract scientific knowledge, as practiced to useless effect by the the Laputians. The Laputians' knowledge, Swift shows, may as well be ignorance, for they don't put their theories to any useful purpose and only waste their lives on fruitless experimentation. Finally, the novel considers self-knowledge as it is gradually acquired by Gulliver over the course of the novel, most so in Book 4. One could see Gulliver's end as an awakening to his true self (and the true self of all human beings), which leaves him disgusted with human nature. However, one could also see Gulliver's end as a tragic exaggeration of self knowledge such that he amplifies human evil beyond its actual proportions and thereby bars himself from integrating productively into the human society he should be a part of.In most of these instances, knowledge becomes harmful when it approaches an extreme: problems arise if one only understands scientific and mathematic abstraction, as the Laputians do, or if one only pursues knowledge of foreign lands without spending time at home among one's own people, as in the case of Gulliver himself. Thus, the novel seems implicitly to advocate a moderate balance between practical and abstract knowledge, between knowledge of the outside world and knowledge of one's own position in it. - Theme: Truth and Deception. Description: Much of the novel's plot action is driven by deceptions, and Gulliver takes note of the inhabitants' feelings about truth and lying in every country he visits. Deceptions that drive plot action include the Lilliputians' secret plot to starve Gulliver to death and Gulliver's subsequent deceits to escape Lilliput. Then, in Brobdingnag, Gulliver deliberately conceals as many of his mishaps he can from Glumdalclitch in order to try to maintain his dignity and freedom. Later, Gulliver lies to the Japanese emperor about being Dutch in order to be granted passage to England. Finally, in the land of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver deliberately avoids correcting the Houyhnhnms misimpression that his clothes are a part of his body, which helps distinguish him enough from the Yahoos to convince the Houyhnhnms he isn't really one of them. From society to society, Gulliver also tracks the inhabitants' different attitudes towards truth and falsehood. The Lilliputians' treat fraud as the highest crime and profess a rigorous devotion to honesty (which is, of course, somewhat undercut by the court's deceptive plot against Gulliver). In Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver explores his own culture's attitude towards truth by summoning ghosts of the past and having later thinkers show ancient thinkers like Aristotle the falsehood in their theories while also exposing rampant deception among the English royalty. In the land of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver encounters a purely honest society, so committed to truth that its members don't even have a word for 'lying' and only refer to a falsehood as "the thing which is not." Yet even as the novel raises earnest questions about the value of honesty, it also toys with the reader, suggesting that truth may be more subjective than absolute. As certain as the novel's human readers are that the societies described are pure fantasy, so too do the characters that inhabit those societies refuse to believe Gulliver's descriptions of human society and insist that Europe is make-believe. Further, Swift makes a concerted effort at verisimilitude by including the preface from Richard Sympson, which repeatedly alludes to geographical facts omitted, supposedly to prevent boredom. (Earlier editions of the novel took this verisimilitude even further by keeping Swift's name off the book and publishing it under the pseudonym Lemuel Gulliver.) Swift also has Gulliver attest again and again to his own honesty and to the true nature of his account. Beyond insisting that it is the factual count it emphatically isn't, Gulliver's Travels also criticizes the novelistic form it is when Gulliver encounters the erosive influence of novels on readers' brains. As with knowledge, then, Swift presents a mixed message on truth: while his work advocates for honesty among individuals and human governments, it also suggests that life will always contain some degree of unknowability and confusion. - Climax: Gulliver's decision to reject humankind and try his best to become a Houyhnhnm - Summary: Lemuel Gulliver is a married English surgeon who wants to see the world. He takes a job on a ship and ends up shipwrecked in the land of Lilliput where he is captured by the miniscule Lilliputians and brought to the Lilliputian king. The Lilliputians are astonished by Gulliver's size but treat him gently, providing him with lots of food and clothes. Gulliver is at first chained to a big abandoned temple then, after surrendering his weapons and signing articles of allegiance to Lilliput, he is granted his liberty. He befriends the king and puts out a fire in the palace by urinating on it. He successfully assists Lilliput by stealing the neighboring Blefuscans' war ships and receives a high honor, but the Lilliputian king begins to cool towards Gulliver when Gulliver refuses to help enslave the Blefuscans. Gulliver makes friends with the Blefuscans' when they come to make peace and, soon after, an unnamed man of the court informs Gulliver that the Lilliputian court plans to accuse him of treason and put out his eyes. Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu and then returns to England. Gulliver soon sets out on his next voyage and is stranded in the land of Brobdingnag where the Brobdingnagians are immense giants and Gulliver feels like a Lilliputian. After being forced to perform exhausting freak shows by the Brobdingnagian farmer, Gulliver is sold to the Brobdingnagian queen, the farmer's daughter and his loving caretaker Glumdalclitch in tow. In the court, Gulliver is well cared for but everyone laughs frequently at his physical mishaps. Gulliver tries to maintain his dignity with little success. He offers to help the Brobdingnagian king strengthen his power by using gunpowder and is puzzled the king's disgust, concluding that, though the Brobdingnagians are a good-hearted people, they are just not as sophisticated as humans. One day, the box Gulliver is carried around in for outings gets snatched up by a bird on the beach and, dumped in the sea, he is picked up by a human ship and carried back to England. Back among humans, Gulliver is astonished by their littleness. Gulliver sets out yet again to sea and is again stranded, this time getting taken up by the Laputians to their floating island. He meets the Laputian king and observes life in Laputa where everyone is so obsessed with abstract mathematical, musical, and astronomical theory that they are utterly incompetent about practical matters and can barely hold a conversation. Gulliver is disgusted when he visits the city of Lagado below and sees the destructive influence the Laputians' theories have had, turning a once functioning people into a broken society. He tours the academy where the projectors contrive useless scientific projects. Afterwards, Gulliver visits Glubbdubdrib and meets ghosts of history, visits Luggnagg and meets the power-crazed Luggnaggian king and the grim immortal Struldburgs, and finally returns to England. Gulliver sets out on his fourth voyage only to be mutinied and stranded in a land where the noble and reasonable horses, the Houyhnhmns, do their best to control the foul degenerate human Yahoos. Gulliver tries to distance himself as much as possible from the Yahoos and, indeed, the Houyhnhmns, especially Gulliver's mentor, the master horse, see Gulliver is different because he has a rational mind and wears clothing. The more Gulliver learns from the Houyhnhmns, the more he admires their uprightness, egalitarianism, and reason, and he eventually turns against humankind, wanting to live forever among the Houyhnhmns. As he learns about the Houyhnhmns from the master horse, the master horse also learns about humanity from Gulliver, and concludes that the Yahoos Gulliver has come from are really not very different from the filthy Yahoos among the Houyhnhmns. Much to Gulliver's chagrin, the Houyhnhmns ultimately insist that Gulliver return to his own country. Though he tries to avoid returning to human society, Don Pedro's ship picks Gulliver up and forces him to return to Europe. Back home, Gulliver remains disgusted by all the Yahoos around him, including his family members, and spends all his time with horses, reminiscing longingly about the Houyhnhmns. He concludes by assuring the reader that everything he's described is true and that he's written his travels solely for the public good so that the wretched Yahoos around him might learn from the virtuous beings of other lands.

- Genre: Historical Fiction - Title: Half of a Yellow Sun - Point of view: Third person limited, switching between following Ugwu, Olanna, and Richard - Setting: Nigeria - Character: Olanna Ozobia. Description: One of the novel's main protagonists, the beautiful daughter of Chief Ozobia. Olanna's parents are shallow and greedy, but she has a strong character and sense of morality. She studied sociology in London and then moved back to Nigeria. She was seriously involved with a Hausa named Mohammed, but then left him for Odenigbo, whom she loves deeply. Olanna and her family are Igbo, and so are greatly affected by the massacres and the war. During the war Olanna teaches children and helps with the refugee camps. - Character: Kainene Ozobia. Description: Olanna's twin sister, who is less beautiful than Olanna and has something of a dour, sarcastic personality. Kainene is always the less popular of the two, and she builds up many emotional defenses against the world. Kainene also studied in London, and then takes over her father's business in Port Harcourt. Richard falls deeply in love with her when they meet. She returns his love but rarely displays open affection. Kainene runs a refugee camp during the war. - Character: Ugwu. Description: The novel's first protagonist, a young Igbo boy from the small bush village of Opi. Ugwu becomes Odenigbo's houseboy and initially marvels at all his possessions and education. Ugwu possesses a natural brilliance, and quickly excels at school and becomes an excellent cook. He goes through puberty and lusts after girls (and Olanna), but is usually frustrated in love. Ugwu is forcefully conscripted into the army and almost killed. While in the army he also kills enemy soldiers and participates in a gang rape of another Igbo women, an act he deeply regrets. He ends up writing The World Was Silent When We Died, the story of the Biafran conflict. - Character: Richard Churchill. Description: An English expatriate and journalist. He first came to Nigeria after he fell in love with the roped pots of ancient Igbo-Ukwu art. Richard is very good-looking but extremely shy and awkward. He falls deeply in love with Kainene and they start a relationship. Richard feels like a true Biafran, but in the end he recognizes that as a white man he will always be an outsider to the Igbo's suffering. He finds a purpose when he begins using his privilege to publish articles about the Biafran War. - Character: Odenigbo. Description: A mathematics professor and pseudo-revolutionary, and Olanna's lover/husband. Odenigbo is strong and hairy, and speaks forcefully about many subjects, mostly arguing about international politics. Olanna falls in love with his confidence and they are happy together for a long time. Odenigbo takes in Ugwu and helps educate him. Odenigbo loves Olanna but cheats on her with Amala and then possibly with Alice. He is a patriotic Biafran, but as the war drags on he starts drinking and gets depressed. - Theme: Colonialism and Nigerian Politics. Description: Half of a Yellow Sun mostly deals with the Nigerian Civil War (also called the Biafran War), which took place between 1967 and 1970. Nigeria had only recently freed itself from British colonial rule at the time, and the country of Nigeria was itself an arbitrary unification (by its colonizers) of over 300 different ethnic groups. The largest of these were the Igbo in the Southeast, the Yoruba in the Southwest, and the Hausa in the North. Adichie paints a picture of this hopeful young country in its new independence through scenes at Odenigbo's house, where politicians, professors, and poets argue and laugh together. But despite Independence in 1960, Nigerian politics were still under British influence (which wanted to maintain its access to Nigerian resources), mostly through the way the government was arranged – so that the autocratic Northern Hausa had the most control. Ultimately the tensions between the ethnic groups (exacerbated and sometimes even created by England) led to the massacres of Igbo people in 1966 and the Civil War that followed, with the secession of the Republic of Biafra in the Southeast.Half of a Yellow Sun is told from the point of view of mostly Igbo characters – Ugwu, Odenigbo, Olanna, and Kainene – who are all affected by the massacres and the war, and hold a desperate hope in the future of Biafra. Adichie also gives us the viewpoint of an outsider, the white Englishman Richard, who though he belongs to the colonizers comes to identify closely with the Biafran cause through his love of Kainene (and yet, at the same time, can never actually be Biafran or completely extricate himself from the colonialist context or to separate his own objectification of Biafrans from his love of Kailene. Ultimately none of the political sides come out blameless in the conflict, just like the characters in the novel. England started all the trouble by colonizing and oppressing Nigeria, stirring up ethnic tensions, and supplying arms to Nigeria during the war; Nigeria used starvation and genocide as weapons of war, and the Biafran soldiers committed their own atrocities against the Nigerians and even their own people. The power of the novel is then to show human faces of different aspects of this conflict, and to portray individual tragedies and victories that bring to life events most Westerners aren't even aware of. - Theme: Loyalty and Betrayal. Description: On the political level, Adichie shows a "betrayal" within Nigeria through the massacre of the Igbos, and also in the secession of Biafra and the powerful Igbo devotion to the Biafran cause. The book focuses mostly on the individual level, however, and its main characters experience personal loyalty and betrayal as well. The two central characters, Olanna and Kainene, are twin sisters who in many ways act as a microcosm of the Nigerian conflict, as they painfully break apart but are eventually reunited. The twins don't look at all alike, and they are close in their youth but grow apart as they get older. Olanna then betrays Kainene by seducing her lover, Richard, and Kainene responds by totally cutting Olanna out of her life. In a similar way Odenigbo betrays Olanna by sleeping with Amala, his mother's helper, and Richard betrays Kainene by sleeping with Olanna.All of these betrayals cause great pain and times of personal reflection for the characters, but they ultimately lead to forgiveness and a stronger loyalty than before. Olanna takes Odenigbo back, Kainene burns Richard's manuscript but stays with him, and Olanna and Kainene are eventually reunited and grow closer than ever. In her well-developed characters Adichie shows the human tendencies toward loyalty and betrayal, while at the same time showing how these impulses play out in the larger political arena. - Theme: War and Violence. Description: Most of the novel centers around the Nigerian Civil War, and the excessive cruelty and violence of this conflict affects all of the characters. This war was sparked by the massacres of Igbo people in 1966, when angry mobs killed soldiers and citizens as "retribution" for a government coup. The creation of Biafra was then a time of hope for the battered Igbo, but this was quickly tempered by the declaration of war from Nigeria. In Half of a Yellow Sun, Adichie contrasts scenes of peace and optimism (like the dinner parties at Odenigbo's house) with sudden scenes of violence and fear. In this way she creates a tone of constant suspense, as the country becomes a place of danger and casual violence.Anywhere from one to three million people died of starvation and fighting during the Biafran War, and Adichie draws out the personal tragedies in these astronomical numbers. She shows small horrors like a woman carrying her daughter's severed head in a basket, the girl's hair still carefully braided, or Ikejide having his head cut off by a piece of shrapnel. There are other tragedies as well, like the poet Okeoma giving up writing in order to fight, or Ugwu contributing to the horrors of war by participating in the rape of a bar girl. War and violence is often overwhelming in both the world and in the novel, and sometimes the only redemption seems to be trying to avoid history's mistakes by fully confronting them, as we do in Adichie's merciless writing. - Theme: Race and Culture. Description: Much of the conflict in Nigerian politics and between the characters of the novel has to do with race and culture. The root cause of this is the racist, oppressive colonization of Nigeria by the British Empire. This is illustrated in characters like Susan, who sees all Africans as less-civilized and inferior to white people. Colonialism also exacerbated cultural conflicts among the Nigerians themselves, as the country's borders are a "unified" region created by England, forcing together over 300 different cultural groups. The main tension is between the Muslim, autocratic Hausa and the mostly-Christian, republican Igbo. The British colonizers gave most of the government control to the Hausa, as they were easier for the British to influence from afar, but the Igbo and the Yoruba developed the strongest middle class.Adichie's characters then represent many of these different cultures and races. Olanna and Kainene are upper-class Igbo, Odenigbo is a middle-class, intellectual Igbo, Ugwu is an extremely poor Igbo from a bush village, and Richard is a white English expatriate. Adichie is from an Igbo family herself, so she clearly identifies more with the Biafran cause, but she doesn't shy away from portraying the mistakes and atrocities committed by Biafra. Overall her portrayal of the conflicts between race and culture shows the common humanity of all, and how even someone like Richard – a member of the oppressive culture – can be a force for good when he is willing to recognize the equal value of all people and try to help them. - Theme: Love. Description: Half of a Yellow Sun deals with political and historical events but it is also deeply personal, particularly in the love between its characters. The romantic relationships between Olanna and Odenigbo, Kainene and Richard, and Ugwu's infatuation with Eberechi are at the center of the novel, as well as the sibling love between Olanna and Kainene. As with everything in the book, the personal is affected by the political and vice versa: Olanna's love for Odenigbo brings her into his world of radical politics, and Richard's love for Kainene causes him to cross racial and political boundaries.The love between the sisters becomes a sort of symbol for the unity of Nigeria, as they painfully cut off ties but are eventually reunited. Ugwu's longings for Nnesinachi and Eberechi are thwarted by the war, and then as a soldier he commits the atrocity of rape – the ultimate corruption of love. The love between Kainene and Richard and the love between the sisters seems the most enduring of the book, which makes it all the more tragic when Kainene disappears. Ultimately Adichie delves into all the deep aspects of the human experience: sex as well as violence, romance as well as cruelty, and though she shows great injustice and pain she also portrays love that can withstand such suffering. - Climax: Ugwu fights on the front lines - Summary: Half of a Yellow Sun takes place in Nigeria in the 1960s. The book begins when Ugwu, an Igbo boy from a bush village, goes to Nsukka to work as a houseboy for Odenigbo, a professor and radical. Odenigbo is in love with Olanna, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Nigerian. Olanna moves in with Odenigbo and meets his friends, who argue about politics every night. Ugwu becomes an excellent cook and goes to school. Meanwhile Richard, a white Englishman in Nigeria, leaves his girlfriend Susan when he falls in love with Kainene, Olanna's sardonic twin sister. Richard moves to Nsukka and befriends Odenigbo and Olanna. Odenigbo's mother "Mama" visits and calls Olanna a witch, which upsets her greatly. Olanna and Odenigbo start trying to have a child. The narrative jumps a few years ahead, when the Nigerian government is overthrown. The Northern Hausa blame the Igbo for the coup. There is then another coup, and this time many Igbo soldiers are killed. Olanna now has a child she calls "Baby," and she takes her to Kano to visit her relatives. The violence against the Igbo becomes a pogrom, and Olanna's relatives are brutally murdered. She escapes on a train to Nsukka and sees a woman carrying her daughter's severed head in a basket. Meanwhile Richard watches Igbo civilians being murdered at the airport. Colonel Ojukwu, the Igbo leader, announces that Southeast Nigeria will secede and become the Republic of Biafra. All the characters are overjoyed at this. Nigeria then declares war on Biafra to annex it. Britain and Russia supply arms to the Nigerians, who advance against the confident Biafrans. Nsukka is evacuated, and Olanna, Odenigbo, Ugwu, and Baby move to the cities of Abba and then Umuahia. Their living situations get progressively worse as the war continues and Biafra's food and money runs out. Odenigbo and Olanna get married, but there is an air raid during the reception. The narrative is sometimes interrupted by a book called The World Was Silent When We Died, where an unknown author describes the larger political forces at work in the war. The story returns to the early sixties, to the time before the war. Olanna goes to London, and while she is away Mama visits Odenigbo with a girl named Amala. Odenigbo sleeps with Amala, and when Olanna returns home she finds out. She moves out and gets very depressed. Olanna learns that Amala is pregnant with Odenigbo's child. She gets drunk one night and seduces Richard. Richard and Olanna both agree not to tell Kainene, though Olanna soon tells Odenigbo. Olanna and Odenigbo get back together. Olanna decides to adopt as her own Amala's child, which is a girl and unwanted by Amala and Mama. Olanna names the child Chiamaka but calls her Baby. Kainene then finds out about Olanna and Richard, and she stops speaking to Olanna. She burns the manuscript Richard was writing but doesn't leave him. The story returns to the late sixties. The situation in war-torn Biafra rapidly declines, and there is starvation and violence everywhere. Nigeria blockades all aid to Biafra, and most foreign countries ignore the conflict. Richard starts writing articles about the suffering Biafrans, and Kainene runs a refugee camp. Odenigbo's mother is killed, and he gets depressed and starts drinking. Kainene finds Olanna and, her perspective changed by the war, forgives her. The sisters grow close again. Ugwu falls in love with a girl named Eberechi, but then he is forcefully conscripted into the army. He fights some battles and then takes part in the gang rape of a bar girl. He is badly wounded in a subsequent battle, and everyone thinks he is dead. Umuahia falls to the Nigerians and Olanna's family moves in with Kainene. They find Ugwu in a hospital and take him home. Children start regularly dying of kawashiorkor, a disease of starvation and malnutrition. One day Kainene crosses enemy lines to find food if possible, and doesn't return. Richard and Olanna search for her frantically but find nothing. Finally Biafra surrenders and Nigeria is reunified. Olanna's family returns to Nsukka to find their house looted and all their savings liquidated. Ugwu returns to his village and learns that his sister was gang raped by soldiers. He starts writing about his experiences, and it is revealed that he is the author of The World Was Silent When We Died. Kainene's disappearance remains a mystery.

- Genre: Short story, literary fiction - Title: Happy Endings - Point of view: Third person omniscient - Setting: Canada - Character: Mary. Description: The main female character in the story, Mary is introduced along with John in scenario A, and reappears several times throughout the story. In scenario A, she marries John and gets to participate in the "happy ending" consisting of a stable marriage, a house, children, career, and hobbies. In scenario B, after unsuccessfully courting John, she commits suicide when she discovers that he has been unfaithful to her. In scenario C, she engages in a relationship with a different iteration of John, who is much older and already married, while also pursuing a romantic relationship with James, who is her own age but often unavailable. When John discovers their relationship, he murders both Mary and James before committing suicide. Throughout the several variations presented in the story, Mary is substituted in as a typical female character, constrained by the expectations placed upon her because of her gender and ultimately defined by her romantic relationships. Unlike the male characters in the story, she is unable to pursue her own sexual and romantic fulfillment without dire consequences. It is notable that in several iterations of the story, Mary's character arc ends in death, whether self-inflicted or otherwise, illustrating the ways in which the lives of female characters are drastically limited in their options—their only "endings" being death or marriage. - Character: John. Description: Like Mary, John is one of the first characters introduced in the story, and serves as a stand-in for a typical male character throughout the various plot iterations. In scenario A, John and Mary succeed in obtaining a "happy ending" consisting of marriage, children, a house, and fulfilling jobs and hobbies. In scenario B, after Mary eventually commits suicide, John still goes on to the ending described in A, only this time with a woman named Madge, who is virtually interchangeable with the version of Mary described in scenario A. Scenario C features an older version of John, still married to Madge but also engaging in an affair with a comparatively much younger version of Mary. In this scenario, when John finds Mary engaged in a relationship with another man, he is overcome with despair and frustration and kills both Mary and her lover James before committing suicide. While John's ending is not always, strictly speaking, happy, in each of the scenarios John always ultimately has a sense of agency that Mary lacks, illustrating the ways in which men's freedom when it comes to romantic and sexual relationships greatly outstrips that of women. Even when John has achieved the "happy ending" of marriage with Madge, he still engages in extramarital affairs, an option denied to the various female characters. Ultimately, John is representative of masculine sexual privilege throughout the story. - Character: Madge. Description: First introduced in scenario B, Madge is the woman John is seeing on the side instead of Mary. While ostensibly a different character than Mary, Atwood implies that the two characters are so similar that they are able to be swapped into one another's stories with only slight changes. In scenario C, after her husband John commits suicide, Madge marries a man named Fred and things continue on as in scenario A. In scenario D, Madge and Fred must deal with a tidal wave disrupting their typical happy ending. In scenario E, Atwood further complicates the ending by introducing elements such as cancer and heart disease. Throughout the various iterations of her story, Madge is presented as another two-dimensional stock character, virtually indistinguishable from Mary. - Character: James. Description: In scenario C, James is Mary's young, independent, and often unavailable lover. James, who owns a motorcycle and an impressive record collection, is adventurous and desirable, in contrast with Mary's other lover, John, who is older and uninteresting. When James visits Mary, John walks in on them getting high and having sex, and kills them both in a jealous rage before committing suicide. While in many ways interchangeable with John throughout the various other iterations of the story, in scenario C James is representative of the relative freedom enjoyed by men, both in general and specifically in terms of romantic and sexual relationships. While Mary is left waiting for him to return to her, James is able to go off on adventures on his motorcycle, and is implied to have engaged in other sexual relationships. - Character: Fred. Description: In scenario C, Madge marries Fred after her husband John commits suicide. In scenario D, Fred and Madge brave a tidal wave, while in scenario E, they deal with disease and illness. In each of these scenarios, Fred is basically interchangeable with John, a stock male character in a relationship with a stock female character. While the names might be swapped around, Fred's character arc is essentially the same as John in each of the scenarios, with the goal always being to end up at A, the so-called "happy ending." - Theme: Sex and Gender. Description: In "Happy Endings," Atwood describes a variety of scenarios involving stock characters she calls John and Mary in order to reflect upon gender and sexuality. Throughout these iterations of character arcs and story stereotypes, Atwood presents sexuality as heavily conditioned by social and gender norms, most often to the detriment of women. In particular, women's sexuality is often socially dependent upon men, whose needs are put first, over and above women's. The story's title itself, "Happy Endings," obliquely refers to sexual acts, a tongue-in-cheek nod by Atwood that "happy endings," in sex and real life, are largely the domain of men. Ultimately, Atwood makes the claim that the gendered expectations surrounding sex often result in situations that benefit men and harm women. In none of the scenarios is sex in and of itself the source of a genuinely happy ending for women. Even in scenario A, which is in some senses a "best-case" scenario, John and Mary's "stimulating and challenging" sex life is ultimately presented as a minor hobby alongside other parts of their lives such as children, a house, vacations, and friends. Listing sex with the litany of other accomplishments belies its importance and fraught nature. Their jobs and hobbies are also described as "stimulating and challenging," a phrase that evokes not so much intimacy and passion, but a kind of sterile, paternalistic view of sex as necessary for a "happy ending," the details of which are unimportant. Thus even when the relationship described is a relatively happy one, the only important thing about sex is, presumably, that they're having it. While this would be the case for both John and Mary in this situation, later scenarios complicate the supposedly equal (and equally depressing) depiction of sex for each partner—suggesting that while neither is deeply satisfied, women in particular are unable to achieve or hold onto sexual fulfillment. Indeed, in scenario B, John only uses Mary for sexual gratification, and while Mary doesn't enjoy sex with John, she consents because she wants John to love and marry her. Here Mary and John's relationship makes explicit the fact that, for men, sex is about pleasure, while for women, sex is fraught with gendered expectations of self-sacrifice. Atwood is explicit about the one-sided nature of this relationship: John "merely uses [Mary's] body for selfish pleasure and ego gratification of a tepid kind," and does not reciprocate her care of interest in any fashion. In this scenario, for Mary sex is just a tool, used to get and keep a man who would be otherwise uninterested in her. When John finds another women he is interested in, Madge, Mary is despondent, and eventually commits suicide, with the thought that maybe John will "discover her and get her to the hospital in time and repent and then they can get married." Even at the end of her life, then, Mary uses her body as a tool to get a man to love her. While her friends tell Mary that John is "a rat, a pig, a dog," and the details of the story certainly bear this characterization out, Mary is stuck in a warped view of the world in which John could potentially "emerge like a butterfly from a cocoon." For Mary, sex is a way in which she might be able to encourage John to change; it is not something she does for her own pleasure or, to echo the story's title, happy ending. In scenario C, Atwood goes on to underscore how women, unlike men, are in fact punished when they actively pursue their own sexual gratification. In this scenario Mary is in love with James, but also sleeps with John, now presented as an older man who is cheating on his wife. Here, Atwood complicates the gender dynamic in regards to sex, and there is no "happy ending" even for the men. However, Mary still has to navigate the fraught realm of sex and interpersonal relationships, while for the men it's simpler and more straightforward, a purer reflection of their own desires and needs. Because James is unavailable (as Atwood puts it, "away on his motorcycle, being free"), Mary indulges in a sexual relationship with John, although she is not in love with him. Here, the reader sees a distorted reflection of the relationships in scenarios A and B: although John is supposed to be living his "happy ending" as depicted in those stories, in reality he is cheating on his wife with a much younger woman. But John's infidelity isn't what invalidates the "happy ending"—male sexual digression seems permissible within the existing framework. It's only when John finds Mary and James in her apartment, "stoned and entwined," that his narrative begins to unravel. For John, this is no longer a "happy ending" because his sexual and romantic desires are no longer uncomplicated and fulfilled. For James and Mary, a "happy ending" isn't possible either—but only because Mary's infidelity prompts John to take drastic action and kill them all. Throughout the entirety of scenario C, then, Atwood illustrates that the "happy ending" of sexual climax is, throughout the story, largely in reference to male sexual pleasure. It's clear that female pleasure isn't a concern for most of the male protagonists of the story, except as an afterthought, perhaps a necessary component the "stimulating and challenging" aspects of scenario A. The only men who do not get a "happy ending" are those in scenario C: John, because he squanders his already happy life in a jealous rage, and James, because he is the victim of that rage. In none of the iterations of the story do women have the power to deny men a "happy ending" outright. What's more, they seldom have the ability to meaningfully pursue their own "happy ending." - Theme: Relationships and Marriage. Description: Throughout the story, the character arcs of John, Mary, and others are all described in relation to one another, most often in terms of romance and eventual marriage. Atwood highlights the way in which these events function less as interesting narrative developments and more as necessary fulcrums in the plot, moving the story along inexorably toward its ending. Once marriage happens, the story's usually over—barring plot-worthy tragedies like natural disaster or disease—and the characters are neatly fitted into place, so similar in their endings that they can be slotted directly into any other story where "everything continues as in A, but under different names." Marriage is always the ultimate conclusion, no matter what—an "ending" that Atwood critiques as superficial and formulaic, and which reduces the meaningful aspects of the characters' lives to a singular focus. Scenario A, the first narrative presented in the story and the one to which all other narratives eventually default, concludes with a static marriage, one in which all interesting or significant events have already occurred in the characters' lives. In this scenario, John and Mary have a "happy ending" consisting of jobs, children, a house, friends, hobbies, and financial prosperity. Having reached the end of their story, John and Mary get to live a happy life—one that is expected and unchanging. While Atwood doesn't condemn happiness as the ultimate goal, she's quick to poke fun at the cookie-cutter elements of such an ending. While the other scenarios may have more twists and turns, they eventually end up at scenario A: a man and a woman fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after. Whether this means John and Madge in scenario B after Mary has killed herself, Fred and Madge in scenario C after John has committed a murder-suicide, or any of the other iterations is irrelevant. In each of the scenarios, then, Atwood lays bare the empty goal of the "happy ending" of marriage, suggesting that marriage as an end-point is an artificial, perhaps even harmful construction. In other scenarios throughout the story, Atwood complicates the idea of marriage itself as a "happy ending" by introducing elements such as infidelity, jealousy, and illness. In these scenarios, while the story as a whole ends up at A, various characters must suffer unhappy endings before the story can get there. In scenario B, a lovelorn Mary pines after John even though he is ultimately uninterested in her. Here, as in scenario A, the characters are ultimately defined by their romantic relationships with one another, even when they don't eventually result in marriage. For Mary, the defining element of her character arc is her relationship with John (or lack thereof). Mary commits suicide precisely because she has been denied the traditional "happy ending" of romance and marriage, illustrating the ways in which harmful ideas about what constitutes a happy and fulfilling life can have a negative effect. In scenario C, Mary is in a similar situation, in love with James, who is often both emotionally and physically unavailable ("away on his motorcycle, being free"). Mary bides her time by engaging in a relationship with John, who is older and married on this scenario, although she does not love him. While in some respects Mary complicates the tropes present in the two preceding iterations of the story, she is still ultimately defined by her romantic relationships. Although, in the end, she does not get a "happy ending," the entire arc of her story is still based on her romantic relationships with men. Even when marriage, and romantic relationships in general, are shown to be unhealthy and unhappy, they are still positioned as the ultimate goal of both a story and a life. In further iterations of the story, Atwood illustrates the ways in which, no matter how one attempts to complicate the plot, it eventually defaults back into the same template of romance and marriage. In scenario D, after Fred and Madge get married, they are threatened by a tsunami, and "the rest of the story is about what caused the tidal wave and how they escape from it." Despite this detour, however, at the end of the story they "they clasp each other, wet and dripping and grateful, and continue as in A." Fred and Madge are still characterized exclusively by their relationships to one another. Even tossing in wildly different elements, such as spies, ultimately does nothing to change this. While there might be more filler—"a lustful brawling saga of passionate involvement"—in the end the characters yet again default to marriage as the defining element and goal of their lives. Throughout the story, Atwood illustrates the ways in which conventional storylines ultimately define their characters by their relationships with others. At least in terms of plot, most stories are conventional in their relationship dynamics, and rely on romance and marriage to the point that characters are often interchangeable with one another. Atwood argues that, contrary to traditional belief and established plot structures, marriage is a false ending, one that simplifies characters' goals and motivations and ignores the possibilities of other endings, happy or otherwise. - Theme: Storytelling Tropes. Description: Beyond illustrating the problematic dynamics underpinning sexual and romantic relationships, "Happy Endings" is concerned with the nature of storytelling itself. "Happy Endings" details the broad plot arcs of a variety of different stories, poking fun at the traditional structure that underpins so many of them. In doing so, Atwood asserts that the broad strokes of a life—who sleeps with whom, who marries whom, who dies and how—as less interesting than the day to day trials and motivations of characters, or as she puts it, the "How and Why." The various iterations of the stories all start with an initial romance, whether explicit or implied. This is the first building block of the plot of all the stories—as Atwood puts it "John and Mary meet. What happens next?" Scenario A, which establishes the default ending of many of the other subsequent scenarios as well, offers a "happy ending" to the initial romance. Atwood argues that the ubiquity of this ending renders it virtually meaningless—it is uninteresting precisely because of its generic character. One could literally swap the names of the characters from other scenarios into it without meaningfully changing any of the broad plot strokes. Scenario B and C interject tragedy into the plot—they are not simply "happy endings." However, they, too, follow a formulaic pattern, and all ultimately arrive at scenario A. Whether describing a lovelorn heroine or a love triangle with a violent end, these plots rely on the same tropes and stereotypes, rendering them, for Atwood, deeply boring stories. Marriage is another foundational plot element to all of the stories that Atwood introduces. While the details sometimes differ, marriage is ultimately uninteresting as a plot development because of its sheer inevitability. Marriage is assumed to be an integral part of the "happy ending," no matter what. Whether in scenario A, where marriage is a happy default, or in any of the other scenarios, where marriage is the goal of the story even if it is never ultimately realized, marriage is seen as the culmination of the romantic plot. Everything after marriage, notwithstanding disaster, is merely denouement. This isn't just a regressive viewpoint that robs other elements of life of meaning, but, in Atwood's estimation, it's simply bad writing. And while all of the characters either succeed in, or tragically long for, marriage, Atwood ultimately describes it as a sterile, uninteresting component of the story. It may be nearly inevitable, and it may provide some measure of happiness, but once one has achieved the goal of marriage, there's really nothing left to do—only sideshows and irrelevant plot filler. Atwood argues that an emphasis on formulaic plot elements such as marriage and "happy endings" ignores the things that make stories important and original. In all of the stories, the characters also eventually die. Death is the ultimate trope, the inescapable conclusion, and as such is fundamentally uninteresting. On the other hand, stories that attempt to avoid or subvert death are being dishonest: the plot remains the same no matter how creatively one tries to pretend otherwise. Indeed, Atwood asserts that "the endings are the same however you slice it." While it might be tempting to play along with other versions of the story, she reminds readers that "they're all fake, either deliberately fake, with malicious intent to deceive, or just motivated by excessive optimism if not by downright sentimentality." Death is the ultimate ending, and in all of the stories (albeit with some name swapping) the ending is simple: "John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die." Atwood acknowledges that the plots of these stories—and most stories—are formulaic when stripped down to their components: romance, marriage, death, with happy or tragic endings meted out accordingly. For her, what is interesting about stories thus aren't the components of plot, which are "just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what." Instead, what is truly unique to stories are the "How and Why"—those elements which add depth and interest to what are, in the end, basic and formulaic stories about human life. Throughout the story, Atwood often directly addresses her audience, breaking the fourth wall and letting the audience in on the secret of formulaic plots and typical endings. From the start, she plays on the conventions of a "choose your own adventure" type story, encouraging the audience, "If you want a happy ending, try A." After several more iterations, anticipating a reader's objections to the formula, she suggests wryly, "If you think this is all too bourgeois, make John a revolutionary and Mary a counterespionage agent and see how far that gets you." At the conclusion of the story she reminds readers, "you'll have to face it," emphasizing that, no matter how inventive or elaborate, plots are ultimately all the same, a collection of stock parts strung together in different orders with varying effects: romance, marriage, death. What is interesting and important about stories ultimately has nothing to do with the plot. Instead, it rests on the "How and Why," the details, motivations, and descriptions that are unique to particular characters and stories. - Theme: Mortality. Description: Throughout "Happy Endings," the various romantic scenarios and plot features the story describes all end in death. In all of the archetypal plot elements she caricatures, Atwood emphasizes that death and loss are a fundamental part of any story. While marriage may be an ending of a sort, of the "lived happily ever after" variety, it's never the true ending: death is the ultimate conclusion of any story, and there's no use pretending otherwise. Accepting and moving beyond this is essential for good storytelling, but, on a more existential level, is also presented as a prescription for living a more meaningful life. In each of the scenarios that Atwood describes, the ultimate ending is death. While the plots may conventionally lead up to marriage, infidelity, disaster, or other interpersonal conflicts, Atwood illustrates the ways in which these endings are all false, premature endings if they do not include death. In scenario A and the other scenarios that eventually default to this ending, the story concludes with a good death, at the end of a long, fulfilling life. Atwood writes that "eventually they die. This is the end of the story." This death is the ultimate conclusion of the "happy ending" scenario, illustrating the ways in which even stories that ostensibly triumph over tragedy cannot escape death. This underscores the story's broader focus on the unavoidability of mortality. In other scenarios, a tragic death comes earlier in the story. In scenario B, for instance, Mary commits suicide after her lackluster lover, John, leaves her for another woman. Similarly, in scenario C, all of the characters meet tragic ends, illustrating the central place that death has in all stories. Even in stories with added, sometimes elaborate, details, death remains the final conclusion. Whether characters face heart disease, cancer, natural disasters, or a variety of other deadly ailments, Atwood suggests that these elements can be inserted into the story with little to no change in the overall plot. Death always has the potential to profoundly disrupt the stability of a "happy ending." Adding in elements of a thriller doesn't work either: "If you think this is all too bourgeois, make John a revolutionary and Mary a counterespionage agent and see how far that gets you." While you might end up with a more superficially interesting story, the plot points are all the same, and death remains inevitable and inescapable. By the conclusion of the story, Atwood is firm in her insistence that "the only authentic ending is the one provided here: John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die." As she writes, "so much for endings." At the same time, however, she indicates that death, while so ordinary and inescapable as to become banal, can be an important factor in stories insofar as it illustrates the "How and Why." On the face of it, death is ubiquitous and inescapably human. As such, it can inform and motivate characters in interesting ways. What makes a story worth reading isn't what happens, but how and why it happens. That's why Atwood emphasizes that, throughout any story, it's no use to focus on the inevitable end, whether that means the false ending of marriage or the ultimate ending of death itself. Instead, stories, and life itself, are made meaningful by the characters within them; the bones of the story in the form of plot are less important than the skin and muscle, the organs and scars. By emphasizing that death is the final act of all stories, Atwood reveals certain plot elements to be universal, interchangeable, and without meaning. Thus, she argues that what makes narratives meaningful and significant are the "How and Why": the peculiarities, motivations, and desires of characters. - Climax: The narrator reveals that the endings of stories are all the same. - Summary: Atwood begins the story with a simple setup: "John and Mary meet. What happens next?" The story then proceeds through various plot iterations, describing different ways in which the tale might end. In scenario A, John and Mary marry, buy a house, have children, and generally achieve a "happy ending." In scenario B, Mary falls in love and attempts to pursue a romantic relationship with John, who is noncommittal and uninterested. While Mary attempts to woo him with carefully prepared meals, her impeccable appearance, and sex, John remains unsatisfied and treats her poorly. When Mary finds out that John is seeing another woman, Madge, she commits suicide. John marries Madge and everything continues as in A. In scenario C, Mary is in love with James, an independent and adventurous young man with a motorcycle and record collection. Since James is often away, Mary also engages in a relationship with John, who in this scenario is much older and already married to Madge. When John walks in on Mary and James having sex, he kills them and commits suicide. At the conclusion of the story, Madge remarries to a man named Fred and everything continues as in A. In scenario D, Fred and Madge brave a tidal wave, while in scenario E, Fred and Madge deal with illnesses such as heart disease and cancer. In scenario F, the narrator attempts to complicate things further by imagining John and Mary as spies and counterrevolutionaries, but concludes that the endings of all of the stories are all ultimately the same. At the end of "Happy Endings," Atwood meditates on the nature of plot and story, arguing that plot is ultimately less interesting than other aspects of storytelling. The various plot iterations throughout the story illustrates the ways in which the elements of a story, when broken down into discrete units, are often so interchangeable with one another as to be virtually meaningless. Ultimately, the story concludes that the "what" is not nearly as important as the "How and Why."

- Genre: Novel, Social Criticism - Title: Hard Times - Point of view: Third person, omniscient - Setting: Coketown, England - Character: Thomas Gradgrind. Description: Mr. Gradgrind is a school superintendent who promotes an education based on facts alone (no talk of imagination or emotions, please) and later becomes a Member of Parliament. His two eldest children, Louisa and Tom, suffer greatly from being brought up under this philosophy, and Gradgrind eventually comes to learn the error of his ways and dedicate his life to fostering faith, hope, and charity. - Character: Louisa Gradgrind. Description: Louisa, Mr. Gradgrind's eldest daughter, could be said to be the protagonist of the book. From a young age she resents the education of facts, which she finds thoroughly unenjoyable and which represses her imagination and emotions, deforming her heart. Led by her education, she marries a man she doesn't love, and then nearly runs away with another man, James Harthouse, who finally makes her feel as if she is understood. With the help of her gentle friend, Sissy, her heart and her humanity are gradually resuscitated. - Character: Thomas Gradgrind, Jr. (Tom). Description: Tom, the second oldest Gradgrind child, fares worse than Louisa in that his character is almost irrevocably deformed by his education of facts. He turns into a grumpy, sulky young man who ends up robbing a bank to help pay off his debts and nearly breaks the heart of his father and sister in the process. - Character: Josiah Bounderby. Description: Mr. Bounderby is a pompous, arrogant, and successful factory owner who constantly boasts about how he is a self-made man (he isn't, it is later revealed). He is good friends with Mr. Gradgrind and lives with an elderly widow named Mrs. Sparsit until he marries Louisa Gradgrind, whom he has had his eye on since she was little. Selfish and blustering, he does not make Louisa happy, driving her to be emotionally vulnerable to James Harthouse's advances. - Character: Cecilia (Sissy) Jupe. Description: The daughter of a circus performer, Sissy's background is of the lowest quality, but her imagination and her heart are of the highest, thanks to her father's care when she was little. This father does desert her when she is still a young girl, leaving her to be adopted by the Gradgrinds, but his education has made its mark on her, and nothing Mr. Gradgrind can try to teach her will undo it. She becomes the guardian and the savior of the Gradgrind family: when Louisa nearly succumbs to Harthouse's proposal and when Tom is nearly arrested, Sissy saves the day, saving their lives and their hearts. - Character: Mrs. Sparsit. Description: An old widow with a Roman nose and a classical countenance, Mrs. Sparsit keeps Mr. Bounderby company before he is married. Jealous at being driven out by Louisa, she watches with glee as the inappropriate friendship between Louisa and James Harthouse progresses. However, just at the moment of her greatest triumph (when she thinks that Louisa has ruined herself by running off with Mr. Harthouse), Mrs. Sparsit is foiled when Louisa turns to her father instead of eloping. She furthermore earns Mr. Bounderby's unceasing enmity when she accidentally reveals Mr. Bounderby's mother to be alive, well, and a very good mother and that he had not, therefore, built himself up from poverty. - Character: Stephen Blackpool. Description: A poor worker at Mr. Bounderby's factory, Stephen is a victim both of the industrial system and of society's restrictions on marriage. His face and body are much aged because of the grueling work he must do every day at the factory, and his heart is aged ever since his wife became a drunken prostitute and left him, occasionally returning for money. He has longed ceased to love her, and loves a gentle, kind woman named Rachael in her stead, but he cannot marry Rachael because of his preexisting marriage. His fellow workers shun him when he refuses to join the union, and Bounderby fires him after Stephen refuses to give him details about the union that his fellow workers are forming. Tom furthermore frames him in the Bank robbery, and he dies tragically, on his way back to defend his good name. - Character: Rachael. Description: Rachael is a good, gentle woman who works at Bounderby's factory with Stephen and who is Stephen's best friend and only consolation in the hard times he goes through. She helps Stephen care for his drunken wife when she occasionally returns to haunt him, and is the sole defender of his innocence when, thanks to Tom, he becomes the main suspect in the Bank robbery. Stephen dies holding her hand. - Character: James Harthouse. Description: A young, wealthy London gentleman, Mr. Harthouse is as bored and as pleasing as most men of his class tend to be, and he bends all his powers of pleasing and persuasion in trying to seduce. Louisa, when he sees what a fascinating, repressed, beautiful woman she is. His plans are thwarted when Louisa goes to her father's house instead of rendezvousing with him to elope, and Sissy, in her calm and pure way, confronts him the next day and succeeds in making him leave Coketown forever. - Character: Mrs. Pegler. Description: Mrs. Pegler is Mr. Bounderby's mother who took as much care of her son as the most loving mothers of the world ever did. Mr. Bounderby, who wishes to perpetuate the story that he is an entirely self-made man, tells her never to contact him in public and goes around telling everyone that his mother deserted him at a young age to his drunken grandmother (he never had a drunken grandmother, either). She spends most of the book as a mysterious old woman who hangs around Mr. Bounderby's factory from time to time, inquiring after his well-being, but her true identity is accidentally revealed by Mrs. Sparsit at the end of the book. - Character: Slackbridge. Description: An oily, manipulative orator who rouses the workers to rebel and unionize against Mr. Bounderby, Slackbridge is also responsible for Stephen's alienation from all the other factory workers when Stephen refuses to join the union because of a promise he made to Rachael. Though on the side of the workers, Slackbridge is not much of a better man than Bounderby. - Theme: Fact vs. Fancy. Description: Dickens depicts a terrifying system of education where facts, facts, and nothing but facts are pounded into the schoolchildren all day, and where memorization of information is valued over art, imagination, or anything creative. This results in some very warped human beings. Mr. Thomas Gradgrind believes completely in this system, and as a superintendent of schools and a father, he makes sure that all the children at the schools he is responsible for and especially his own children are brought up knowing nothing but data and "-ologies". As a result, things go very badly for his children, Tom Gradgrind and Louisa Gradgrind. Since they, as children, were always treated as if they had minds and not hearts, their adulthoods are warped, as they have no way to access their feelings or connect with others. Tom is a sulky good-for-nothing and gets involved in a crime in an effort to pay off gambling debts. Louisa is unhappy when she follows her mind, not her heart, and marries Mr. Bounderby, her father's friend. As a result of her unhappy marriage, she is later swept off her feet by a young gentleman, Mr. James "Jem" Harthouse, who comes to stay with them and who seems to understand and love her. Louisa nearly comes to ruin by running off with Harthouse. Cecilia (Sissy) Jupe was encouraged when she was little to dream and imagine and loved her father dearly, and therefore she is in touch with her heart and feelings, and has empathy and emotional strength the other children lack. Sissy, adopted by the Gradgrinds when her father abandons her, ultimately is the savior of the family in the end. - Theme: Industrialism and Its Evils. Description: Hand in hand with the glorification of data and numbers and facts in the schoolhouse is the treatment of the workers in the factories of Coketown as nothing more than machines, which produce so much per day and are not thought of as having feelings or families or dreams. Dickens depicts this situation as a result of the industrialization of England; now that towns like Coketown are focused on producing more and more, more dirty factories are built, more smoke pollutes the air and water, and the factory owners only see their workers as part of the machines that bring them profit. In fact, the workers are only called "Hands", an indication of how objectified they are by the owners. Similarly, Mr. Gradgrind's children were brought up to be "minds". None of them are people or "hearts". As the book progresses, it portrays how industrialism creates conditions in which owners treat workers as machines and workers respond by unionizing to resist and fight back against the owners. In the meantime, those in Parliament (like Mr. Gradgrind, who winds up elected to office) work for the benefit of the country but not its people. In short, industrialization creates an environment in which people cease to treat either others or themselves as people. Even the unions, the groups of factory workers who fight against the injustices of the factory owners, are not shown in a good light. Stephen Blackpool, a poor worker at Bounderby's factory, is rejected by his fellow workers for his refusal to join the union because of a promise made to the sweet, good woman he loves, Rachael. His factory union then treats him as an outcast. The remedy to industrialism and its evils in the novel is found in Sissy Jupe, the little girl who was brought up among circus performers and fairy tales. Letting loose the imagination of children lets loose their hearts as well, and, as Sissy does, they can combat and undo what a Gradgrind education produces. - Theme: Unhappy Marriages. Description: There are many unhappy marriages in Hard Times and none of them are resolved happily by the end. Mr. Gradgrind's marriage to his feeble, complaining wife is not exactly a source of misery for either of them, but neither are they or their children happy. The Gradgrind family is not a loving or affectionate one. The main unhappy marriage showcased by the novel is between Louisa Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby. Louisa marries him not out of love but out of a sense of duty to her brother, Tom, the only person in the world she loves and who wheedles her into saying "yes" because he works for Bounderby and wants to improve his chances at rising in the world. Bounderby's intentions regarding Louisa seem a bit creepy at first, but he turns out to mean no harm to her (except that he deprives her of any marital affection). The only solution to this bad marriage, once Louisa has escaped the hands of Jem Harthouse, is for Louisa to live at home the rest of her days. She will never be happy with another man or have the joy of children, though Dickens hints she will find joy in playing with Sissy's future children. Stephen Blackpool, too, is damned to unhappiness in this life as a result of his marriage. The girl who seemed so sweet when he married her many years ago becomes, by a gradual process, a depraved drunk who is the misery of his life. She periodically returns to Coketown to haunt Stephen and is, as he sees it, the sole barrier to the happiness he might have had in marrying Rachael. Mrs. Sparsit (an elderly lady who lives with Mr. Bounderby for some time) was also unhappily married, which is how she came to be Mr. Bounderby's companion before he marries Louisa. - Theme: Femininity. Description: The best, most good characters of Hard Times are women. Stephen Blackpool is a good man, but his love, Rachael, is an "Angel". Sissy Jupe can overcome even the worst intentions of Jem Harthouse with her firm and powerfully pure gaze. Louisa, as disadvantaged as she is by her terrible upbringing, manages to get out of her crisis at the last minute by fleeing home to her father for shelter, in contrast to her brother, Tom, who chooses to commit a life-changing crime in his moment of crisis. Through these examples, the novel suggests that the kindness and compassion of the female heart can improve what an education of "facts" and the industrialization has done to children and to the working middle class. Still, not all the women in the novel are paragons of goodness. Far from it. Mrs. Sparsit is a comic example of femininity gone wrong. She cannot stand being replaced by Louisa when Bounderby marries, and watches the progression of the affair between Louisa and Jem Harthouse with glee. As she attempts to catch them in the act of eloping (and ultimately fails), she is portrayed as a cruel, ridiculous figure. Stephen Blackpool's wife, meanwhile, is bleakly portrayed as a hideous drunken prostitute. So while the novel holds women up as potentially able to overcome the dehumanizing effects of industrialization and fact-based education, those women in the novel who do not fill this role, who have slipped from the purity embodied by Sissy and Rachael beyond even the empty-heartedness of Louisa, are presented as both pathetically comic and almost demonic. Women in the novel seem like a potential cure to the perils of industrialization, but also the most at peril from its corruption. - Climax: Louisa, instead of eloping with James Harthouse, runs away from her husband to her father's home. - Summary: The novel begins with Mr. Thomas Gradgrind sternly lecturing a room full of school children on the importance of facts. He believes that facts, and not imagination or emotion, are the key to a good education, and he educates all the children of the school and his own children, Louisa and Tom, according to this philosophy. When one of his worst students, Sissy Jupe, is abandoned by her father (a circus performer), Mr. Gradgrind takes in Sissy to educate her along with his children according to his sacred system of facts. Since their hearts and imaginations have been utterly neglected, Louisa and Tom grow into deformed human beings—inwardly, not outwardly. They know neither how to love nor how to be happy, and sense that there is something very wrong with the way they are living their lives. At Mr. Gradgrind's request, Louisa dutifully marries his older friend, Mr. Josiah Bounderby, who is a blustering manufacturer in Coketown. She agrees to marry Bounderby not because she loves him, but because she thinks it will help her brother Tom, who is apprenticed to Mr. Bounderby. Tom is the only person she cares for and, knowing this, Tom wheedles her into the marriage. Now both Louisa and Tom live with Mr. Bounderby, and Sissy stays back with Mr. and Mrs. Gradgrind and Jane, the youngest Gradgrind. Mr. Bounderby's factory workers, also called "Hands," do not live happy lives under his rule. One factory worker by the name of Stephen Blackpool is daily worn out by his work at the factory, but what plagues him more is his unhappy marriage, for his wife has become a hideous drunk. He wishes to free himself from her and marry Rachael, a sweet, gentle woman in the village, but he cannot because of the ties of marriage. After he asks Bounderby for help on the matter, Mr. Bounderby informs him that he might be able to get out of the marriage if he had enough money to pay for a lawyer, but as he doesn't the cause is hopeless. As he resignedly leaves Mr. Bounderby's home, he runs into an old woman, who for some reason is very interested to hear any news about Mr. Bounderby and his successes. Tom is now a dissolute, lazy young man, very much in debt and inclined to a sulky attitude in front of everyone. His, Louisa's, and Mr. Bounderby's lives are somewhat enlivened by the arrival of a Mr. James Harthouse from London. Mr. Harthouse is a wealthy, pleasing young gentleman who is bored out of his mind and has come to work for Mr. Bounderby in hope of finding something entertaining. He quickly becomes very interested in Louisa, for he sees that a strong fire burns under the cold, impassive mask of a face she wears. Noticing that she softens and shows emotion only towards Tom, Harthouse sets about seducing her by pretending to be Tom's good friend. Mrs. Sparsit, an old widow who used to live with Mr. Bounderby before he married Louisa and was then unceremoniously kicked out, watches the progression of his seduction of Louisa with glee. Mr. Bounderby's factory workers, restless with their bad lot and stirred on by the fiery words of a sleazy union orator named Slackbridge, decide to form a union. Stephen, present at the rowdy meeting at which they come to this decision, tells them that he cannot join because of a promise he has made to someone. The entire town then decides to shun him as a result of his decision. Bounderby brings Stephen in for questioning, but fires him when he won't reveal anything about the union. Louisa and Tom visit Stephen to give him some money before he leaves town in search of a new job, and before they leave, Tom secretly tells Stephen to hang around the bank the few nights before he leaves town…there might be something good in it for Stephen. Stephen does so, but nothing happens. Soon after that, the bank is robbed, and as a result of his suspicious activity, Stephen is the main suspect. By a coincidence of events, Louisa is left alone at home one night while her husband is out of town, and Harthouse finds her, passionately declares his love for her, and begs her to elope with him. Louisa tells him that she will meet him somewhere later that night. Mrs. Sparsit, hiding in the vegetation near to where those two are standing, hears all this with a vengeful delight and follows Louisa when she leaves the house, but then loses her track. She hastily runs to tell Mr. Bounderby that his wife has all but eloped with Mr. Harthouse. Louisa, in the meantime, has actually gone to her father's house and is at her wits' end. She confronts her father and tells him that the unhappiness of her entire life which has brought her to this point is all due to his education of facts, which quashed all feelings of the heart which are so essential to human existence. Dumbstruck and penitent, her father tries to catch her as she falls in a faint on the floor. Thanks to Sissy's care and actions (Sissy persuades Mr. Harthouse to leave Coketown forever), Louisa gradually begins to recover at her father's house. Bounderby, who learned of the almost-elopement through Mrs. Sparsit, tells Mr. Gradgrind that if Louisa stays at her old home, he and she shall cease to live together as man and wife—and so they separate. Meanwhile, tragedy has befallen Stephen. On his way back to Coketown to clear his name, he falls into Old Hell Shaft, a huge pit in the ground. Sissy and Rachael find him there, and the men of the surrounding village manage to rescue him, but he dies shortly after being retrieved from the pit, holding Rachael's hand and peacefully gazing at the stars. Before he dies, he asks Mr. Gradgrind to clear his good name, because it was Tom, who committed the robbery. Sissy saves the day again: she tells Tom to hide with her father's old circus company, and from there Mr. Gradgrind and Louisa plan for him to slip out of the country. One of Mr. Gradgrind's old pupils, Bitzer, who has been brainwashed by his education of facts, almost prevents Tom's escape, but thanks to the cunning of the circusmaster, Tom manages to evade Bitzer's clutches and escapes to another country. Back in Coketown, Mrs. Sparsit has accidentally revealed Mr. Bounderby to be a fraud. Everyone had thought Mr. Bounderby to be a self-made man, deserted by cruel parents at a young age… until Mrs. Sparsit dragged his very respectable and kind mother to the public eye, thinking her to be an aid to Stephen Blackpool in the Bank robbery. Mr. Bounderby, now shunned as a liar, "exiles" Mrs. Sparsit from his presence and she is forced to spend the rest of her days with an old, sick, miserly relation. Mr. Gradgrind, having learned his lesson the hard way, devotes the rest of his life to faith, hope, and charity instead of facts. Louisa does not remarry, but finds some happiness in helping Sissy care for her own children. Tom dies far from home, and repents of his hardness towards his family on his deathbed.

- Genre: Young Adult/Children's Fiction; Magical Realism - Title: Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Point of view: Primarily third person with occasional second-person asides to the reader - Setting: The fictional land of Alfibay; Kahani, the earth's second moon - Character: Haroun Khalifa. Description: Son of Rashid and Soraya Khalifa, and the protagonist of the book. Haroun is a young, inquisitive boy who experiences a major sense of responsibility for saving both Rashid and the Ocean of the Streams of Story. While Haroun's initial questioning of the value of stories is partially responsible for Rashid's sadness, through his adventures on Kahani, Haroun grows to understand both the power of stories as well as their value in society. Haroun's inner monologue consists of constant attempts to at first neatly compartmentalize people and events into black and white categories, but as he becomes more comfortable in the fantasy world of Kahani, he learns to appreciate a balance of different ideas and qualities. - Character: Rashid Khalifa. Description: Husband to Soraya and father to Haroun, Rashid is a professional storyteller who's known as the "Ocean of Notions" by his admirers and the "Shah of Blah" by his rivals. When Soraya runs off with Mr. Sengupta, Rashid loses the Gift of the Gab and turns from his usually happy, imaginative, story-filled self into a sad and self-pitying man who can only say "ark" when telling stories. Rashid finds himself transported to Kahani with Haroun and is instrumental in defeating Khattam-Shud. Rashid uses his storytelling powers to overthrow Mr. Buttoo and his government by telling his and Haroun's story of their adventures on Kahani, illustrating the importance of stories as forces for good in the world. - Character: Khattam-Shud. Description: The villain of the novel, the archenemy of stories and language and the Prince of Silence. He's described as a clerkish, sniveling man with a monotonous voice. Because "khattam-shud" means "the end" or "it is finished," his name is used at the end of things. He is the Cultmaster of the Cult of Bezaban, which promotes silence and the end of stories. Khattam-Shud's goal is to silence all stories so that he can control Kahani and Earth. He tries to accomplish this by poisoning stories in the Ocean and plugging the source of new stories, the Wellspring. He also figured out how to separate himself from his Shadow, allowing him to be in two places at once. He corresponds to Mr. Sengupta in Alfibay. - Character: Iff. Description: A Water Genie first tasked with disconnecting Rashid's Story Water supply, but thwarted when Haroun steals his Disconnecting Tool. While Iff initially looks out primarily for himself, his love of the Ocean and guilt over neglecting the Old Zone in particular cause him to fully join forces with Haroun to defeat Khattam-Shud and save the Ocean. Iff acts as a prime example of what Guppees are and stand for, as he's gentle and kind, loves to argue and debate whenever he can, and has no taste for violence. - Character: Butt. Description: A mechanical Hoopoe bird that communicates telepathically without moving its beak. As a machine, Butt is highly logical, but also has a flair for the dramatic and has temperamental outbursts at times. According to Iff, the Hoopoe bird is the bird that in old stories leads all the other birds through danger to their goal, and in Haroun's story, Butt is instrumental in the defeat of Khattam-Shud's shadow. Butt the Hoopoe corresponds to Mr. Butt in Alfibay. - Character: Blabbermouth. Description: A young female page in King Chattergy's Guppee army and Haroun's love interest. In order to obtain and keep her job, she poses as a boy but is later discovered. When she's found to be female, Mudra, whom she greatly admires, offers her a job in his service. Blabbermouth is very opinionated and not afraid to offer her opinion, and is an exceptional juggler. - Character: Mr. Butt. Description: The Mail Coach driver who drives Haroun and Rashid from the Town of G to the Valley of K. He's very excitable and drives extremely fast and recklessly. He corresponds to Butt the Hoopoe on Kahani, as they share the same voice and the penchant for adding "but but but" to the beginnings of their sentences. - Character: Princess Batcheat Chattergy. Description: King Chattergy's daughter and Prince Bolo's fiancée, princess of Gup. Batcheat is described as being extremely ugly, particularly in regard to her nose and her teeth, and she's known for her horrible singing although she isn't aware of how bad her voice is. Her songs are always about her undying love for Bolo. Batcheat's name comes from a Hindustani word meaning "chit-chat." - Character: Mudra. Description: A Chupwala Shadow Warrior who speaks Abhinaya, the gesture language. Mudra was originally Khattam-Shud's second in command, but he grew uncomfortable with the fanaticism and violence that Khattam-Shud promoted. His shadow, while technically part of the same person, allows Mudra to keep his true thoughts confidential, as he and his Shadow can put on opposite acts as needed. - Theme: Language, Words, and Naming. Description: Haroun and the Sea of Stories is extremely concerned with words, naming, and the intricacies of language in general. It is filled with puns, plays on words, and double meanings, all of which encourage the reader to consider how exactly language works and functions, as well as what exactly its purpose is. The novel contains many characters and locations whose names are derived from Hindustani words, and Rushdie even includes a reference glossary to provide the reader with additional tools to understand the names. This asserts, first and foremost, the idea that names and words have meaning and are worthy of consideration unto themselves. Most of the names have to do with language and speaking, such as "Gup" meaning gossip and "Batcheat" coming from a word that means chit-chat. In this way, the names of characters provide further evidence that language is something important and worthy of study. In the same vein, "Khattam-Shud" means "completely finished," and the character Khattam-Shud wishes to essentially finish and eradicate completely all the stories in the Ocean. Similarly, Rashid and Haroun's names come from Harun Al-Rashid, a historical caliph and an integral figure in One Thousand and One Nights. This reference provides further weight to their positions as storytellers. Verse, rhyming, and song are used to highlight important passages and relationships throughout the text. The Plentimaw fishes mate for life, and speak in rhyming couplets with their partner in order to show their devotion to them. Similarly, though Batcheat's physical presence is minimal throughout the text, when she does speak, she's most often singing about her love for Prince Bolo. Rhyme also works to turn the act of reading the novel from a solo endeavor to a communal one, as some rhymes are harder to pick out unless they're read aloud and heard. This works to support the idea that language is not something to be used or understood by one person, as Khattam-Shud would like it to be, since he's the only Chupwala allowed to speak. Rather, language is a means of communication between individuals. Iff the Water Genie states early on that to name or label something brings that thing into existence. This raises the question of what the act of naming something means, and what the implications are when naming and language are removed. Haroun's home city in Alfibay is so sad, it's forgotten its name. Further, the logic of the novel suggests that Khattam-Shud's insistence on silence will also mean that names are lost or forgotten as a result of the silence. These relationships between silence and loss indicate that the presence of language is linked to happiness and an understanding of one's existence in the world, while the complete absence of language eliminates understanding and purpose. In this way, when Haroun's city remembers that its name is Kahani, which means "story," it is filled with happiness and celebration thanks to its reclamation of its name and of this specific language. Essentially, the novel's insistence on the importance of naming encompasses the idea that by creating and using specific language to describe something, we can then begin to understand and engage with that thing in a meaningful and purposeful way. - Theme: Storytelling. Description: The first question the novel asks is, "what is the use of stories that aren't even true?" The novel then sets out to answer this question, as well as complicate the answers. As fiction, the novel tells a story that, by default, isn't necessarily true, and the obviously fantastical and magical elements emphasize this almost to absurdity. This process and style brings into question the purpose of the novel itself as it simultaneously explores the purpose of the stories within its own pages, as well as its place in the world. Haroun's story relies very much on the stories of others in order to add meaning and create different meanings. The outside references are numerous and range from One Thousand And One Nights to Beatles' songs. By including so many references to outside works, the novel then gets to pull meaning, morals, and ideas from those outside works. In this way, the novel is able to essentially borrow meaning from these stories, rather than create meaning solely out of thin air. Further, by making these references to outside fictional works, the novel insists that made-up, fictional stories in general can be meaningful, as their inclusion creates layer upon layer of meaning. Additionally, an individual reader's interpretation and experience of the novel is extremely dependent on his or her familiarity with the referenced works. In this way, the experience of reading Haroun and the Sea of Stories can become a highly personal experience. In addition to exploring the meaning of stories, the novel is also very concerned with exploring its own structure and texture in regards to story structure and character archetypes. Haroun and Khattam-Shud especially make constant observations about the arc of the story in which they find themselves. Haroun remarks that Khattam-Shud himself is an anti-climactic figure, while Khattam-Shud states that Haroun's arrival is indicative of a tiresome melodrama. In exploring its texture and more general character archetypes, the novel is especially concerned with the shape and form of evil characters. By presenting evil characters that appear mundane and boring, such as Khattam-Shud and Mr. Sengupta, the novel insists that evil characters need not take an obvious or expected shape, as Mr. Buttoo and his henchmen do, in order to carry out their evil plans. As well as questioning what makes a good villain, the novel also questions the very concept of a happy ending. While Haroun's final wish for a happy ending comes at the end of the novel, it's still very close to the beginning of his life. This further supports the idea that stories are living, breathing things, and while a story may end for the reader, the characters' lives continue after the last page. By engaging with itself in this reflective manner, the novel asks the reader to question in a broader sense what makes a good story, what makes a good hero or villain, and what constitutes a truly happy ending. Essentially, the novel functions as a champion of the value of stories as teaching tools, entertainment, and a force for good in the world. It takes the position that whatever the specific purpose of a story might be, there is always a use for stories. Further, it encourages the reader to be an active participant in the preservation of old stories, for it is through the oldest stories that humans can connect to their roots and each other, and find common ground despite apparent irreconcilable differences. - Theme: Power and Censorship. Description: Haroun and the Sea of Stories was written in the years following the publishing of The Satanic Verses, which sparked immense controversy and began a years-long battle between Rushdie and some Muslim-majority countries, particularly Iran, over freedom of speech. Especially in light of these events, Haroun and the Sea of Stories can be considered a meditation on ideas of power and censorship, and how language and stories are tools that can be used to exert, maintain, or undermine power. The novel presents a very clear position that language is power, and whoever is in possession of language can exert power over those around them. Consequentially, censorship emerges as a major theme as characters battle for power over not just what language can and should say or do, but over language itself. The relationship between power and stories is first introduced when we learn that Rashid is in high demand with politicos (politicians). The general populace believes Rashid because he is upfront about the fact that his stories aren't true, while nobody trusts the politicos that make no such claims. As such, Mr. Buttoo hires Rashid to tell happy stories so that he can win the election in Alfibay. Essentially, he understands the power that Rashid and his stories hold, and uses money and threats to attempt to censor what Rashid says. However, in spite of these threats, the novel ultimately champions the power of free speech, as Rashid's retelling of his and Haroun's adventures on the moon Kahani become an allegory for what is happening politically in Alfibay and ultimately leads to Mr. Buttoo's defeat. Khattam-Shud's desire to have absolute power stems from a need to control everything he possibly can. He sees the worlds around him as existing only for the sake of being ruled, and his preferred method of ruling is through censorship. Rather than insist that people only speak a certain way or tell certain types of stories like Mr. Buttoo, Khattam-Shud sets out to stop the existence of speech and stories altogether. As a result of this extreme degree of censorship, the Chupwalas' trust in each other is eroded. More important even than that is the idea that the Chupwalas also lose trust in their Shadows, which possess their own personalities, and are therefore unable to exist as whole, functioning individuals. This exposes censorship as a dark force that can successfully control even an unwilling population, as Mudra the Shadow Warrior knows that many Chupwalas only obey Khattam-Shud out of fear. Rashid is able to disobey Mr. Buttoo thanks to what he and Haroun learn from witnessing the ill effects of censorship in Chup and the positive effects of free speech in Gup. Despite the fact that Haroun and Rashid are undeniably on the side of the talkative Guppees, they initially struggle to reconcile how language functions in Guppee society with what they know of censorship in Alfibay. Haroun, for example, is shocked that some Guppees would openly state they'd sacrifice Princess Batcheat for the sake of the Ocean, describing such a suggestion as mutinous. However, Butt suggests that there's no point in granting people freedom of speech if they're unable to truly exercise that freedom. Haroun and Rashid's struggle to understand this relationship between freedom and censorship is resolved when Rashid sees that the arguments and discussions within the Guppee army lead not to mutiny, but to a greater sense of trust among the Guppee soldiers. Seeing that this style of open and honest discourse can create positive results, Rashid weaves a story that slyly reveals Mr. Buttoo as the villain he is by conflating him with Khattam-Shud. In the novel's exploration of language and power, censorship is painted as a way to dehumanize and depersonalize a population. The novel essentially suggests that by limiting speech, knowledge of the world and knowledge of the self cannot be obtained, while simultaneously presenting the idea that open communication and the spread of ideas is the only way for individuals and societies to truly flourish. - Theme: Balance and Opposites. Description: Throughout the novel, Haroun is confronted with opposing poles and concepts that are seemingly unable to coexist. Good struggles with evil; stories and language struggle with silence; absurdity struggles with logic. However, Haroun comes to realize that it's impossible to have, for example, only silence—there must be a balance of silence and sound, and this need for balance remains a common thread throughout. The war between Chup and Gup, as well as the conflicts in Alfibay, are wars and battles of opposites. As Haroun journeys through Alfibay and Kahani, the reader is encouraged to make comparisons between the two sides. When the battle between the Guppees and the Chupwalas concludes thanks to Haroun's wish that the moon Kahani rotate, bringing day to Chup for the first time in many years, it becomes obvious that the victory wasn't just due to one side's superiority. The victory came in finding balance, not in the triumph of one side over the other. Opposites are explored often through the use of character foils. The most developed foil is that between Rashid Khalifa and the twin characters Mr. Sengupta and Khattam-Shud. Rashid is loud, imaginative, and at times too caught up in telling stories to pay attention to what's going on in the real world. In contrast, Mr. Sengupta and Khattam-Shud are logical and down-to-earth to a fault, and have no time for stories or imagination. Prince Bolo also acts as an opposite for Mudra, the Shadow Warrior. Prince Bolo, despite speaking conventionally, never has anything particularly useful to say, while Mudra is unable to speak conventionally. However, what Mudra does "say" through the gesture language Abhinaya is fully thought out and taken seriously. By providing examples of characters on opposite ends of a spectrum, the novel further indicates the need for a happy medium. Every character is needed to truly tell the story, and as such the novel as a whole presents the balance for which it advocates. Several characters, including Haroun, present a more balanced array of beliefs and traits. Butt the Hoopoe, as a machine, walks a fine line between scientific rationality and more human feeling and emotion. He is rational to a fault at times, which provides humor, but he also shows great insight into the human condition and the state of the world in a very emotional and human way. Mudra as well, because of his shadow, is able to achieve a great sense of balance, which helps him to be a successful communicator and warrior. He stands in stark contrast to other Chupwalas who have lost all sense of trust in their shadows, setting them completely off balance within themselves. The Kahani lands of Gup and Chup also act as foils for each other. Gup is warm, friendly, and talkative, while Chup is a place of ice, fear, and silence. Chup, for all its seriousness, has to rely on elements of absurdity to make life livable there. All the residents wear nose warmers that look like clown noses to keep their real noses from freezing off, alluding to the idea that the extreme censorship that Chup experiences is, to some degree, absurd. In the same vein, despite Gup's belief in stories and nonsense, and an appreciation for the unpredictability of stories, the Eggheads and the Walrus rely on complicated, inherently rational science in order to keep the moon Kahani from turning, keeping life in Gup predictable and safe. In this way, despite presenting two opposite ways of life, the novel indicates that it's impossible to be fully one way or another. This idea becomes fully crystallized when the reader learns that Khattam-Shud, despite wanting silence for all, speaks—he's unable to maintain his power to dictate silence if he himself is silent. - Climax: When Haroun's wish causes the moon Kahani to rotate - Summary: Haroun is a young boy who lives with his parents, Soraya and Rashid Khalifa, in a city so sad it's forgotten its name, in the country of Alfibay. Rashid is a storyteller, and Soraya loves to sing. Things take a turn for the worse when Soraya stops singing. The Khalifas' upstairs neighbors are Oneeta Sengupta and Mr. Sengupta, who is a weaselly clerk and always says disparaging things about stories and Rashid to Soraya. One day he asks Soraya, "what's the point of stories that aren't even true?", and Haroun, listening from outside, can't get the question out of his head. On the first day of the rains, Haroun comes home from school to find that Soraya ran off with Mr. Sengupta at exactly 11:00. When Rashid noticed that the clocks had stopped moving, he smashed all the clocks in the house. It soon becomes clear that as a result of this Haroun develops a problem, as he can't concentrate on something for more than 11 minutes. Several days later, Rashid is invited by a politico (politician) to travel to the Town of G and the Valley of K to tell stories to help the politico win election. Rashid accepts and takes Haroun with him. When Rashid takes the stage in the Town of G, he opens his mouth and all that comes out is, "ark ark ark." After threatening Rashid, the politico's henchmen drop Rashid and Haroun at the bus station to find their own way to the Valley of K. While Rashid is attempting to buy their tickets, Haroun meets Mr. Butt, a mail coach driver who agrees to drive them to the Valley of K, and to make a stop at the top of the mountains so that Rashid might enjoy the magnificent view of the sunset over the Dull Lake. The drive is terrifying, as Mr. Butt drives very quickly. However, he gets Rashid to the view in plenty of time. The politico himself, Mr. Buttoo, greets Haroun and Rashid in K. Haroun immediately doesn't like Mr. Buttoo and refers to him as "Snooty Buttoo." Surrounded by guards, Mr. Buttoo leads them to the edge of the Dull Lake and into a boat shaped like a swan, as Rashid and Haroun will be staying in a houseboat. As they begin across the lake, Rashid is sad and Mr. Buttoo starts an argument, creating both smelly mist and hot wind. Haroun realizes they're in the Moody Land. As Mr. Buttoo and Rashid argue, the weather gets worse and the boat begins to rock dangerously. Haroun yells for everyone to be quiet and implores his father to think happy thoughts, and the weather calms. When they reach the houseboat, Rashid bids Mr. Buttoo goodnight and he and Haroun head to bed, Rashid on a bed shaped like a peacock and Haroun on one shaped like a turtle. Haroun and Rashid both can't sleep and decide to switch bedrooms. Moments after Haroun dozes off, he wakes to see a small man with a monkey wrench in the bathroom, muttering about a Story Tap. Haroun sneaks out of bed and startles the man, who disappears and drops his wrench. Haroun grabs it and the man reappears. After some arguing, the man introduces himself as Iff the Water Genie and tells Haroun that he's there to disconnect Rashid's Story Water supply. He tells Haroun to contact the Walrus to resolve the issue, and when Haroun realizes that this is an impossible task, he asks Iff to take him to see the Walrus. Iff agrees in exchange for getting back his wrench, which is actually a Disconnecting Tool. Iff instructs Haroun to choose a tiny bird from his hand, and Haroun selects the Hoopoe. Iff throws the tiny bird out the window and the Hoopoe grows to be the size of a bed. Iff and Haroun jump on and begin the journey to the moon Kahani. On the way, Haroun is informed that the Hoopoe is actually a machine and is called Butt. Haroun also learns that Kahani doesn't rotate and is undetectable by instruments on Earth. When they land in Kahani's Ocean, Iff offers Haroun some wishwater to fix his problem, but Haroun is unable to successfully make his wish since he can't concentrate for more than 11 minutes. Butt instructs Iff to give Haroun a happy story to cheer him up, and Haroun drinks the proffered story and finds himself in a Princess Rescue Story that has gone horribly wrong. When Haroun wakes, he tells Iff and Butt what happened. Iff and Butt are very worried and say that if the Ocean's pollution is this bad where they are, then Gup City must be close to war with the Land of Chup—which is on the dark side of Kahani—and particularly with Khattam-Shud, the Cultmaster of Bezaban. As they travel towards Gup City, Iff explains that Chattergy's Wall in the Twilight Strip separates Chup, the land of perpetual darkness, and Gup, which experiences eternal sunshine. As they draw close to Gup City, Haroun meets Mali, who is a Floating Gardener, and Goopy and Bagha, a pair of Plentimaw fishes. When they reach Gup City, they listen to King Chattergy, General Kitab, Prince Bolo, the Walrus, and the Speaker say that Khattam-Shud has captured Princess Batcheat, is also responsible for poisoning the Ocean, and that war on Chup has been declared. A commotion breaks out on the balcony, and General Kitab announces that they've captured a spy, who turns out to be none other than Rashid Khalifa. A Page named Blabbermouth is sent to escort Haroun to the royal quarters to meet his father. When he arrives, Rashid is telling his story to the court. He says that he accidentally ended up in the Twilight Strip, where he witnessed the Chupwalas' capture of Princess Batcheat. The court decides that they must go to war and send Blabbermouth to show Haroun to bed first. As they wander through the passageways, Haroun takes a swing at Blabbermouth's head and knocks off his cap, revealing that Blabbermouth is actually a girl. She shows off her juggling and when she wakes Haroun hours later, she threatens him to not tell anyone she's female. Blabbermouth and Haroun head for the garden, where the Guppee Army has just finished arranging itself. Haroun finds Rashid and Iff and the three board Butt the Hoopoe. As the army moves off towards Chup, Haroun hears arguments and debate all around him discussing the merits of General Kitab's battle plan, and whether they should save Batcheat or the Ocean first. Haroun is shocked at this talk, but Butt explains to him the importance of free speech. The army reaches the dim shore of Chup and sets up camp. Rashid is called to show General Kitab and Prince Bolo the Chupwala camp. He leads them to a clearing and points at a man with a painted face fighting his own shadow. After the man notices his audience he tries to speak, but can't make coherent sounds. Rashid realizes he speaks Abhinaya, the gesture language, and that his name is Mudra. Mudra explains the situation in Chup, most importantly that Khattam-Shud has learned to separate himself from his shadow and can be in two places at once. Mudra then offers to help the Guppees defeat Khattam-Shud. Since Batcheat is being held in the Citadel of Chup, Bolo and the Guppee Army decide to go there and rescue her, while Haroun offers to head to where the second Khattam-Shud is poisoning the Ocean in the Old Zone. Haroun chooses Iff, Butt, Mali, Goopy, and Bagha to go with him. As Haroun and his companions travel, the water becomes cold and dark, and Goopy and Bagha can go no further. Iff, Butt, Haroun, and Mali soon reach an overgrown forest. Mali disappears ahead to clear a path. Butt, Iff, and Haroun follow, but a group of Chupwalas throw a Web of Night over them and draw them towards a massive ship. The Chupwalas, which look like clerks, tie Butt to a gangway, remove his brain box, and then herd Iff and Haroun up the gangway. Iff trips and presses a "Bite-a-Lite" into Haroun's hand as Haroun realizes that the Chupwalas can manufacture darkness. When they reach the deck, Khattam-Shud comes out to greet them. He speaks to them in a dull, monotonous voice, and proceeds to switch off the darkness and lead them below deck and explain to them how he's poisoning the ocean and planning to plug the Wellspring. He tells Haroun that worlds are for controlling, and since stories cannot be controlled, he must kill them. As Khattam-Shud points out the generator, Mali quietly enters the ship and destroys it, cutting the ship's power supply. Haroun bites the Bite-a-Lite, puts on a special diving suit, grabs Butt's brain-box, and dives out the window. After sinking deep enough to see the beauty of the Wellspring, Haroun realizes how to win. He surfaces next to Butt and reconnects Butt's brain box. Haroun swallows the wishwater he still had in his pocket and wishes for Kahani to rotate. After 11 minutes, his wish comes true. The sun melts the ship and the Chupwalas, which are all shadows. Iff and Mali make it safely off the ship. Meanwhile in Chup City, a Chupwala messenger sent to the Guppee commanders offers them a juggling show, but adds a bomb to the many objects. Blabbermouth seizes the bomb and throws it far away, but is revealed to be female in the process. This angers Bolo, and after he and Blabbermouth fight, Mudra offers to employ Blabbermouth. The battle between the Guppees and the Chupwalas is an easy one, as the Guppees are united by their trust in each other and the Chupwalas end up fighting their shadows. The army enters Chup City victorious to look for Batcheat when the ground begins to shake and the moon rotates. The Citadel of Chup begins to melt in the sun, and Bolo and a group of Pages frantically rescues Batcheat before she's harmed. The giant ice sculpture of Bezaban falls and crushes Khattam-Shud. Batcheat and Bolo are married that day, but an Egghead finds Haroun at the festivities and instructs him to report to the Walrus. Haroun attempts to get Iff and Mali to vouch for him, but they refuse. When Haroun enters the Walrus's office, he sees all his friends and Rashid there. The Walrus offers Haroun a happy ending in thanks, and Haroun asks that it be a happy ending for himself as well as his sad city. Haroun and Rashid fly back to Alfibay on Butt and wake the next morning to find an impatient Mr. Buttoo. When Rashid takes the stage to tell his story for Mr. Buttoo, he tells of their adventure on Kahani. The audience boos Mr. Buttoo away and he's never seen again. When Haroun and Rashid return to the sad city, they find it's still raining but not so sad anymore. A policeman tells them that they've remembered the city's name, Kahani, which means "story." When they reach their house, Soraya has returned and Rashid welcomes her home. The next day is Haroun's birthday, and he wakes to find a new clock. The clock is working, and he declares that time is moving again.

- Genre: satire, science fiction - Title: Harrison Bergeron - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: America in the year 2081 - Character: Harrison Bergeron. Description: Harrison Bergeron is the 14-year-old son of George and Hazel Bergeron who, at the beginning of the story, has been taken away by agents of the U.S. Handicapper General. Harrison is an extraordinarily smart, athletic, handsome individual who faces extreme governmental regulations on his natural gifts and abilities, including severe physical and mental handicaps to limit his nearly-superhuman strength and intelligence. Harrison's refusal to accept the government's regulations on himself and society leads to his imprisonment, though he escapes from prison, removes his handicaps, and—in an act of dissent against the government—un-handicaps a ballerina and a ballet orchestra to stage a transcendent dance performance on live TV. Harrison's dissent, which relies on the power of individualism and art to reach oppressed citizens watching TV from home, ends when the Handicapper General executes him in the midst of his dance. While Harrison clearly views his actions as a heroic coup against the totalitarian government, his own parents' inability to remember—let alone find meaning in—their experience of Harrison's art and their subsequent grief at his death puts into question whether his sacrifice of his life to oppose the government will have any effect at all. Though Harrison represents the power and beauty of art and individualism in a society in which everyone is forced to be mediocre and alike, Vonnegut's ending is somewhat pessimistic, in that Harrison's life and death seem not to have been particularly impactful on society overall. - Character: George Bergeron. Description: George Bergeron is the father of Harrison Bergeron and the husband of Hazel Bergeron. Although George is characterized by his strength and "way above normal" intelligence, his state-issued mental and physical handicaps limit his talents, making him equal to everybody else. George's attitude towards forced equalization is ambivalent. He abides by the law of the Handicapper General, declining his wife's suggestion that he rest his handicaps while at home because he's afraid of punishment, and he also suggests, while watching the handicapped ballerinas on TV, that their handicaps are in his best interest, since their mediocre dancing makes sure that nobody watching feels inferior to them. However, George does have an inkling that their dancing is bad and it might be worthwhile to see unhandicapped dancing—a thought that is interrupted by his mental handicap before he can follow it any further. Although George is upset by the imprisonment and murder of his son, his loyalty to the state and his inability to think for himself make it difficult for him to find any meaning or political resolve in the experience of losing his son. George's conformity to the law of the Handicapper General represents a passive mode of citizenship that neglects to critique authority in society. - Character: Hazel Bergeron. Description: Hazel Bergeron is the mother of Harrison Bergeron and the wife of George Bergeron. Unlike her husband and son, Hazel is described as having "perfectly average" strength and intelligence (she is unable to "think about anything except in short bursts"), so she is not subjected to any mental or physical handicaps. Hazel has a loving, supportive presence throughout the story, and although she never speaks directly against the Handicapper General, she laments the fact that her husband and son are burdened by the law. She suggests, for example, that her husband rest his handicaps, stating, "I don't care if you're not equal to me for a while," though she concedes that if people broke the law then society would fall apart, which shows her ambivalent relationship to the status quo. Hazel cries after the murder of her son, but due to her inability to focus on a single thought for more than an instant, she is unable to recall why she is upset once the television burns out. - Character: Ballerina/Empress. Description: The Ballerina is one of the dancers in the televised dance performance that George and Hazel Bergeron watch throughout the story. Initially, she is subject to extreme mental and physical handicaps, as well as a disfiguring disguise. When Harrison Bergeron storms onto the stage and commands, "Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne," this ballerina is brave enough to stand, and so she becomes Harrison's Empress. Harrison removes all her handicaps, revealing her "blindingly beautiful" looks, and the two of them dance wonderfully together before Harrison and the Empress are shot and killed by Diana Moon Glampers in order to quell their dissent. - Character: Diana Moon Glampers (Handicapper General). Description: Diana Moon Glampers is the Handicapper General of the United States. She is responsible for regulating the minds and bodies of all American citizens in order to ensure that all people are absolutely equal. In "Harrison Bergeron," Diana Moon Glampers' character represents the oppressive authority of the totalitarian government. She is responsible for shooting and killing both Harrison Bergeron and the Ballerina on live television in order to quell their dissent and send a message to all citizens that displays of individualism and talent will not be tolerated. - Theme: Equality vs. Individualism. Description: In the futuristic world of "Harrison Bergeron," the government applies physical and mental handicaps to individuals with above-average strength and intelligence in order to guarantee that all people in society are equal. While equality is often regarded as a positive condition of democratic society, Vonnegut's dystopian portrayal of an absolutely equal society reveals how equality must be balanced with freedom and individualism in order for society to thrive. Although in the story all people are "finally equal" in "every which way," Vonnegut suggests that forbidding individualism causes society to suffer. For instance, the distribution of mental handicaps prevents citizens from thinking critically or creatively. In the case of George, who has "way above normal intelligence," citizenship in an equal society comes at the price of his ability to critically question the world around him. George clearly has the impulse to question the invasive nature of government regulations on equality, particularly with regards to the handicaps' negative effects on the arts (he watches shackled dancers on TV who are forbidden from displaying any above-average talent), yet the presence of his own mental handicaps prevents him from pursuing this line of thought: "George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't be handicapped," Vonnegut writes. "But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. Harrison Bergeron is the only character in the story who defies the government's handicap regulations, and the degree to which the government and news media villainize him shows that individualism, in addition to making society more vibrant, has the power to challenge the totalitarian government. Harrison proves capable of disrupting state power through demonstrations of his individuality—both in strength (his escape from jail and destruction of "scrap-iron handicaps") and intelligence (his ability to think for himself and rebel against the government). The state recognizes that Harrison's individuality will threaten the status quo of society, and the administration justifies his imprisonment and eventual murder on the grounds that he is "extremely dangerous" and is "plotting to overthrow the government." From this, readers can assume that Harrison's displays of individualism are deeply threatening to the efficacy of a government that seeks to maintain equality. The interplay between individualism and equality is clear in the juxtaposition between Harrison and his father George. Harrison's embrace of his extraordinary strength and genius mark him as an outlaw, while his father's acquiescence to the law of the Handicapper General (despite his above-average strength and intelligence) renders him ordinary. While Harrison is considered dangerous for his difference, he is also capable of extraordinary feats, such as his escape from jail and his ability to think for himself. Conversely, although George is able to fit into society, he loses his ability to think or act for himself. By the end of the story, Harrison's death, coupled with his parents' inability to mourn or question the nature of his death, suggests that individualism has been lost to absolute equality.  By exploring the suppression of individualism in favor of equality under a totalitarian government, Vonnegut reveals that governments that do not balance their pursuit of social equality with a commitment to personal freedom and individualism can impede the well-being of a state and its citizens. Given the time of Vonnegut's writing (post-WWII and during the Cold War), his story can be seen, in part, as a comment on the danger of totalitarian regimes that suppress expressions of individualism and dissent on the ideological grounds that invasive governmental policies are for the "common good" of the country. - Theme: Media and Ideology. Description: In "Harrison Bergeron," the totalitarian state regulates the minds and bodies of its citizens to ensure statewide equality. In addition to distributing handicap devices to lower the physical and/or mental strength of above-average citizens, the government maintains equality among citizens through ideologically-charged media that encourages citizens to consent to the invasive practices of the US Handicapper General. By showing propaganda as an equally powerful and invasive force as grotesque physical devices, Vonnegut suggests that propaganda is violent and all-consuming, even if its effects aren't physical or even outwardly sinister. George and Hazel's relationship to television is probably representative of the media consumption of most citizens in this dystopian future: they passively consume government media constantly, absorbing ideological messages that encourage them to accept their difficult lives. The extent of their indoctrination is clear when George and Hazel watch a televised performance by a troupe of mediocre ballerinas, and George thinks that all of them are handicapped so that nobody watching at home would be made to "feel like something the cat drug in." Despite his vague inkling that ballerinas shouldn't be handicapped and his knowledge that he's not witnessing good dancing, George sees the handicaps as the government protecting his well-being rather than consolidating power through not allowing citizens to imagine other possibilities for their lives. Furthermore, after George and Hazel see their son murdered by the government on national television, the combination of their indoctrination and their physical handicaps prevents them from processing what would normally be one of the most traumatic events of a person's life. After seeing Harrison die, Hazel retains only a limited memory of what happened, noting that she saw "something real sad on television," and George responds that she should "forget sad things." That not even their son's execution galvanizes George and Hazel to question—let alone fight back against—the government shows the profound success of their indoctrination by the media. The media coverage of Harrison's escape from jail and his subsequent death at the hands of the state presents a concrete example of how propagandistic media creates passive, unquestioning citizens. When the ballerina delivers the news bulletin about Harrison's escape, her audience learns that Harrison is "under-handicapped" and "extremely dangerous;" the conflation of these characteristics teaches the TV audience that Harrison's dissent from the law is a threat to society as a whole. Subsequently, the graphic coverage of Harrison's assassination on television teaches viewers that dissent is punishable by death. Given the tendency for normal citizens to passively consume national media, it is probable that the coverage of Harrison's death would impel citizens to continue following the law for fear of punishment. While the handicapping devices and the media are, in some ways, two separate prongs of totalitarian power, Vonnegut subtly blurs the line between physical devices and media propaganda. Citizens with above-average intelligence receive "ear radios" that blast them with distracting noises every few seconds so that they cannot focus, thereby rendering their intellect useless. These radio blasts are synchronized, as is apparent when several ballerinas on TV and George at home simultaneously react to the noise. Therefore, the mental handicap is a sinister form of syndicated media, like a radio station but with the explicit purpose of inhibiting critical thought. The fact that the handicapping devices resemble media operations shows that media is the central form of manipulation and control in this dystopian future, and it's clearly an effective one. George, an intelligent man with inklings that all is not well in his society, has been so thoroughly indoctrinated that he even refuses to break the law innocently. When Hazel suggests that he rest on the couch to relieve the burdens of his physical handicaps, he responds in the best way the government could hope, saying, "The minute people start cheating on laws… [society would] fall apart." - Theme: Dissent vs. Authority. Description: For the brief moments when Harrison proclaims himself Emperor, destroys his state-issued handicaps, and dances beautifully on state TV, the government's power is lost. Although the moment is short-lived (a government agent shoots Harrison dead while he's dancing), his dissent nonetheless shows that individuals might still have power under totalitarianism. Harrison's exceptional existence proves that equality isn't absolute (or else he wouldn't have been able to achieve such an extraordinary feat), and therefore that the state's power is not omnipotent. However, even though Harrison Bergeron is an extraordinary individual whose very existence poses a serious threat to the totalitarian government of Vonnegut's story, his execution by the government and his parents' subsequent inability to recall witnessing his murder ultimately suggests that, once the government has consolidated enough power, individual dissent has little effect. Vonnegut writes that, as Harrison danced, "Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well." The language and imagery of weightlessness (the destruction of physical handicaps; the physical "neutraling [of] gravity with love and pure will" as Harrison and the ballerina float to the ceiling) surrounding Harrison's performance suggests that dissent can bring freedom for those who are subjected to state authority. Indeed, just as Harrison's dancing suggests broader liberation, he physically liberates others during his brief dissent: he removes the handicaps of the ballet orchestra members and of the ballerina who becomes his Empress. Governmental authorities regard Harrison Bergeron as an "extremely dangerous" person, and they respond swiftly and aggressively to his escape from jail. Given the state's violent reaction to Harrison's sedition, Vonnegut asserts that acts of dissent pose a fundamental threat to totalitarian regimes. By declaring himself "a greater ruler than any man who ever lived," Harrison's status as Emperor at the ballet exists in opposition to the power of the state. Although Harrison's reign as Emperor is short-lived, the power takeover is fundamentally troublesome to a regime that claims utmost authority. Consequently, the climactic event of Harrison's death at the hands of the Handicapper General attests to the irreconcilability of totalitarianism and dissent. However, the value of Harrison sacrificing his life to protest totalitarianism is uncertain. Harrison's own parents cannot even remember that Harrison has died after the television burns out, and they certainly haven't been galvanized to question or act against the government, even though they're the two people in the world who are most likely to care about Harrison's performance and death. This suggests that other citizens are also unlikely to be affected by Harrison's dissent. Vonnegut, then, is cynical about the power of dissent once a government has consolidated power to the degree it has in the story. Though the totalitarian government's insistence on suppressing dissent and artistic talent strongly suggests that individualism and dissent are threats to the state and therefore powerful, the actual impact of individual dissent in the story is shown to be limited—the government, in other words, seems to have won. Therefore, Vonnegut's story—itself a work of art and an expression of individualism and talent—is a cautionary tale. Vonnegut hopes that his story will lead readers to understand the value of dissent in a democracy before the government consolidates power to the extent that dissent becomes meaningless. - Theme: The Power of the Arts. Description: Though state media insists that Harrison has plans to overthrow the government, his act of rebellion is not a traditional coup: he dances beautifully on national TV with a ballerina whom he has liberated from her handicaps, to music from an orchestra he has also un-handicapped. In other words, Harrison's dissent is an artistic performance unencumbered by forced equality, which suggests that artists can disrupt state authority through the power of performance. Before Harrison takes over the televised dance performance, George and Hazel are watching the handicapped dancers from their living room. Both agree the dance is "nice," and George notes that the ballerinas are "no better than anybody else would have been" due to their intense physical and mental handicaps: they are burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in." Here, the totalitarian state regulates the minds and bodies of artists in order to curb their potential for extraordinary artistic expression—after all, a citizen witnessing moving artistry might begin to question the value of forced equality, thereby undermining the state's power. The intense regulation of artists, then, is a reflection of the state's recognition of the power of the arts. Harrison's transcendent performance with the ballerina, televised on state TV for all citizens to see, is a political act meant to disrupt the totalitarian regime. When Harrison enters the ballet, he declares himself Emperor. In response, all witnesses "cowered on their knees before him," which signifies Harrison's effective displacement of governmental authority. This initial power-takeover grounds Harrison's artistic performance as political. Harrison destroys several state-issued handicaps on himself, the ballerina, and the musicians in order to perform to his personal standards. The ease with which "Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper" suggests that his rebellion has potential, as this act symbolizes that the government control that seems all-consuming is actually somewhat flimsy. In addition, Harrison tells the musicians to "play your best…and I'll make you barons and dukes and earls," which shows that Harrison imagines the new social order will enshrine individual talent rather than forced equality. Ultimately, Harrison's performance is cut short by his death at the hands of the state. The very fact that Harrison is killed on the spot by Diana Moon Glampers (the Handicapper General) herself—someone who would presumably only handle the most grave events—speaks to the political significance of Harrison's artistic expression. Harrison's choice to express his politics and enact his rebellion through artistic performance demonstrates that art is a powerful political tool that encourages critical thought. - Climax: Harrison Bergeron is shot and killed by the Handicapper General - Summary: The year is 2081, and as a result of a series of constitutional amendments, all people living in the United States are absolutely equal. In order to ensure equality amongst citizens, extraordinary individuals must wear mental and physical handicap devices that limit their special gifts and talents, and extraordinarily attractive folks must wear disfiguring makeup and accessories to make them look less attractive. Handicaps are regulated by the US Handicapper General, Diana Moon Glampers, who is responsible for maintaining equality across society. George and Hazel Bergeron, the parents of Harrison Bergeron, are watching a ballet performance on television. George, a person with above-average strength and intelligence, must wear mental and physical handicaps at all times, while Hazel is naturally perfectly average, and therefore doesn't need to wear handicaps. Although George and Hazel do not mention their fourteen-year-old son, readers learn that Harrison has recently been arrested by the Handicapper General's agents. While George and Hazel watch television, George's thoughts are frequently interrupted by his mental handicap device—a radio transmitter that airs a series of loud, invasive noises, intended to disturb his train of thought. At one point, George begins to wonder whether the dance program would be better if the ballerinas were unhandicapped, but an interruption coming from his mental handicap prevents his pursuit of this thought. At one point, Hazel notices that her husband looks tired and she suggests that he rest his physical handicap—a canvas bag filled with heavy lead balls, padlocked to his neck. George refuses this offer, reminding his wife of the fines and jail sentence he would receive if he were caught disobeying the Handicapper General. He asks Hazel, rhetorically, what she thinks would happen if people disobeyed the laws set by the HG, and she answers, "Reckon it'd fall apart." The ballet program on television is interrupted by a news bulletin, which informs viewers that Harrison Bergeron has recently escaped from jail. Harrison's photo appears on-screen: he is seven feet tall, and his body is covered with grotesque handicap devices made to hamper his extraordinary strength, intelligence, and natural beauty. In the news bulletin, Harrison is framed as a dangerous criminal wanted "on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government." The bulletin is interrupted by the noise of Harrison Bergeron tearing down the door to the television studio on-screen. Harrison declares himself Emperor and proceeds to destroy all of his mental and physical handicaps in front of the television cameras. He selects a ballerina to be his Empress and destroys all of her handicaps, as well. Harrison then removes the handicap devices from the musicians in the studio and instructs them to play music as he dances with his Empress. The pair sways to the music and eventually Harrison and the ballerina spring in the air and float to the ceiling. They kiss the ceiling and then each other, all while floating in thin air. Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, barges onto the scene with a shotgun. She shoots and kills Harrison and the ballerina, and instructs the musicians to put their handicaps back on or face the same fate. The scene is cut short when the Bergerons' television burns out. George, who had left the living room to get a beer, returns to find Hazel in tears, but Hazel cannot remember why she is crying. George urges Hazel to "forget sad things," and Hazel replies, "I always do." The exchange is interrupted by George's mental handicap device, which transmits the sound of a "riveting gun." The story ends with Hazel's comment on the latest soundwave, stating "Gee—I could tell that one was a doozy."

- Genre: Young Adult novel, bildungsroman, nature writing - Title: Hatchet - Point of view: Third person - Setting: The wilderness in Northern Canada - Character: Brian Robeson. Description: Brian Robeson, the protagonist of the novel, is a thirteen-year-old boy from the New York City area. At the start of the novel, Brian is reeling at the news that his mother and father are getting a divorce. The split is devastating for Brian, and his knowledge that his mother has been having an affair is particularly haunting. Brian takes a plane to Northern Canada to visit his father, but midway through the flight, the pilot has a heart attack and dies suddenly, forcing Brian to land the plane on his own in the dense Canadian forest. Brian has always lived in urban comfort and has little knowledge of the natural world. His development from sheltered child to wise, self-sufficient young man forms the story's central arc. Even though he is weak and frightened at first, Brian reveals himself to be resourceful and resilient in the face of adversity, demonstrating how the challenges and wonders of the natural world can transform even an average person into someone strong and insightful. Brian's newfound understanding and appreciation of the natural world leave him calmer and more perceptive even after he returns home at the end of the book. - Character: Pilot. Description: The pilot is an unnamed man in his mid-forties who flies Brian in a small plane to see his father in Northern Canada. The pilot is brusque but kind, making little conversation with Brian but encouraging him to enjoy the flight and even to try his hand at controlling the plane. Brian notices that the pilot is so engaged in flying that he seems to be an actual part of the plane rather than a separate being. The pilot suffers a fatal heart attack midflight, leaving Brian alone to land the plane and survive in the wilderness. The memory of the pilot's death and the knowledge that his body remains in the lake haunts Brian throughout the book, sometimes frightening him and sometimes inspiring him to remain strong on his own. - Character: Brian's Mother. Description: Brian's mother lives in the New York City area and works in real estate. She described mostly in terms of her divorce from Brian's father. She has an affair with another man and initiates the end of her marriage, although she is not aware that Brian knows about the affair. Although Brian is furious with his mother about the affair, he also longs for the comfort of her presence during his time in the wilderness and especially misses her cooking. Brian's mother also gives him his hatchet as a gift before he leaves on the plane, which enables him to survive for several months in the wilderness after the crash. - Character: Brian's Father. Description: After divorcing from Brian's mother, Brian's father moves to Northern Canada to pursue his career as a mechanical engineer. Brian's father is not described in detail, but Brian feels sympathetic toward him because of his mother's affair, which Brian's father presumably never finds out about. Paulson hints that Brian feels a strong bond with his father, as when Brian imagines telling his father all about the mistakes that he makes in the wilderness. Brian also dreams of his father wanting to tell him something important, an experience which leads Brian to figure out how to make fire with the hatchet. - Character: Perpich. Description: Perpich is one of Brian's former English teachers. He teaches Brian the importance of thinking positively and valuing oneself, lessons that turn out to be crucial for Brian's survival in the wilderness. Brian often thinks of Perpich as a source of strength as he struggles to remain positive and calm in the face of adversity. - Character: Terry. Description: Terry is one of Brian's friends from school. Terry is not described in detail, but he is present in Brian's memory of discovering his mother's affair ("The Secret"), and Brian thinks of him several times while lost in the wilderness. At one point, remembering playing make-believe with Terry inspires Brian to build his shelter, and Terry also appears in the dream that encourages Brian to attempt making fire. - Theme: Adversity and Growth. Description: At the start of the book, Hatchet's protagonist, thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson, is a privileged city boy who is accustomed to the comforts of home and shocked at the unexpected changes brought about by his parents' divorce. Brian initially views such adversity as a negative force that ruins the things he values. However, after a tragic plane crash that leaves him stranded alone in the Canadian wilderness, Brian finds himself facing much greater adversity than before. Through this extreme challenge, he eventually comes to understand that when combined with perspective and courage, adversity can be a source of positive change rather than pure destruction. Through his depiction of Brian's personal evolution, Paulsen argues that while adversity can be a powerful catalyst for growth, it is not on its own enough to cause profound change in a person. In order to grow through adversity, an individual must meet challenges with patience, thoughtfulness, and hope. Brian's despair at the book's start demonstrates his initial inability to gain perspective on his difficulties. To Brian, his parents' divorce is all-consuming, and at this early stage, he is unable to imagine it as anything other than a force of destruction and ruin. Even as he is immersed in the new experience of flying in a plane above beautiful scenery, Brian can't stop contemplating his parents' divorce. Paulsen describes Brian's interpretation of the word "divorce" as "a tearing, ugly word […] the breaking and shattering of all the solid things." After the crash, Brian's first reaction is to focus on what he lacks, echoing his despair and pessimism over his parents' divorce. Considering what he'll need to survive, Brian perceives himself to have no assets at all, thinking: "It kept coming back to that. He had nothing." This simplistic view of events underscores Brian's initial immaturity and inability to find anything positive in his challenging situation. Even after gaining some early mastery of his surroundings and attempting to find ways to survive, Brian continues to feel sorry for himself and focus on the destructive results of his situation. He sees his reflection in the water and, reacting to all the ways that he has been harmed, cries "long tears, wasted tears, self-pity tears." Although Brian's feelings are understandable given the circumstances, Paulsen's word choice and description of these tears as "wasted" highlights his argument that for Brian to grow from his painful experiences, he will have to move past self-pity and find a more productive way to interpret the adversity he faces. As Brian's ordeal continues, his perspective slowly shifts from one of victimhood to one of empowerment and agency. After admitting to himself that his self-pity is holding him back, Brian gradually teaches himself glean lessons from the challenges he faces. In this way, he transforms his experience into one that brings him both a greater chance of survival and greater personal satisfaction. As his adversity increases, so too do the rewards he finds by looking for the benefits within his new challenges. After being attacked by a porcupine, Brian thinks repeatedly that he "can't do this" and succumbs to a final bout of self-pity. However, this time he comes out of his despair with the new understanding that "feeling sorry for [himself] didn't work." Though he remains tempted by self-pity after this point, Brian's acceptance of its futility is a crucial turning point in his ability to survive. Immediately after the episode with the porcupine, Brian's newfound commitment to searching for wisdom in his challenges allows him to discover how to make fire with the hatchet. By rewarding Brian with the crucial tool of fire so soon after his rejection of self-pity, Paulsen promotes the idea that a positive mindset is a necessary component of growing through adversity. Brian's ability to maintain this new mindset is tested by greater and greater setbacks during the rest of the novel. When the rescue plane flies away without seeing his smoke signal, Brian is so overcome with despair that he contemplates suicide, but rather than giving in to misery as he has in the past, Brian emerges knowing that "the disappointment cut him down and made him new." Abandoning hope of a speedy rescue, Brian instead finds a fresh resolve that he calls "tough hope," which rests not on an external savior but on his ability to take care of himself. Brian's survival skills increase dramatically as a result of this "tough hope," indicating that it is a superior, more useful mode of thought than playing the victim. The most dramatic example of Brian's ability to find strength within disaster comes when the tornado destroys Brian's camp. Instead of despairing over what he has lost, Brian notices that he can now access the sunken plane and, through grueling work, he finds within it the resources he needs to finally get home. Brian's rescue comes only when he has genuinely learned to survive without it, again underscoring Paulsen's argument that determination in the face of adversity is essential for true growth. By the novel's conclusion, Brian's priorities and perspective have undergone a profound shift. His newfound familiarity with life's most essential needs—food, shelter, survival—helps him reinterpret adversity as a force for building strength rather than breaking it. Brian's changed priorities are a crucial piece of his success in escaping the wilderness. Excited by the prospect of searching the plane after the tornado, Brian remembers to slow down and eat before beginning, thinking: "First food, then thought, then action." Paulsen indicates that approaching his difficulties with thoughtfulness and careful observation has made Brian more able to confront change with wisdom. When Brian at last reaches his family after his ordeal, the thought of his mother's affair no longer seems to hold any power over him. Although "The Secret" haunted him at the beginning of the book, Brian has grown enough to recognize its relative unimportance, and he does not bring it up with his father. What once seemed an insurmountable force of destruction is now just another part of Brian's life, a change that again underscores the importance of the individual's interpretation of adverse circumstances. - Theme: Independence vs. Connection. Description: The opposing forces of personal independence and connection with the natural world play a key role in Brian's journey. At the beginning of Hatchet, thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is upset about his parents' divorce but takes his immediate safety for granted, trusting the kind pilot to navigate to their destination in Northern Canada, where Brian is to spend the summer with his father. However, the pilot's fatal heart attack creates a situation in which Brian is completely vulnerable and helpless, and from that point on, he longs to gain a sense of control over his difficult new circumstances. As his skills and experience develop, Brian also develops this stronger sense of independence, learning to rely on himself to survive in the wilderness. However, it turns out that simple self-reliance is not enough to allow Brian to truly thrive. Rather, Paulsen illustrates that in order to feel genuinely safe and at home, Brian must learn to connect deeply with his surroundings and give up the idea that he is separate from the rest of nature. Through Brian's changing relationship with the wilderness around him, Paulsen argues that rather than being an end in itself, personal independence is instead a crucial step on the journey toward a meaningful connection with the rest of the world. At the start of the novel, Paulsen foreshadows the conclusions that Brian will eventually reach about the limitations of personal independence. Before the crash, Brian imagines a sense of control over the situation that quickly turns out to be illusory. When the pilot offers Brian the chance to steer the plane, the experience of controlling the complicated machine distracts Brian from his troubles and prompts him to call flying "easy." However, after the pilot's heart attack Brian quickly realizes that his momentary perception of knowing how to fly is not enough to get the plane back on track. Similarly, Brian develops a careful plan to land the plane safely, drawing on all the facts he has about the situation. However, the plan becomes obsolete when the plane runs out of fuel much more quickly than Brian expected. This turn of events underscores the futility of trying to impose one's own plans on the complex, unpredictable nature of the outside world. After his initial despair after the crash, Brian revisits the idea of his own independence within nature. At first, his feeling of independence proves to be an essential means by which he gains the confidence to survive his early days in the wilderness. Taking stock of his assets, Brian at first thinks that he has nothing of value. Then, he remembers his teacher Perpich telling him: "You are your most valuable asset." Remembering his own value and independence gives Brian the strength to begin finding food and shelter. Brian also uses the phrase "I am Brian Robeson" to stay calm, and he repeats basic facts about himself in order to focus on the tasks at hand. Throughout this early phase, individual identity is an important way for Brian to ground himself in reality and hang onto his courage. Later, when the rescue plane turns back without noticing Brian's flare, Paulsen writes: "They would not come. He was alone and there was nothing for him." This moment of extreme independence is painful for Brian, but it also pushes him into the next phase of his evolution, in which he develops "tough hope" and the ability to sustain himself in the wilderness. In this shift, Paulsen suggests that this sense of isolation is a necessary phase that Brian must move through in order to achieve true connection later on. As Brian's familiarity with the wilderness grows, his initial reliance on a sense of independence fades away. He develops a more nuanced view of himself as a component of nature rather than an entity apart from it. This shift highlights Paulsen's argument that genuine safety and resilience, as opposed to simple survival, requires an understanding and acceptance of the interrelated nature of all things. An early hint of the coming change in Brian's sense of self appears when he meets a bear while picking raspberries. Though terrified at first, Brian continues to contemplate the bear and realizes that it was only curious about him and did not want to harm him. Though still largely self-absorbed at the time, Brian later wonders whether the bear was surprised to see him, a thought that Paulsen notes as "the first time since the crash he was not thinking of himself, or his own life." Gradually, Brian finds that his senses grow more acute and his mind and body are connected to the world around him in a way he has not previously experienced. Paulsen writes: "When he saw something […] he would truly see that thing, not just notice it as he used to notice things in the city." Though he does not know exactly how or why, Brian perceives the boundaries between himself and the outside world breaking down. Though independence gives Brian his basic survival skills, his newly sharpened senses and perception of connection give him a more sustainable way of existing in the wilderness. In particular, Brian applies this patient, open mode of being to his study of how to catch the elusive camouflaged foolbirds. When he finally learns how to recognize their unique shape in the underbrush, he is rewarded with his first taste of meat. This milestone solidifies Brian's ability to thrive in the wilderness as a part of nature rather than simply survive there as an isolated individual. In contrast, when Brian finds a rifle in the survival kit just before being rescued, he reacts with discomfort, realizing: "It somehow removed him from everything around him. Without the rifle he had to fit in, to be part of it all, to understand it and use it—the woods, all of it." Brian sets the rifle aside, choosing his newfound sense of connection over a shortcut to individual power. With this choice, Paulsen points to the necessity of surrendering independence in favor of interconnection, even when independence may seem to be the easier route. - Theme: The Natural World. Description: After a terrifying plane crash that leaves thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson alone in the wilderness to fend for himself, he becomes acquainted with a rich, complex natural world that was previously foreign to him. Even after he is rescued at the end of the book, Brian's interactions with that new world continue to shape him in profound ways. At first, the wilderness around Brian appears chaotic to him, just as his life in New York feels after his parents announce their divorce. However, as his experience in the wilderness unfolds, Brian slowly begins to see the rational order and deep value of the natural world—a new worldview that brings him peace and guides his actions even when he returns home. Through Brian's experiences, Paulsen illustrates that nature provides a model of profound balance that can and should inform human behavior, even for people who live far from the wilderness. At first, Brian is so used to interpreting the world around him as a chaotic blur that he can barely perceive the beautiful nuances that now surround him. Accustomed to the sensory overload of city life, Brian cannot at first see the natural balance that becomes so clear to him later on. Looking at the lake for the first time, Brian is dazzled by the reflection of the trees in the water, with reality and illusion blending together and everything looking like "a green and blue blur." Initially, Brian is unable to appreciate the full beauty that he perceives later on. When Brian impulsively yells how hungry he is, he is surprised to find that complete silence follows his voice. He realizes that "in all his life he had never heard silence before," underscoring how different his city life has been from his time in the wilderness. After that clarifying silence, Brian hears the birds and insects start making noise one by one, hearing them now as individuals rather than a blur of sound. With this moment, Paulsen demonstrates that quiet and peace underlie even the wildest of natural environments, and suggests that cities lack the conditions necessary to truly appreciate the nuances of nature. Brian's burgeoning understanding of the careful balance and logic underpinning the seemingly chaotic natural world around him comes from the dangers that he discovers. Initially they seem purely threatening, but many of these dangerous situations turn out to conceal clues that help him survive. The wolf that initially frightens Brian quickly becomes a symbol of his newfound sense of connection with nature. Brian reflects that "he knew the wolf for what it was, another part of the woods, another part of it all." With this realization, Brian's fear fades, and he gains further confidence that he has a right to live in harmony with the wilderness. Even the skunk that nearly blinds Brian with its spray demonstrates the crucial fact that food can be quickly and easily be lost. After this experience, Brian resolves to protect his food supply above all else, learning an important key to survival from a painful experience. In this way, the skunk helps Brian even as it harms him, again showing the presence of an essential balance in nature. Later, when a moose attacks Brian, he is stunned that he cannot find any reason for the moose's "insane" behavior. Although it seems to be at odds with the logic that Brian discovers elsewhere in the woods, its randomness also serves a purpose for Brian: the moose's attack illustrates the continued possibility of genuinely unexpected events even within a sensible environment. Brian's ability to make peace with such random misfortune is a crucial part of his successful coping upon returning home to his divorced parents. Over and over, Paulsen demonstrates that each misfortune contains a lesson that Brian will need in order to continue surviving. As Brian continues to grow more confident living in the wilderness, he learns to fully appreciate the finely balanced order of the natural world around him. Where he once saw chaos, he now sees logic and opportunity everywhere, an understanding that brings him peace even in the face of difficulty. Over time, Brian settles into a routine of maintaining his camp and food stores while repeating variations of the phase: "There were these things to do." By sorting the complex landscape into rational concrete tasks, Brian gains a sense of stability and staves off his fear that he will never be rescued. This relatively early example of finding order in chaos foreshadows the even greater logic that Brian will come to perceive throughout the wilderness. Shortly before he is rescued, Brian rests after a day of work and reflects on the beauty of a sunset. He notes each part of the sight—the sky, the water, the trees—and thinks that the balance between all of these elements creates "almost unbelievable beauty." Imagining what might be happening at that moment back in the city, Brian also wonders if the situation will someday be reversed: will he someday find himself sitting at home and imagining the details of the sunset that's unfolding before him? This moment hints at the growing affinity that Brian feels for the wilderness. Even as he misses his urban home, some part of him understands that the balance of the forest sunset is lacking in the city. Upon returning home, Brian continues to dream of his camp at the lake and the peace that he found there. Paulsen writes that the dreams were "not bad and would never be bad for him," and also notes that Brian's increased thoughtfulness and ability to be observant will persist throughout his life. At the end of the book, even Brian's parents' divorce appears as a simple fact rather than the painful chaos that it was before Brian's experience in the wilderness. Furthermore, it seems that the lake remains a truer home for Brian than the homes of either of his parents. The epilogue makes it clear that Brian is permanently changed for the better by his deep understanding of the natural world, even though he cannot continue living there. - Theme: The Power of Language. Description: Although he is isolated from all human interaction during his time in the wilderness after a tragic plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson frequently turns to language as a coping mechanism and survival tool. Brian's ability to verbalize what he is going through is pivotal at many points throughout the story, and the words he chooses often define the way he proceeds in the face of challenge. By repeatedly emphasizing the importance of language in shaping Brian's reality, Paulsen argues that words can actively shape the world around us rather than just describing it. Even at the start of the novel, Brian is preoccupied with words and definitions. The words that he uses to interpret events, whether good or bad, impact the roles that those events play in his life. Thinking about his parents' divorce while on the plane, Brian reflects that his thoughts are "always the words." He mulls over the harsh language of divorce, lawyers, and visitation rights, and feels that the words themselves are breaking his life apart with "legal phrases that mean nothing." After the pilot suddenly dies of a heart attack, Brian turns again to language, this time as a mode of support rather than a force of destruction. Planning how he might land the plane, he repeats the phrase, "easy say, hard do," until it becomes "a chant that beat with the engine." This repetition allows Brian to stay calm enough to manage the plane's descent to a degree that might otherwise have been impossible. After the crash, Brian is largely helpless until he says aloud: "Here I am." Paulsen writes that after Brian speaks those words, "for the first time since the crash […] his brain triggered and he began thinking." Voicing his reality leads to Brian's first attempts at survival, demonstrating that using clear language is a crucial tool for creating real action. Once Brian begins consciously using language to shape his circumstances, he remembers the lessons of Perpich, the English teacher who taught him about positive thinking. Committing to using positive words to interpret his surroundings helps Brian find opportunities where at first he only saw setbacks. Though Brian is initially certain that he has nothing that will help him survive, thinking of Perpich's directive to "look at all of it" leads him to go through his assets more carefully and, crucially, to remember the hatchet strapped to his belt. Although his actual circumstances have not changed, Brian goes from having nothing to having something very valuable, just by using different language to describe his situation. Beginning to venture out in search of sustainable food, Brian catches himself thinking of how he will return "home" at the end of the day. Though initially uncomfortable with considering his shelter home, Brian decides that even though the shelter "wasn't much," he would rather call it home than not have a home. With that, Brian gains another asset just through changing his definition of what constitutes a home, and his ability to think of the shelter as home leads him to make improvements that ultimately increase his safety. The changing meanings of the words "luck" and "mistake" are perhaps the most essential instances of Brian's use of language to shape his reality. Brian uses these words to find the positive aspects of his situation and to learn from occurrences that at first seem negative, again demonstrating how simple word choice can dramatically alter one's mindset and surroundings. When Brian feels lucky to have survived the crash, he quickly reminds himself that genuine good luck would have been to have his parents still together, or to have been flying with a pilot who didn't have a heart attack. At this early stage, Brian has not yet harnessed the power of language to positively shape his reality. Accordingly he becomes despairing and struggles to endure the first day in the wilderness. However, when Brian discovers the spot that will become his shelter, he feels lucky again and decides that he is lucky to have survived the crash at all, casting his life in the wilderness as a positive outcome rather than a negative one. This new mindset provides Brian with a way to remain upbeat and inspires him to continue searching for ways to improve his situation. Similarly, Brian comes to rely on the word "mistake" as an indication that he can learn from a negative outcome. Paulsen writes that Brian "list[s] all his mistakes" mentally and analyzes each one thoughtfully to turn the mistake into an asset. By returning over and over to this word and the many lessons that it teaches Brian, Paulsen demonstrates how even a seemingly negative word can have great power for good, underscoring the way that careful, thoughtful engagement with language can be a tool for shaping reality for the better. - Climax: When Brian explores the plane, successfully obtaining the survival pack but also seeing the pilot's deteriorating body. - Summary: A thirteen-year-old boy named Brian Robeson is flying in a small plane over the Canadian wilderness, with only a quiet middle-aged pilot for company. Brian is consumed with thoughts of his parents' divorce and the way it has torn his life apart, and he is unable to stop thinking about it even when flying over the beautiful landscape. Brian also hints at knowing what he calls "The Secret" about his mother, which his father does not know. Brian is briefly distracted when the pilot gives him a turn at the plane's controls, but he soon falls into miserable contemplation of the divorce again. The reader learns that Brian lives in the New York City area but is on his way to visit his father in Northern Canada, since his father now has summer visitation rights. Brian feels angry at his mother, but somewhat guilty for refusing to talk to her in the car on the way to the airport. He remembers that she gave him a new hatchet as a gift for the journey, which he is wearing on a loop attached to his belt. The pilot starts complaining of aches in his shoulder and stomach, which distracts Brian from his thoughts. The pilot suddenly spasms violently, and Brian realizes that he is having a heart attack. The pilot falls unconscious, leaving Brian alone in the airborne plane. Terrified, Brian realizes that the pilot's spasms knocked the plane off course, and he tries to steer it back in the right direction. He desperately calls for help on the radio but cannot get a clear connection. An hour passes, during which Brian realizes that the pilot is definitely dead, and he will have to land the plane himself. The plane abruptly runs out of fuel and starts to drop. Brian manages to steer the plane toward a lake at the last minute, landing in the water although the wings are torn off in the trees on the way. In a panic, Brian escapes from the sinking plane and manages to swim to the shore of the lake, where he falls asleep. When he wakes up, the first thing he remembers is discovering his mother in the car with a strange man while out biking with his friend Terry. This is The Secret that haunts him. Remembering the crash, Brian starts screaming and crying. He does not know where he is and is in terrible pain. Brian loses consciousness again and wakes up in the early morning, still in pain and confused. Brian cannot stop thinking about the pilot's death and is unable to move, especially after he is attacked by mosquitos that appear as the sun rises. Before falling asleep again, Brian struggles to take in his surroundings and sees a blur of lake and trees, as well as a tall rocky ridge. When he wakes up, Brian is horribly thirsty and sunburned, and he decides to drink the lake water even though it might not be safe. He tries to calm himself down, but keeps thinking that he is nowhere and has nothing. He focuses on repeating his own name and telling himself that rescuers are likely to come for him soon. He remembers an English teacher named Perpich who always used to tell students to get motivated and stay positive. The memory inspires Brian to carefully look through everything he has, which makes him remember the hatchet. He also remembers that he himself might be his most important asset. As Brian considers his situation, he realizes that because the plane was off-course, rescuers might not come right away. However, he decides to build a shelter and find food, determined to survive until they find him. Brian discovers that the stone ridge hides an overhang by the lake, which he decides to turn into a shelter, happy at his good luck. Extremely hungry, Brian sets off around the lake to look for berries to eat, which he finds by following a flock of birds. Although the berries are tart, he eats many of them and harvests more to bring back to his new shelter. In the night, Brian wakes up horribly ill from eating the berries and is again lost in thoughts of his mother's affair. The next morning, he is overcome with self-pity for how lost, alone, and ugly he is, feeling unable to escape his misery. Eventually, his hunger distracts him, and he eats a few of the riper berries before going to search for better food. As he leaves, he catches himself thinking of his shelter as home. Along the shore of the lake, Brian finds a clearing full of raspberry bushes but is startled when a black bear appears. However, the bear leaves him alone, interested only in the berries. Brian realizes that it does not pose a threat to him and continues gathering berries. Later, he wonders how the bear felt seeing him and realizes that he has stopped thinking about his own pain for the first time since the crash. While Brian is sleeping that night, he hears an animal enter his shelter and throws the hatchet at it. He misses, and the animal, which turns out to be a porcupine, attacks his leg. Brian begins to cry and feel sorry for himself again, a point that he later recalls as the moment in which he realized that self-pity doesn't work. Brian has odd dreams of his father and his friend Terry, and when he wakes up the next morning, he suddenly remembers seeing the hatchet make sparks when he threw it against the rock wall in the night. Brian succeeds in recreating the sparks, becoming totally absorbed in the task of making fire. After some trial and error, he succeeds in getting the sparks to catch in a nest of birch bark, creating fire at last. Brian is overjoyed and gathers wood for the fire, swearing to himself that he will never let it go out. Soon thereafter, he discovers that a turtle has laid eggs in the sand near his shelter, giving him a new source of food. Encouraged by the fire and food, Brian begins to feel more confident about his ability to survive, but reminds himself that he must keep hoping to be rescued as well. In order to keep from getting depressed, Brian resolves to stay busy around his camp by cleaning, gathering wood, and collecting food. He also makes an unlit signal fire on top of the ridge, in the hope that he can send a smoke signal if he hears a passing plane. Brian feels himself changing mentally, becoming more attuned to his surroundings and noticing everything more than he did living in the city. He also realizes that lots of fish live in the lake and plans to make a spear in order to catch them. When his fish spear doesn't work, Brian decides to build a bow using springy wood and one of his shoelaces. While cutting wood for the bow far from his shelter, he suddenly hears the engine of a plane. Ecstatic, he sprints back to light the signal fire, but the plane turns back just as he gets the smoke going. Realizing the plane has disappeared, Brian falls into total despair, feeling certain that he cannot survive on his own any longer. Many days later, Brian stands in the shallows of the lake, fishing even though he is sick of eating fish. Moved by instinct, he turns to see a wolf behind him on the hill. Though he is initially frightened, Brian quickly realizes that the wolf is only a part of nature and does not want to harm him. The reader learns that 42 days have passed since Brian's despair at the plane's passing. The narrative flashes back to that experience, during which Brian attempts to commit suicide with the hatchet before deciding that he has to continue living. Afterward, Brian realizes that he is not the person he was before the crash and must now rely on himself to survive. Brian experiences many setbacks and mistakes as he learns to live in the wilderness, and he views his mistakes as learning experiences. He successfully builds a bow and learns to shoot and cook fish, which gives him the strength to believe he can keep surviving on the "tough hope" of self-reliance. Several times, Brian's mistakes seriously threaten his survival, as when an encounter with a seemingly harmless skunk almost blinds him. Still, each mistake helps Brian improve his survival skills, and over time he even learns how to hunt and kill some of the birds that live in the woods. He comes to realize that his survival depends on his ability to be patient and attuned to his surroundings. Back in the present, Brian has succeeded in building a sustainable life in the wilderness, even though he remains hungry and vulnerable. As he is hunting that morning, a moose attacks him for no reason, severely injuring his ribs and leaving him terrified. He returns to his shelter to recover, but that very same night, a tornado strikes, destroying his camp and scattering his possessions. Brian marvels at how quickly his luck can change, but he also finds himself feeling more resilient than he once was, vowing to rebuild the camp even as the tornado tears it apart. When he wakes up in the morning, he sees that the tail of the sunken plane is now visible above the water and prays for the pilot to have rest. Brian begins rebuilding his shelter and camp. As he does so, he suddenly remembers that survival pack in the plane and wonders if he can get to it now that part of the plane is above the water. He decides to explore the plane, making a crude raft to stand on in the water. He uses his hatchet to open a hole in the plane, at one point dropping his hatchet into the lake. Although he fears that it is lost forever, Brian successfully retrieves the hatchet from the bottom of the lake, and soon opens a hole in the plane wide enough to crawl inside. Floating amid the supports of the body of the plane, Brian dives down and quickly finds the survival pack. In the process, he sees the decaying head of the pilot, mostly eaten by fish. Brian is horrified, but he manages to get himself and the survival pack out of the plane and, eventually, back to camp. Exhausted, Brian falls asleep immediately. The next morning, Brian opens the survival pack and can barely comprehend the incredible riches it holds, such as sleeping bags and packets of food. There is even a rifle, which makes him feels strangely separated from the natural world around him. He sets the rifle aside and finds an emergency transmitter as well. He flicks it on, but it appears to be broken. Overwhelmed by the excitement of the food, Brian decides to have a feast before rationing the rest, and begins to cook several packets over his fire. Suddenly, a rescue plane lands on the lake. The pilot of the plane asks if he is the missing kid and Brian, astonished, invites the man to eat with him. In the epilogue, the reader learns that the pilot heard the signal from the transmitter that Brian unknowingly left on. Brian returns home to find that he is profoundly changed and experiences life in a much calmer, more observant way than he did before. He often dreams of the lake and its beauty. Although his parents are happy to have him home, they do not get back together, and Brian's life soon returns to normal. Although he considers it, he does not tell his father about The Secret.

- Genre: Satire, science fiction, Russian literature, anti-communist literature - Title: Heart of a Dog - Point of view: First-person (multiple narrators), third-person - Setting: Moscow in winter 1924 - Character: Sharik / Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov. Description: The central character in Heart of a Dog is a mangy stray mutt who gets turned into a man—and then, at the end of the book, back into a dog—by the gentleman scientist Philip Philippovich Preobrazhensky. At the beginning of the novel, he is Sharik ("little ball"), a bitter, self-pitying dog waiting to die from a severe wound in the freezing Moscow winter. But when Philip adopts him and heals his wounds, he becomes the mirror image of his new owner: elegant, loyal, and grateful for his privileges. In fact, he's relatively well behaved until he becomes a man during Philip's experiment—and his personality completely changes. Over time, he loses his fur, starts to walk on two legs, and learns to talk. Then, he becomes a vulgar, disrespectful drunk, thief, and womanizer—just like Klim Grigorievich Chugunkin, the man whose pituitary gland and testicles he received during the surgery. He starts cursing, smoking, and spitting everywhere, and he insists on being called Polygraph Polygraphovich, an absurd name referring to the printing technology for the calendars that most Russians used to choose their children's names in the early 20th century. He plays the balalaika, plots with Shvonder to kick Philip out of his apartment, and starts harassing Zina and Darya Petrovna. Worst of all, in Philip's eyes, he starts to become a communist. While mostly human, he still has some doglike traits—he looks the part, and he obsessively chases after cats, which lands him a job purging strays for the government. When his antics grow too insufferable, Philip and Dr. Bormenthal turn him back into a dog. His transformation from a loyal, obedient dog to a vulgar, destructive human is Bulgakov's metaphor for the Russian people's transformation from dutiful subjects in the Russian Empire to incompetent rulers during the Russian Revolution, which he thinks enabled their worst instincts and ought to be undone. - Character: Professor Philip Philippovich Preobrazhensky. Description: Preobrazhensky is the eccentric surgeon, professor, and aristocrat whose experiment on Sharik drives the plot of Heart of a Dog. He is a world-renowned expert on the brain, and his expensive rejuvenation operations are in high demand among wealthy Moscow residents. But he's more interested in science than medicine, as he thinks his side treatments can help transform people and improve the human species as a whole. This is what leads him to experiment on Sharik—with disastrous effects. He lives a lonely but admirable and cultivated life: while he spends most of his time seeing patients and researching, he also feasts lavishly with his assistant, Dr. Bormenthal, and frequently goes to the theatre. An unapologetic anti-communist, he struggles to hold onto his privileges under the new Soviet government, which wants to allocate part of his seven-room apartment to people who need the space. Over the course of the novel, he fights with the building management committee head, Shvonder, to hold onto his seven rooms and with Sharikov, the humanoid monster he created, to maintain order and sanity. He represents the refinement, the noble values, and the excesses of the Russian aristocracy, as well as of science: he takes the noble pursuit of knowledge and progress too far and creates a monster instead. Of course, the trope of the mad scientist (most famously Dr. Frankenstein) and early 20th century surgeons who actually transplanted animal organs into people are all inspirations for Philip's unusual profession. Preobrazhensky means "of the transfiguration," making it an ironic reference to Philip's aspirations to play God and transform humanity—aspirations which get ruined when he creates the monstrous Sharikov instead. - Character: Dr. Ivan Arnoldovich Bormenthal. Description: Bormenthal is Prof. Preobrazhensky's loyal assistant, friend, and admirer. Notably, the fifth chapter of the novel consists of his journal. He helps Philip with his surgeries and day-to-day medical practice, and partway through the novel, he moves into Philip's apartment to help him deal with the increasingly unruly Sharikov. He soon becomes Sharikov's main enemy and character foil. Throughout the second half of the novel, he repeatedly attacks and threatens Sharikov in order to protect Philip and the women Sharikov harasses (including Zina, Darya Petrovna, and Vasnetsova). Near the end of the novel, he begs Philip to let him kill Sharikov—but Philip refuses. Despite his violent tendencies, his friendship with the older Philip represents many of the basic values—like kindness, respect, and loyalty—that Bulgakov suggests make human life worth living, but believes that the Russian Revolution tried to eradicate. - Character: Shvonder. Description: Shvonder is a young working-class communist who moves into Prof. Preobrazhensky's building, immediately gets appointed to lead the building management committee, and spends most of the novel trying to confiscate all or part of Preobrazhensky's apartment. Shvonder is a caricature of cynical, mediocre, and rigidly ideological communists and a personification of the Bolshevik government. He helps turn Sharikov into a model proletarian, register for identity papers, and get a government job. He also constantly complains about Philip's "counterrevolutionary" behavior and friendship with a powerful Communist Party official, Pyotr Alexandrovich, who protects him from losing his property. - Character: Darya Petrovna Ivanova. Description: Darya Petrovna is Prof. Preobrazhensky's talented cook. She befriends Sharik the dog, but gets sexually assaulted in the night by Sharikov the man. Her relationship with Prof. Preobrazhensky is close but occasionally strained—for instance, she occasionally leaks information about his experiments to the press and lets curious citizens into his apartment. For the most part, however, she is a loyal servant, like Fyodor and Zina. - Character: Fyodor. Description: Fyodor is the doorman at Prof. Preobrazhensky's building. Notably, he climbs through the window to turn off the faucet after Sharikov floods Preobrazhensky's bathroom and helps resolve disputes between Sharikov and the neighbors. Like Zina and Darya Petrovna, he is loyal and decent, and he represents the best of the proletariat. - Character: Klim Grigorievich Chugunkin. Description: Chugunkin is the alcoholic, petty thief, womanizer, and balalaika player whose pituitary gland Prof. Preobrazhensky implants into Sharik. Sharik then manifests Chugunkin's offensive personality, an exaggerated version of what Bulgakov considers to be the proletariat's worst traits. Characteristically, he dies in a bar fight. The name "Chugunkin" comes from the Russian word for cast iron, which makes it a play on Stalin's name (which comes from the Russian word for steel). - Character: Vasnetsova. Description: Vasnetsova is a young typist who appears briefly at the beginning and end of the book. In the opening scene, she rushes out of the government cafeteria into the winter and gives Sharik his name. Later, Sharikov manipulates her into working for him by falsely claiming to be a war hero. Philip tells her the truth and promises to use his influence to protect her from Sharikov. Her poverty and relationship with Sharikov represent the way the Bolshevik government deceives women and young people. - Character: Zinaida (Zina) ProkofievnaBunina. Description: Zina is Prof. Preobrazhensky's young housekeeper, who helps him deal with Sharik's antics as a dog and harassment as a man. In addition to cleaning and serving dinner, she also reports to Preobrazhensky about the building management committee and assists him in his surgeries. Like Darya Petrovna and Fyodor, she is decent and loyal. - Theme: Revolution and Regression. Description: Set in the early days of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Bulgakov's science fiction satire Heart of a Dog is really an extended allegory of the Russian Revolution of 1917. When the mad scientist Professor Philip Philippovich Preobrazhensky transplants human organs into a mangy stray dog, Sharik, he's astonished to watch Sharik take on human form and try to usurp his apartment. Shvonder, the communist head of Philip's building management committee, helps Sharik the dog become Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov, the official government cat-catcher. Over the following weeks, Sharikov's stealing, drinking, cat-chasing, and womanizing start to destroy Philip's life. In fact, Philip's experiment and Sharikov's takeover are both metaphors for the Russian Revolution, in which a group of communist militants called the Bolsheviks seized power and replaced Russia's old system of monarchy with a dictatorship led by the working classes, or proletariat. However, Bulgakov thinks that the proletariat neither deserved power nor wielded it responsibly. Instead, he suggests, the Bolsheviks created a monstrous, corrupt society in which the working classes preached cooperation and equality, but really manipulated others for their own selfish ends. For Bulgakov, this shows that revolutionary change generally sets humanity back rather than pushing it forward. Whether in science, politics, or culture, Bulgakov argues that sweeping change is counterproductive because it's based on a naïve view of human nature. Bulgakov uses his two main characters' attempts to change the world—Philip's experiments and Sharikov's attempt to steal Philip's apartment—as metaphors for the Russian Revolution. First, Philip spends his days transplanting animal testicles and ovaries into his human patients in an attempt to rejuvenate them, or restore them to youth and sexual vitality. Like the Revolution, rejuvenation promises a fresh start and a brighter future—but it's unclear whether Philip's procedures help people or simply feed their worst instincts. (Most of his patients are mainly interested in sex.) When he tries this experiment the other way around—by transplanting human organs into the stray dog Sharik—its true implications become clearer. Sharik turns into a human and takes on the vulgar personality of Klim Grigorievich Chugunkin, the criminal whose organs he received. He spends all day drinking, smoking, cursing, killing cats, and assaulting women, which infuriates Philip. The procedure doesn't improve him at all—on the contrary, it makes him worse by giving him the power to pursue all his most dangerous and destructive desires. This is similar to how Bulgakov characterizes the Revolution: it didn't improve Russia or the proletariat, but rather enabled their corruption and immorality. After Philip's failed revolution in the examination room creates Sharikov, Sharikov's failed revolution in Philip's home creates endless division, corruption, and violence for both of them. Sharikov exemplifies many of the communist regime's worst tendencies. He gets legal papers in his absurd new name, "Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov," that say he has a right to a portion of Philip's seven-room apartment. Despite having no education whatsoever and not knowing the first thing about communism, he becomes a communist and starts preaching about equality. In reality, he just joined because the communists want to give people like him more property. His motives are totally selfish, and his supposed belief in equality is just an excuse for that selfishness—just like Bulgakov thinks the official Soviet ideology is a cover for the party members' self-interest. Then, Sharikov gets a job as a government cat-catcher and allies with Shvonder to report Philip's "counterrevolutionary" behavior. However, one of Philip's powerful friends intercepts and stops the report—ironically enough, corruption saves him from Sharikov manipulating the system. Finally out of options, Sharikov draws a gun on Philip and Bormenthal—who subdue him and then reverse their original operation, turning him back into a dog. Ultimately, both Philip's revolution in the laboratory and Sharikov's in the apartment are spectacular failures. Both believe that they're liberating people and improving the world—Philip thinks he's helping his patients and pioneering new technologies to improve the human gene pool, while Sharikov thinks he's liberating himself and the proletariat. But in reality, both actually set the world back by enabling selfishness and corruption. Finally, Bulgakov also attacks the Russian Revolution head-on, by showing directly how it made Russia absurd and degraded instead of progressive and equal. Even Sharik the stray dog notices how things have deteriorated in Moscow: he compares Count Tolstoy's cook Vlas (who used to toss him bones before the Revolution) to the cruel, bitter cook at the government cafeteria (who throws a pot of boiling water at him). Clearly, the Revolution hasn't improved workers' lives or even encouraged cooperation—people are more suspicious of one another than ever. For instance, Philip's neighbors have stopped putting their shoes and coats out in the hallway, and now his building's common areas are falling into disrepair. This is both evidence of the government's failures and a microcosm of those failures in Russia as a whole. In their pursuit of novelty and equality, the communists also start doing things upside down. For instance, Shvonder visits Philip to insist he give up part of his apartment and start eating in his bedroom instead of his dining room. Meanwhile, the economy is crashing, the government persecutes anyone who disagrees with it, and the bureaucracy values documents and formalities above human lives—as Sharikov explains, "a man is strictly forbidden to exist without documents." In the mid-1920s, Bulgakov sees a society around him that promises equality, modernity, and moral improvement but delivers corruption, backwardness, and vice. The Revolution tried—and failed—to improve human nature. Philip and Sharikov's experiments both highlight the Russian Revolution's specific failures and suggest that people react to sweeping change with selfishness and suspicion, not cooperation and consensus. At the end of the novel, Philip operates on Sharikov again and turns him back into Sharik, the obedient and grateful dog. Clearly, Bulgakov wants Russia to do the same: undo the Revolution. He thinks that gradually improving existing systems is preferable to wiping them out entirely and replacing them with something new. - Theme: Social Class and Hierarchy. Description: The second half of Heart of a Dog centers on the gentleman professor and surgeon Philip Philippovich Preobrazhensky's conflicts with Sharikov, the freakish, vulgar dog-man he creates through a transplant experiment gone awry. During these conflicts, Philip isn't just defending his own property and privilege: he's also defending the old Russian aristocracy, which has gone from ruling the Russian people to being reviled by them in just a few years. After the Russian Revolution, when the communist Bolsheviks took power, elite scientists and professionals like Philip were increasingly viewed as an outdated relic of Russia's imperial past. But when Heart of a Dog is set, in the mid-1920s, the Bolshevik government still tolerated specialists like Philip because it hadn't yet trained loyal communists to replace them. While Bulgakov certainly does satirize Philip's elitism and greed, he also shows how Philip leads a fulfilling, cultivated life because of them. Bulgakov's equally exaggerated portrayal of Shvonder, the angry young communist charged with taking away Philip's apartment, and Sharikov, the bumbling proletarian lowlife who gets unexpectedly rewarded with a government job, shows his skepticism about the working class's competence and values. In fact, for Bulgakov, the difference between the cultivated elite and the foolish masses is similar to the difference between humans and dogs. Bulgakov defends Russia's aristocracy—and social hierarchy in general—because he thinks that the elite have the traits needed to govern society, while the masses are incompetent, immoral, and irresponsible. Throughout the novel, Bulgakov presents working-class people as brutish, vulgar, and morally inferior to the competent, sophisticated elite. He exaggerates and parodies these differences, but only to argue that they exist—and never to challenge them. In fact, virtually everything in Bulgakov's Moscow is segregated by class. Working-class people eat rotten meat stew and horsemeat sausage in the government cafeteria, while Philip and his assistant Dr. Bormenthal dine lavishly on lobster, fish, and caviar prepared for them by Philip's private cook, Darya Petrovna. Sharikov goes to the circus and plays the balalaika, while Philip goes to the ballet and hums classical songs and opera arias. And most importantly, working-class people live in cramped apartments where they have to eat in their bedrooms, while Philip has seven rooms all to himself. Even after the Russian Revolution, then, there's a sharp division between the elite, who live opulently, and the masses, who live rudimentary, uncomfortable lives. But Bulgakov suggests that class divisions are more than just economic and cultural: he thinks they're also intellectual and moral. This is clearest of all in the differences and clashes between Sharikov and Philip. While Philip spends his days treating patients and exploring scientific mysteries, Sharikov spends his harassing women, stealing from Philip, and killing cats. Even though some of Philip's science is dubious, Bulgakov suggests, his job is clearly more sophisticated, ethical, and valuable to the world than Sharikov's. So is his day-to-day behavior. For instance, while Philip keeps a strict routine and maintains order in his apartment, Sharikov ruins his schedule and spits, swears, and smokes all over the apartment. Most disturbingly, Sharikov is incapable of thinking for himself. He constantly repeats communist slogans and policy ideas that he learned from Shvonder, and he presents them as sophisticated theories, even though he has no education and can't even read a calendar. Philip eventually snaps and tells Sharikov the truth: he's an inferior being "on the lowest rung of development." To Philip, so is the rest of the proletariat. Based on the class differences he portrays, Bulgakov argues that aristocratic social and economic hierarchies are actually beneficial for society. In his mind, the superior are meant to lead and the inferior are meant to follow. Before he becomes a man, Sharik the dog illustrates this principle perfectly. At the beginning (and very end) of the novel, Sharik and Philip live in blissful harmony. Sharik is deeply loyal and grateful to his new owner, who has saved him from freezing to death in the Moscow winter. In fact, he's much happier when he accepts his position as Philip's social inferior (as a dog) than when he insists on being Philip's equal (as a man). Similarly, there is a whole group of workers in the novel, like Zina and Fyodor, who are loyal and happy for the same reason: they accept their status rather than fighting it. This is how Bulgakov imagines that society should work: the majority should accept their subservient role and follow the dictates of the elite, educated minority. Like Philip, Bulgakov suggests, this minority should use its privilege to pursue the extraordinary political, creative, and scientific goals that only it is capable of achieving. But without the privileges that hierarchy brings them—in Philip's case, the privilege of a seven-room apartment and ample free time—the elite will not have the time, space, or resources to pursue excellence. Therefore, for Bulgakov, traditional social hierarchies actually ensure that everyone ends up where they belong, and society as a whole progresses as efficiently as possible. Of course, Bulgakov's views on the class system were practically the opposite of the Bolsheviks'. He thought they made a fatal error by trying to dissolve the Russian social hierarchy and give power to the proletariat. In Bulgakov's mind, they replaced an effective aristocratic hierarchy—in which the most sophisticated and capable people ruled society—with an ineffective political one in which a new, corrupt, thoughtless elite trampled on everyone else. Restoring order to Russian society, Bulgakov suggests at the end of the novel, really means restoring hierarchy. In the final scene, after Philip turns Sharik back into a dog, Sharik lounges around on the rug, enjoying his life, while "the superior being," Philip, sits in his chair, cuts up brains, and contemplates the mysteries of science. Inequality allows each to do what they do best. - Theme: Science, Nature, and Morality. Description: Heart of a Dog focuses on the impossible result of a fictional scientific experiment, but Bulgakov uses this experiment to emphasize science's very real limits and ethical implications. Through the absurd premise that a doctor could transform a dog into a human being, he mocks the idea that people could or should totally conquer nature through science. But he also demonstrates that science does give people an immense power over the world—a power that can be used equally for good or for evil. Sometimes scientists can decide how to use this power, and sometimes they simply ignore the ethical implications of their work (like Professor Philip Philippovich Preobrazhensky with his rejuvenation patients at first). But often, they simply can't know whether they will do good or evil, change the world, or create a monster. Philip's failed experiment on Sharik suggests that, when human beings arrogantly try to dominate nature, they often do create monsters. Because scientists must take moral responsibility for their work, Bulgakov suggests, they ought to adapt to nature, rather than trying to change it. Bulgakov frequently emphasizes science's sheer power, which can be both creative and destructive. After all, science is just the sum of human knowledge about how the world works and how we can manipulate it, and medicine is the same for the human body. Therefore, it's no surprise that surgeons like Philip have a sometimes unfathomable life-or-death power over living beings. Bulgakov points this out by mixing the language of medicine with the language of violence. During the operation, Philip is "positively terrifying." He "slashes" Sharik up and "roar[s]" to his assistant, Dr. Bormenthal, and they are "as frantic as hurrying murderers." Bulgakov shows how there's a fine line between surgery and dismemberment, or healing and maiming. Philip doesn't even expect Sharik to survive the surgery. Accordingly, it's no wonder that Sharik is terrified every time Philip leads him into the exam room: he knows that science can kill him. But science's great dangers don't nullify its equally great power to heal and create. For instance, Philip mainly performs rejuvenation procedures on his patients—he transplants animal organs into them in the hopes of reversing aging and improving their sexual health. Later, when he transplants human organs into Sharik, he's astonished to see Sharik transform into a man. In response to this transformation, Bormenthal goes on to praise Philip's godlike creative power in his journal: "The surgeon's scalpel has brought into being a new human entity. Professor Preobrazhensky, you are a creator." This shows that science's power to create and its power to destroy are inseparable. Science is neither inherently good nor inherently evil; rather, whether it does good or evil depends on the situation. Having shown that science can accomplish either good or evil, Bulgakov next shows how scientists unintentionally do evil when they try to outsmart nature. Bormenthal and Philip often disagree about whether science's purpose is to learn about the world or to change it: Bormenthal is excited about everything Philip has learned about the brain through his experiment on Sharik, while Philip focuses on the consequences of his discovery, not the new knowledge he's producing. But in a way, both are right: Philip does make an astonishing discovery—that the pituitary gland determines human personality and identity. (This is science fiction—it's not actually true.) But this discovery also has important consequences. Once he realizes that his creation, Sharikov, is a liar, thief, and scoundrel, Philip starts to feel a nagging sense of moral responsibility. He realizes that he intended to do good, but ended up doing harm instead. Specifically, he violated the natural order of the world by trying to change the inherent essence of things. He gave a dog a human's essence (pituitary gland), and he interfered with the natural process of human evolution. Similarly, while Philip's rejuvenation treatments appear to make patients younger, they're also clearly destructive, as they disrupt normal development. One of Philip's patients faces a physical developmental issue (he suddenly gets green hair and loses control over his knees) while another appears to be failing in his moral development (he brags about using his new youthful appearance to seduce an underage girl). Reflecting on his experiments, Philip realizes that it's dangerous to interfere with natural development. He admits that "it might be possible to […] turn a dog into a highly advanced human." But, he asks, what's the point? "The human race takes care of this by itself," he argues, by reproducing and evolving over time. There's no need for scientists to get in the way. Like Philip, Bulgakov was a trained doctor who both understood how humans are constrained by our biology and fought those constraints to the extent he could. In the real world, of course, rejuvenation and inter-species transformations aren't possible. But while fictional characters like Philip and Sharik don't face the same natural limits as real people, they still face consequences when they try too hard to surpass those limits. Like many other science fiction writers, Bulgakov uses the manipulation of nature in literature to warn his readers about trying to transcend nature, including human nature, in the real world. - Theme: Dignity, Loyalty, and Respect. Description: In Heart of a Dog, the Soviet government attacks more than just Philip Philippovich Preobrazhensky's oversized apartment and wealthy elite class: it also tries to eradicate the basic human values that make a life like Philip's worth living. While solitary and occasionally standoffish, Philip still believes in treating everyone—even the intolerable, mischievous Sharikov—with dignity, decency, and respect. He's also staunchly committed to nonviolence. The relationships that hold his life together are based on these values, which he shares with his assistant Bormenthal and his house staff, Zina, Fyodor, and Darya Petrovna. In fact, he thinks that loyalty and friendship are what separate people like him from people like Sharikov, Shvonder, and most of the Russian proletariat, who view others as interchangeable parts in a system of social classes, rather than as individuals. For Bulgakov, Soviet communists lose these basic values—and the sense of human connection they create—because they form relationships around abstract political ideas about economic and social equality, instead of around mutual interest, consent, and good will. To have truly meaningful relationships, Bulgakov suggests, humans actually have to be biased and individualistic to a certain degree—in other words, rather than trying to treat everyone else equally, they have to dedicate their care, attention, and loyalty to some people over others. The novel sharply distinguishes between two different models of human relationships: those based on consent and those based on coercion. Philip and Bormenthal's partnership exemplifies the first. They work, live, and socialize together because they want to. They deeply appreciate and respect one another, and it's clear that they both gain from the relationship. For instance, shortly before they start to plot Sharikov's demise, Bormenthal sincerely thanks Philip for his mentorship and even gives him a  platonic kiss on the moustache. Philip's relationships with the house staff and many of his patients are similarly respectful and loyal, although not as close. So is his relationship with Sharik (at least as first). After he lures Sharik back to his apartment with sausage, Bormenthal is surprised to see him successfully catch a stray dog. Philip responds that "kindness [is] the only method possible in dealing with living creatures"—terror will not work because it "completely paralyzes the nervous system." In other words, Philip understands that people respond better to positive incentives than negative ones. In short, he shows how genuine relationships can enrich people's lives by giving them a sense of safety, meaning, and community. In contrast, Sharikov, Shvonder, and other representatives of the new revolutionary government have coercive relationships. Instead of entering human interactions with respect and decency, they treat everything as a power struggle. For example, when Shvonder and his building management committee first visit Philip at the end of the second chapter, they offer demands, threats, and a thinly-veiled call for donations. Where Philip approached Sharik with kindness, the management committee approaches Philip trying—unsuccessfully—to terrorize him into giving up part of his apartment or donating money. Something similar happens after Philip's experiment turns Sharik into a man. Instead of loyally obeying his master, Sharik (now named Sharikov) starts to insult and make demands on him. He no longer recognizes or appreciates Philip's generosity towards him, even though Philip saved his life by adopting him. When Philip asks Sharikov to quiet down and clean up, Sharikov refuses. They aren't linked together by goodwill or mutual consent, but instead by obligation—they're now roommates, whether they like it or not. (They don't.) Where Philip and Bormenthal's relationship is win-win, Philip and Sharikov's is zero-sum: it adds nothing but conflict and tension to their lives, but they can't avoid it because they're forced to interact. Bulgakov suggests that the repressive Soviet communist government tilts the balance away from consensual relationships and towards coercive relationships by intervening in people's private lives. Trust disappears; more connections revolve around power, and fewer involve genuine care, kindness, and affection. Philip illustrates this general loss of trust when he points out how people's shoes started getting stolen in his building around the time of the Russian Revolution, and then everyone suddenly started keeping their shoes in their apartments rather than in the shared rack. This shows how people withdrew from public and social life after the Russian Revolution. The novel suggests various possible causes: they feared government persecution, they started viewing their former peers as rivals, they started refusing to put another person's needs before their own, or they started insisting on equality in every interaction. Vyazemskaya, a member of the management committee, particularly illustrates this distorted thinking when she asks Philip for a donation for German children—but instead of telling him why he should donate, she tells him why it would be wrong not to. She's appealing to his sense of abstract obligation to the needy and fear of the government, not his sense of concern or goodwill, which would require him to feel partial towards the beneficiaries of his donation. In order to promote equality, the Soviet Union seems to think, people have to feel the same way towards everyone. Any loyalty, commitment, or affection is suspect. For instance, Philip points out that even Sharikov will probably turn against Shvonder as soon as it's convenient for him—and he does. This shows that, even though they're working together to kick Philip out of his apartment, Shvonder and Sharikov don't share any genuine connection—at best, they're temporary allies, not friends. In contrast to the Soviets, Bulgakov sees that the most valuable relationships are precisely the loyal, biased, unique, trustworthy, and respectful ones. Philip and Bormenthal's relationship is something of an outlier—a relic, even—but it's also a sign of hope. It proves that the authoritarian government does not have to infiltrate every part of people's lives and turn every relationship into a source of suspicion and distrust. - Climax: Sharikov reports Philip to the Soviet authorities, then pulls a gun on Philip and Bormenthal. - Summary: In the early days of the Soviet Union, a mad scientist (Prof. Preobrazhensky) implants a human pituitary gland into a stray dog (Sharik) and accidentally turns him into a man. In Heart of a Dog, Mikhail Bulgakov uses this fictional experiment as a metaphor for what he sees as the failures of the Russian Revolution and communist Bolshevik government. Just as the professor's unruly experiment upends his life, Bulgakov suggests, the Bolsheviks destroyed Russian society through their unruly communist experiment in social equality. The novel opens with the perspective of a wounded dog, who howls as he freezes to death in the harsh Moscow winter. The cook in a Soviet government cafeteria threw a pot of boiling water at him, scalding his side. The dog curses the cook, a dishonest scoundrel who serves rotten meat. He watches a young typist (Vasnetsova) run out of the cafeteria into the snowstorm and pities her. She pets him and nicknames him "Sharik" (which means "Little Ball"). Then, a well-dressed gentleman (Prof. Philip Philippovich Preobrazhensky) marches over and feeds Sharik a horsemeat sausage. Thrilled, the mangy Sharik follows the gentleman through Moscow back to his huge, elegantly-decorated department. But when Prof. Philip and his beautiful young maid Zina lead Sharik to an operating room, Sharik realizes what's happening. He tries to run away and bites Prof. Philip's assistant, Dr. Bormenthal, who puts him to sleep with a noxious gas. But Philip is only healing Sharik's scalded side, and Sharik awakens clean, bandaged up, and pain-free. He follows Philip into his office, where he naps while one strange-looking patient after another drops their pants and pays Philip a huge sum of money. It turns out that Philip is a surgeon who transplants animal organs into humans in the hopes of rejuvenating them. Later that day, four angry young communists led by a man named Shvonder visit Philip and introduce themselves as the building's new management committee. They explain that Philip's seven-room apartment is too big and demand that he give up some of his space. He angrily refuses. He calls one of his patients, an influential government official, and gets the management committee to leave him alone. Over the next several days, Sharik naps and lounges around in Philip's apartment while Philip and Bormenthal dine extravagantly and complain about the state of Moscow under the new communist government. Sharik eats voraciously, admires himself in the mirror, and starts hanging out with the cook Darya Petrovna in the kitchen. One evening, Bormenthal frantically tells Philip that someone has died. The two men lock Sharik in the bathroom and scramble to set up the examination room. Then, they put Sharik to sleep and start the operation. Philip replaces Sharik's seminal vesicles (part of the reproductive system) and pituitary gland (an important gland in the brain) with human organs he brings in jars. The next chapter is Dr. Bormenthal's journal. After the operation, he and Philip expect Sharik to die. Instead, Sharik's condition improves. He sheds his fur, starts moaning, and walks on his hind legs. His tail falls off, he starts speaking Russian, and he increasingly looks like a human. Philip is astonished, and the newspapers are starting to gossip about his experiments. Soon, Sharik starts laughing, smoking, wearing clothes, and swearing at everyone around him. Bormenthal and Philip realize that he's becoming human—and he's taking on the attributes of the organ donor who gave him his pituitary gland, a lowlife thief and balalaika player named Klim Grigorievich Chugunkin. With his humanization complete, Sharik becomes vile and offensive over the following weeks. He starts sleeping in the kitchen, playing the balalaika, harassing Zina and Darya, and wearing the same ugly clothes as all the other men in Moscow. He criticizes Philip's elitism, insists on being treated as an equal, and conspires with Shvonder to get government papers listing his absurd new name, "Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov." Then, Sharikov sees a cat. He chases after it, breaks a window, and locks himself in the bathroom with the faucet on. The apartment starts to flood, and the doorman Fyodor climbs through the window to fix the faucet. Bormenthal has to send all of Philip's patients home while they clean up the water. Sharikov doesn't apologize—he starts complaining about the cat instead. He keeps up his bad manners, getting drunk at dinner and loudly criticizing Philip's elitism and taste in theatre. Philip declares that Sharikov is obviously "on the lowest rung of development" and doesn't deserve to be an equal to civilized, educated men like himself and Bormenthal. Over the next week, Philip starts to plan something in secret. He tries to kick Sharikov out of his apartment, but Sharikov has government papers saying he now has a right to a portion of Philip's apartment. Meanwhile, Bormenthal and Philip lament their failed experiment and plot to get rid of Sharikov. They debate whether Sharikov's problem is that he's part dog, or that he's all too human. When they learn that Sharikov tried to sexually assault Darya Petrovna in her sleep, Bormenthal attacks Sharikov and promises to teach him a lesson when he sobers up in the morning. But in the morning, Sharikov has disappeared. Three days later, he returns with new clothes and a new job as a government cat-catcher. After a few more days, Vasnetsova, the young typist from the beginning of the novel, comes to the apartment. Sharikov has lied about being a war hero and convinced her to move in with him. But Philip tells her the truth, and she leaves in tears. The next morning, Philip learns that Sharikov has reported him to the government for his anti-communist outbursts. He and Bormenthal confront Sharikov, who pulls a gun on them. Bormenthal and Philip subdue Sharikov and take him back into the examination room. In the epilogue, the reader learns what they've done: they've turned Sharikov back into a dog. The police come to investigate Sharikov's disappearance, and Philip introduces them to his dog. He claims that Shvonder registered Sharik, the dog, for a government job as an animal-catcher in order to get back at him. That night, Sharik lazes on the rug, feeling grateful for his beautiful life and wondering why the doctors kept operating on him. And Philip, "the superior being," is back to his old peaceful self.

- Genre: Colonial literature; Quest literature - Title: Heart of Darkness - Point of view: First person (both Marlow and the Unnamed Narrator use first person) - Setting: The Narrator tells the story from a ship at the mouth of the Thames River near London, England around 1899. Marlow's story-within-the-story is set in an unnamed European city (probably Brussels) and in the Belgian Congo in Africa sometime in the early to mid 1890s, during the colonial era. - Character: Marlow. Description: One of the five men on the ship in the Thames. Heart of Darkness is mostly made up of his story about his journey into the Belgian Congo. Marlow is a seaman through and through, and has seen the world many times over. Perhaps because of his journeys, perhaps because of the temperament he was born with, he is philosophical, passionate, and insightful. But Marlow is also extremely skeptical of both mankind and civilization, and, to him, nothing is simple. As the Narrator describes him: "to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze." The one thing Marlow does seem to believe in as a source of simple moral worth is hard work. - Character: Kurtz. Description: The fiancé of his Intended, and a man of great intellect, talent, and ambition who is warped by his time in the Congo. Kurtz is the embodiment of all that's noble about European civilization, from his talent in the arts to his ambitious goals of "civilizing" and helping the natives of Africa, and can be seen as a symbol of that civilization. But in his time in Africa Kurtz is transformed from a man of moral principles to a monster who makes himself a god among the natives, even going so far as to perform "terrible rites." His transformation proves that for all of his talent, ambition, and moral ideas, he was hollow at the core. - Character: General Manager. Description: The head of the Company's Central Station on the river. Untalented and unexceptional, the General Manager has reached his position of power in the Company because of his ability to cause vague uneasiness in others coupled with an ability to withstand the terrible jungle diseases year after year. The General Manager has no lofty moral ambitions, and cares only about his own power and position and making money. - Character: The Russian Trader. Description: A wanderer and trader who wears a multi-colored patched jacket that makes him look like a harlequin (a jester). Through some miraculous stroke of luck, he has ended up alone in the jungle along the Congo and survived. He is naïve and innocent and believes Kurtz is a great man beyond any conventional morality. He even nursed Kurtz back to health on a number of occasions though Kurtz once threatened to shoot him. Of all the white men in the Congo, only the Russian refrains from trying to assert control over the jungle. - Character: Narrator. Description: One of the five men on the ship in the Thames, he is the one who relays to the reader Marlow's story about Kurtz and the Congo. He is insightful, and seems to understand Marlow quite well, but otherwise has little personality. He does seem to be affected by Marlow's story. - Character: The Brickmaker. Description: The General Manager's most trusted agent. A sly, lazy, power-hungry fellow who despite his title seems to have never made a brick, the Brickmaker cares only about his own advancement and therefore sees Kurtz as a threat. He also thinks that Marlow and Kurtz are somehow allied within the company. Marlow describes the Brickmaker as a "papier-mâché Mephistopheles." - Theme: Colonialism. Description: Marlow's story in Heart of Darkness takes place in the Belgian Congo, the most notorious European colony in Africa because of the Belgian colonizers' immense greed and brutal treatment of the native people. In its depiction of the monstrous wastefulness and casual cruelty of the colonial agents toward the African natives, Heart of Darkness reveals the utter hypocrisy of the entire colonial effort. In Europe, colonization of Africa was justified on the grounds that not only would it bring wealth to Europe, it would also civilize and educate the "savage" African natives. Heart of Darkness shows that in practice the European colonizers used the high ideals of colonization as a cover to allow them to viciously rip whatever wealth they could from Africa.Unlike most novels that focus on the evils of colonialism, Heart of Darkness pays more attention to the damage that colonization does to the souls of white colonizers than it does to the physical death and devastation unleashed on the black natives. Though this focus on the white colonizers makes the novella somewhat unbalanced, it does allow Heart of Darkness to extend its criticism of colonialism all the way back to its corrupt source, the "civilization" of Europe. - Theme: The Hollowness of Civilization. Description: Heart of Darkness portrays a European civilization that is hopelessly and blindly corrupt. The novella depicts European society as hollow at the core: Marlow describes the white men he meets in Africa, from the General Manager to Kurtz, as empty, and refers to the unnamed European city as the "sepulchral city" (a sepulcher is a hollow tomb). Throughout the novella, Marlow argues that what Europeans call "civilization" is superficial, a mask created by fear of the law and public shame that hides a dark heart, just as a beautiful white sepulcher hides the decaying dead inside.Marlow, and Heart of Darkness, argue that in the African jungle—"utter solitude without a policeman"—the civilized man is plunged into a world without superficial restrictions, and the mad desire for power comes to dominate him. Inner strength could allow a man to push off the temptation to dominate, but civilization actually saps this inner strength by making men think it's unnecessary. The civilized man believes he's civilized through and through. So when a man like Kurtz suddenly finds himself in the solitude of the jungle and hears the whisperings of his dark impulses, he is unable to combat them and becomes a monster. - Theme: The Lack of Truth. Description: Heart of Darkness plays with the genre of quest literature. In a quest, a hero passes through a series of difficult tests to find an object or person of importance, and in the process comes to a realization about the true nature of the world or human soul. Marlow seems to be on just such a quest, making his way past absurd and horrendous "stations" on his way up the Congo to find Kurtz, the shining beacon of European civilization and morality in the midst of the dark jungle and the "flabby rapacious folly" of the other Belgian Company agents.But Marlow's quest is a failure: Kurtz turns out to be the biggest monster of all. And with that failure Marlow learns that at the heart of everything there lies only darkness. In other words, you can't know other people, and you can't even really know yourself. There is no fundamental truth. - Theme: Work. Description: In a world where truth is unknowable and men's hearts are filled with either greed or a primitive darkness that threatens to overwhelm them, Marlow seems to find comfort only in work. Marlow notes that he escaped the jungle's influence not because he had principles or high ideals, but because he had a job to do that kept him busy.Work is perhaps the only thing in Heart of Darkness that Marlow views in an entirely positive light. In fact, more than once Marlow will refer to work or items that are associated with work (like rivets) as "real," while the rest of the jungle and the men in it are "unreal." Work is like a religion to him, a source of support to which he can cling in order to keep his humanity. This explains why he is so horrified when he sees laziness, poor work, or machines left out to rust. When other men cease to do honest work, Marlow knows they have sunk either into the heart of darkness or the hollow greed of civilization. - Theme: Racism. Description: Students and critics alike often argue about whether Heart of Darkness is a racist book. Some argue that the book depicts Europeans as superior to Africans, while others believe the novel attacks colonialism and therefore is not racist. There is the evidence in the book that supports both sides of the argument, which is another way of saying that the book's actual stance on the relationship between blacks and whites is not itself black and white.Heart of Darkness attacks colonialism as a deeply flawed enterprise run by corrupt and hollow white men who perpetrate mass destruction on the native population of Africa, and the novel seems to equate darkness with truth and whiteness with hollow trickery and lies. So Heart of Darkness argues that the Africans are less corrupt and in that sense superior to white people, but its argument for the superiority of Africans is based on a foundation of racism. Marlow, and Heart of Darkness, take the rather patronizing view that the black natives are primitive and therefore innocent while the white colonizers are sophisticated and therefore corrupt. This take on colonization is certainly not "politically correct," and can be legitimately called racist because it treats the natives like objects rather than as thinking people. - Climax: The confrontation between Marlow and Kurtz in the jungle - Summary: The Narrator describes a night spent on a ship in the mouth of the Thames River in England. Marlow, one of the men on board, tells of his time spent as a riverboat pilot in the Belgian Congo. With the help of his well-connected aunt, Marlow gets a job as pilot on a steamship on the Congo River in Africa for a European business outfit called the Company. First he travels to the European city he describes as a "whited sepulcher" to visit the Company headquarters, and then to Africa and up the Congo to assume command of his ship. The Company headquarters is strangely ominous, and on his voyage to Africa he witnesses waste, incompetence, negligence, and brutality so extreme that it would be absurd if it weren't so awful. In particular, he sees a French warship firing into a forest for no discernible reason and comes upon a grove where exploited black laborers wander off to die. While at the Company's Outer Station, Marlow meets the Company's Chief Accountant. He mentions a remarkable man named Kurtz, who runs the Company's Inner Station deep in the jungle. Marlow hikes from the Outer Station to the Central Station, where he discovers that the steamship he's supposed to pilot recently sank in an accident. In the three months it takes Marlow to repair the ship, he learns that Kurtz is a man of impressive abilities and enlightened morals, and is marked for rapid advancement in the Company. He learns also that the General Manager who runs Central Station and his crony the Brickmaker fear Kurtz as a threat to their positions. Marlow finds himself almost obsessed with meeting Kurtz, who is also rumored to be sick. Marlow finally gets the ship fixed and sets off upriver with the General Manager and a number of company agents Marlow calls Pilgrims because the staffs they carry resemble the staffs of religious pilgrims. The trip is long and difficult: native drums beat through the night and snags in the river and blinding fogs delay them. Just before they reach Inner Station the steamship is attacked by natives. Marlow's helmsman, a native trained to steer the ship, is killed by a spear. At Inner Station, a Russian trader meets them on the shore. He tells them that Kurtz is alive but ill. As the General Manager goes to get Kurtz, Marlow talks to the Russian trader and realizes that Kurtz has made himself into a brutal and vicious god to the natives. When the General Manager and his men bring Kurtz out from the station house on a stretcher, the natives, including a woman who seems to be Kurtz's mistress, appear ready to riot. But Kurtz calms them and they melt back into the forest. The Russian sees that the General Manager has it in for him, and slips off into the jungle, but not before telling Marlow that Kurtz ordered the attack on the steamship. That night, Marlow discovers Kurtz crawling toward the native camp. Marlow persuades Kurtz to return to the ship by telling him he will be "utterly lost" if he causes the natives to attack. The steamer sets off the next day. But Kurtz is too ill to survive the journey, and gives his papers to Marlow for safekeeping. His dying words are: "The horror! The horror!" Marlow believes Kurtz is judging himself and the world. Marlow also falls ill, but survives. He returns to the sepulchral city in Europe and gives Kurtz's papers to the relevant people. The last person he visits is Kurtz's Intended (his fiancé). She believes Kurtz is a great man, both talented and moral, and asks Marlow to tell her Kurtz's last words. Marlow can't find it in himself to destroy her beautiful delusions: he says Kurtz's last words were her name. On the ship in the Thames, Marlow falls silent, and as the Narrator stares out from the ship it seems to him that the Thames leads "into the heart of an immense darkness."

- Genre: Short story - Title: Her First Ball - Point of view: Third person - Setting: A New Zealand dance hall - Character: Leila. Description: Leila, the story's protagonist, is an eighteen-year-old girl from the New Zealand countryside. As the story begins, she is on the way to her first ball with her cousins Laurie, Laura, Jose and Meg Sheridan. Initially, Leila's naiveté is her most significant characteristic. Since Leila has never been to a ball before, she savors every detail—even banal ones, like the tissue paper that her cousin discards from his new gloves. She relishes the lights, the decorations, and the music, and she's nearly overwhelmed by joy. But these initial impressions of the ball are overly positive: she believes every dance partner is excited to meet her, for instance, and that everyone is having fun, despite clear evidence to the contrary. Her inexperience means that she lacks the ability to see what's really going on. After she meets and dances with an old man, however, everything changes; the old man explains that Leila will soon grow old, which means she won't be able to dance at the balls anymore and she won't be desirable to men. After their conversation, Leila is devastated, feeling like this ball isn't the beginning of something marvelous, but rather the beginning of the end. Nonetheless, after she starts dancing again, she quickly forgets her despair, and when she bumps into the old man a moment later, she doesn't even recognize him. This represents her retreat into delusion—she knows the sinister aspects of the ball now, but she chooses instead to return to her naïve joy. - Character: The Old Man. Description: The old man is one of Leila's dance partners, who fills out her dance card at the start of the story. His appearance shocks Leila, because it doesn't fit with the beauty of the ball—the old man is fat, balding, and wears shabby clothing. He's the first person to ask Leila if he recognizes her from a previous ball, hinting that Leila isn't any different from the throngs of other young women who have attended these balls over the years. While dancing with Leila, the old man reveals that he's been going to balls for 30 years, and he tells her—cruelly—that she can't hope to attend for as long as he has. The old man can keep dancing (and even remain an in-demand partner) simply because he's male, whereas older women are ignored and discarded, relegated to sitting on the stage and watching their daughters dance. Though Leila chooses to forget his warnings at the end of the story, the old man makes a significant impression on her, shattering her initial innocence and forcing her to reconsider her future. - Character: Meg Sheridan. Description: Meg is Leila's older cousin, who brings her to the ball. Having been to many balls before, Meg isn't nearly as excited about the ball as Leila is. Once they arrive at the drill hall, Meg gets Leila settled with a dance card and encourages the other girls to help her find dance partners. While Meg clearly cares about Leila and does try to help her find her way, her priority is finding partners for herself and spending time with men, not hanging out with her little cousin. - Character: Laurie Sheridan. Description: Laurie is Leila's cousin, who helps escort her to the ball. The Sheridans are of a higher social class than Leila, and Leila watches in horror as Laurie throws away the wrapping of his new gloves—Leila would have liked to have kept it as a memento. Like the other men at the ball, Laurie has the power to choose who he dances with, while the women must simply wait to be approached. - Theme: Youth, Novelty, and Aging. Description: In "Her First Ball," Leila—a young woman of 18—attends her first formal dance. Having grown up in the New Zealand countryside, Leila has never attended a ball before, and she is overcome with anticipation. Everything appears "new and exciting": the floor, the lights, the stage, and the dancing itself. But as the story progresses, it becomes clear that Leila's feverish sense of novelty cannot last. Even the most youthful dancers are accustomed to the ritual of attending balls, with some of them seeming already tired and bored. Furthermore, while the dancers may think they'll be young forever, their future is visible onstage where fathers and mothers sit in chairs, watching their children dance and lamenting their own lost youth. By contrasting Leila's breathless excitement with the jadedness of the young dancers and their aged parents, Katherine Mansfield shows that—despite the adolescent feeling that one is "at the beginning of everything"—youth quickly fades. While Leila may feel that everything is new, she's actually enacting an age-old pattern, and her innocent excitement will dissipate just as it did for generations of dancers before her. Since this is Leila's very first ball, everything about it excites her—even things that others find ordinary. Leila's delight in small, ordinary things is clearest in contrast to her cousins, the Sheridans, who have been to many balls before. While they are "indifferent" to the beauty and indulgence around them, Leila notices everything: the flowers, the outfits, the lights. She even wishes she could keep as a memento the discarded tissue paper from her cousin Laurie's gloves. Mansfield takes pains to connect Leila's excitement to her age; one Sheridan refers to Leila as "my child," another as "my little country cousin." But the anticipation Leila feels comes more from novelty than from youth; after all, the Sheridans are around Leila's age, but since they've already been to many balls, they don't feel the same sense of overwhelmed excitement. Leila's fevered state, then, is a reflection of this being her first ball—an experience she will never have again. Once the dancing starts, Mansfield makes clear that Leila's sense of novelty will not last. The ball opens with men approaching the women to fill out their dance programs, and Leila meets "quite an old man" who believes he might recognize her from a previous ball. Though Leila thinks nothing of it at the time, the man's mistaken reference to having seen her before suggests that, while everything at the ball is new to her, she herself is not a novelty—she's indistinguishable from countless other young women who have attended these balls over the years. Furthermore, as Leila dances with several young men, she notices them behaving the same way: they all comment on the quality of the floor and then ask if they've seen her at previous balls. Her first partner's voice even sounds "tired" as he speaks. Not only does this reinforce that most of the dancers (despite their youth) are already used to (and even bored with) these balls—but it also shows Leila in the process of losing her own sense of newness. Within her first few dances, Leila is already having conversations that are familiar to her, growing used to the patterns of the ball. When the old man finally dances with Leila, he is explicit that her youth and excitement are already fading. Referencing the mothers sitting onstage, he tells Leila that she'll be one of them before long, watching her daughter dance and pining for her own bygone youth. Leila is horrified to realize that "this first ball [is] only the beginning of her last ball"—that time marches along for everyone, and novelty and youth cannot last. While this revelation seems for a moment like it will ruin Leila's night, it doesn't; even knowing what awaits her, she's able to return temporarily to her youthful feelings. After leaving the old man, the music swells and another young man asks her to dance. Despite her reluctance, she quickly forgets the sobering conversation she's just had. As she dances, the room is once again a whirling blur of flowers, lights, and faces, and she's swept back up in her joy. While this ending might seem to signify youth and innocence triumphing over cynicism and age, it's not so simple; Mansfield makes clear that while Leila may feel that this night is completely new, she's actually part of a generations-old pattern. Every person in the ballroom once had their first ball, and afterwards the excitement faded; soon she will be one of the youthful dancers following a conversational script, bored with repeating this social ritual over and over. Then, inevitably, she will be the parent of someone having his or her first ball, remembering her own excitement while knowing that her child, too, will grow old. Mansfield emphasizes this generational cycle in one of her closing images; as Leila swirls around the ball, the amazing sights around her become a "beautiful flying wheel." The image of a wheel evokes the passage of hands around a clock and the notion of the life cycle. Adolescence is a time of new, exciting experiences—but this very experience of adolescent newness is itself a well-worn pattern, one that every generation feels. As Leila dances, she temporarily forgets what the man told her, but it's clear to readers that her innocence won't last. - Theme: Gender and Society. Description: While attending her first ball, Leila learns that her society values men over women. This is apparent in how much power the men have at the dance; they select their partners, for instance, while women simply wait to be chosen. But the power of men becomes clearest when an old man tells Leila that, when she is his age, she will not be desirable to men and will no longer be able to dance at balls. In other words, while he can still dance with beautiful young women and feel accepted and valued, she can anticipate no such future; at a certain age—one that is coming soon—she will be discarded and scorned. In exposing this dynamic, Katherine Mansfield depicts how male power frays female friendships, leaves young women vulnerable to predatory men, and flippantly casts older women aside. The message that women receive is that nothing matters besides attracting a man and they have no intrinsic worth. While Leila values her relationships with women, men are always shaping those relationships—even when they're absent. At first, Leila seems to have a genuine friendship with her female cousins who look after her at the ball. But the cousins don't choose to spend time with Leila, and they instead show their friendship by helping her attract men. Before the dance begins, Meg tells the other girls at the ball to help Leila find partners, and the girls respond vaguely while looking "towards the men" in anticipation. This suggests that female friendship is only valuable when convenient and can be cast aside in favor of men. Leila's previous experiences affirm this sense that female friendship is less important than attracting men. At her boarding school, for instance, girls learned to dance with each other to prepare for dancing with men. Leila describes this experience not as a fun bonding activity with her friends, but as unpleasant, with girls stepping on each other's toes. During her first dance with a man at the ball, however, Leila notes that "he steered so beautifully." Leila's female friendships seem to have no value on their own, and exist only to train girls for more pleasant experiences with men. The women preparing for the ball also disregard female friendship. Inside the "Ladies" room at the dance hall, young women compete for mirror space and fuss over their dresses. As with Leila's dance lessons, these women are gathered together not to bond with one another, but to prepare to encounter men. This reality—in which women compete for male attention rather than befriending and helping one another—leaves women at the mercy of men. Once the ball begins, it's clear that the men are fully in charge. The ball itself begins at the men's discretion, for instance. Once everyone is in the drill hall, the women and men stand separately at first. Not once does Leila think that she could approach a man herself—instead, she knows intuitively that she must wait until the men decide to come to her. Throughout the ball, the women remain passive participants, while the men seem active in comparison. They're free to choose partners and move around the dance floor, while Leila must continue waiting for them to approach her. Men have the power to appear and disappear, seemingly at random—Leila notes that one partner appeared to "spring from the ceiling"—but Leila herself remains stationary, believing "she would die" if her partner didn't arrive. Leila's powerlessness seems somewhat trivial at first—until she realizes the future that awaits her. The old man who dances with Leila reveals this insidious reality. He has been attending balls for thirty years and can continue dancing at his age only because he's male; during their dance, he tells Leila that she "can't hope" to dance at balls for as long as he has, since she will soon be an old woman who must watch the dance from the stage. It's clear that a woman his age would not dream of being on the dance floor, since she would not be considered a viable romantic partner. Meanwhile, this man is distinctly old and disheveled—Leila notices his "creased" waistcoat, missing button, and bald head—but he nonetheless appears to be popular, holding a dance card "black with names." Leila's conversation with this man reveals a pervasive disdain for women, especially older ones. He points out the "poor old dears" watching the dancing from onstage and suggests that, once Leila is one of them, she'll have idle conversations about how a "dreadful man" tried to kiss her daughter at the ball while secretly feeling jealous, since it's devastating that nobody wants to kiss her anymore. His implication is that it's better to be young and pursued by horrible men than to be old and ignored by them. Not only is this condescending and self-serving (since he himself might be the "dreadful man" he imagines), but it frames male attention as determining a woman's self-worth. Unfortunately, Leila seems to believe him. She herself observes the older women with unkindness, noticing that the female chaperones in the room "smil[ed] rather foolishly," and the old women in the dressing room served only to aid the young. There seems to be no purpose for older women at the ball—or in society. Leila's experience of the ball, then, is teaching her a horrific lesson: that her social value depends on men desiring her, and men will only desire her for a little while longer. After that, she can expect to be cast aside. - Theme: Illusion, Delusion, and Reality. Description: When Leila arrives at the ball, she finds it joyful and thrilling. But her naïve view doesn't match reality—the ball is repetitive, even boring. No one is interested in Leila's experience, and none of her partners are having fun. Despite this, Leila remains inside her glamorous illusion until she dances with an old man who reveals the true nature of the ball, showing her that youth and excitement inevitably fade, particularly for women. While this conversation initially rattles Leila, she quickly returns to her illusion of a thrilling, perfect ball—which is now an active delusion, a choice to ignore ugly reality. While the story ends with Leila living in fantasy, the clear implication is that her youthful illusions cannot last. Inevitably, she'll have to confront reality, which will destroy her fragile joy. Throughout the story, Leila perceives her circumstances to be grander than they are. For instance, Leila is jealous of her cousins, as she imagines them to be much closer than they are. In truth, their interactions are relatively shallow: Laurie and Laura discuss their upcoming dance, and Meg comments on Jose's hair. But Leila wishes she had siblings of her own, and she therefore views the Sheridans' small talk as the epitome of familial love. This demonstrates Leila's tendency to see things as she wishes they were. Later, in the ladies' dressing room, Leila ignores the reality of the scene in front of her. The room is pure chaos, and the women seem stressed and aggressive, but Leila dismisses this. "Because they were all laughing it seemed […] that they were all lovely," she thinks, misinterpreting nervous laughter as evidence of happiness and beauty. Then, once the dance begins, Leila mistakes her partners' small talk as interest in her experiences and opinions, though it's clear they ask the same questions of everyone. Her first partner won't engage with her observations about the dance floor, and her second is completely uninterested in the fact that this is her first dance, even though Leila herself is clearly excited about it. Despite that these men are essentially ignoring her, Leila's joy and self-importance persist, as she remains enchanted with the ball and continues to try to converse with her partners. But Leila must finally acknowledge reality during her conversation with the old man. As soon as he appears, it's clear that he will pull Leila out of her fantasy. He's incompatible with her illusion of a glamorous, joyful ball, since he's conspicuously old, fat, and shabby. She tries to ignore this and be polite to him, but he doesn't return the favor—intuiting that this is her first ball, he immediately reminds her that her joy is fleeting and she will someday grow old. This conversation forces Leila to notice something she had previously ignored: the older women in the room. They aren't dancing; instead, they're forced to sit on the sidelines and watch their daughters dance. Now that Leila has been told that she will one day join these women, she sees them sitting there and feels frightened. While her belief in her own significance had previously blinded her to the ball's unhappier elements, she's now forced to confront the bleak reality that awaits her. While Leila does briefly acknowledge this horrible truth, she quickly returns to her illusions. Almost immediately after she and the old man stop dancing, Leila imagines herself as a "little girl" throwing a tantrum. She's deeply upset by what she's just heard, and imagining herself as a child again is an attempt to return to innocence and see the ball as she did before this conversation. It works; after a moment of dancing, Leila looks again at all the lights and flowers and feels her old joy return. The magnitude of her repression is evident in the story's last line, when she bumps into the old man while dancing and doesn't even recognize him—she's so unable to grapple with what he's told her that she refuses to acknowledge (even to herself) that she knows him at all. However, it's clear that the man is right and Leila's joy will be fleeting. While her initial impressions of the ball were mere misperception (since she didn't have the context to understand what was really going on), now she is deliberately deluding herself by ignoring the harsh truths that the man revealed. Leila's delusion of a thrilling and perfect ball cannot last; once the newness of the experience wears off, she will not be able to lose herself in the lights and flowers anymore. At that point, she'll be forced to confront reality, and she'll find the balls as boring and depressing as everyone else. - Climax: Leila dances with the old man - Summary: A young girl named Leila is about to attend her first ball, escorted by her cousins, Meg, Laurie, Laura and Jose Sheridan. Leila is from the New Zealand countryside, and she has never been to a ball before, to the surprise of her wealthier and more experienced cousins. The Sheridans speak with nonchalance about their attire and upcoming dances, while Leila is almost beside herself with excitement. When Leila and the Sheridans arrive at the drill hall, Laura helps escort Leila to the ladies' room, where women are busy getting ready. Though Leila focuses only on the noise and excitement, the women are clearly stressed out, competing for mirror space and worrying about their appearances. Once the dance programs are passed out, Meg brings Leila to the drill hall. Leila is awed by the beauty of the room, and Meg tells the girls around them to help Leila find dance partners. But the girls are focused on the group of men nearby, who eventually walk over to fill out their dance cards. After securing a few partners, Leila meets an old man, who fills out her card despite not having much space on his own. The old man at first believes he recognizes Leila from another ball, which of course is impossible, given that this is Leila's first one. Leila waits for her first partner to approach her, reminiscing about her dance lessons at boarding school. They were often unpleasant—girls had to dance with each other, and they often stepped on each other's toes or bumped into each other. Her experience with her first partner is much better than these lessons; she notes that he "steered so beautifully." As they dance, he remarks on the floor, to which Leila replies that it's "beautifully slippery." This answer surprises him, and he asks whether she was at another ball last week. Leila is excited to tell him that this ball is her first, but he doesn't seem to care. Leila's second partner also comments on the floor and a previous ball, which Leila notices is a pattern. Despite the repetition, she remains excited about the night until the old man approaches to claim his dance. She's struck by how old and shabby he looks; he's missing a button on his glove, and his coat is dusty. He immediately remarks that it must be Leila's first dance, which he's able to guess because he's been attending balls for thirty years. The two begin dancing, and the old man seems to grow sad, telling Leila that she will never be able to attend balls for as long as he has. After all, she's a woman and will soon be too old to dance. He points out the older women sitting onstage and says that Leila will soon be one of them, sitting up there gossiping about horrible men trying to kiss their daughters while secretly devastated that men no longer want to kiss them. Leila is disturbed by her conversation with the old man, particularly because she hadn't previously thought about her age—now, she's worried that "this first ball [is] only the beginning of her last ball." She's angry at the old man, who she believes "spoiled everything" by cluing her in to her fate. The two stop dancing, and Leila chooses to lean against the wall rather than return to the floor. The old man tells her not to take him seriously, and Leila scoffs but remains petulant, thinking that she'd like to go home. Soon, however, another partner approaches and the two begin dancing. Suddenly, the ball seems beautiful again. Leila's partner bumps into the old man, but she doesn't recognize him and simply smiles.

- Genre: Feminist science fiction, utopian fiction - Title: Herland - Point of view: First-person - Setting: Herland - Character: Vandyck "Van" Jennings. Description: Vandyck Jennings is the narrator and protagonist, called Van by all characters. Van is a sociologist who enjoys going on adventures with Jeff Margrave and Terry O. Nicholson so that he can study primitive societies. Van decides to go with Terry and Jeff to discover the whereabouts of the legendary Herland because he sees it as a unique opportunity to study the sociology of a community that (allegedly) is made up entirely of women, although Van initially doubts that it's possible for any "civilized" society to exist without men. Upon discovering Herland and being imprisoned by the Colonels, Van seizes the opportunity to learn more about the Herlandians and rapidly develops a sense of friendship with his assigned tutor, Somel. As Van becomes more proficient in the Herlandian language, he and Somel discuss the importance of motherhood in Herlandian culture, Somel describes her civilization's history, and Van gives Somel some insight into what life outside of Herland is like. Later, when Van and the other men are given more freedom, Van begins courting Ellador, a young Herlandian he met when he first arrived in the country. The Herlandians were eager to reinstate a bi-sexual community and so encourage the three men (the first they had seen in over 2,000 years) to select a mate: Van chooses Ellador, Terry chooses Alima, and Jeff chooses Celis. Although the Herlandians haven't practiced marriage throughout their long history, the men show them how to conduct a traditional Christian ceremony. After their marriage, Ellador and Van struggle to find common ground—Van initially wants a traditional Western marriage and Ellador opposes the idea of fulfilling a submissive, passive role. Ultimately, Van and Ellador reach an understanding and Ellador chooses to go with Van to America after Terry is expelled from Herland. Van represents the cold, scientific attitude many male academics and scientists had towards women, especially at the time the novel was written—they saw them as objects to be studied rather than as full people. - Character: Jeff Margrave. Description: Jeff is one of the three American explorers who discover Herland. Jeff is a doctor by trade, but Van describes him as having the heart of a poet: he is romantic, idealizes women, and is brimming with chivalry. For Jeff, Herland is clearly a utopia full of beauty, love, and wholesomeness. Jeff stands in stark contrast with Terry, who is a womanizer and full of lust, and Van, who is coldly scientific. Jeff looks forward to discovering a nation full of women because he believes it will be an ideal, gentle, peaceful society, free from the violence and cold ambition that characterized America in the early 20th century. While the men are imprisoned in Herland, Jeff is assigned Zava as a tutor and the two of them genuinely enjoy each other's company. In conversations about American culture, Jeff is frequently the one who highlights the most negative aspects of it, such as the high prevalence of poverty and the mistreatment of women. Jeff courts and eventually marries Celis, one of the first young Herlandian women he met. Jeff and Celis are the only one of the three couples (the others being Van and Ellador, and Terry and Alima) to consummate their marriage, thus making Celis the first Herlandian woman to become pregnant by a man in over 2,000 years. In the end, Jeff decides to stay in Herland while Terry, Ellador, and Van go back to America after Terry is expelled from the country. Jeff embodies the early 20th century view of women as helpless, weak creatures who needed to be protected and even worshipped by men—Jeff himself is often described a "born worshipper." - Character: Terry O. Nicholson. Description: Terry is one of the three American explorers who discover Herland. Terry is a wealthy and privileged womanizer who believes that he, Jeff, and Van will be "Hailed as deliverers" by the women of Herland. Of the three men, Terry is the least happy with what they find in Herland—not only are they held prisoner by the middle-aged Colonels, but none of the women show any sexual interest in him at all. Terry formulates a failed plan to escape and frequently yells at his tutor, Moadine, for preventing him from enjoying the company of younger Herlandian women. When the men are allowed to meet the younger women, Terry is upset because all of them reject his efforts to flirt with them. Eventually, Terry begins a tumultuous courtship with Alima, one of the first women he talked to in Herland. Alima is as strong-willed and opinionated as Terry, so the two frequently fight, break up, and then get back together until they finally get married. After they are married, Terry becomes enraged by the fact that Alima won't have sex with him. He tells the other men that all women like being "mastered" shortly before trying to rape Alima—an action he thinks will force her to be submissive to him from then on. Instead, Alima fights back and calls for help, and Terry is kept prisoner in a small room with a garden. It is finally decided that Terry has to leave Herland, which he readily agrees to. He brings Ellador and Van to help him glide their plane off the mountain Herland sits on and they all go back to America together. Terry symbolizes the misogynistic attitudes many 20th century men had towards women—he sees them as objects to possess and becomes furious when he finds that the women of Herland have none of the submissive, passive qualities that he believes any "real" woman would naturally have. - Character: Ellador. Description: Ellador is the young Herlandian woman who marries Van. Ellador is one of the few children of an Over Mother (a woman who is given special permission to have more than one child). Ellador stands out from many of the other women for her intelligence and openness. She is stunningly beautiful and unfailingly kind and patient. Ellador tells Van about Herlandian religion and the education of children, and after hearing about American customs from Van she becomes increasingly interested in leaving Herland to learn more about the rest of the world. After her marriage to Van, Ellador struggles to understand why American women have sex with their husbands for any reason other than to create a child. Because of this, Ellador asks Van not to ask her to have sex with him until they are both ready to have a child, which is something Van struggles with but ultimately agrees to. After Terry is told to leave Herland as a consequence for trying to rape Alima, Ellador decides to leave with him and Van. - Character: Celis. Description: Celis is the Herlandian woman who marries Jeff. Celis is frequently bewildered by Jeff's evident adoration of her and rebuffs his attempts to treat her as weak or in need of protection. Aside from this, Celis and Jeff fall deeply in love with each other and become the only couple (the others being Ellador and Van, and Terry and Alima) to consummate their marriage. Celis is also the first woman in Herland to get pregnant by a man in over 2,000 years and is therefore treated with extreme reverence and kindness. Terry, Ellador, and Van leave Herland before the birth of Celis's child, but Jeff decides to stay with her in Herland. - Character: Alima. Description: Alima is the Herlandian woman who marries Terry. Like Terry, Alima is strong and passionate. Unlike Terry, Alima's passion does not take the form of lust and after their marriage, the two frequently argue about her unwillingness to have sex with him. Eventually, Terry and Alima fight so much that she asks Moadine (Terry's former tutor) to stay in a room near her for protection and Alima stops spending time with Terry. One night, however, Terry sneaks into Alima's room and hides. When Alima comes in, Terry tries to rape her in order to make her more submissive to his desires. Alima fights back and calls for help, Terry is taken away, and the Herlandians decide to expel him from Herland. Despite this, Van says Terry is madly in love with Alima and becomes heartbroken when Alima refuses to say goodbye to him. That last thing the characters hear about Alima is that she moved to the northern part of the country to get away from Terry. - Character: Somel. Description: Somel is Van's tutor in Herland. Shortly after Van, Terry, and Jeff are taken to the fortress in Herland, Somel is assigned to teach Van how to read, write, and speak the Herlandian language as well as to learn English herself. Van and Somel get along very well because they are both highly inquisitive and eager to learn from one another. Even after the men are released from the fortress, Somel and Van maintain a steady friendship and Somel visits him shortly before his marriage to Ellador. Somel also teaches Van about Herlandian culture, history, and traditions. - Character: Moadine. Description: Moadine is Terry's tutor in Herland. Moadine is assigned to teach Terry the Herlandian language and to learn English from him. They also discuss Herlandian culture and American culture, and Terry frequently asks her when he will be allowed to visit the younger women. Even though Terry is often blustery and frequently yells at Moadine, she is unfailingly patient and kind with him. Alima asks Moadine to stay near her after her marriage to Terry turns sour due to her refusal to submit to his sexual desires. When Terry tries to rape Alima, it is Moadine who ties him up and has him carried to a makeshift prison cell. - Character: Zava. Description: Zava is Jeff's tutor in Herland. Zava is assigned to teach Jeff about Herlandian language and culture, as well as to learn about the English language and American culture from Jeff. Zava and Jeff get along well because Jeff sees her as a mother figure and is prone to idealizing all women. - Character: The Colonels. Description: The Colonels are a group of middle-aged Herlandian women who enforce peace and keep an eye on Jeff, Terry, and Van. The Colonels always appear when there is trouble with the three men. They are very strong, organized, and stern, which repulses Terry because he expects all women to be weak and submissive. After Terry's imprisonment, the Colonels are the ones who guard his cell. - Theme: Womanhood and Femininity. Description: Charlotte Perkins Gilman's feminist utopia novel Herland follows three American men—Van (the narrator), Jeff, and Terry—in the early 1910s as they discover and learn about the legendary Herland, an ancient civilization made up entirely of women who have not seen any men or other outsiders in over 2,000 years. The three men learn of Herland from natives in a mysterious and largely unmapped country; these natives claim that there is a dangerous country full of women and that men who go to find it disappear without a trace. After making the necessary preparations and armed with the latest technology (namely an airplane that can take them over the mountains that protect Herland), the three men successfully discover this lost civilization. However, the women there are not the timid, submissive, weak, and primitive creatures they expected, nor are the men themselves treated as the conquering heroes they imagined themselves to be. Through Jeff and Van's changing beliefs about womanhood—and Terry's refusal to change his own beliefs—Gilman argues that society's belief that women are inherently inferior to men is based on socially constructed ideas of femininity and does not reflect women's natural abilities and characteristics. Van, Jeff, and Terry each harbor distinct ideas of what type of womanhood they will find in Herland. However, all of their beliefs are based on the assumption that the women of Herland will naturally possess all the same ideal qualities of femininity that women in American do. Terry is a wealthy and adventurous womanizer brimming with "intense masculinity." He believes that "There never was a woman yet that did not enjoy being mastered," and thus that the women of Herland will prove submissive to his sexual desires. Jeff is a doctor with the heart of a poet. According to Van, Jeff "idealized women, and was always looking for a chance to 'protect' or to 'serve' them," highlighting Jeff's perception of women as weak and helpless. Van, a sociologist, does not look forward to any kind of romantic or sexual conquests in Herland. With his "airs of sociological superiority," Van believes that women are incapable of creating a "civilized" society without men's help and hopes to study these women as inferior objects rather than as fully developed people. Once they arrive in Herland and begin to learn more about the women there, however, it becomes clear to the men that the women there do not conform to traditional Western ideals of femininity. The women of Herland challenge their definitions of femininity and traditional beliefs about women's natural inferiority. When the men first enter a Herlandian town, they are surrounded by a group of stern older women who forcibly carry them off to a fortress. Van describes them as "uncomfortably strong women," which challenges Jeff's beliefs that women are naturally weak and helpless. After failing to captivate the younger women, Terry declares that "these women aren't womanly." By this he means that the Herlandian women are not as submissive nor as flirtatious as he assumed they would be when the men began the expedition. Van, however, is pleasantly surprised by the "sociological achievements" of Herland. In fact, he accepts "Herland life as normal" and life in 20th-century America as "abnormal," proving that women do have the practical and intellectual abilities to maintain a "civilized society" despite Van's initial prediction. Although Terry remains stuck in his narrow definition of femininity, Jeff and Van both learn that their beliefs surrounding womanhood and femininity are actually social constructs that defy rather than comply with nature. Entering Herland, all three men had an "easy air of superiority" that made them feel as if they could impose their will and desires on the women. This attitude leads to Terry's attempted rape of his Herlandian wife, Alima, and his expulsion from Herland. Terry's inability to change his perception of women as inferior stands in stark contrast to the realization both Jeff and Van come to: "those 'feminine charms' we are so fond of are not feminine at all, but mere reflected masculinity." In other words, what they considered natural femininity in women was actually a façade that women put on in order to "please [men] because they had to." Jeff decides to stay in Herland, and Van brings a Herlandian wife back to America, highlighting both men's acceptance of Herland's brand of femininity. By the time Van leaves, he notes that he became "well used to seeing women not as females but as people." This means that Van now accepts women as naturally equal rather than naturally inferior objects to be studied—they are not just inferior "females" but "people" just like himself. Gilman created the country of Herland to prove that women are not naturally inferior to men and that popular conceptions of femininity are not rooted in biological fact. The success of Herland as a society proves that the only thing holding women back from achieving the same (if not better) things as men are the social restrictions that men have placed upon them. - Theme: Gender Roles and Relationships. Description: Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland is about a utopian society entirely composed of women and girls. When three male explorers (Van, Terry, and Jeff) enter Herland and begin learning about the history of the Herlandian people, they learn that the women have existed without men for over 2,000 years. With thousands of years and dozens of generations standing between the women of Herland and experience with heterosexual relationships, the Herlandians have peacefully existed without concern for gender roles or romantic relationships. However, the appearance of the three men makes it possible to reestablish the existence of opposite-sex relationships. To that end, Jeff and Celis, Terry and Alima, and Van and Ellador get married. However, it isn't long before the newlyweds are forced to confront their very different lifestyles: the women wish to preserve the egalitarian spirit that characterizes Herlandian culture within their marriages, while the men expect their new wives to take on traditional Western gender roles; that is, to become submissive and passive. Van and Jeff adapt their beliefs about marriage to fit the expectations of their wives and thus enjoy happy marriages; Terry, however, tries to force Alima into a submissive role by attempting to rape her and is consequently expelled from Herland. In Herland, Gilman argues that by abolishing traditional gender roles and practices, men and women can enjoy happier and more equitable relationships. The three American men enter their respective relationships with the assumption that they, as the stronger sex, will fulfill certain roles (such as protectors) while the women will limit their roles to wives and mothers. One day, while Jeff and Celis are walking in the woods, Jeff insists on carrying Celis's basket because, as he explains, "We assume that motherhood is a sufficient burden—that men should carry all the others." While this comment certainly recognizes the towering difficulties associated with motherhood and respects that role, this comment also tacitly implies that married women are limited to the role of mothers—they can no longer work or engage in an active life too far outside the confines of their homes because it is too much of a "burden." However, Van realizes that because the Herlandians had been cut off from men for so long, they had grown up with nothing to fear and "therefore no need of protection." As men, Van, Jeff, and Terry assumed they would take on the role of protectors, but because the women don't need protection the men are unable to fulfill what they consider a vital role in a "normal" relationship. This calls into question whether the women can be reasonably expected to fulfill their assigned role if the men cannot, opening the door to the possibility of a new kind of relationship based on choice and equality rather than the restrictions of traditional gender roles. Another element of traditional gender roles in relationships that the American men and Herlandian women confront is the question of last names. Terry, whose views are representative of the possessive element of traditional Western marriage, explains that "A wife is the woman who belongs to the man." Because of this, the woman takes the man's last name, thus showing who she belongs to and highlighting the commonly held belief that men take ownership of women upon marrying them. When she hears this, Alima exclaims, "Then she just loses [her name] and takes a new one—how unpleasant!" In calling this arrangement "unpleasant," Alima highlights how unfair traditional gender roles appear from an outsider's perspective. After their respective marriages, the three men hope and expect that their wives will simply fall into traditional gender roles, especially in regards to sex. Instead, the men are forced to make a decision: either force their wills on their wives or adapt to a marriage based on equality and choice rather than possession and dominance. Van writes about traditional marriage in Western culture, saying, "The woman may have imagined the conditions of married life to be different; but what she imagined, was ignorant of, or might have preferred did not seriously matter." This means that women are expected to surrender themselves completely to their husbands and husbands are allowed to do whatever they want with their wives. Terry eventually becomes enraged with Alima for not having sex with him after their marriage and tries to rape her, but he's stopped and sentenced to expulsion from Herland. With this, Herland firmly rejects the notion that husbands own their wives and are therefore justified in using force to fulfill their sexual desires. Unlike Terry, Van finds happiness in his marriage because he decides to be with Ellador "on [her] own terms," which includes not having sex until she is comfortable with the idea. This abolishes one of the central gender roles in a traditional marriage—the idea that wives must surrender themselves to their husband's will—and instead establishes equality between Van and Ellador, which leads to her final decision to go to America with Van. Van, Jeff, and Terry all marry Herlandian women with the expectation that their wives will simply and naturally fall into their prescribed gender roles. Even before their marriages, however, Celis, Alima, and Ellador reject American gender roles and traditional practices, calling attention to how meaningless they are and challenging the belief that gender roles are natural. This rejection opens the door to a new kind of marriage—one based on trust, equality, and choice. - Theme: Community. Description: In Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman creates a world full of women who work together for the common good. The Herlandian women are constantly looking to the future, trying to find ways of improving it for the next generation. Rather than losing their individuality in the pursuit of this common goal, however, Herlandian women actually find individual happiness and fulfillment in the idea that they are creating a safe, progressive, and happy community for their daughters and granddaughters. This is something that Van, Jeff, and Terry (20th-century American explorers) have a difficult time wrapping their heads around because they come from a culture in which individual ambition is considered more important than collective progress. In describing Herland, Gilman provides a compelling illustration of the potential a community has for universal happiness and peace when citizens work together for the common good instead of focusing on individual gain. In Herland, poverty has been eliminated and every individual citizen enjoys a high standard of living as a result of their dedication to making life better for everyone. When Van, Terry, and Jeff explain that some women in America work because they are poor, their tutors ask them, "What is poor, exactly?" This question implies that poverty is not something that Herlandians are faced with, meaning all the women there live comfortably and with far greater security than those in America. In describing the appearance of Herlandian towns, Van writes that "Everything was beauty, order, perfect cleanness, and the pleasantest sense of home over it all." The beauty, order, and "sense of home" reflects Herlandians' collective belief that the entire country is their home and should therefore be treated and maintained as such. In Herland, the three men find "a land in a perfect state of cultivation" in which every plant bears edible food. The evident work that had to go into cultivating the land so well is further evidence of the community's dedication to ensuring all its citizens' needs are being met. In Herland, children are seen as "the most precious part of the nation" (emphasis added), which is why children's education is considered a community-wide effort and is geared toward "mak[ing] the best kind of people" to ensure continued happiness for the community as a whole. Van writes that "[Children] were People, too, from the first." This means that children are not treated as inferior beings to be talked down to, but as people deserving of respect; by doing this, the Herlandians prepare their children to treat other children (and, later, adults) the same way. In preparing children for the future, the Herlandians also believe that "real growth lay […] through education." However, this doesn't just mean education in hard facts—personal growth is also encouraged through social education in which the whole community plays a part. By the time Herlandian children reach adulthood, "what one kn[ows], all kn[ow], to a very considerable extent." This means that equal education in childhood results in greater equality in adulthood, which helps promote a sense of unity and oneness that is then passed on to the next generation. Throughout their 2,000-year history, the Herlandians' primary focus was on creating conditions conducive to long-term sustainability. As Jeff, Van, and Terry discover, the most important reason for Herland's success lies in the sense of community that exists throughout the land. Van writes of the children of Herland, "They were sisters, and as they grew, they grew together—not by competition, but by united action." By discouraging competition in favor of "united action," Herlandians eliminate societal divisions that occur as a result of conflicting individual interests. When the three men arrive in Herland, they find that the country's "most conspicuous feature" is the "evident unanimity of these women." This highlights the universal agreement on important decisions that exists in Herland as a result of their sense of unity. Moadine explains the motivation to work for the benefit of future generations rather than immediate personal benefit by saying, "You see, we are Mothers." The Herlandians, then, have a deep, selfless, abiding love for the next generation because of their own motherhood—in making a better future for their individual children, they also seek to make a better future for all children. There is no doubt that Herland is a successful community: poverty has been eliminated, universal education ensures equality from one generation to the next, and there is a true sense of unity and kinship between individual citizens. All of this, as the American men learn, is due to the fact that every individual Herlandian values the future of the entire community over individual gain, thus highlighting the importance of fostering a sense of community in ensuring the long-term success of a country. - Theme: Motherhood and Reproductive Control. Description: As a society full of women, Herland is also a society full of mothers. As Gilman explains in her novel Herland, Herlandian women reproduce through a process called parthenogenesis in which an ovum develops into a baby without being fertilized by a man's sperm. Motherhood is considered sacred and giving birth is the most important part of any Herlandian woman's life, although they are only allowed to reproduce once unless they receive special permission. When three men—Americans named Terry, Van, and Jeff—discover Herland, they struggle to understand the importance the Herlandians place on motherhood. The men ultimately learn that motherhood is the reason for Herland's success—the maternal love that Herlandians feel for their own children extends to all children, and thus they selflessly work to improve their world for their daughters and their daughters' daughters. Motherhood in Herland is starkly contrasted with motherhood in America in the 20th century, as Gilman explores the importance of women having control over their reproductive lives on both the personal and national levels. American motherhood as described by Terry, Van, and Jeff is fraught with stress and frequently comes at a great personal cost. The primary reason for this is that American mothers have very limited control over their reproductive lives. Van describes American motherhood as "involuntary fecundity" in which mothers are "forced to fill and overfill the land." Without any socially acceptable and safe forms of birth control, American women—particularly married ones—have virtually no control over how often they have babies. Unfortunately, it is the lower-class women who are most burdened by an overabundance of children, as shown by Jeff's observation that "the poorer [women are], the more children they ha[ve]." This only perpetuates poverty from one generation to the next as impoverished mothers are unable to give their children adequate education, ample food, or opportunities for advancement. For women of the middle or upper classes, motherhood "[keeps] them in the home." This means that once a woman—even a more affluent one—becomes a mother, she has to give up all other personal ambition or an active life in the public or professional sphere. In Herland, however, women have complete control over their reproductive lives and limit the number of children they each have to one (or two in special cases). This not only makes motherhood more precious and desirable, but also encourages the whole community to take an active role in raising the children. Early in their history, Herlandians realized that overpopulation could create a burden on their country that would lead to poverty, hunger, illness, and even war. For them, limiting reproduction was key in preventing these things from happening and thus creating a happier and more sustainable community. Furthermore, reproductive control helps Herlandians become "Conscious Makers of People." Thanks to reproductive control, motherhood is planned for—a conscious decision that one does not feel compelled to make, and therefore is a positive thing instead of a burden. What's more, the culture of Herland is portrayed as overwhelmingly positive because motherhood is a conscious decision instead of something women are forced into by a lack of reproductive control. In fact, reproductive control and limiting population growth is the primary reason for the happiness of Herlandians. Even though many women want to have more children, the choice not to benefits everyone, especially the children. This is shown in Somel's statement that "the reason our children are […] so fully loved, by all of us, is that we never […] have enough of our own," meaning that the collective love and devotion of the entire community is funneled into the care of all the children, instead of just a select few at the top tiers of society. Van notes that in Ameica "children […] constitute about three-fifths of the population; with [Herlandians], only about one-third." The overwhelming number of children prevents American society from being able to properly care for them, but a lack of reproductive control also prevents Americans from limiting population growth the way Herlandians do. Because Herlandians were able to check population growth relatively early in their history, their present community is able to thrive: there is enough food for everyone, nobody struggles with poverty, education is universally accessible, and no child is considered a burden. This sends a powerful message to readers about the profound benefits access to contraception can have for individual women, their families, and entire communities. - Climax: Terry tries to rape Alima and is expelled from Herland - Summary: Vandyck "Van" Jennings says that the following events are written from his own memories, since he lost the detailed notebooks and pictures taken in Herland itself. Van states that he is going to do his best to describe the country without his old notes because the world needs to know what life there is like. Van writes that the real adventure begins when he, Terry O. Nicholson, and Jeff Margrave are on an expedition unrelated to Herland. Their guide tells them that there is a mysterious country hidden in the wilderness that is comprised entirely of women and their daughters, with no men or boys; however, all the native men who have tried to find the land disappear without a trace. The guide brings them to a river that has evidence of red and blue dye that the guide claims is coming from the land of women. Thirsty for adventure and tantalized by the idea of a country full of women, Terry suggests to Van and Jeff that they should go back to America, prepare for a long expedition, and return to the area to find the mysterious women. Jeff, who believes that a country of women sounds like a utopia, and Van, who is intrigued and wants to study the sociology of an all-female society, both agree with Terry's plan. The men return to America and Terry, who is extremely wealthy, arranges to have a plane and motorboat bring them back to the unnamed jungle where Herland is rumored to be. The men find the river of dye and follow it as far as they can before having to leave the boat and prepare to fly over the mountains. Terry is an experienced pilot, so he flies himself, Van, and Jeff over the mountains. From the sky, the men can see miles of forests, well-developed towns, and even people down below. Terry lands the plane and the men hide it as best as they can in the forest. While the men prepare to explore the country by foot, they talk to each other about what they've seen so far. They theorize that the towns are so well developed that there must be men somewhere, although they might live in another part of the country. As it is, the only people the men were able to see from the sky were women. The three men walk through the forest, closely inspecting the trees. Jeff and Terry realize that every single tree is growing either fruit or nuts and that the land has been very carefully cultivated so that it is producing the maximum amount of food that it can without being overburdened. In fact, the forest is more like a giant garden than a wilderness. The men remain wary, fearing that there must be men ready to protect all the women with violence if they have to. As they walk through the forest, Terry hears stifled giggling coming from somewhere nearby. Looking around, the men notice three figures watching them from the branches of a large tree. The men carefully begin climbing the tree and stop when they are within talking distance of the women. Terry introduces himself, Jeff, and Van by pointing at each and saying their names. One of the women does the same, introducing herself as Ellador and her companions as Alima and Celis. The women refuse to let the men any closer, so Terry holds out a bright necklace to Alima. Van realizes Terry's plan is to grab Alima as soon as she gets close to the necklace, but the plan fails when Alima deftly grabs the necklace and drops from the tree before Terry can grab her. The women take off running and are soon out of reach. Pulling out their binoculars, the men see the women entering the closest city and start walking there. When they enter the city, they notice that it is clean and well-maintained. Before they get far, however, a group of middle-aged women that Terry calls "the Colonels" surrounds them. Jeff, Van, and Terry follow the women to a large gray building. The men become alarmed and decide to fight back and make a run for freedom rather than be taken prisoner. It doesn't take long for them to be overpowered, but in the process Terry shoots his gun twice and a cry from one of the women is heard. The Colonels place anesthetic rags over Terry, Jeff, and Van's faces, which makes them fall asleep. When they wake up, they are in a large room with comfortable beds. They get up together and look around the room, discovering a bathroom with all of their toiletries inside and a closet full of Herlandian clothes, although their own clothes are missing. The men decide to wash up and get dressed before trying to find a way out of their room. The clothes (constituting a one-piece undergarment, stockings, and knee-length tunics) are very comfortable and have numerous pockets, much to the men's surprise. After getting dressed, they knock on the only locked door in the room. The door opens into a large dining hall full of tables, chairs, and sofas. There is plenty of food and 18 women are waiting for them. Each man is placed at his own table opposite a middle-aged woman who gives him a book, evidently designed to teach the men the Herlandian language and for the men to teach the women English. Over the next few weeks, Jeff, Van, and Terry are given daily lessons by the women who gave them their books. These women—Somel, Moadine, and Zava—are tutors who also teach the men Herlandian history, religion, and culture. The tutors also ask the men to teach them about the world outside of Herland. After several weeks, however, Terry becomes restless and insists on trying to escape. One night, the men make a long rope out of their clothes and bedsheets and use it to escape out of their window and over the garden wall below. After traveling through the country by night and sleeping by day for several days, the men find their plane. However, it has been covered by a tough cloth that they can't cut through without knives. Suddenly, Alima, Celis, and Ellador appear a short distance away, giggling while they watch the men try to tear the cloth. Having learned some of the Herlandian language, Van and Terry try to get the women to give them a knife so they can fly their plane away. Alima, Celis, and Ellador refuse and run away when the men desperately lunge at them to steal their knives. The Colonels appear and take the men back to the fortress. The men are surprised that they are not punished for running away, but rather treated like truant children. Their tutors explain that if the men learn the language and promise not to hurt anyone, they will be allowed to go around the country and meet everyone. With this in mind, the men rededicate themselves to their lessons. In bits and pieces, Van, Jeff, and Terry learn that there have been no men in Herland in over 2,000 years. Before that, the country had a lot of men, an army, a king, and access to the sea. However, wars, a volcanic eruption that cut the country off from the rest of the world, and a slave uprising led to the deaths of all the men in the country, leaving the women stranded and forced to rebuild the cities themselves. After 10 years of rebuilding and cultivating the land, one woman mysteriously became pregnant. She had one daughter and then, over the years, four more daughters. These girls were raised and loved by the whole community. When the girls grew up, each of them also had five daughters. This pattern continued for the next 2,000 years. Motherhood became a sacred calling and every woman looked forward to giving birth, which also motivated the women to make improvements to their society that would last from one generation to the next. However, they soon realized that they would have to limit population growth or else there would be too many people to feed. Having cultivated every available inch of their land, the ancient Herlandians decided that the country could support about three million people, which meant each woman could only have one child from then on (although some women, called Over Mothers, were given special permission to have a second child). The Herlandians learn to prevent pregnancies by focusing their physical and mental energy on work as soon as they begin experiencing the feeling of exultation that indicates their body is trying to create a child. When a child is born, the entire community comes together to educate and care for her. This process of reproduction is called parthenogenesis (or "virgin birth") and only results in daughters, never sons. The women establish a religion based on motherhood and make a continuous conscious effort to improve their society to ensure its sustainability for centuries to come. In exchange for information about Herland, Jeff, Van, and Terry tell their tutors about life in the rest of the world, especially America. The women always take notes and, as the men find out later, they also keep charts about topics the men avoid talking about. The men frequently find themselves embarrassed to share certain details of social conditions in America because they are frequently inferior to conditions in Herland, where wars, poverty, and disease have been eliminated. The condition of American women is particularly interesting to Somel, Zava, and Moadine, especially as the men reveal that women are kept in the home and expected to raise children while men do all of the public work. Soon, Jeff, Terry, and Van are invited to travel across the country and give lectures about world history and culture to classes of girls and young women. During their tour of the country, Jeff, Van, and Terry again meet Celis, Alima, and Ellador. Friendship between them soon turns to courtship: Jeff worships Celis, Terry fall madly in love with Alima (although the two of them frequently argue), and Van's friendship with Ellador slowly ripens into deep romantic love. Courting Herlandian women, however, proves to be a struggle—there are no gender roles to dictate behavior and the women themselves have never experienced sexual attraction and struggle to understand why the men do. Eventually, the three couples get married, but marriage proves even more difficult than courtship. Ellador doesn't understand Van's desire to have sex, saying that she can only do it if she feels like it is useful, namely when they are consciously creating a child. Van is initially annoyed by this but agrees to wait until she's ready. Celis and Jeff, however, do have sex and Celis becomes the first woman of Herland to become pregnant by a man in 2,000 years. Terry becomes enraged with Alima because she refuses to start a sexual relationship with him. One night, he hides in her room and attempts to rape her, believing that if he does then she will become submissive to his desires. However, Alima fights back and calls for help, Terry is taken prisoner, and the women decide Terry must leave Herland forever. Van and Ellador decide to return to America with Terry so that Ellador can explore the outside world. All three of them promise not to reveal the location of Herland until (and if) Ellador returns with a thorough report of life outside their peaceful country.

- Genre: Realistic young adult fiction - Title: Heroes - Point of view: First person - Setting: Frenchtown, a neighborhood in the town of Monument (presumably in Massachusetts) - Character: Francis Cassavant. Description: Francis is the novel's protagonist and narrator. A quiet, unassuming boy, Francis is an average kid in his hometown of Monument—neither popular nor an outcast. While he is not particularly athletic, Francis is an avid reader, and he dreams of one day being a hero like the characters in his favorite books. Francis's greatest trauma was witnessing the rape of his childhood sweetheart Nicole Renard by his former hero Larry LaSalle, and knowing that he did nothing to stop it. This one moment of violence shatters the innocence of Francis' idyllic childhood, ultimately propelling him to enlist in the army as a way to discreetly and honorably commit suicide, an attempt that not only fails, but also earns him the title of "hero." In a last ditch effort to evade the misery of his adult life, Francis sets out to murder Larry, a quest that ultimately brings Francis face-to-face with the inescapable complexity of adult problems, forcing him to accept his adulthood and move on with his life. - Character: Larry LaSalle. Description: Larry, a young war veteran from Francis's hometown, is the novel's antagonist. Athletic, graceful, and charismatic, Larry is a hero in the lives of the children of Monument; he is a source of entertainment and encouragement (as he runs the local recreation center, known as the Wreck Center), and he's also proof that even someone from their sleepy town can become a success. Despite outwardly framing his decision to enlist in the army as fulfilling his patriotic duty, Larry goes to war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor looking for revenge, betraying a penchant for violence under his "movie star" exterior. While on furlough, his cruelty comes home when rapes Nicole Renard in the Wreck Center while a terrified Francis stands in the shadows. When confronted by a vengeful Francis, Larry seems defeated and haunted by his past, and he ultimately talks Francis out of committing murder with the promise that he will commit suicide instead. Whether Larry is succumbing to his feelings of guilt and despair or lifting up his former pupil one last time by making Francis "better than he is," his suicide concludes the cycle of violence he started when he raped Nicole. - Character: Nicole Renard. Description: Nicole moves to Frenchtown in the seventh grade and eventually becomes Francis' childhood sweetheart and Larry LaSalle's star dance pupil. When she and Francis first meet, she teases him and he cannot summon the courage to respond, but eventually the two begin an innocent relationship based around weekly dates at the local theater. After Larry rapes her, however, Nicole blames Francis and finds respite from her suffering in the local convent. She hides among the nuns—without ever intending to take vows—until she ultimately leaves Frenchtown to escape her past, moving back to Albany with her parents. At the end of the novel, Francis finds her poised to graduate from parochial school and pursue a career as a teacher. In the conversation that follows, she forgives Francis, but she does not entertain the idea of them becoming a couple again or even remaining in each other's lives. Instead, she wants to leave her shattered childhood firmly in the past. Of all the characters in the novel, she is the one who seems to best cope with the traumas of her past in her attempt to move forward with her life. - Character: Arthur Rivier. Description: Arthur is one of the Frenchtown veterans who frequents the St. Jude Club. He is the only patron to recognize Francis through his wounds and fake identity. He is also one of the only characters besides Francis who will acknowledge the traumatic nature of the war, usually only when drunk. Inebriation aside, he is the first character besides Francis to admit that there were not heroes in World War II, only scared children in soldiers' uniforms. Before the war, Rivier played first base for the Frenchtown Tigers. - Character: Joey LeBlanc. Description: Joey is a childhood friend of Francis known for his boisterous nature and his big mouth. While Francis himself says he never had a best friend, Joey most often accompanied Francis around town. However, he often angered Francis with his "big mouth," and would prophesize an ill-fated end to the Wreck Center. According to Francis, he died on Iwo Jima. - Character: Dr. Abrams. Description: Dr. Abrams is the American surgeon who operates on Francis' face during the war. He attempts to use humor to cheer up his patient; Dr. Abrams also urges Francis to find his plastic surgery practice in Kansas City after the war, promising that he will be able to mitigate the disfigurement. - Character: Sister Mathilde. Description: Sister Mathilde is one of the local nuns who also served as teachers at the St. Jude Parochial School attended by all the Frenchtown children. Francis and Nicole meet for the first time in her 7th grade class. Sister Mathilde is especially notorious for her strict discipline and use of corporal punishments. - Theme: The Simplicity of Childhood. Description: By the time Heroes begins, Francis's childhood is already over. Even before he was traumatized by the horror of war, his innocence was shattered by the rape of his childhood sweetheart, Nicole. Cormier uses flashbacks to present Francis' childhood as an ideal time, characterized by innocence and a tendency to both simplify the world and magnify the significance of trivial problems. By presenting Francis's simple childhood problems alongside his complicated postwar problems, Cormier shows coming of age to be, in part, a process of learning to carry heavy burdens and grapple with their complexity. The main focus of Francis's childhood flashbacks is his relationship with Nicole. These memories, which retain the innocence of childhood, show how simple obstacles can have profound significance in the life of a child. For instance, the largest "battle" Francis fights in these flashbacks is his struggle to answer Nicole in full sentences whenever she teases him. Without any larger or more pressing problems, the quest to win Nicole's affection consumes Francis' life with an exaggerated importance. This childish tendency towards over-simplification is also evident in the younger Francis's ideas about heroism. To the children of Frenchtown, Larry LaSalle is a hero simply because he opens the Wreck Center, providing them with entertainment in an otherwise boring town. In this simplified form, heroism does not carry implications of bravery or morality, only usefulness and popularity. For Francis, this means that he can become a hero to himself and the other children simply by becoming the Wreck Center Ping-Pong champion. Even as World War II comes rolling into Frenchtown, Francis still views the conflict through the simplistic lens of childhood. While he knows that the war means fighting, war is an abstract idea in Francis's mind, something that happens far away in "exotic" locations. For him, the more immediate signs of the war are ones to be met with excitement: Uncle Louis is rumored to be involved with a secret wartime project at the Monument Comb Shop, for example, which thrills Francis and makes him wonder if there might soon be spies in Frenchtown. However, when the war arrives home in the form of Larry being on furlough, Francis's veil of innocence cannot endure. After Larry rapes Nicole, Francis is suddenly faced with an adult problem that he cannot simplify—a problem that dwarfs all his previous struggles—and he is woefully unprepared to face it. Witnessing Larry raping Nicole destroys Francis's innocence, which means that, in a way, Larry is responsible for the abrupt end of Francis's childhood. In that light, Francis's subsequent quest to murder Larry can be seen as a misguided attempt to deny adulthood and return to the innocence of childhood—a way of not grappling with the reality of his problems. Francis's ultimate inability to pull the trigger when given the chance to kill Larry signals Francis' full transition into adulthood and a willingness to face his problems rather than deny them, repress them, or run from them. Thus, the novel can be seen as the story of Francis growing into himself by realizing that adult life is full of pain, difficulty, and ambiguity. A central part of adulthood is learning to grapple with complex problems rather than simplifying them or running away. - Theme: Flawed Heroes. Description: As the title suggests, Heroes raises significant questions about what constitutes heroism. Francis, the novel's protagonist, and Larry LaSalle, the antagonist, have both received the Silver Star medal for heroism in combat. However, Cormier shows a significant disconnect between the public perception of both men's "heroic" acts and the private motivations for those acts. By exploring the selfishness, cowardice, and even malevolence of publicly recognized heroes, Cormier questions whether heroism can ever be unambiguously ethical. Cormier blurs the line between heroism and selfishness from the very moment Larry announces his decision to enlist in the Marines following the attack on Pearl Harbor. After informing the Wreck Center children of his decision, Larry declines their applause explaining that he was simply doing his patriotic duty along with countless other men across the country. Outwardly, he appears to be a devoted patriot answering a call to duty. However, Larry's underlying desire for bloody revenge is later betrayed when he says—with an uncharacteristic anger—that he wasn't going to let "the Japs get away with this." Here, there is no mention of joining the war effort to stop the atrocities being committed by the Nazis, only the desire to punish the Japanese. By disguising the desire for revenge as the nobility of fulfilling a patriotic obligation, Cormier shows how morality can be manipulated, ultimately allowing people to get away with doing the right things for the wrong reasons. Furthermore, Cormier uses Larry's Silver Star medal to question the value of wartime heroics that stem from an intrinsic desire for self-preservation in a kill-or-be-killed situation. After several vague references to Larry's feats of bravery in the South Pacific, it is finally revealed that Larry earned the Silver Star for capturing an enemy machine-gun nest in order to save the lives of his platoon. However, had he failed to act, he would have certainly been killed along with his fellow soldiers. Thus, his heroic act, while brave, was also the only logical choice available to him. Larry's rape of Nicole while on furlough shows that he is capable of acts of extreme violence in a civilian context, as well. The contrast between his celebrated violence towards enemies in combat and his reprehensible violence towards Nicole—two acts whose ethics are distinguished only by society's approval of war—implicitly questions the morality of wartime violence, regardless of whether it is socially deemed "heroic." With Francis, on the other hand, Cormier presents what appears to be the closest approximation of "true" heroism; when Francis fell onto a live grenade, he was willing to sacrifice his life to save the lives of his platoon. However, when Francis reveals that he had really thrown himself on the grenade as a way to commit suicide without disgracing his family, his act of selfless bravery no longer serves as a foil for Larry's self-serving heroism. In the end, both men are flawed; neither of the novel's supposed "heroes" quite embodies the selflessness, bravery, or courage that one would expect of a "true hero." Cormier's skepticism of the possibility of "pure" heroism is best articulated during Francis's interaction with a drunken Arthur Rivier (a veteran), who claims that there were no war heroes, only scared children. Cormier's lack of a hard and fast definition of "true heroism" allows the reader to experience the same sense of confusion and ambiguity that the characters do, and his portrayal of flawed heroes ultimately proposes that "heroism" is a more of a myth than a reality. - Theme: Religion. Description: Through the lens of Francis's narration, Cormier presents a world that is suffused with religion, and the near-constant presence of religion shines a light, in particular, on the relationship between religion and suffering. The most notable manifestation of this relationship is the association of religion with violence. From a young age, violence and religion were linked in Francis's mind, particularly due to the behavior of the nuns at his school who would use their religious authority to justify violent discipline, such as hitting students with rulers. Francis lived in fear of this violence, which in turn became central to his understanding of religion. After the war, this association between religion and violence continues, as Francis includes Larry (the man he has set out to murder) in his prayers. While Francis admits to feeling guilty about that part of his litany, his prayer does not change his mind about his intent to murder—he has been taught to pray for his enemies, which apparently left a stronger impression than his religion's prohibition on violence. This makes sense, since Larry has always understood religion and violence to be compatible. Furthermore, when Francis is finally face-to-face with Larry, he aims his pistol at Larry's heart and tells him to say his prayers. Since religion was shown to be such a formative part of Francis' life, readers assume that he is being sincere; he believes that this act of violence demands a religious component. Even if Cormier had presented religion as promoting peace and forgiveness instead of violence, Heroes suggests that religion alone would not be a powerful enough force to change a person's violent behavior. This is because Cormier sees religion as so common that people have become desensitized to it. For example, after the Wreck Center closes, the children of Frenchtown hang out either in the schoolyard of St. Jude's or in front of the town drugstore. By making the churchyard and drugstore equivalent, Cormier implies that the children do not consider religious institutions to be more serious or important places than anywhere else. This banality is also evident in Francis' speech patterns; throughout his narration, Francis uses religious imagery when religion doesn't seem particularly fitting or relevant. For example, when he defeats Larry in a high-stakes game of Ping-Pong, he turns to see a joyous Nicole, describing her as having her "hands joined together as if in prayer, eyes half closed as if making herself an offering." By associating the act of prayer with a trivial, secular thing like a Ping-Pong game, Cormier is using—or perhaps intentionally overusing—this intense religious imagery to show that for Francis, religion is indeed as seemingly banal as a Ping-Pong tournament. Additionally, like a Ping-Pong tournament, religion is not morally forceful enough to make Francis contemplate his behavior or ethics. Thus, by portraying religion as both linked with violence and as a mundane part of life, Cormier argues that religion is unable to provide solutions to the suffering found in the lives of the characters. For instance, Nicole demonstrates the ineffectiveness of religion when she withdraws into the nun's convent after being raped. Instead of taking the holy vows or even using religion to work through her trauma, she reveals that she was simply hiding among the nuns until her family left Monument for good. For her, religion was literally only a temporary distraction from her suffering. In a similar manner, Francis demonstrates the ineffectiveness of religion when he chooses the church steeple as the location for his first suicide attempt, taking away any possible symbolism of the church as a sanctuary or a place of salvation or redemption. Furthermore, Cormier heightens the sense of the impotence of religion by showing GI's using empty religious language in the face of horrors. When Francis and his platoon sweep through an occupied village, one soldier says, "Jesus"—according to Francis, the entire platoon knew that the soldier really meant "I'm scared." Here, there is no expectation of receiving any aid or comfort by invoking religion. In fact, this scene is an allusion to the 23rd Psalm, which is an invocation of God for protection, yet Cormier inverts this allusion by ending the scene with the death of two GI's. Ultimately, Cormier questions the usefulness of a religion that is not only incapable of mitigating human suffering, but can also at times create it. Thus, in a world where suffering is the norm and religion is inseparable from suffering, it logically follows that religion will eventually be normalized to the point of becoming mundane. It is important to note, however, that Cormier does not outright argue that religion is pointless. Instead, he uses individual characters' actions and thoughts to offer insights into the relationship between religion and human suffering as seen through the lens of the sufferers. Like with his arguments about heroism, Cormier comes just shy of any definitive proclamations, leaving the reader to ascertain religion's value, or lack thereof, for themselves. - Theme: Appearance vs. Reality. Description: Throughout Heroes, Cormier presents a disconnection between outward appearances and internal realities. By revealing the contradictions of characters, places, and even the war itself, Cormier highlights how pleasant appearances will never be able to erase the pain and suffering they conceal—and, in certain instances, they may even exacerbate the problem. In Heroes, a new appearance often has the purpose of attempting to erase an uncomfortable past. For instance, Francis' scarf, hat, and bandages serve the practical purpose of hiding his injuries from the public, but they also grant him a degree of anonymity when he returns to Frenchtown, which enables him to literally hide from his past. However, his new identity does not take away any of the pain he feels when he stalks the streets of his hometown, recalling all the painful memories of his adolescence. This disconnection between appearance and reality is also seen in the renovations to the Wreck Center. While the building takes on a new purpose and a new exterior, the memory of its bloody past as the site of a brutal murder still lingers in the minds of many characters. Ultimately, Joey LeBlanc's constant predictions that the Wreck Center, despite its change in appearance, will continue to be a site of suffering come to pass when Nicole is raped. On a societal scale, Cormier explores how public perceptions of the war were shaped by unrealistically positive media depictions. Specifically, he examines how the war was packaged and presented to the public as glamorous or mysterious. For instance, the "war reels" that preceded films at the local Frenchtown cinema cast the war as exciting and exotic and conflated war footage, in viewers' minds, with harmless Hollywood movies. By associating the excitement and glamor of the movies with the war, the war reels hid the gruesome reality of combat from the public. Similarly, Cormier describes how this also occurred on the radio, where news of the war was punctuated by catchy "wartime songs," thereby using a veneer of excitement to mask the violence that the news was relaying to the public. Cormier contrasts these media portrayals of an exciting and innocuous war with accounts of the war from veterans who reveal the gritty reality of combat. Furthermore, several veterans, including Arthur Rivier, lament that the war was nothing like the papers or the newsreels portrayed it to be. Thus, the euphemistic public image of the war made it harder for soldiers and veterans to cope with the violent reality of combat. Cormier also suggests that, in addition to the media, the characters themselves create false images of the war in order to hide from its violent reality. Namely they use celebrations to mask pain, or they focus only on a particular part of the war to make it easier to process. For instance, to the patrons of the St. Jude Club, the "Frenchtown Warriors" scrapbook is a catalogue of heroes, showcasing the bravery of local boys. In reality, this celebration of bravery masks the fact that the scrapbook really represents Frenchtown's personal involvement in the violence of war. Frenchtown residents employ a similar tactic when Larry returns on furlough after winning his Silver Star and the entire town throws him a party. While Larry had obviously killed enemy soldiers, the town chooses to focus instead on the abstract idea of his heroism in order to avoid the gruesome reality of Larry's enlistment. In fact, throughout the entire novel, the only person who talks about the death of any Frenchtown boys is Francis, who is unable to return to the sanitized view of the war he held before his enlistment. Cormier ultimately shows that all of these attempts to use appearance to conceal reality are dangerous. For individual characters, putting on a false appearance does nothing to help them process their past traumas—in fact, it isolates them and intensifies their suffering. Francis succumbs to his war flashbacks alone in his room at night, Larry rapes Nicole, and Arthur Rivier breaks down in the alley, away from the posturing of the St. Jude Club and its catalogue of heroes. The war reels are doubly dangerous. Not only do they mislead men into a brutal war, but the disillusioned men coming home feel pressure to align their stories with the media image of war, which only makes their suffering worse. Thus, Heroes shows the consequences of not dealing with difficult realities head-on, and suggests that to run from demons only makes them stronger. - Climax: Francis confronts Larry LaSalle with the intent of killing him. - Summary: The novel opens as Francis Cassavant returns to his hometown of Monument after serving in World War II. Francis begins his story by explaining the gruesome injuries he sustained when he fell on a live grenade and saved his platoon. His face was permanently disfigured, but he ultimately survived and was awarded the Silver Star medal in recognition of his bravery. After recovering in a veterans hospital in England, Francis returns home with one goal: to murder the man who had sent him to war, his childhood hero and fellow Silver Star recipient Larry LaSalle. To that end, Francis disguises his identity from the residents of his hometown, giving a fake name at his boarding house and always traveling with a scarf and hat to cover his wounds. As he stalks about Frenchtown hunting for any news of Larry, he meets other local veterans and begins to frequent their favorite bar, the St. Jude Club. At the bar, the other veterans talk eagerly of their future plans now that the war is over, but never of their experiences overseas. Eventually, one the veterans, Arthur Rivier, recognizes Francis but agrees to keep his identity secret. Not long after, Francis encounters Arthur drunkenly slumped over in alley. As Francis helps him, Arthur begins to pour out his emotions, lamenting that nobody wants to talk about the horrible truth of what happened during the war, and exclaiming that the war wasn't a stage for glamorous, heroic soldiers, but merely a group of terrified children caught up in a violent struggle for survival. Through various flashbacks, Francis relates the story of his simple and innocent childhood, which was centered on his quest to win the affection of Nicole Renard. While Francis was well liked by his fellow children, he was not particularly popular or even notable, and thus he struggled at first to win the attention of his sweetheart. However, his luck began to change with the arrival of Larry and the opening of the town's new recreation center, which was dubbed the "Wreck Center" due to its shoddy refurbishment and its bloody history as the site of a wedding that turned into a mass shooting. Under Larry's leadership, the children of Frenchtown flooded the Wreck Center; Larry had a special talent for making even the most quiet children feel appreciated and talented. Under Larry's tutelage, Francis became the Ping-Pong champion, which secured Nicole's attention, and made him a hero among the children of Frenchtown. Hailed as a hero and inching ever closer to his childhood sweetheart, Francis seemed to be living in a perfect world, but the attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent entry of the United States into WWII changed everything. Larry was the first young man of Monument to enlist in the armed forces, leaving the Wreck Center closed in the wake of his departure. Meanwhile, Francis and Nicole fell in love. Suddenly, however, Monument received news that their native son, Larry LaSalle, was awarded the Silver Star for heroism in the South Pacific, and with it, a furlough to return home. During the town's party for Larry's return, Larry rounded up his old Wreck Center crew to sneak into the Wreck Center after hours. After a night of fun, people began to leave until only Larry, Nicole, and Francis were left. Larry asked Francis to leave so that he could have one last dance with Nicole, and though Francis felt that something was amiss, he did as Larry told him. At the last minute, though, Francis chose to remain hidden in the shadows where he heard Larry rape Nicole. Paralyzed by fear and confusion, Francis remained hidden until Nicole burst from the darkness and realized that Francis had been standing there the whole time. Betrayed and disgusted, she left without speaking to Francis. Larry, unaware that Francis had witnessed his crime, left Frenchtown the next morning to return to combat. Distraught, Francis waited outside of Nicole's house for days until she finally came out and angrily sent him away. That night, contemplating suicide, Francis climbed the steeple of the town church, but ultimately decided that to take his own life in such an obvious way would only disgrace his family. The next day, he altered his birth certificate and enlisted in the Army, hoping to die "with honor" in combat. Back in the present time, Larry resurfaces in Frenchtown, and Francis puts a pistol in his pocket and tracks him down. Since Larry and Francis were friends (and Larry doesn't know Francis witnessed the rape), Larry receives him warmly. As the two men talk, Francis confesses that the true reason he went to war was because he wanted to die, and then he reveals that he witnessed the rape. Francis draws his gun, intent on avenging Nicole, but Larry explains to Francis how much he lost in the war, drawing his own gun and speaking of how he, too, has contemplated suicide. Saving Francis from the burden of murder, Larry convinces Francis to leave. Out on the street, Francis hears a single gunshot from Larry's apartment. With that part of his past settled, Francis tracks down Nicole, who has moved to Albany. Their conversation is awkward when they meet, and Nicole does not allow the possibility that their relationship might resume, but she does apologize for blaming Francis for her trauma. When she asks Francis what his plans are, he gives the answer of one of his fellow veterans from the St. Jude Club: finish high school and attend college on the GI Bill. When they run out of conversation topics, Francis asks to see Nicole again, and she declines and leaves. As he heads into the train station, Francis thinks of all the things he could do next: find his war buddy Enrico, find the doctor who said he could fix his disfigured face, start a career as a writer like Nicole wanted him to do when they were younger. Then he thinks of Nicole one last time, along with the gun in his duffel bag and the possibility of his own suicide. Ultimately, he slings his bag comfortably over his shoulders and heads for the next train out of Albany, giving no clues as to his final decision or destination.

- Genre: In the larger sense, this story belongs to the 20th century short story modernist fiction genre. Hemingway was famous for his "Iceberg Theory" of fiction writing, which holds that powerful writing relies most on what it omits, what is concealed out of the reader's sight. The theory's name stems from its analogy with icebergs; just as one can only see the small sliver of an iceberg exposed above the water, so should the minimalist style of fiction allude to but not reveal its implied and "deeper" meaning. Beginning his writing career as a journalist, Hemingway favored clipped, impersonal statements over subtle, emotional, or poetic styles of writing. His fiction style followed this model of objective reporting, hinting obliquely at characters' feelings and motives. - Title: Hills Like White Elephants - Point of view: This story engages in delicate shifts of free indirect discourse, in which the reader slips into both the man and the girl's points of view. However, in line with Hemingway's distinctive style, the story avoids explicit expressions of perspective in favor of journalistic precision and impersonal objectivity. - Setting: Train station near the river Ebro in Spain. - Character: The Man. Description: In accordance with Hemingway's characteristically sparse style, this main character is identified only as "the man" and occasionally "the American" without any identifying descriptors or background information. When the story opens, he is waiting at a train station near the river Ebro in Spain with the girl, a young woman with whom he has a romantic relationship and who has recently become pregnant. The only clue as to why he and she are at this station is the luggage beside them, covered with "labels…from all the hotels where they had spent nights." As the man and the girl talk, it becomes evident that the man is unhappy about the pregnancy, though the issue is never directly mentioned. While the girl seems resistant to the idea of having an abortion, the man argues that "it's all perfectly natural" and the two will be happy as they "were before" if she goes through with the procedure. The man is clearly the one who holds the most power in this relationship, believing that he knows what is best for both of them. He undermines and ultimately grows angry with the girl's attempts to express her differing feelings about her pregnancy, and in the end seems to get his way. - Character: The Girl (Jig). Description: The girl is the female companion of the story's other main character, the man. Unlike the man, the girl's name (or nickname) is revealed to the reader when the man is imploring her to get an abortion. However, this is the only information we have as to her background. She seems to be younger than the waitress, who is identified as the woman as opposed to a girl. The girl and the man are both tourists in Spain waiting for their train to Madrid when the story opens. The girl does not understand Spanish and relies on the man to translate their waitress's words. In her interactions with the man she is generally younger and more hopeful; in turn, her perspective on her pregnancy is one of opportunity, a chance to transform her relationship with the man. However, she ultimately defers to the man's decisions, silencing her own point of view despite an obvious, though unstated, sense of sadness and desperation about it. - Character: The Woman (the Waitress). Description: Throughout the story the girl and the man sit drinking outside the train station bar where the woman is their waitress. Throughout the man and the girl's conversation about whether to get an abortion, the woman comes and goes bringing them beer and liquor. The woman speaks only Spanish, though Hemingway writes her words as English, and the man must translate the woman's words for the girl. This situation requiring the man's translation for the girl characterizes the relationship between the man and the girl and the man's position of power over her. - Theme: The Limits of Language. Description: As in most of his fiction, Hemingway is interested in where language breaks down between individuals and how what is unsaid or what is unspeakable can define and divide individuals. At a purely stylistic level, Hemingway exposes the inadequacy of language through his use of unnamed characters and minimalist, stripped down sentences. Without using details to describe how "the man" or "the girl" look or sound, Hemingway instead chooses to focus almost exclusively on the dialogue between the two charactersto suggest the growing alienation between them. The story's very title of "Hills Like White Elephants," with its use of simile to gesture at the story's underlying tension of a pregnancy neither character feels able to directly mention, reflects the characters' critical loss for words.Beyond narrative style, the conversation between "the man" and "the girl" hinges on the inadequacy of what they can say or not say to one another. The man continually misunderstands or contradicts the girl, to the point that the girl begs him to stop talking at all. Though they mirror each other's language, repeating the same words, the effect is as of an echo chamber—words repeated meaninglessly without actual communication. Finally, the looming decision that drives the whole story—whether or not the girl will get an abortion—goes unnamed by either character. They both allude to it but seem unable to discuss it directly, allowing the conversation to lapse into silences or angry outbursts instead.An added layer to the issue of the failure of language in this story is the fact that the events are unfolding between two English-speaking tourists in Spain. Throughout the story as the characters drink,the waitress intermittently enters the scene, speaking in Spanish, which the man must translate for the girl. This situation draws attention to the idea of translation, and yet also underscores how, ironically, even though they speak the same language, it is the man and girl who are in the most need of a translator. - Theme: Choice. Description: Significantly, this story unfolds as the man and the girl wait at a station for a train to Madrid. The heat is oppressive and the two are forced to wait, drinking away the afternoon till the train arrives. This sense of agonizing waiting permeates the story from the setting itself—a hot, dry river valley at a literal crossroads—to the crucial decision the couple is trying to make: whether or not to have an abortion. To leave or to stay, to embrace parenthood or to reject it,to give up one's own desires for the desires of another, are key decisions at play here.The delayed resolution of these decisions forms the driving action of the story. - Theme: Freedom vs Family. Description: As the story makes clear from the beginning, both the man and the girl are accustomed to a free, uncommitted lifestyle. When the man looks at their combined luggage, it is covered with "labels…from all the hotels where they had spent nights." The two of them have spent a long time traveling together, going wherever they wanted without restriction. The decision to carry through with the girl's pregnancy and create a family would completely alter the nature of their relationship. They would have to settle down. Rather than spending nights in hotel after hotel, they would have to build a home of their own. The man very definitively doesn't want to "settle down" in this way, and thinks it will be easy not to. He is firm in his conviction that this pregnancy is "the only thing that's made us unhappy" and that getting the abortion will be "perfectly simple" and "perfectly natural." In a sense, he thinks that the pregnancy is something they can just leave behind the way they would leave a hotel they'd already stayed in.The girl, on the other hand, maintains a wholly different attitude toward her pregnancy. To her, having a child with her partner promises a world where "we could have everything," an altogether different definition of freedom. Ultimately, however, she tentatively agrees to the procedure, surrendering her own freedom of choice to a different sort of idea of "family," as she hopes that doing so will restore the man's love for her. The story implies, though, through the girl's initial resistance and then her perhaps too-strong statement that nothing is wrong, that the girl will not be able to so "freely" move on from the pregnancy, and that the man's insistence on maintaining his definition of freedom has impinged on the girl's own freedom. - Theme: Men, Women, and Relationships. Description: At the heart of "Hills Like White Elephants" is Hemingway's examination of the man and girl's deeply flawed relationship, a relationship that champions "freedom" at the cost of honesty, respect, and commitment. In this sense, the man and girl represent stereotypes of male and female roles: the male as active and the female as passive. In this gender framework, the man makes the decisions and the female complies. However, as the story illustrates, such a power dynamic is fundamentally flawed and destructive. The man is domineering in all his interactions, andthough he pays lip service to wanting to make the girl happy, his decisions are ultimately guided by his own desires. He wants the girl to seekan abortion in order to maintain the freedom he enjoys, but he wants it to be her decision. For the man,it is not enough for her to do what he wants, but she must also want what he wants. The man seeks to control both the girl's actions and intentions as though she were a child, a deeply unhealthy and damaging pattern of behavior. At first the girl is resistant to the man's emotional manipulation. She attempts to paint a picture of the future life she and the man could have together if they were to have a child. The man, though, is unwilling even to entertain these notions, and yet he phrases his refusal in the manipulative language of love, claiming that "I don't want anybody but you." Eventually the girl acquiesces to the man's overbearing insistence, surrendering her personal freedom to his wishes. At the story's conclusion, when he asks her if she feels better, the girl's stiff reply reveals her true feelings: "I feel fine. There's nothing wrong with me. I feel fine." This final act of concealment and self-suppression suggests that this relationship, so representative of the traditional dynamic between men and women at the time,will remain stalled in its present unhealthy stateuntil it likely falls apart completely. - Climax: In such a compressed scene with such stripped down prose, it is difficult to determine an exact climax. However, tensions between the man and girl boil to the point where she threatens to scream if he keeps talking about getting an abortion. In a moment of desperation, faced with the impossibility of their talking, the man moves the luggage to the other side of the station. This moment signifies the first physical separation between the man and the girl in the story. - Summary: The story opens with the American man and the girl sitting outside a bar at a train station near the Ebro river in Spain. The two sit drinking beer and liquor in the sweltering heat and sun light as they wait for their train to Madrid. A Spanish woman, a waitress, comes in and out of the bar through a beaded curtain bringing the two beer and anise. The man and girl have been traveling together as a romantic couple, but at the moment the two are bickering. As the two sit drinking alcohol, it becomes clear that the girl is pregnant and the man is encouraging her to get an abortion, though neither directly names the issue they are discussing. The man argues that getting an abortion will restore their relationship to what it was before. As the two dance around the issue at hand, the girl comments on the barren but beautiful hills around them and the liquor they're drinking. As the man continues to pursue the issue of the abortion however, the girl begs him to stop talking. The man excuses himself to move his bags to the other side of the station. In this moment of separation, he looks with relief at the other travelers "waiting reasonably for the train," suggesting that he is frustrated and angry with the girl for not acceding to his request. When he returns to their table at the bar and asks if she feels better, she responds that she feels fine and that there's nothing wrong.

- Genre: Young Adult Novel; Mystery - Title: Hoot - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: Coconut Cove, Florida - Character: Roy Eberhardt. Description: The protagonist of the novel, Roy is a middle school student who recently moved to Coconut Cove, Florida with his parents, Mr. Eberhardt and Mrs. Eberhardt. The family has moved a lot because Mr. Eberhardt works for the government, but Roy considers his previous home in Montana his real home and thus struggles to adjust to life in Florida. Roy begins to feel more at home when he becomes involved with Mullet Fingers's campaign to save native burrowing owls who are living on the future site of a Mother Paula's pancake house. As a nature lover and as someone with a firm sense of right and wrong, Roy agrees with Mullet Fingers that it's extremely unjust that a corporation can pay to bury baby owls. With his dad's help, he reveals that Mother Paula's isn't following the rules and organizes a student protest against the company. As Roy does this, he also uses his relative privilege to help Beatrice and Mullet Fingers, sometimes getting into trouble in the process as when he lets Mullet Fingers assume his identity at the hospital to get medical care. Additionally, Roy outsmarts Dana, the school bully, ultimately getting Dana arrested. Roy ends the novel feeling both secure and at home in Florida. - Character: Mullet Fingers/The Running Boy. Description: Mullet Fingers, whose name is eventually revealed to be Napoleon Bridger, is Beatrice's stepbrother and Lonna's son. His nickname comes from his ability to catch mullet (a type of tiny fish) with his bare hands. Roy first sees Mullet Fingers running, barefoot, along the sidewalk and becomes transfixed by the strange boy. As Roy gets to know Mullet Fingers and later, Beatrice, he comes to greatly admire Mullet Fingers. Mullet Fingers has always loved animals and nature and has never gotten along with Lonna. In fact, she's tried to send him away to several military schools, but he keeps running away—and the last time he did so, she didn't bother to look for him and said outright she didn't want him. Thus, Mullet Fingers lives on his own in Coconut Cove's wild areas, with Beatrice and later, , Roy, supporting him. Mullet Fingers is the true Mother Paula's vandal, as he wants to protect the burrowing owls that live on the construction site. A lot of his vandalism entails leaving dangerous animals, like alligators and venomous snakes, on the property. When Roy's protest in support of the owls is successful and the construction project shuts down, Mullet Fingers disappears. However, Roy suspects that Mullet Fingers is still lurking around Coconut Cove. - Character: Beatrice Leep/The Girl. Description: Beatrice is a hulking, athletic blond girl at Trace Middle School who eventually becomes Roy's friend. In addition to having a reputation as a skilled athlete, Beatrice is also feared: she once broke a football player's collarbone when he touched her bottom. Though she attempts to intimidate Roy, Roy sees through her tough demeanor, and she eventually begins to trust him. She reveals to Roy that the running boy, Mullet Fingers, is her stepbrother, and for his safety, she's the only person who knows he's in town. Her home life is difficult and borders on unsafe, as her dad, Leon, and stepmom, Lonna regularly get into physically violent fights. And Beatrice is also mature beyond her years, as she cares for Mullet Fingers and makes sure her dad has meals to eat. As she gets to know and trust Roy, she proves herself to be a loyal friend who, like Roy, values doing the right thing and standing up for the weak and innocent, whether that be Roy or the burrowing owls. - Character: Dana Matherson. Description: One of the novel's antagonists, Dana is an older bully at Trace Middle School who rides the bus with Roy. He's huge, strong, and smokes cigarettes, though he's not very smart. And because he's terrified all the students at Trace Middle with his violent and incessant bullying, nobody is brave enough to report him—so therefore, as far as the administration is concerned, Dana isn't actually a bully. Dana targets Roy specifically, though this never ends well for Dana: Roy is small and spry enough to dodge many of Dana's hits, and Roy even ends up breaking Dana's nose on accident. Ultimately, Dana gets his comeuppance when Roy tricks him into trying to break into the construction trailer at the Mother Paula's construction site. Dana is arrested for vandalizing the site, and because he has a previous criminal record, he's incarcerated at the local juvenile detention center. - Character: Officer David Delinko. Description: Officer Delinko is a young police officer who works in Coconut Cove. He's bored with his job and dreams of being a detective one day, so he's intrigued when he begins responding to claims of vandalism at the future site of a Mother Paula's pancake house. Believing that catching the vandal will prove he has what it takes to be a detective, Delinko volunteers to work without pay surveilling the site—but this backfires when Delinko falls asleep and the vandal spray paints his cruiser, landing Delinko on desk duty as punishment. For much of the novel, Delinko is righteous, pushy, and unquestioningly believes in finding out who the vandal is. Though Delinko redeems himself at work when he catches Dana (whom his superiors insist is the vandal), Delinko privately realizes Dana isn't at fault. He also begins to wonder if he's doing the right thing trying to catch the vandal at all when he sees the burrowing owls living on the property and realizes that doing his job right will consequences for the baby owls. And because of this, he becomes an unexpected ally to Roy, Mullet Fingers, and Beatrice on the day of the groundbreaking ceremony. - Character: Curly. Description: Curly is the foreman at the Mother Paula's construction site in Coconut Cove, Florida. Curly is bald, has no sense of humor, and is desperate to keep his job. This is why, he implies, he's more than willing to pretend that there are no burrowing owls on the site—acknowledging their existence would lead Chuck Muckle to fire Curly immediately. Mullet Fingers, the real Mother Paula's vandal, regularly tricks and thwarts Curly by pulling up survey stakes, setting venomous snakes loose on the property, and even putting alligators and Curly's pistol in the portable toilets. Though Curly thinks of himself as brave and competent, he's humorously afraid of the wild animals that end up on the site. Though Curly seems willing to support the Mother Paula's corporation and its plan to build on the burrows as long as it's convenient for him, once Muckle fires him and the project is scrapped, Curly acknowledges the owls' existence and even admits that they're cute. - Character: Mr. Eberhardt. Description: Roy's dad, Mr. Eberhardt, works for the Department of Justice; it's implied that he's particularly skilled in interrogation. However, Roy doesn't know or even care all that much what his dad does for work, though he often fears telling his dad things—such as Mullet Fingers's nickname or Dana's name—because he's worried his dad will get the kids in more trouble than they might get in otherwise. This fear seems somewhat overblown, as Mr. Eberhardt is certainly interested in justice. He's also more concerned, for instance, with the fact that Mullet Fingers isn't safe at home than he is that Mullet Fingers isn't attending school. Mr. Eberhardt encourages Roy to be smart, safe, honest, and to stand up for what he believes is right. He even becomes an unexpected ally when Roy is trying to fight the Mother Paula's development project: Mr. Eberhardt is the one to discover that the company is missing an Environmental Impact Statement and consult a lawyer. - Character: Mrs. Eberhardt. Description: Mrs. Eberhardt is Roy's mother. She's a kind and generous woman who encourages Roy to follow rules and make good choices, but she also pushes him to follow his heart and do what he believes is right. She's extremely proud of him after the lunchtime protest in support of the burrowing owls at the Mother Paula's building site, though Roy infers that she's not actually all that concerned about the owls—her focus is on her son. - Character: Miss Hennepin. Description: Miss Hennepin is the vice principal at Trace Middle School. A stern woman, Miss Hennepin is nevertheless difficult for Roy to take seriously, due to a long hair growing on her upper lip that changes color nearly every time Roy sees her. Mr. Eberhardt and Mrs. Eberhardt, meanwhile, take issue with Miss Hennepin for what they see as her cowardice: she refuses to punish Dana for choking Roy, despite having proof Dana did so, for fear that Dana's parents would sue the school. At the end of the novel, Roy is amused to hear that Miss Hennepin told reporters she encouraged kids to protest in support of the burrowing owls—from Roy's experiences with her, Miss Hennepin would never do such a thing. - Character: Chuck Muckle. Description: One of the novel's antagonists, Chuck Muckle is the vice president of corporate relations for the Mother Paula's pancake house company. He's a suave older man, with wavy silver hair, sunglasses, and impeccable suits. Muckle is also clearly corrupt and drunk on power. It's implied that he knew about the burrowing owls on the prospective Coconut Cove restaurant site and was involved in hiding the Environmental Impact Statement. He also regularly taunts and threatens Curly when the Mother Paula's vandal is on the loose. At the groundbreaking ceremony (which turns into an impromptu protest), Muckle loses his temper and embarrasses himself by hacking up a bucket of rubber snakes and choking a reporter. He's demoted and forced to take an anger management course, but he ends up quitting his job and becoming a cruise director. - Character: Kimberly Lou Dixon. Description: Kimberly Lou Dixon is a former Miss America runner-up who plays Mother Paula in commercials. She's also just beginning to get into film, so the hurry to break ground on the Coconut Cove Mother Paula's site is mostly due to the fact that Dixon will start filming a new movie soon. Though she's relatively young and gorgeous, she has an absurdly sandpapery voice. At the groundbreaking, once Roy alerts her to the burrowing owls' existence, Dixon joins the protest. She later breaks her contract with the Mother Paula's corporation and goes public about her lifetime membership to the Audubon Society. - Character: Leon Leep. Description: Leon is Beatrice's dad. A former NBA player who retired more than a decade ago, he hasn't yet figured out what he wants to do with himself—and so he spends his days watching television. Following his divorce from Beatrice's mom, he married Lonna. Though Leon seems like his heart is in the right place—he has no issue with his stepson, Mullet Fingers, and loves Beatrice—Leon is totally checked out. Beatrice prepares all his meals, and for the most part, he seems unaware of how cruel and selfish Lonna is. He and Lonna, however, do get in several loud and violent fights, one of which frightens Beatrice enough that she runs away to spend the night at Roy's house. - Character: Lonna Leep. Description: One of the novel's antagonists, Lonna is Mullet Fingers's mom and Beatrice's stepmother. She married Beatrice's dad, Leon, several years ago. Lonna is cruel, selfish, and controlling—when she couldn't stop Mullet Fingers from rescuing animals or running off, she began sending him away to military schools. The last time, when he ran away, she never looked for him and told Beatrice outright that she doesn't want him anymore. She's also cruel to Beatrice and forces Beatrice to essentially act as a maid in the Leep home, though Beatrice does occasionally fight back against her stepmother. Lonna is more than willing to use Mullet Fingers and the publicity that the protest against Mother Paula's generated to try to get news outlets to pay attention to her, but true to form, she has no issue accusing her son of theft to get him arrested when the media stops returning her phone calls. - Character: Garrett. Description: Garrett is a skater boy at Trace Middle School who befriends Roy. He's a poor student and is best known for his impressive fake fart noises. He's also a huge gossip and has lots of insider information on his classmates, due to his mom being the guidance counselor at Trace Middle. Though Roy isn't much of a skater, he appreciates Garrett's attempts to be friendly—and appreciates it even more when Garrett procures Dana's home address for Roy and later attends the lunchtime protest in support of the burrowing owls. However, Roy does find Garrett's exaggerated suggestions to get plastic surgery or transfer to a private school (to escape Dana and Beatrice, respectively) a bit annoying. - Character: Councilman Bruce Grandy. Description: Bruce Grandy is on Coconut Cove's city council. Following the Mother Paula's groundbreaking ceremony and the revelation that there are indeed burrowing owls on the construction site, someone finds the Environmental Impact Statement and a check for several thousand dollars in his golf bag. It's implied (though never proven) that Mother Paula's bribed him to hide the paperwork and push the project through, no matter the environmental damage the project would cause. - Character: The Captain. Description: The Coconut Cove Public Safety Department's captain is close to retirement age; after a career in the Northeast, he planned to work a few easy years in Florida and then retire. However, he's extremely disappointed with how hard he must work and finds the Mother Paula's vandalism mystery particularly trying. In order to smooth things over with the city council and other higher-ups, the captain insists that they keep Dana imprisoned as the Mother Paula's vandal, despite evidence suggesting they have the wrong kid. - Theme: Conservation and the Natural World. Description: Hoot follows middle school student Roy and his new friends, Beatrice and a boy known only as Mullet Fingers, as they work together to stop the Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House corporation from building a new location in Coconut Cove, Florida. They do this because the vacant lot where Mother Paula's plans to build is home to several nesting pairs of burrowing owls, which are endangered and are thus protected under state and federal law. As the novel progresses and as Roy becomes increasingly enthusiastic about protecting the owls, Hoot illustrates how nature conservation works and why it's important. The natural world, the novel suggests, is worth protecting simply because it's beautiful and existed long before humans began developing. And it's only possible to protect it because of people like Roy—ordinary people who are willing to be animals' voices, create laws to protect animals and natural areas, and make sure those laws are ultimately enforced. When Roy's mom, Mrs. Eberhardt, is putting together a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about Roy's student protest in support of the owls, Roy mentally scoffs at his mom's implication that the protest itself is what matters most. Roy thinks that he'd rather show his kids and grandkids the owls one day, assuming the owls still live in Florida decades into the future. This view highlights what Roy (and the novel on the whole) thinks is most important: preserving nature, if only because an area's plants and animals have the right to live and can also bring a sense of joy and wonder to people who are lucky enough to catch sight of them. The novel's conclusion supports this view, as in an attempt to rehabilitate their public image, Mother Paula's announces that the Coconut Cove site will become an owl refuge. Though Roy sees this as the company's shameless attempt to make itself look good, it's impossible to ignore that Roy and many others in Coconut Cove—even those who were involved in trying to push the construction project forward—can and do stand at the fence and admire the owls. Nature conservation, this suggests, doesn't just benefit the animals—it also benefits the people who live in close proximity to those animals. - Theme: Bullying and Corruption. Description: There are two primary antagonists in Hoot: Dana, a bully who incessantly targets Roy, and Chuck Muckle and the Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House corporation, which plans to build a new Mother Paula's location on a vacant lot in Coconut Cove, despite sightings of protected burrowing owls on the lot. As Roy and his friends take on both Dana and Mother Paula's, Hoot highlights how corruption and intimidation function, highlighting how money and fear can routinely impede justice and righteousness. When it comes to Dana, Roy explains that technically speaking, nobody has complained about him and therefore, Dana isn't officially considered a problem at school. But really, Dana has terrified the entire student body into not reporting his bullying by threatening to beat up anyone who reports him. And even when Roy does tell Miss Hennepin, the vice principal, that Dana choked him, Miss Hennepin only believes Roy when she sees the obvious bruises on Roy's neck. Still, out of fear that Dana's parents would sue the school, Miss Hennepin refuses to discipline Dana, highlighting how Dana and his family are able to create a culture of fear and threaten expensive legal consequences, which allows Dana to continue his reign of terror over the Trace Middle School student body. The same dynamic plays out on a much larger and more expensive scale when it comes to the Mother Paula's corporation's plan to build a new pancake house in Coconut Cove. Per Florida law, it's illegal to build where there are owl burrows. Mother Paula's "solves" the owl burrow problem by simply insisting that there are no owls on the vacant lot—and by threatening to fire, sue, or otherwise discipline anyone who acknowledges the owls' existence. Given the circumstances, it's possible to see foreman Curly's insistence that there are no owls as proof that, like his bosses, he genuinely doesn't care about the birds. But it's also worth keeping in mind that his and his wife's livelihoods depend on him doing as Chuck Muckle tells him. Fear and self-preservation, in other words, lead Curly to support his employer's corruption in much the same way that Miss Hennepin allows Dana to terrorize students to avoid a lawsuit, clearly illustrating how fear, intimidation, and threats create situations where corruption can thrive. - Theme: Morality, the Law, and Protest. Description: Hoot's protagonist, preteen Roy, is extremely concerned with doing the right thing, particularly when it comes to situations where what's right or wrong isn't entirely obvious. When Roy's new friend Mullet Fingers shows him the burrowing owls living on a vacant lot where the Mother Paula's pancake house corporation plans to build a new location, Roy is convinced the building project is morally wrong—it's wrong, Roy believes, to bury baby owls just so people can eat pancakes. However, though Roy sees the situation as very black and white, his parents, Mr. Eberhardt and Mrs. Eberhardt, suggest that things might not be so simple—Florida requires permits and an environmental review to build, after all, and they suggest that Mother Paula's is no doubt complying with those requirements. This impresses upon Roy that the law isn't always moral and just. Ultimately, Roy and his friends decide that the best way to advocate for laws that are more moral and just is a combination of public oversight and political protest. Roy isn't sold on his parents' suggestion that a company can get a permit to bury baby owls and that, therefore, it's okay to do so. And indeed, his trip to the local building records department suggests he's right: Mother Paula's file is missing permits and environmental reviews, and it's later implied that the corporation bribed a local councilman to hide evidence that there are federally protected burrowing owls on the prospective building site. So, at least in this case, Roy is right: the law does not condone destroying owl burrows and burying baby owls; in this instance, the law is morally in the clear. However, as Roy is piecing this together, he and his friends organize an impromptu protest, something the novel suggests is another effective way to fight for what's right. Faced with dozens of children accusing him on live television of prioritizing profit over adorable owls, Mother Paula's higher-up Chuck Muckle loses his temper and ultimately, his job—and the Mother Paula's corporation is forced to abandon the project due to the terrible publicity. Thanks to Roy and other likeminded classmates who are willing to stand up for what they believe is right, the owls are saved. In this way, Hoot makes the case that anyone is capable of advocating for positive change and for those, like the owls, who have no voice of their own. - Theme: Parenting and Support. Description: While Hoot's main focus is on its young protagonists, it nevertheless offers readers glimpses into the role parents play in children's lives. It's possible to trace why Roy, Beatrice and Mullet Fingers, and Dana behave the way they do to how their parents support them (or don't). The novel shows how present parenting prepares kids to tackle complex challenges while still giving them opportunities to be kids, while absent, neglectful, or abusive parenting fosters bad behavior and forces kids to grow up long before they're ready. Mr. Eberhardt and Mrs. Eberhardt, Roy's parents, are presented as ideal parents. When Roy gets into trouble, he trusts that his parents will still love and support him. Additionally, they coach Roy through learning to trust his gut and make good choices. Trusting his parents, and learning from them in this way, helps Roy become independent. But it also means that Roy is able to ask for help when he needs it and simply be a carefree kid a lot of the time. In contrast, Hoot presents what Roy refers to as "shaky example[s] of motherhood" (and, it should be noted, fatherhood) in Beatrice, Mullet Fingers, and Dana's parents. Dana, the school bully, experiences physical abuse from Mrs. Matherson and seems to bully timid Mr. Matherson just like he bullies his classmates. This, the novel suggests, has taught Dana to bully others to get his way—and when it comes to those he can't intimidate, like his mother, to fight back violently. While the novel frames Dana as something of an absurd joke, Beatrice and Mullet Fingers's family situation is far more tragic. Beatrice's dad, Leon, married Mullet Fingers's mom, Lonna, several years ago. And while Leon is totally checked out, Lonna is cruel and neglectful. Lonna has said outright that she doesn't want her son anymore—so after sending him to several military academies from which Mullet Fingers ran away, she didn't look for him when he ran away the last time. Thus, Mullet Fingers now lives on his own in Coconut Cove's wild areas, supported by Beatrice. And Beatrice, in addition to parenting her stepbrother, is essentially a maid to the adults at home: Lonna forces her to perform all household chores, and Beatrice has been planning and cooking Leon's meals for years. Due to their parents' neglect, both Beatrice and Mullet Fingers are functionally adults, something Hoot frames as both tragic and damaging. - Theme: Friendship. Description: Even as Hoot illustrates how neglectful or absent parenting can hurt children and make their lives extremely difficult, it also shows that there's an antidote to some aspects of questionable parenting situations. While Hoot doesn't go so far as to suggest that having close friendships with peers is enough to totally remedy an unsupportive or dangerous situation at home, it does show that having a friend can make one's home life more bearable and, in some cases, provide a much-needed escape. Roy, having grown up with stable and supportive parents, takes an interesting view of friendship: because he's so close with Mr. Eberhardt and Mrs. Eberhardt, he doesn't feel such a pressing need to try to make friends after the move to Coconut Cove. But for Beatrice and Mullet Fingers, who eventually become Roy's best friends, friendship with Roy offers not just an outside perspective on how to best go about saving the burrowing owls on the future site of a Mother Paula's pancake house, but emotional and physical support they don't have access to at home. Despite Beatrice's rough and tough demeanor, for instance, Roy discovers that she still sometimes needs emotional support and a safe place to stay. So, when her dad Leon and stepmom Lonna get in a loud and physically violent fight, Roy lets Beatrice sneakily spend the night in his room, offering her a much needed break from her guardians. Similarly, Roy uses his relative privilege to make sure that when attack dogs bite Mullet Fingers and the bites get infected, the boy gets treatment without his parents finding out that he's in town (Lonna, his mom, doesn't want Mullet Fingers and sends him away to military schools). It's worth noting that on the whole, Hoot presents the fact that Roy, a child himself, must provide this kind of care and support to his friends as tragic. However, the novel still presents friendship and the support friends can show each other as something wholly positive and capable of making bad situations bearable. - Climax: The groundbreaking ceremony for the new Mother Paula's location in Coconut Cove turns into an impromptu protest. - Summary: Roy only notices the strange, barefoot running boy because the school bully, Dana Matherson, chooses to squeeze Roy's head, which forces Roy to look out the window instead of at his comic book. Roy is so curious about the boy that he spends the next week looking for him, but he doesn't see the boy until the following Friday. But when Roy tries to race off the bus to catch the boy, Dana chokes Roy. Roy punches at Dana, shoves past a blond girl (Beatrice Leep), and pursues the boy onto a golf course until a golf ball hits Roy in the head. Later, though Miss Hennepin, the vice principal, sees the bruises Dana left on Roy's neck, she maintains that Roy started it (Roy did accidentally break Dana's nose). She suspends him from the bus and asks him to write Dana an apology letter. Roy's parents, Mr. Eberhardt and Mrs. Eberhardt, are upset about this. And inexplicably, the next day at school Beatrice tries to intimidate Roy, insisting that he didn't see a running boy. At the same time, foreman Curly calls Officer Delinko out to the future site of a Mother Paula's pancake house to inspect some recent vandalism. While there, Delinko trips in big holes. Curly says owls live in the holes, but there aren't currently any owls using the burrows. Delinko returns again the following week to find the survey stakes pulled out again and alligators in the portable toilets. When Delinko meets with his captain and sergeant, he offers to patrol the site for free. He just wants to solve the mystery. However, Delinko falls asleep in his car at the site and wakes up to his windows spray painted black. As punishment, Delinko is placed on desk duty. Deciding he can't let Beatrice and Dana bully him all year, Roy approaches Beatrice at lunch and tells her that in the future, they should just talk things out. Then, after paying Garrett (whose mom is the guidance counselor) to find Dana's address, Roy asks his mom to drive him to Dana's house. He gives Dana the apology letter and takes note of Dana's broken, bruised nose. Later, Roy sneaks out of his house and rides to the golf course. He enters the trees where he saw the running boy disappear and finds a campsite—and a bag of venomous cottonmouth moccasins with glittery blue tails. The running boy pulls Roy away from the snakes, puts a hood over Roy's head, and says people call him Mullet Fingers. He walks Roy out of the trees and leaves Roy there, telling him not to come looking for him again. A few days later, Roy sneaks out of the house with a shoebox just as a storm is rolling in. He goes to Mullet Fingers's camp, but the boy isn't there—and when Roy gets back to where he left his bike, it's gone. He trudges through the rain until Beatrice rides up on his bike and tells him to get on the handlebars. She takes him to a junkyard, where she accepts the shoes in the box and promises to get them to Mullet Fingers, whom she reveals is her stepbrother. Beatrice then bites Roy's bike tire so he has an excuse for being so late. Roy's parents have reported him missing by now, and Officer Delinko spots and picks Roy up on his way home. Over the next few days, Curly fields calls from his boss Chuck Muckle, who's the vice president of corporate relations at Mother Paula's. Muckle is incensed that construction hasn't started yet and threatens to fire Curly if Curly can't stop the vandal, so Curly hires attack dogs. However, Curly gets to the construction site the morning after the dogs arrive to find the trainer, Kalo, in hysterics: there are cottonmouth moccasins with glittery blue tails on the site, and so Kalo refuses to bring the dogs back. Roy, meanwhile, is allowed back on the bus, and Dana returns to school. Beatrice defends Roy from Dana on the bus, but when Roy is on his own after school, Dana pulls Roy into a janitor's closet and tries to suffocate him. But Beatrice again comes to Roy's rescue—she strips Dana to his underwear and ties him to the flagpole—then insists she needs Roy's help. Lying that they're working on a science project together, Beatrice and Roy get Mrs. Eberhardt to give them ground beef and sneak first aid supplies. In an ice cream truck in the junkyard, Mullet Fingers is feverish and is nursing clearly infected dog bites on his arm. He allows Roy and Beatrice to dress his wounds and then the three go to the Mother Paula's construction site. There, Mullet Fingers explains that the dogs bit him while he was putting snakes through the fence. And he did that because the construction project can't happen: there are wild burrowing owls living on the site, and they'll die when the bulldozers bury their burrows. Watching the tiny owls nibble at raw meatballs, Roy understands now. Mullet Fingers collapses from the fever, so Beatrice and Roy rush him to the emergency room and tell the doctor that Mullet Fingers is Roy. (Mullet Fingers's mom, Lonna, doesn't want Mullet Fingers and would send him somewhere terrible if she knew he was in town, so they can't give his real name.) Beatrice runs home to make her dad, Leon, dinner, leaving Roy alone. When Roy's parents arrive, Mullet Fingers has already escaped the hospital. Roy tells his dad about the owls and why he lied about Mullet Fingers's identity. Mr. Eberhardt suggests that Mother Paula's is probably following all the permitting requirements, but he notes that Roy can check on that at city hall. Over the weekend, Mullet Fingers takes Roy to a creek and shows him how he got his nickname; he can catch mullet, which are tiny fish, with his bare hands. The boy also implies that he has more hijinks planned for the Mother Paula's property tonight and invites Roy to join him, but Roy refuses. However, Roy wants to help—so he goes to Dana's house, moons him to draw him outside, and then lies to Dana that there are cigarettes in the construction trailer on the Mother Paula's property. As such, Curly has a harrowing weekend: not having attack dogs means that Curly himself has to spend the night on the property, and after battling mice in the trailer, Curly comes face to face with Dana trying to break in. Dana runs away, rattraps snapped to his toes, and Officer Delinko arrests him. Curly spends a blissful night at home, proud of his heroics. On Monday morning, though, Curly discovers that someone took all the seats from the earthmoving equipment. This enrages Chuck Muckle, who insists that Curly has to keep the site locked down until the groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday. Kimberly Lou Dixon, an actress and former Miss America contestant who portrays Mother Paula in TV commercials, will be there. Officer Delinko's superiors are impressed with his work catching Dana. So, even though they all believe on some level that Dana isn't the vandal, they praise Delinko and assign him to surveille the property overnight with Curly until Wednesday. Delinko decides to test his theory that Dana isn't the vandal by scaring him with a rubber alligator, which proves to him that Dana isn't capable of handling live ones. The vandal is still out there. After doing some research on burrowing owls, Roy visits City Hall and discovers that the Mother Paula's permits have been checked out—or are missing. He then stops at the construction site, leaves crickets for the owls to eat, and encounters Curly. Roy deduces that Curly indeed knows about the owls, which tells him that Mother Paula's is in violation of Florida's building laws. That night, when Officer Delinko is patrolling the property, he trips in an owl burrow and comes face to face with a baby owl in the burrow. Noticing the bulldozers, Delinko realizes that doing his job and catching the vandal will have horrible consequences: the baby owl will no doubt die. On Tuesday morning, Roy reads in the paper that the groundbreaking ceremony is the next day. That afternoon, in Mr. Ryan's history class, Roy uses his current events speech to tell his classmates about the owls and his suspicions that Mother Paula's isn't following all the rules. He shares that he's going to the ceremony tomorrow during lunch. Roy also knows from his research that it's illegal to build where there are active burrows, so he also gives Mullet Fingers a camera and asks him to take pictures of the owls—all they need is proof. Mr. Eberhardt is happy to write Roy a note giving him permission to leave school and attend the groundbreaking ceremony. Beatrice shows up to school with the camera; Mullet Fingers got pictures—and at lunchtime, it turns out that lots of kids from Trace Middle School got permission to attend the groundbreaking. As far as Chuck Muckle is concerned, things seem to be going well at first. But then, Roy and his classmates begin talking and chanting about the owls, and Roy pulls out the camera. The pictures, though, are unidentifiable, and all hope seems lost—until everyone realizes that Mullet Fingers squeezed himself into an owl burrow last night. Mullet Fingers insists they'll have to dig him up to start construction, and he also threatens to dump over a bucket of cottonmouth moccasins if anyone approaches him. The snakes are rubber, but both Roy and Officer Delinko play along. Muckle loses his temper, hacks at the snakes, and then tries to hurt Mullet Fingers, but the children—and then Kimberly Lou Dixon—link arms to form a circle around the boy and start to sing. The next morning, a reporter, Kelly Colfax, knocks on the Eberhardts' door. Mr. Eberhardt gives Roy a file to give to her; it's the permits, and the Environmental Impact Statement is missing. Over the next few weeks, Mother Paula's erupts in scandal. Someone discovers the Environmental Impact Statement and a huge check in a councilman's golf bag, and Chuck Muckle loses his job. The company ultimately abandons the Coconut Cove project and turns the site into an owl refuge to try to rehab their public image, while Kimberly Lou Dixon cancels her contract with the pancake house and publicly announces her lifetime membership to the Audubon Society. Mullet Fingers, meanwhile, spends a few days at home, is arrested when he runs away, and then runs away from juvie after manipulating Dana Matherson into helping him. Roy suspects Mullet Fingers is still in the area: when Roy returns to the spot on the creek to try to catch mullet himself, he hears a boy laughing and finds a mullet swimming in one of his shoes.

- Genre: Gothic Short Story - Title: Hop-Frog - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: A castle in a distant land - Character: Hop-Frog. Description: Hop-Frog is a dwarf jester who is captured during the conquest of his native country and sent to the king's court as a gift. At the beginning of the story, Hop-Frog is inclined to perform his role as jester dutifully; during his meeting with the king and his ministers, Hop-Frog calmly handles his abuse, attempting to help his tormentors with their costumes despite their cruel behavior. But when the king strikes his companion Trippetta, Hop-Frog's disposition fundamentally changes. Before, Hop-Frog used his inventiveness for humor, but now, he employs it for subversive, violent ends; he devises a brutal scheme and then executes it with Trippetta's help. So, though Hop-Frog performs his final fiery jest and escapes his bonds by his own wits, he is moved to do so only by the cruel acts of the king. - Character: The King. Description: The king is a sadistic joker who is aided by seven cruel ministers. The king wields significant power in his court and abroad; in the past, his generals conquered foreign lands and sent gifts to earn his favor. When he enlists Hop-Frog's help in designing a costume for a masquerade ball, the king unknowingly brings about his own demise by cruelly striking the defenseless Trippetta. Despite his frequent abuse of Hop-Frog, he expects only willful compliance from the jester, evidenced by his unhesitating approval of Hop-Frog's masquerade act. Even moments before his death at Hop-Frog's hands, he still believes that Hop-Frog is just performing his part in an astonishing act. Though the king's arrogance and naiveté prevent him from doubting his jester's intentions, his cruelty is the primary cause of his undoing. - Character: Trippetta. Description: Trippetta is a beautiful dancer who was captured in the province adjacent to Hop-Frog's native land. Trippetta becomes very close to Hop-Frog after they are both placed in the service of the king. She frequently helps Hop-Frog using her considerable influence in the court, a service which he is unable to reciprocate. When Trippetta is struck by the king during a tense encounter, Hop-Frog plots an act of vengeance, possibly out of a feeling of indebtedness towards her. Trippetta assists Hop-Frog in the act by maneuvering the chandelier-chain from the roof and pulling the king and his ministers upwards. Following their act, she and Hop-Frog manage to escape to their native lands and are never seen again. - Theme: Cruelty and Comeuppance. Description: In "Hop-Frog," court jester Hop-Frog and fellow servant Trippetta severely punish their cruel king. The king has essentially enslaved the two of them, and he uses them for his cruel amusement. For instance, he forces Hop-Frog to drink copious amounts of wine, even though drinking alcohol makes Hop-Frog feel distressed and almost crazed. When Trippetta tries to stand up for Hop-Frog in this situation, the king pushes her and tosses his own drink on her. Following these acts, Hop-Frog plots violent revenge on the king that reflects the tyrant's own sadism: after tricking the king and his abetting ministers into performing a masquerade act that involves them being chained together, Hop-Frog and Trippetta burn the group alive. Ironically, Hop-Frog and Trippetta are implied to otherwise be calm and good-natured: up until this point, they dutifully accept their tasks as slaves. Hop-Frog is resigned to his abuse, responding to the king's questions and requests in an aloof manner. But when the king strikes Trippetta, whom Hop-Frog deeply cares for, Hop-Frog decides to punish his tormentors—a decision that's signified by the previously unheard sound of Hop-Frog grinding his teeth. In this sense, a specific act of cruelty provokes the two servants to seek retribution, even though they aren't naturally inclined toward violence. The resulting reckoning of the king is extremely brutal—perhaps even disproportionate in harshness to his cruel deeds. By illustrating this striking turn of events, the story suggests that there are inevitable consequences for cruelty: wicked deeds tend to provoke violent reciprocation, sometimes even from people who might otherwise be kind and mild-mannered. In this sense, the story also cautions against underestimating seemingly meek, subservient people. - Theme: Subversion, Jest, and Trickery. Description: In the story, the court jester Hop-Frog manages to get revenge on a sadistic king through elaborate, subversive trickery. Given his role as a jester, Hop-Frog is expected to use humor and hijinks to entertain the court—but as the story progresses, he uses tricks to undermine rather than appease the king. Given the king's power and influence over his court, trickery is perhaps the only viable way for Hop-Frog and fellow servant Trippetta to retaliate—the king's soldiers would quickly suppress an open revolt. In this sense, Hop-Frog must plan and execute his scheme very subtly in order for it to succeed: he fools the king and his ministers into wearing costumes he can easily set on fire and then burns the men alive. But this principle also holds true more generally with respect to Hop-Frog's resistance: even before the jester plots his vengeance, he resists the king's authority through subtly subversive humor and banter. When Hop-Frog is forced to consume wine for the king's amusement, for example, he refuses to outwardly demonstrate the effects of the wine, instead acting aloof. Furthermore, he tries to think of a witty response to the king's cruelty. In a certain way, then, Hop-Frog's fiery finale is consistent with his previous subversion. Hop-Frog is aware of this fact, seizing the opportunity to announce at the end of the story that this is his "final jest." Thus, out of necessity, Hop-Frog has taken the very qualities that the king appreciates in him—jest and trickery—and used them to resist (and defeat) the cruel king. His final act of subversion is his most elaborate, vicious trick. By illustrating this development, the story suggests that humor and trickery aren't just forms of entertainment. Rather, they're viable modes of resistance to oppressive powers that can develop into profound forms of subversion and defiance. - Theme: Physique and Character. Description: Throughout the narrative of Hop-Frog's revenge, there is particular attention given to physical features and how they inform characters' behavior. At the beginning of the story, the narrator clearly suggests that there is a strong association between appearance and behavior, evoking the stereotype that fat people naturally like to joke. The narrator later reiterates his belief in the determining effect of body type when he explains that Trippetta (another court servant) is more popular than Hop-Frog because of their drastically different appearances. (Hop-Frog is crippled and has dwarfism; Trippetta also has dwarfism but is extraordinarily beautiful.) This suggests that a person's appearance can affect not only how they act, but how other people treat them. Descriptions of physique also function to foreshadow events in the story. For example, the narrator notes early on that Hop-Frog has large, strong arms that enable him to climb well. This is a seemingly insignificant detail that ultimately matters a great deal, as Hop-Frog's plots to trap his victims (the king and his ministers) and escape using a chain that he can climb. The king and his ministers' portliness and oiliness also arguably represent such an instance of foreshadowing, as these qualities call to mind a plentiful, greasy source of sustenance—something that the king and his ministers ultimately serve as for the fire when Hop-Frog burns them alive. Instances like these, in which the story associates a visual description with an outcome or behavior, suggest that a body type can tangibly affect how one acts or is received by others. By observing and emphasizing this trend, the story suggests that physique can determine how we interact with our environment—and in this sense, our physique may have an impact on our character. - Climax: Hop-Frog suspends his tormentors above the ground, sets fire to them, and escapes through the skylight. - Summary: The narrator describes a king who lives only to joke. The king's seven ministers are, like himself, committed jokers. They even resemble him physically—fat and oily. The narrator supposes that there is a connection between corpulence and joking, given how often jokers are fat. The king's humor is unrefined, and he prefers practical jokes to verbal ones. He, like other kings at the time, owns a jester who amuses him at court. The jester's name is Hop-Frog, and he is a dwarf and crippled. The king delights at this confluence of traits, as he can laugh both at Hop-Frog's witticisms and his stature. In order to walk, Hop-Frog must perform a very strained movement; his upper limbs have considerable strength, however, and he can climb abnormally well. When Hop-Frog climbs objects, he resembles a squirrel or small monkey more than a frog. Hop-Frog was taken from a distant country when the king's general conquered it. Along with a dancer girl named Trippetta from an adjacent province, he was given to the king as a gift. Due to her grace and beauty, Trippetta possesses influence that she uses to benefit her companion Hop-Frog. The jester, by comparison, has no courtly favor with which to gain benefits. The king plans to hold a masquerade ball on a grand state occasion. Hop-Frog is inventive in designing costumes and characters, so he assists greatly with such events. On the night of the ball, the hall is elaborately set up in accordance with Trippetta's guidance. Every masquerader has a costume except the king and his ministers, who are presently indecisive. For that reason, Hop-Frog is brought in to assist them in choosing costumes. The king is in poor humor and forces Hop-Frog to drink copious quantities of wine, a beverage that makes Hop-Frog unpleasantly mad. Hop-Frog is confused after drinking the wine and cannot suggest anything immediately. The king is angered and tells Hop-Frog to drink more, joking that he is sulky and must need more wine. Trippetta intervenes and implores the king to spare Hop-Frog. The king is stunned and unsure what to do, but eventually shoves Trippetta to the floor. After a period of silence, there is a harsh grating noise which, unbeknownst to the king and his ministers, is the sound of Hop-Frog angrily grinding his teeth. Hop-Frog placates the king by saying he will drink as much as the king wants, and states that he has an act for eight people that will cause great astonishment. He calls it the "Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs," and it portrays a set of beasts that have escaped their captors. The king roars with approval and agrees to perform the masquerade act. Hop-Frog equips the king and his ministers with tight-fitting flax and wax costumes. Then he chains them together. In the circular masquerade hall, a chain hangs from the skylight that would normally hold the chandelier. The chandelier is removed for this occasion, on Trippetta's advice. The masquerade begins, and the king and his ministers wait outside until midnight. They burst in when the clock strikes and instruct Hop-Frog, who has the keys, to lock the door. A great fright ensues, and people rush to the doors. During the height of the tumult, the skylight chain descends to just a few feet above the floor. The king and his ministers eventually find themselves at the center of the hall. While Hop-Frog incites them to maintain the commotion, he attaches the chain binding them together to the chandelier-chain. Suddenly, this chandelier-chain is pulled upwards, hoisting the king and his ministers into the air. Hop-Frog leaps onto the chained group and announces, with a torch in his hand, that he will soon find out who they are. The chained group is pulled further upwards, with Hop-Frog on top of them. After a minute's silence, Hop-Frog produces the same grating noise with his teeth, but this time the audience knows it's him. Hop-Frog pretends to scrutinize the king and his ministers with his torch and sets fire to the flax of their costumes. He climbs higher on the chain to avoid catching fire and then announces to the aghast audience that he sees clearly who the masked individuals are. They are a king who would strike a defenseless girl and the king's complicit ministers, he states. He declares, furthermore, that he is the jester Hop-Frog and that this is his final act, before escaping onto the roof through the skylight. The narrator explains that his companion Trippetta likely aided him from the roof and that neither was seen again.

- Genre: Short Story, Canadian Literature - Title: Horses of the Night - Point of view: First Person - Setting: The fictional town of Manawaka, Manitoba, Canada - Character: Vanessa. Description: Vanessa is the narrator of the story, a thoughtful, sensitive, and observant young girl. She lives with her mother, Beth, and father, Ewen, in Manawaka, Canada, near her Grandmother Connor and Grandfather Connor's "Brick House." She loves her grandmother deeply and is full of anger and contempt for her emotionally abusive grandfather, who keeps the entire family walking on eggshells around him. When Vanessa is 6, her cousin Chris, 15, comes to live in the Brick House so he can attend high school. At first, she is wary of him, but soon grows attached to him, and their relationship becomes a significant part of Vanessa's growing up. Vanessa longs to be old enough to know what to say in response to the the dreams and big ideas that Chris is always sharing with her. She is enamored with the stories he tells her of his life back in Shallow Creek and the gifts he crafts her, like the miniature leather saddle he gives her for her birthday one year. Chris leaves Manawaka when she is 9, which upsets her at first, but is soon forgotten in a swirl of major life events like the birth of her brother Roderick, her grandmother's death, and the arrival of Aunt Edna. Her father dies when she is 11, which completely upends her view of the world and marks a major turning point in her growing up and loss of innocence. Over these years, Chris wanders in and out of the family's life, and soon Vanessa is old enough to not only understand Chris but see through the obvious cracks in his dreams and hopeless endeavors. By the end of the story, Vanessa is in college, has outgrown her childish innocence, and sadly accepts that Chris might never be able to face reality. - Character: Chris. Description: Chris is Vanessa's older cousin who grew up in poverty on his family's failing farm in Shallow Creek. Chris is a kind, imaginative, and creative young man. When he is 15, he moves to Manawaka to live with his Grandmother and Grandfather Connor so that he can attend high school. His cousin, Vanessa, and her parents Beth and Ewen, live nearby, and Vanessa becomes particularly attached to him. Chris is a dreamer who uses his dreams to escape his difficult realities: the limitations of his origins, Grandfather Connor's resentment for having to take him in, and the economic realities of the Great Depression that prevent him from going to college to be a civil engineer. He invents a version of Shallow Creek at odds with the harsh reality of the place, and Vanessa is enchanted by this made-up world where he has a ranch named the Criss-Cross and two majestic horses, Duchess and Firefly. When Grandfather Connor won't fund his college education, Chris paints another romantic picture, this time of life as a "traveller," which he tells Vanessa he'd like to become. In reality, Chris becomes a travelling salesman who believes each new item he has to sell will be his ticket to economic success and a shot at college. He's unable to accept the reality that the Great Depression prevents anyone from buying these superfluous goods. Chris is forced to return to Shallow Creek when he finally accepts that the job is a lost cause. When Vanessa visits him there, she sees not only how different it is compared to his imagined version, but how Chris continues to remain out of touch with reality and is beholden to his dreams. To escape Shallow Creek, Chris enlists in the army at the outset of World War II, despite the fact that war is against his beliefs. While stationed in England, Chris suffers a mental breakdown. Vanessa realizes that he'd been depressed for as long as she'd known him. At the end of the story, Chris is left living in a psychiatric hospital, and it's hinted that he will never recover. - Character: Beth. Description: Beth is Vanessa's mother and Grandmother and Grandfather Connor's daughter. She feels sorry for Chris and wishes she could do more for him. She feels especially sorry that he can't fulfill his dream of going to college, but is too afraid to ask her father, who would be Chris's only hope for affording tuition. After Chris ends up in the psychiatric hospital, she worries about having exposed Vanessa to his troubles, especially on her trip to Shallow Creek. She remembers Chris as an extremely optimistic person and can't believe he ends up lost to his madness. - Character: Grandmother Connor. Description: Grandmother Connor lives in the "Brick House" with her husband, Grandfather Connor. She is a loving, doting woman who serves as a buffer between her husband, Grandfather Connor, and the rest of the family. Her faith in God helps her bear her husband's emotional abuse, and she uses her own strength to protect Vanessa, Beth, and the rest of the family from his wrath. Vanessa loves her dearly. Grandmother Connor is the only one who immediately and warmly greets Chris. She dies when Vanessa is 9 or 10 years old, in the same year that her younger brother, Roderick, is born. - Character: Grandfather Connor. Description: Grandfather Connor rules over the "Brick House" where he lives with his wife, Grandmother Connor. He is a harsh and unforgiving patriarch whose pointed criticisms and outbursts force the rest of the family into walking on eggshells around him. Vanessa is full of anger towards her grandfather and wishes that she, or Chris, could muster the courage to speak out against his behavior. Grandfather Connor resents Chris's father, Uncle Wilf, for making a bad investment in a failing piece of land, and by extension resents the fact that he's funding Chris's three-year stay in the Brick House. - Character: Aunt Edna. Description: Aunt Edna returns to live with the family in Manawaka after losing her job as a secretary in Winnipeg. Like many others, she's unable to find another job due to the Great Depression. Vanessa is especially fond of her. She calls Vanessa and Aunt Beth down to the Brick House one night when Grandfather Connor is enraged by one of Chris's unannounced returns. - Theme: Dreams vs. Reality. Description: Throughout "Horses of the Night," Chris, a young man growing up in rural Canada during the Great Depression, finds refuge in his own imagined worlds that are at odds with the difficult realities of his life. Chris moves from his family's struggling farm in Shallow Creek to stay with his Grandmother and Grandfather Connor in Manawaka to attend high school. Grandfather Connor is a harsh and critical man whose biting comments affect everyone in the family except, as his cousin Vanessa notes, Chris, who seems to retreat into himself where he is safe from this emotional abuse. As Vanessa gets to know and grow incredibly fond of Chris, she discovers the many ways he retreats into himself and his dreams to protect himself from difficult realities. Chris enchants Vanessa with tales of his life back in Shallow Creek where he says he lived in a tree house on a sprawling ranch, with a lake once full of prehistoric creatures, and two majestic horses. It's only when Vanessa visits his home years later that she realizes this world existed only in Chris's imagination and stands in stark contrast to the hardscrabble conditions of his family's farm. Chris dreams of going to college, but his financial realities make this impossible. In the face of this loss, Chris dreams instead of becoming a traveller, but in reality ends up working as a travelling salesman, foolishly optimistic that each new item is his ticket to getting rich. Life in Shallow Creek becomes unbearable enough for Chris that he enlists in the army. However, the realities of World War II are so harsh that his dreams can't defend him, and he suffers a mental breakdown. Unable to recover, he's confined to a mental hospital where Vanessa hopes he can at last escape reality altogether and live perpetually in his imagined worlds. In this way, Chris's story reveals the limitations of using dreams to protect oneself from reality. At some point the dreams can no longer ward off reality, and, if unable to face that reality, one risks losing hold of it altogether. - Theme: Madness and Society. Description: In the beginning of "Horses of the Night" Chris is an optimistic young man with big dreams and goals for his life. However, he is growing up during The Great Depression and the beginnings of World War II, so the realities and hardships of the society he lives in prevent him from realizing these goals at every turn. Chris's dreams start out both admirable and reasonable. He wants to go to college and become a civil engineer, but his impoverished hometown, Shallow Creek, doesn't have a high school, so he must move into his grandfather's house in Manawaka where he can continue his education. After high school, however, his family's poverty, and his unwilling and unsupportive grandfather, make it impossible for him to attend college. So, he becomes a traveling salesman and believes this enterprise will make enough money to fund his college education. As his Aunt Beth and Uncle Ewen point out, however, the Depression means no one has disposable income to spend on the vacuums, magazines, or knitting machines he wants to sell. Again, the limitations of his society prevent him from achieving his dreams, and every time the realities of society crush these dreams, Chris's new dreams become more unreasonable and unrealistic. Eventually, he gives up on college and is forced to return to his humble origins to work on his family's farm. His final breaking point is when he succumbs to his bleak reality and joins the army at the outset of World War II. The war proves too much, is too at odds with his dreams and ideals, and it forces him into the madness that will confine him to a mental hospital for the rest of his life. In the end, the Great Depression, World War II, and the conditions they each impose prevent him from living the life he dreamed. At the same time, they both contribute to what Vanessa later realizes was his own struggle with depression, until the point where his mental health becomes completely unrecoverable. In this way, Chris's story suggests that madness is not simply due to internal factors, but that the limitations and injustices of society can drive one into madness, too. - Theme: Loss of Innocence. Description: "Horses of the Night" tracks the young narrator, Vanessa's, growth from young child to young adult, and her gradual loss of innocence along the way. Vanessa's loss of innocence is largely precipitated by her relationship with her cousin Chris. Chris first arrives in Manawaka when he is 15 and Vanessa is 6. She worries that she won't be able to keep up with him due to their age difference and that he'll belittle her for it. She soon realizes, however, that Chris is kind to her and, in fact, doesn't seem to take their age difference into account at all. He regales her with his dreams and philosophies about life and doesn't seem to notice, or care, that Vanessa can't fully understand what he means. For a while, Vanessa desperately wishes to be older so that she can understand Chris's big ideas and respond to them knowingly. At first, Chris chips away at Vanessa's innocence by exposing her to his big ideas about life and the universe. Over time, however, as Vanessa grows, harsh realities such as her father's and grandmother's deaths chip away further at her childlike innocence. By the end of the story, Vanessa is in college, a place where Chris dreamed of being, while Chris is confined to a mental hospital where he's left to live in his dreams perpetually. In the story's final scene, Vanessa finds the miniature leather saddle that Chris made for her when she was six, and her thrusting it back into a box in the attic represents leaving both her childhood and Chris behind. The parallel stories of Vanessa's development and Chris's stagnation suggest that loss of innocence is what allows one to function in and contend with the realities of the adult world. - Climax: Vanessa and her family find out that Chris has been discharged from the army because he suffered a mental breakdown and is in the care of a psychiatric hospital. - Summary: When Vanessa is six years old, her cousin Chris, 15, comes to live in Manawaka in their Grandmother and Grandfather Connor's "Brick House," which is near where Vanessa lives with her mother, Beth, and her father, Ewen. Chris is moving to Manawaka because he wants to attend high school and there isn't one in his hometown of Shallow Creek, where his impoverished family lives on their struggling hay farm. Grandfather Connor is openly angry and resentful that he must support Chris for the next three years, and blames Chris's late father, Uncle Wilf, for making a bad investment on the land in Shallow Creek. Initially, Vanessa is nervous that Chris will be uninterested in her because she is so much younger than he is, but he turns out to be incredibly kind to her, and she quickly grows very fond of him. She is enchanted by the tales he tells of his home back in Shallow Creek and his lofty dreams of becoming a civil engineer. He gives her a miniature leather saddle for her birthday, branded with what he says is the name of his ranch, the Criss Cross, where he has two beautiful horses, Duchess and Firefly. As much as she loves to listen to Chris, Vanessa never knows how to reply and yearns to be older so that she can impress him with witty and insightful ideas of her own. When Vanessa is nine, Chris finishes high school and leaves Manawaka. His dream of going to college to study civil engineering is crushed, financially impossible because Grandfather Connor is unwilling to fund his studies. On the eve of his departure, Chris tells Vanessa he is going to become a "traveller." A month goes by without a word from Chris, until his mother, Aunt Tess, calls to let the family know that he never returned to Shallow Creek as planned. They have no idea where he ended up. Chris quickly fades from Vanessa's mind amid a whirlwind of major life changes: her Aunt Edna loses her job and comes to live with them, her brother Roderick is born, and Grandmother Connor dies. Two years after Chris disappeared, Vanessa is 11 and Chris shows up unannounced. He's become a "traveller" just as he said he would, but, far from the romantic image he painted of someone who travels the world, Chris has become a travelling salesman. He visits the family three separate times, each time toting a new item—vacuums, magazines, knitting machines—convinced that each is going to be his ticket to college. Vanessa is old enough now to recognize that Chris's dream is unrealistic, given the realities of the Great Depression. No one has money for such superfluous purchases. Chris is living in Shallow Creek again when Vanessa's father dies, an event that shatters what's left of her childhood innocence and completely alters her understanding of God and the world around her. Beth suggests that she go visit Chris to get her mind off of her father. When Vanessa arrives, she quickly realizes that the magical version of Shallow Creek Chris painted for her years before doesn't exist. In reality, his family lives at a level of poverty that Vanessa has never witnessed before and that profoundly shocks her. It's haying season, and one night she and Chris camp out near the hayfields. As the two lay underneath the stars, Chris, now 21, begins to talk about his fascination with the universe and his conviction that God can't exist because a god wouldn't have created such a brutal world. Vanessa, now 13, has had doubts about God since her father's death, but still struggles to formulate a response and is again frustrated by her youth. Months later, Chris, desperate to leave Shallow Creek, joins the army at the outset of World War II. He's stationed in England, and no one hears for him for a year, until a letter shows up for Vanessa. Vanessa is evidently disturbed by the letter but won't tell Beth what it says. Six months later Aunt Tess calls and says Chris has been discharged from the military because he suffered a mental breakdown and is now committed to a psychiatric hospital. Vanessa can't bear to imagine how anguished and alone he must be. Years later, Vanessa is home from college. She and Beth are cleaning out the attic, and Vanessa comes across the miniature leather saddle Chris gave her all those years ago. Vanessa realizes that Chris's stories and dreams were his defense against a deep depression. Lost in her sadness for Chris, Vanessa recalls a line from an old poem: "Slowly, slowly, horses of the night—" She imagines that the days and nights must move slowly for Chris, and wonders if the world he inhabits now is the reality full of terrors he'd spent his life trying to escape, or if he's found a way to permanently exist in his dream world.

- Genre: Novel, Native American Literature - Title: House Made of Dawn - Point of view: Third Person Omniscient - Setting: Walatowa, New Mexico and Los Angeles, California - Character: Abel. Description: - Character: Francisco. Description: - Character: Reverend John Big Buff Tosamah. Description: - Character: Ben Benally. Description: - Character: Angela St. John. Description: - Character: Father Olguin. Description: - Character: Juan Reyes Fragua/The Albino Man. Description: - Character: Milly. Description: - Character: Martinez. Description: - Character: Porcingula. Description: - Theme: Home, Belonging, and Identity. Description: - Theme: Nature. Description: - Theme: Religion, Ceremony, and Tradition. Description: - Theme: Storytelling. Description: - Theme: Connection vs. Isolation. Description: - Climax: Abel leaves Los Angeles and returns to Walatowa. - Summary: House Made of Dawn employs a nonlinear narrative to follow its protagonist, Abel, as he navigates coming of age as a Native American man in a changing society. The story opens with Abel running along an empty Southwestern landscape. It then shifts back in time to July 20, 1945, as Abel returns from World War II to Walatowa, his home in the Jemez Pueblo. He is greeted by his grandfather Francisco, his only remaining relative. Coming home sends the addled, lonely Abel into a spiral of memories about his childhood in Walatowa as he struggles to reconnect with his homeland and community. These memories include the deaths of Abel's mother and brother when he was a child. A white woman named Angela St. John employs Abel to cut wood for her at her house near the reservation. She is struggling with her own mental health issues surrounding her pregnancy, and she finds herself at once irritated and aroused by Abel's stoic demeanor. Angela and Abel begin a sexual relationship. Around the same time, Abel is ritually beaten during a ceremony by an albino man. Abel later stabs the albino man to death, though the narrator provides no insight into Abel's reasoning. In January 1952, a Kiowa priest named John Big Bluff Tosamah presides over a Pan-Indigenous peyote congregation in Los Angeles. His sermons reference the Bible, but he rejects Catholicism and other trappings of settler colonialism. He emphasizes the importance of the oral tradition, which he believes white people can never truly grasp after generations of cheapening and corrupting the power of words. Interspersed with his sermon are Abel's confused recollections of his murder trial, his prison sentence, and his sexual relationship with his social worker Milly. The narration then shifts to the first-person perspective of Ben Benally, who is Abel's friend and roommate after Abel is released from prison and relocated to Los Angeles. After meeting each other at work in a factory, Ben tries to help Abel adjust to urban life. Unfortunately, Abel's reserved nature and occasionally violent temper prevent him from making a life for himself the way Ben has done. Abel quits his job when his supervisor becomes too controlling, and he ends his friendship with Tosamah when the priest laughs at Abel one too many times for being "uncivilized." Abel finally snaps after a corrupt policeman named Martinez bullies and beats him in an alley. Abel decides to get revenge on Martinez, only for Martinez to beat him even more brutally. Abel ends up in the hospital, where Ben looks after him and Angela pays him a visit. She has given birth to a son since she last saw Abel, and she tells her son stories about a hero based on Abel. Abel decides to return to his reservation. The night before he leaves, he and Ben attend a party with other local Native Americans to celebrate Abel's last night in Los Angeles. At the party, Abel sings the traditional Navajo songs that Ben taught him, including one about a "house made of dawn." Abel returns to Walatowa at the end of February 1952. Francisco is dying, and Abel forces himself to push through his alcoholism and the remaining pain from Martinez's attack to care for his grandfather. As Francisco dies, he reflects on his life in Walatowa, speaking in a jumbled mix of Spanish, English, and Jemez about meaningful experiences throughout his life. In his last memory, Francisco recalls losing stamina in a race but continuing to run despite being out of breath. After Francisco dies, Abel prepares his grandfather for burial and performs a ritual over the body. He then wakes the priest, Father Olguin, and demands he bury Francisco. Abel walks to the edge of town, where he sees a distant group of runners as the sun rises. He starts to run alone across the landscape, revealing the context of the opening scene of the book. Abel continues to run despite his exhaustion, and as he takes in the beauty of the natural world, he sings the song of the house made of dawn.

- Genre: Magical Realism - Title: House Taken Over - Point of view: First Person - Setting: Buenos Aires, Argentina - Character: The Narrator. Description: The narrator lives alone in his family's home with his sister, Irene. He maintains a rigid routine of cleaning and cooking, and in the evening he likes to read French literature. He expresses frustration with the dust they are always cleaning, which resettles almost as soon as it is cleared. The narrator feels their efforts are useless and unending, and he blames this for him and Irene never finding spouses. He did once love a woman named Maria Esther, but she died before they could get married. There is bitterness is his delivery of this detail, which implies her death may be a motivating factor for his resignation to such an empty life. The narrator does have some exposure to the outside world at the beginning of the story, going into town on Saturdays to buy new skeins of yarn for his sister and to see if any new works of French literature have arrived at the bookstore. However, the siblings' world shrinks even further when the narrator hears the mysterious presence taking over the back rooms. He reacts immediately, bolting closed the door that separates the back rooms from the front area. In doing so, he loses access to all his books and his pipe, yet he does not leave the house to replace them. His desire to leave, even to run errands, seems to be overshadowed by his fear of the unknown. He remains sequestered to the small front rooms, spending most of his time watching Irene knit while rarely doing anything himself. He claims that he and Irene no longer even need to think because their lives are so rote. The only sign of his distress is an unconscious one: Irene tells him he thrashes in his sleep. When he believes he hears the interlopers begin to take the front of the house, the narrator runs away, pulling his sister behind him, still refusing to face the mysterious force. - Character: Irene. Description: Irene is the narrator's sister, and she lives alone with him in their ancestral home. At the beginning of the story, Irene spends her mornings cleaning the massive back rooms alongside her brother and her evenings committed to her knitting. Her brother notes that she rejected two prospective husbands for no discernable reason, and both she and her brother grow certain that they will be the end of their family's line. She is described as a person who bothers no one, who trusts her brother's taste in yarn, and who is a perfectionist in all she does. When the siblings close off the rear of the house to protect themselves from source of the strange sounds and no longer need to clean, she is content to spend nearly all her time knitting. Like her brother, Irene's only sign of dissatisfaction is the strange way she talks in her sleep. Still, she follows her brother's lead throughout the story, never second-guessing the nature of what he hears and allowing him to decide how they respond. Irene's character has less agency than her brother in the events of the story. In fact, she does not leave their home once, not until their final abandonment of the home when the narrator forces her to leave. She weeps as they stand together in front of the locked house, mourning the loss of everything she knows. - Theme: Home and Identity. Description: In "House Taken Over," the unnamed narrator and his sister Irene live together in their inherited family home, and their experiences depict how homes can both reflect and shape their inhabitants' identities. The siblings' house is filled with relics of the many generations who previously lived there, holding the rich family history that the narrator and Irene cherish. The way the siblings arrange and live in the house also reflects their isolated and rather mundane existence: with no spouses or children despite nearing their forties, the brother and sister lead comfortable but limited and repetitive lives. As such, they have no real need to utilize the communal spaces like the dining and living rooms, instead favoring the smaller front portion of the house that contains their own bedrooms. The larger rooms, in turn, reflect their disuse, constantly gathering dust that the narrator and Irene spend hours cleaning every day. And when an unidentified presence encroaches on these back rooms, the siblings choose to simply barricade this part of their house and live in the front rooms, ignoring the problem rather than investigating it. In this sense, the house actually seems to shrink, influencing how the characters behave and also mirroring how their lives become smaller and more isolated as they try to avoid the frightening uncertainty of whatever is trespassing in their home. In all of these ways, the titular house isn't just a house—it's is an extension of the narrator and Irene's family history, personalities, and life choices. The intense, time-consuming upkeep that the house requires ensures that the siblings will continue living the same reclusive lifestyle that they're comfortable with. They allow their whole identities to revolve around the space, first as their obsessive care of it thwarts their romantic prospects, and subsequently, when they shrink their lives to fit in the spaces that haven't been invaded. In other words, the house leaves its mark on them just as much as they leave their mark on it. So, when the mysterious invader eventually takes over the front rooms too, and the siblings flee the house entirely, it is as if they have lost the whole of who they are. - Theme: Fear of the Unknown. Description: The house in which the narrator and sister Irene live is a space they have inherited, and the narrator explains that they have no need to work for pay either, as they live comfortably off the earnings from the family farm. Because of this generational wealth, the siblings do not need to strive in order to survive, nor do they have any need to participate in their community in Buenos Aires. Instead, they stay inside most of the time and keep to their routine, surrounded by the familiar and isolated from the outside world. Within their home, all of their efforts are fruitless: they wipe away dust that immediately returns, Irene knits with no end goal in mind, and the narrator rereads old French literature. Instead of going out into the world to face uncertainty and take risks, they prefer a lifestyle that's so insulated and repetitive that they no longer need to think. In fact, the narrator admits that they are hardly living at all, suggesting that avoiding the unknown in this way actually equates to a kind of mental or spiritual death. When the back portion of the house, which the siblings rarely use themselves, is taken over by a mysterious presence, they have no interest in who (or what) has moved in or why. They merely lock the huge oak door that leads to the back rooms and cut their losses, preferring to make do with a smaller portion of the house than face the unknown. Indeed, neither the characters nor the reader ever find out who the invader is. When the invader eventually moves into the front rooms, the siblings give up the whole house, locking the door as they go, rather than facing any potential danger. Ultimately, though, neither their reclusiveness nor their wealth protect them from anything. They are left in the street with no money, possessions, or loved ones besides each other—their years of isolation have made them ill-equipped to face the world in which they suddenly find themselves. With this outcome, the story suggests that desperately trying to avoid the unknown and sticking with what is comfortable can be even more dangerous than taking risks and facing uncertainty head-on. - Theme: The Past. Description: As the narrator describes the ancestral house in Buenos Aires that he and his sister Irene share, it is clear that they greatly revere their home. While he admits that they live alone in a space that is much too large for them, he cherishes the history of past generations of their family who lived in the house. In devotion to this history, the adult siblings spend an inordinate amount of time tidying the vast rooms, trying to wipe away dust that only seems to be stirred up before resettling. So much of their time is spent cleaning, in fact, that the siblings never find time to marry or start families of their own—meaning that they have no one close to them to pass the house onto. Aside from cleaning, they spend their time doing the same things over and over again, rarely leaving the house. Irene knits constantly, sometimes reknitting the same garments if she finds a single flaw, while the narrator rereads the same French literature, as no new French literature books have arrived in Argentina since 1939. Their total fixation on preserving and revisiting the past prevents them from pursuing new interests or planning for the future. The siblings' inability to look to the future and or lead productive lives serves as a cautionary tale against orienting one's existence around the past. They don't have families of their own to fill the empty house, nor do they contribute anything of value to society, choosing to limit their lives to an ever-retreating past. The stubborn dust in the house thus serves as a metaphor for their inability to keep time at bay; though Irene and the narrator try their best to eradicate the dust, it keeps coming, as does the future. This resistance to change also manifests when a mysterious force comes to claim the rear rooms of the house midway through the story, and the siblings react by trying to ignore the intruder and pretend that their lives are still the same as they've always been. But just as the dirt and the new inhabitants take over despite the siblings' efforts to stave them off, the present will inevitably replace the past. "House Taken Over" thus implies that clinging to the past is at best futile and at worst destructive. By the end of the story, the characters' refusal to plan for the future or accept the changes happening in their house leaves them with no home and no possessions, unable to pass on the house and family heirlooms that they devoted their lives to maintaining. - Climax: When the mysterious forces that took over the back of the house begin to move into the front rooms where the narrator and Irene have sequestered themselves, they decide to flee their home and abandon their belongings forever. - Summary: The story's narrator lives with his sister, Irene, in their family's home. The house is large enough to hold at least eight people, but the siblings live alone because neither ever married. Together they keep a firm schedule, rising early to clean the dust that continually gathers in the giant house, especially in the larger communal rooms at the back of the building. In the evenings, the narrator reads French literature, and his sister knits all kinds of useful garments, though she produces more than the two could ever wear. Irene never seems to leave the house, but the narrator runs into town occasionally on Saturdays to buy her new skeins of wool and to check the bookstore for new French books. One night, when the narrator gets out of bed to make some tea, he hears a peculiar, muffled sound in the rear rooms. Believing an invading force has taken over the back of the house, he closes the door separating it from the front bedrooms, kitchen, and bathroom. The siblings agree they will live in the front rooms only, and their home and life seems to shrink even further. At first, they miss the belongings they left in the lost portion of the house, but they adjust quickly. They no longer need to clean and they complete all their cooking in the morning, so they have little to do for most of the day. The narrator spends most of his evenings watching Irene knit. Their routine becomes so streamlined that they no longer need to think in order to survive, and they rarely speak; they merely exist, quietly. At night, the only sounds come from Irene's sleep-talking and the narrator's tossing and turning. This simplistic, dismal existence appears as though it will continue indefinitely until the narrator gets up for a glass of water one night. Like before, he hears an odd sound, but this time in the front portion of the house. Irene notices that her brother has frozen in the hallway and gets up to listen with him. When the two are sure the mysterious presence is in either the kitchen or bathroom and coming closer, they run together to the vestibule, locking the entrance door behind them. Only then do they realize they have left with nothing but their clothing. Irene's knitting is caught in the door and cannot be rescued, and the narrator recalls with dismay the 15,000 pesos he left in his dresser. Still, they refuse to go back into the house, instead abandoning it forever. The narrator sees on his wristwatch that it is 11pm, then he and a weeping Irene walk off into the night.

- Genre: Supernatural, Spiritualism - Title: How It Happened - Point of view: First Person and Third Person - Setting: Outside London, England in the early 20th century - Character: The Narrator. Description: The narrator is the main character in "How It Happened," though he remains unnamed throughout. He tells his story through a writing medium, recounting the events that led up to and following his death in a car accident. The narrator is wealthy, as shown by his expensive car, gated residence, and chauffeur, though his occupation is never mentioned. His privilege and entitlement fuel his arrogance and impulsivity, causing him to believe that he can act without consequence, never having to pay the "full price" for his actions. This belief is disproven, however, when he ignores his chauffeur Perkins's warnings and chooses to drive his new car, leading to his own death and Perkins's injury. The car accident serves as a reminder that arrogance and impulsivity come with a price and can have grave consequences. Nevertheless, the consequences of the narrator's actions do not follow him into the afterlife. The narrator passes away peacefully and painless and is greeted warmly by his deceased friend, Stanley. - Character: Perkins. Description: Perkins is the narrator's chauffeur. At the start of the story, he comes to pick the narrator up from the train station, driving the narrator's new 30-horsepower car. He advises the narrator not to drive the car due to its unfamiliar gears, but he ultimately relents when the narrator refuses to listen to him. Later, when the car begins to careen down a hill, Perkins displays calmness and clarity, recommending that the narrator jump to safety while he takes control of the car. However, the narrator refuses this offer and instead offers to let Perkins jump out, which Perkins also refuses. This reveals a great degree of loyalty and professionalism on Perkins's part, for, while he is not responsible for the dangerous situation, he still decides to "stick it out" with his employer. This loyalty is further demonstrated at the end of the story when Perkins dismisses his own injuries to inquire about the narrator's whereabouts and wellbeing. Ultimately, Perkins's good actions and loyalty are rewarded, as he survives the car crash while the narrator does not. This suggests that good deeds are ultimately rewarded in the long run, while bad ones—like the narrator's arrogant and reckless decision to drive the car—are punished. - Character: Stanley. Description: Stanley is the narrator's old friend from college who appears after the narrator's car crash. At first, the narrator is startled by Stanley's presence, but he's also happy to see him and his characteristic wistful smile. However, as the conversation progresses, the narrator begins to sense that something is not quite right. Despite his initial confusion after the car crash, the narrator comes to realize that Stanley has been deceased for years, having died in the Boer War. Stanley confirms this and reveals that the narrator is also dead, having passed away in the car crash. Ultimately, Stanley's presence softens the blow of the narrator's death, suggesting that death is not so different from life. Stanley effectively ensures that the narrator won't feel alone in death. - Character: The Writing Medium. Description: The writing medium is an unnamed character who is responsible for transcribing the narrator's story. She appears to have a connection to the afterlife, as she can access the world of the dead and tell their stories. Her enigmatic and supernatural presence serves to deepen the overall eerie and otherworldly tone of the story. - Theme: Privilege, Arrogance, and Consequences. Description: In "How it Happened," the narrator's privileged arrogance endangers both his own life and that of his chauffeur, Perkins. Despite having no experience driving his new car, the narrator insists on driving himself, knowing full well that this might put his and Perkins's lives in jeopardy. As a person of wealth and status who does not "often have to pay the full price" for his "foolish" actions, the narrator disregards the danger and ignores Perkins's warning, believing himself to be exempt from any consequences. Later, when they reach Claystall Hill, the narrator does not hand control of the car over to Perkins, despite knowing that the hill is one of the most dangerous in London. This arrogance ultimately results in the car crashing, killing the narrator and injuring Perkins. The fact that the narrator dies but Perkins survives, however, suggests that, while privileged people often escape the consequences of their actions, their actions will ultimately catch up with them. The world of "How It Happened," in other words, is a world governed by moral principles in which even wealthy, high-status people eventually get what is coming to them, and the narrator is no exception. Despite the narrator's arrogant belief that he is exempt from the consequences of his actions, he ultimately pays the full price for his reckless behavior. - Theme: Humans and Technology. Description: One of the central themes in "How It Happened" is the relationship between humans and their technology. In particular, while machines are often seen as beneficial for their human users, this story suggests that there might be a darker side to the relationship. The narrator's enthusiasm for his new 30-horsepower Robur, for instance, leads him to drive a car which he is not able to operate safely. Because he forgoes safety precautions, his new car ironically proves to be less safe than his older, less technologically advanced car: despite its superior handling, 30-horsepower engine, and bright headlights, the narrator cannot stop the car from crashing, killing him and injuring Perkins. Thus, while the narrator is at fault for his own arrogance, the story suggests that the car's advanced technology is also to blame: the appeal of the new, flashy car encourages the narrator to act recklessly and foolishly. As the story unfolds, the dangerous aesthetic appeal of the car becomes even more apparent. As the car careens down the hill, the narrator finds himself admiring the beauty of their perilous descent, imagining how they would appear to anyone watching as a "great, roaring, golden death." In this way, the narrator's relationship to the car becomes self-destructive as he associates the deadly nature of the car with its aesthetic appeal, even as it threatens to kill him.  Accordingly, the story serves as a cautionary tale about how technology can be just as deadly as it can be useful. As a story written at the end of the First World War, a conflict in which machines were used to kill millions of people, this moral should come as no surprise: it reflects Doyle's having seen firsthand the damage that the combination of technology and human hubris can do. - Theme: Loyalty, Selfishness, and Inequality. Description: In "How It Happened" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the narrator fails to reciprocate the loyalty and respect of his chauffeur, Perkins, suggesting that the narrator does not see Perkins as an equal. In the beginning of the story, for instance, the narrator disregards Perkins's warning about the dangers of driving the new car, revealing a lack of respect for Perkins's counsel in addition to his wellbeing. Later, when they are in a dangerous situation while driving down Claystall Hill, Perkins offers to take control of the car and let the narrator jump to safety. Given that he has no personal responsibility for the situation, this offer reveals a great degree of loyalty on Perkin's part; he is willing to risk his life for someone who, on an arrogant whim, has endangered him. Like his earlier dismissal of Perkins's warning, however, the narrator rejects this offer, arrogantly believing that he is just as capable as Perkins of driving them to safety. Though both may have survived if the narrator let Perkins take the wheel, the narrator himself fails to recognize the wisdom of Perkins's offer, resulting in his death and Perkins's injury. Likewise, though the narrator reciprocates Perkins's offer, the gesture does not have the same significance because the narrator has already committed to staying in the car: whether or not Perkins jumps has no impact on the narrator's own wellbeing, so the narrator's offer isn't a true sacrifice—it's just a hardheaded refusal to relinquish control of the car. While both men make gestures of loyalty that might seem similar, then, it is only Perkins who shows true loyalty. In fact, the narrator's offer only emphasizes his position of authority, as he refuses to give up control even in a crucial moment. As such, the story highlights the stark contrast between the narrator and Perkins, suggesting that the narrator's power as an elite employer leads him to disregard Perkins's wellbeing while also foolishly putting himself in danger. - Theme: Death and the Supernatural. Description: In Arthur Conan Doyle's short story "How It Happened," the narrator experiences a seamless transition into death. Not only is there no pain, but the narrator emerges much the same as before. Though other humans can no longer see or hear him, he can still see and hear them, and he still inhabits the same body and world as before he died. Nor is the narrator alone in the afterlife—his friend Stanley warmly welcomes him, suggesting that there can be human community and connection even in death. Through this portrayal of the afterlife, Doyle plays with the idea that death might be neither a foreign nor frightening experience, but rather a continuation of life. Doyle's use of the writing medium to tell the narrator's story from beyond the grave further strengthens this idea. It implies that the worlds of the living and the dead are not only similar, but also accessible to one another. All that is needed to bridge the gap is a medium—or, in this case, an author to transcribe the tale. Depending on the reader's belief in the supernatural, then, "How It Happened" can be interpreted either as a true supernatural artifact, faithfully transcribed by Doyle, or a story that demonstrates the power of narrative to seemingly resurrect the dead. In either case, Doyle suggests that the dead are never very far from the living. - Climax: After crashing his car, the narrator realizes he is dead. - Summary: Though "How It Happened" is narrated in the first person by an unnamed male character, readers are told at the beginning that the tale itself has actually been set down by a writing medium. This creates some ambiguity as to the nature and source of the narrator and his narrative, but it eventually becomes clear that the writing medium is using her supernatural powers to tell the story on behalf of the narrator, who is dead. The narrator's story begins with a reflection on his shaky memory of a specific evening and the challenge it poses in narrating the story. He recounts certain events vividly, while others are hazy, as if they're from a dream. Nevertheless, he recalls everything that happened after he arrived at a country station from London. He recounts being picked up at the station by Perkins, his chauffeur, in his (the narrator's) new 30-horsepower Robur. Perkins advises the narrator not to drive as the car's gears are unfamiliar, but the narrator ignores his warning. They drive home without any problem, until they begin their descent down Claystall Hill, which the narrator says is one of the worst in London. Here, the narrator recounts the harrowing descent, describing how both the car's brakes fail as they are accelerating down the hill. After navigating through two difficult curves in the road, Perkins offers to take the wheel and let the narrator jump. The narrator refuses and returns the offer to Perkins, who also declines. As they hurtle toward a third curve, the narrator admires the deathly beauty of the automobile. The car clears the corner but crashes into the pillar of the narrator's home gate. The narrator flies through the air and goes unconscious. When he wakes, he notices a man standing next to him whom he recognizes as his old friend from college, Stanley. He is surprised to see him but does not question it after the excitement of the car crash. He observes the scene of the crash and hears an injured Perkins calling after him, though neither Perkins nor any of the bystanders appear to hear him when he calls back. Stanley asks if there is any pain, and the narrator says no. Stanley, for his part, isn't surprised to hear this, merely noting that there never is any pain in situations like the narrator's. This prompts the narrator to remember that Stanley died in the Boer War years before. Startled, he says, "Stanley, you are dead," to which Stanley smiles and replies, "So are you."

- Genre: Short story - Title: How Much Land Does a Man Need? - Point of view: Third-person omniscient - Setting: An unnamed village in 19th-century rural Russia - Character: Pakhom. Description: The protagonist of the story, Pakhom is a peasant farmer turned landowner. Pakhom is at first depicted as a hard-working husband and family man, barely getting by according to society's standards. Motivated by the elder sister's criticism of country life and guided by the Devil, however, Pakhom progresses from a poor, yet happy, peasant to a greedy and prideful landowner. As Pakhom gains land and wealth, he becomes increasingly unhappy and, just as his wife predicts, increasingly fearful of losing it all. Although Pakhom claims that with enough land he would "fear no one – not even the Devil himself," this proves untrue, as his greed is fueled by constant anxiety about returning to peasantry. The character of Pakhom illustrates the social and personal consequences of greed and pride, while simultaneously exposing the dangers of private landownership. He buys more land than he needs and proves unsympathetic to neighboring peasants left with insufficient property to farm and survive; he even fines them for trespassing. Pakhom's character is largely allegorical, embodying many of the traits and behaviors that lead to the civil unrest and social inequality that plagued nineteenth-century Russia. - Character: The Devil. Description: The Devil makes frequent appearances in Tolstoy's story and requires little in the form of introduction. He is eavesdropping during Pakhom's debate over the merits of peasant life with his wife and her elder sister, and he takes Pakhom's claim that enough land would protect him from the Devil as a personal affront. The Devil proclaims, "I shall see that you have plenty of land and that way I'll get you in my clutches," thus beginning Pakhom's quest. The Devil disguises himself as the Bashkir elder, the traveling peasant, and the passing merchant, inserting himself into Pakhom's life at key points during the story and tempting Pakhom to give in to his greedy impulses. Each time Pakhom acquires a new piece of property, the Devil is behind the transaction. Ultimately, the Devil's attempts are successful in bringing about Pakhom's demise, as he lures Pakhom to his death and ostensibly to Hell. - Character: The Younger Sister/Pakhom's Wife. Description: Pakhom's unnamed wife, and sister of the elder sister. The younger sister is proud of her simple life as a peasant, vastly preferring country living to the more complicated city life her sister leads. Believing that "Loss is Gain's elder brother," she alludes to the notion that loss is inevitable whenever wealth is obtained. She openly disapproves of her elder sister's more luxurious lifestyle and considers hard work a staple of morality. The younger sister claims that, as peasants, her family is "afraid of no one," and rely only upon themselves to survive. Her defense in the face of her sister's insults encourages Pakhom to dare the Devil. Pakhom consults his wife in his early attempts to buy land. However, as Pakhom gains more wealth, he interacts with his wife less and less, until she is left behind altogether when he travels to the Bashkirs' land. - Character: The Elder Sister/Merchant's Wife. Description: The wife of a merchant and Pakhom's sister-in-law. The elder sister lives a wealthy and cosmopolitan lifestyle in an unnamed town, and she is judgmental about her younger sister's life as a peasant. Her character serves as a personification of high society and the upper class, and she is thoroughly unpleasant. Her criticism of her sister and brother-in-law's lifestyle sets off the chain of events that results in Pakhom's death. - Character: The Traveling Peasant. Description: An unnamed stranger who passes through Pakhom's village, implied to be the Devil in disguise. Pakhom offers the traveling peasant food and lodging for the night, at which point the peasant tells Pakhom about his experiences working south of the Volga river. He claims the land there is fertile, and that upon joining the village commune, a person is allotted twenty-acres of prime farmland. The traveling peasant tempts Pakhom with promises of cheap land and a good life, and he later transforms into the Devil during Pakhom's ominous dream the night before he walks the Bashkirs' land. This suggests that the Devil has disguised himself as the traveling peasant to fuel Pakhom's greed for land, and Pakhom takes the bait. - Character: The Passing Merchant. Description: An unnamed merchant implied to be the Devil in disguise. The passing merchant distracts Pakhom and prevents him from buying the bankrupt peasant's land with his stories about "the far-off land of the Bashkirs'." According to the merchant, thousands of acres of land can be purchased from the Bashkirs' for much less than the bankrupt peasant's land. Just like the traveling peasant, the passing merchant transforms into the Devil in Pakhom's dream, suggesting he initially appeared only to further tempt Pakhom and fuel his greedy behavior. - Character: The Bashkir Elder. Description: The leader of the Bashkirs and implied to be the Devil in disguise. The Bashkirs are unable to give Pakhom any amount of land without the elder's permission, and he is the only Bashkir who can speak Russian. The Bashkir elder offers Pakhom as much land as he can circumnavigate in one day for a set price of one thousand roubles. He further insists that Pakhom carry a spade with him, marking his perimeter as he goes. The Bashkir elder transforms into the Devil in Pakhom's strange dream and encourages Pakhom's greed in the real world, cheering him on until he falls to his death. - Character: The Lady Landowner. Description: An unnamed female landowner of a small estate just outside Pakhom's village. A kind woman, the landowner "had always been on good terms with the peasants and had never ill-treated them," until her newly-hired manager, the old soldier, begins to impose petty fines on Pakhom and the other peasants. When she decides to sell her land, she agrees to sell it to the local peasants based on what they can individually afford. - Character: Semyon. Description: A local peasant and one of only three named characters in the story. When Pakhom discovers that someone has stolen the trees from his land, he is convinced, without proof, that Semyon is the culprit. Pakhom's case against Semyon is quickly dismissed by the District Court due to lack of evidence. - Theme: The Corrupting Nature of Greed. Description: Leo Tolstoy's 1886 short story "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" centers on Pakhom, a peasant farmer whose insatiable desire for land brings about his downfall. The story begins when Pakhom unwittingly extends a dare to the Devil, claiming that with enough land he would have nothing to fear. Pakhom's subsequent, insatiable pursuit of land leads him down a path of increasing selfishness and avarice, until he ultimately drops dead in his frantic search for more. A cautionary tale and lesson in morality, Tolstoy's story highlights the corruptive nature of greed and the dangers of assigning too much value to material possessions. Pakhom views land as a source of comfort and security, and he will stop at nothing to obtain as much of it as he can. Rather than satisfaction, however, all this excess land really brings him is the desire for more. In order to buy his first piece of land, Pakhom must sell everything he owns, secure a loan from his merchant brother-in-law, and hire out the labor of his children. Even then, it still takes Pakhom over two years to finish paying for the property. Pakhom's desire to own land is so strong that he is willing to go into debt and exploit his children and family to satisfy his greed. Pakhom tells his wife, "We must get ahold of twenty acres, or thereabouts. If we don't, we won't be able to live." Despite estimating his needs at roughly twenty acres, Pakhom goes on to buy "about thirty acres of partly wooded land." Pakhom himself has admitted that he does not require that amount of land to survive, and thus selects a parcel that exceeds his need. Pakhom later sells this newly-obtained land for a profit, which he then uses to secure even more property. Although he now possesses more than three times the amount of land he needs "to live," Pakhom's greed only continues to grow. When the Bashkirs, distant landowners, say he can have as much land as he can circumnavigate on foot in one day, Pakhom pushes himself to the point that he dies of exhaustion. So blinded is Pakhom by his greed that he literally walks to his own death and damnation. Of course, greed within Tolstoy's story is not limited to Pakhom, but also manifests in the fines larger landowners impose on local peasants. Pakhom's desire to own land is intensified when a neighboring landowner hires an old soldier to manage her estate. A tenant farmer, Pakhom's own small patch of rented land sits near that of the unnamed woman, whom he describes as kind and on good terms with her peasant neighbors. Her newly-hired manager, however, quickly begins to leverage impossible fines on Pakhom and the other peasants for minor infractions, such as wandering horses and stray cows, stressing Pakhom's pocketbook to its breaking point. When Pakhom becomes a more powerful landowner himself, he similarly imposes fines on the peasants for trespassing. He teaches "them a lesson in court, then another, making several of them pay fines," despite his knowledge that "the peasants weren't doing it deliberately but because they were short of land." Indeed, land shortage was a major problem in 19th-century Russia after serfdom was outlawed in 1861. Although the emancipated serfs could legally own land, there was not enough of it to go around, and that which was available was over-farmed and of poor quality. This shortage of farmland leads to the peasants trespassing on Pakhom's property, and even though he has experienced their plight first-hand, Pakhom still demands payment. In fact, Pakhom seeks fines so frequently and aggressively that he falls "out with the magistrates as well as his neighbors, who threaten to burn his cottage down." Pakhom's attempts to exploit money from peasants prove too much for even the Russian courts to tolerate, and the peaceful farmers, once only mildly irritated, now threaten arson in revenge. Pakhom's blind pursuit for more land thus upends his moral compass and strips him of empathy for his fellow man, resulting in animosity and social unrest. "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" ultimately argues that greed begets only more greed. Pakhom is continually in search of more land and power throughout the story, often at the expense of others, and he pays the ultimate price for his avarice. As Pakhom gains land and security, he loses basic human decency, and is still never able to satisfy his ever-expanding desire. What's more, Pakhom's behavior not only isolates him within his community, but also within his own family; Pakhom relies upon his family to secure his first piece of land, but increasingly neglects them with each new piece of property until they are completely left behind when Pakhom travels far away to buy the Bashkirs' land. By focusing on the effects that Pakhom's excessive greed has on his family and neighbors, Tolstoy further suggests that the real tragedy is not Pakhom's own untimely death, but the negative impact of his greed on the world around him. - Theme: Class and Society. Description: In "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" Tolstoy places a critical lens on the social hierarchy of Russian society, in which the poor are routinely deprived to ensure that the rich remain wealthy. Peasants in the story are depicted as second-class citizens, and Pakhom's desire for more land stems in large part from a desire for upward mobility. Although Pakhom is overcome by his greed, Russian society is structed in such a way that it is difficult to find comfort and security as a peasant, and, as such, provides the kindling for Pakhom's initial wish to experience the life of the higher class. Ironically, Tolstoy's story suggests that landownership is responsible for the social inequality within Russian society—and, it follows, perpetuates the very injustice that Pakhom attempts to escape. From the outset of the story, society is portrayed as consisting of two very separate entities: the urban and the rural, or the haves and the have nots. These class differences are exemplified by Pakhom's sister-in-law, the merchant's wife, comes from a nameless town to visit her younger sister in the country. The sister-in-law clearly believes her comparatively cosmopolitan lifestyle to be better than her younger sister's rural existence. Tolstoy writes, "The two sisters sat down for a talk over a cup of tea and the elder started boasting about the superiority of town life, with all its comforts, the fine clothes her children wore, the exquisite food and drink, the skating, parties and visits to the theatre." The merchant's wife not only prefers her urban life, but also believes that people living in town are inherently better than those in the country. "What do you know about nice clothes and good manners!" she says. "However hard your good husband slaves away you'll spend your lives in the muck and that's where you'll die. And the same goes for your children." In the opinion of the merchant's wife, her sister's poverty is a personal failing that will inevitably be passed down from one generation to the next, underscoring the difficulty of raising one's social status in this world. While the merchant's wife finds value in material objects and a full social calendar, Pakhom's wife is content with simpler things. According to her, "One day you are rich and the next you might find yourself out in the streets. Here in the country we don't have those ups and downs." The peasant's wife believes that material wealth only leads to complications. The more one person has, the more they stand to lose, and city living is full of temptations. As such, Pakhom's wife considers her rural life a much safer alternative to city living. Each sister is ultimately judgmental of the other, and while the merchant's wife accuses her sister of living in "muck," Pakhom's wife questions her sister's morals due her indulgent lifestyle. Through these two very different sisters, Tolstoy clearly sets up the dichotomy and resentment between the rich and the poor that will serve as the backdrop to Pakhom's landowning ambitions. Despite his wife's contentment with a simple life, the boastfulness of the merchant's wife causes Pakhom to reflect on his status as a peasant. He claims that he doesn't resent the hard work his life entails, yet his sister-in-law's argument for the value of material objects leads Pakhom to regret that he doesn't have enough land to live as comfortably as she does. He believes that, in addition to his upward mobility, landownership will make his life easier. Of course, this is not the case, and owning land only brings Pakhom frustration and grief. Just as Pakhom's wife predicts, material wealth is not a genuine indicator of a successful and fulfilled life. In fact, landownership turns Pakhom into an ugly person who beats his wife, mistreats the local peasants, and accuses his neighbors of theft with little proof. Tolstoy thus implies a moral decay associated with placing too much value on material objects and excessive wealth. What's more, each time the Devil makes an appearance in Tolstoy's story, it is in related in some way to landownership. It is the Devil who influences Pakhom's greed and desire for more land, and when the local peasants quarrel about land, the Devil turns them into "loggerheads" who are unable to get along. The Devil is also at the center of Pakhom's ominous dream the night before he walks the Bashkirs' land, in which he envisions his own dead body at the Devil's feet. Through these references Tolstoy draws a direct parallel between the Devil and landownership, implying an inherent evil in the buying and selling of natural resources. "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" ultimately serves as a harsh critique of 19th-century Russian society, in which possessions and material wealth define social class and personal worth. Throughout the story, the private ownership of land is continually associated with the Devil and is often the cause of social inequality and unrest. The negative representation of Pakhom's experiences with landownership even suggests that the buying and selling of land is ultimately not in the best interest of a just society; Pakhom's land enables him to exploit more money from the local peasants in the form of fines, effectively keeping them poor and maintaining an unequal social order. Without denying the corrosive nature of greed, then, Tolstoy also critiques the highly-stratified nature of Russian society that contributes to the desire for more wealth in the first place. - Theme: God, the Devil, and Free Will. Description: As one of only three named characters in "How Much Land Does a Man Need?", the Devil plays a crucial role in Tolstoy's story. Early on Pakhom declares that with enough land, he would "fear no one–not even the Devil himself!" The Devil, eavesdropping nearby, receives this statement as a personal dare and sets the events of the story in motion. Even as the Devil tempts Pakhom, however, it is Pakhom himself who takes the bait each step of the way. Pakhom's resistance to the Devil's temptations proves insufficient, and he is easily led away from righteousness until he presumably ends up Hell. Even as Tolstoy's story suggests that Pakhom has free will, however, in the sense that he could deny the Devil if he wished, the author also presents God as wielding ultimate power over man. Pakhom may be free to decide how he will live his life; however, it is God's will that decides his fate. Tolstoy's repeated references to the Devil imply that evil is a constant presence in life. The Devil makes his first appearance when Pakhom boasts to the merchant's wife that with enough land he would not fear the Devil. Tolstoy writes, "the Devil had been sitting behind the stove heard everything." The Devil is not called upon or summoned in any way; on the contrary, he is quietly lying in wait for the perfect time to strike. Later, when the local peasants attempt to buy land in the name of a village commune, they are unable to arrive at a consensus. "They met once, they met twice," Tolstoy writes, "but no progress was made: the Devil had set them at loggerheads and there was nothing they could agree upon." The peasants behave foolishly and are unable to work together, and it is again because of the Devil.  The night before Pakhom circumnavigates the Bashkirs' land, he has a strange dream in which he encounters each of the men involved in his prior attempts to buy land. First, Pakhom sees the Bashkir elder who has the final authority in selling the land; he then sees the traveling peasant who informed him about the commune south of the Volga; and finally, he sees the passing merchant who first told him of the Bashkirs' land. Pakhom soon realizes that the figures he sees are not actually these men, "but the Devil himself, with hoofs and horns, sitting there laughing his head off." The transformation of the men suggests not only the hand of the Devil pushing Pakhom forward every step of the way, but also that all men have the capacity to behave in evil ways. In contrast to the Devil, God is mentioned very little in Tolstoy's story. Nevertheless, he is an exceedingly powerful force. For example, when Pakhom begins to negotiate with the Bashkirs, he becomes nervous about the validity of their deal. He insists on a contract to legally secure the land, arguing that future generations of Bashkirs may want the property back. After all, Pakhom says, their "lives are in God's hands." Tolstoy implies that the future is out of their control, and only God has can know how their present actions will be received in years to come. Despite his negotiations, the walk around the Bashkirs' land proves too much for Pakhom. As his body begins to deteriorate, he fears he will not make it back to his starting point, and, as such, will have to forfeit all his land. As Pakhom reaches the end of his walk he states, "I've plenty of land now, but will God let me live to enjoy it?" As Pakhom begins to die, Tolstoy suggests that even though Pakhom has the power to simply sit down and stop following the Devil, it is God, and not the peasant himself, who ultimately dictates if he will live or die. Indeed, each time Tolstoy mentions God in "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" he speaks of God's will; only God has the power to decide if Pakhom survives, and only God knows if the Bashkirs' children will someday want their land back. In both instances, Pakhom and the Bashkirs are ultimately at the mercy of God, whose will decides their fate. Even though the Devil is a continuous presence who undeniably influences Pakhom, he only provides the opportunity for Pakhom to stray from good. Pakhom has free will to resist the Devil at any time yet proves too blinded by his greed to do so. Pakhom is not required by law to fine the local peasants for trespassing on his property, for example, nor is he forced to expend so much energy to obtain such a large piece of the Bashkirs' land; Pakhom makes these decisions freely and follows the Devil willingly, albeit unknowingly. Though Pakhom is free to resist the Devil's evil bait, his will is limited when compared to God's. God, the story argues, holds absolute power over men. If Pakhom has the power to deny the Devil's evil intentions, it is only because God has given it to him. When Pakhom neglects to use this power, he secures his place in Hell. - Theme: Death and Pride. Description: Tolstoy's portrayal of death in "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" is powerful and absolute, and no amount of land or material wealth can protect Pakhom from its reach. Yet when death comes for Pakhom during his attempt to walk the Bashkirs' land, he repeatedly disregards it and shows surprisingly little fear. It is not simply greed that blinds Pakhom to the danger he is in, however, but also his own pride. Pakhom refuses to heed warnings of death and seems to fear the shame of losing his new-found material wealth and social standing more than his own wellbeing. By linking pride and death, Tolstoy suggests that the former, like greed, is a corrupting influence that leads only to ruin and moral decay. What's more, the finality of death becomes the ultimate insult to Pakhom's pride, as it renders all of his efforts toward obtaining and flaunting wealth meaningless. Death first appears in the form of an omen in Pakhom's dream the night before he walks the Bashkirs' land. Pakhom sees himself in his dream, wearing only a shirt and trousers, dead on the ground at the foot of the Devil. He wakes in a cold sweat, yet his only response to this disturbing imagery is to note, "The things one dreams about!" Pakhom is too consumed by his greed and excitement about securing as much land as possible to pay attention to what his dream may actually mean. As Pakhom walks the perimeter of land he hopes to purchase from the Bashkirs', he sheds his outer coats, shoes, and excess clothing under the strain of the sun. He walks until the "heat had exhausted him, his bare feet were cut and bruised, and his legs were giving way." Even as Pakhom begins to physically resemble the dead version of himself from his dream, he still does not heed its warning. By the time Pakhom finally makes the connection between his dream and his greedy behavior, it is too late. As he reaches the top of the hill where his cap marks his starting point, Pakhom "remembered the dream and he groaned. His legs gave way, he fell forward and managed to reach the cap with his hands." Pakhom's ominous dream is his last thought before he dies, reinforcing its importance. Pakhom's foolishness suggests the depth of his pride, as he fails to grant any weight to this clear omen of his own doom. It is in large part this pride that keeps Pakhom from forfeiting the Bashkirs' land. Pakhom's initial fears as his body begins to deteriorate are focused on losing the valuable land, rather than on death. Pakhom's "fear made him only more breathless," Tolstoy writes. "On he ran…" To Pakhom, it seems, returning to the village commune to live among the other peasants is a fate worse than death. Even when Pakhom finally does admit the fear that death is upon him, this proves no match for his fear of being made a fool. Pakhom states, "If I stop now, after coming all this way–well, they'd call me an idiot!" He knows that his body cannot possibly take much more abuse, yet he continues to push himself past the breaking point, worrying he will lose face with the other villagers. At the moment Pakhom realizes that he is most definitely dying, he does not scream or cry. Instead, as he collapses, his behavior is controlled and composed. At this point, Pakhom knows that he has secured his land; as such, his extreme fear of living the life of a peasant fades, and along with it his earlier panic and breathlessness subside. He is left with only his lesser fear of death, which he meets with a mere groan. Through Pakhom, then, Tolstoy highlights the short-sighted futility of pride. Pride, much like greed, is at the root of Pakhom's problems. Pakhom's pride is wounded when his sister-in-law insults his life as a peasant, and his fear of returning to such an allegedly shameful life after obtaining land only serves to fuel his greedy behavior. By focusing at the end of his life on what other villagers will think, rather than the reality of his desperate situation, Pakhom privileges pride above the finality of death. To do so, Tolstoy's story argues, is deeply foolish. "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" thus also suggests the ultimate triviality of human being's material concerns in the face of their inevitable loss. - Climax: Upon reaching the bottom of a hill while circumambulating the Bashkirs' land, Pakhom realizes that that the sun only appears to have set from his position. At the top of the hill, where the Bashkirs stand waiting, the sun has not yet set. Seeing that he still has more time to return to his starting point and claim his land, Pakhom pushes himself to his death. - Summary: Pakhom, a poor peasant, and his wife after visited by latter's elder sister. The wife of a merchant, the elder sister brags about her glamourous life in the city and insults her sister's modest country existence. The younger sister defends her lifestyle, claiming self-sufficiency and simplicity is the road to the moral high ground. Pakhom joins in, saying that with enough land he would have nothing to fear—including "the Devil himself." The Devil overhears Pakhom's claim and vows to tempt him with land. When a local lady landowner suddenly decides to part with her property, Pakhom convinces her to sell him thirty acres. At first, Pakhom seems happy with his purchase. It would be perfect, he thinks, if not for the constant trespassing of local peasants. Pakhom repeatedly fines these peasants and takes them to court, causing tensions to escalate to the point that his neighbors threaten to burn down his house. Pakhom has grown resentful of his "cramped life" when a traveling peasant tells him of a village south of the Volga river, where families are allotted twenty-five acres of farmland per person upon settling. Pakhom and his family travel to the commune, where they are welcomed and allotted land totaling three times the amount they left behind. Nevertheless, Pakhom wants more, convinced that freehold land—in contrast to leased—is the way to truly become wealthy. Just as Pakhom is about to purchase some freehold land from a bankrupt peasant, a passing merchant distracts him with stories of plentiful land in the far-away region of the Bashkirs. Over tea, the merchant says that after gifting the Bashkirs a few presents, he was able to secure thirteen thousand acres for a mere twenty copecks apiece. Pakhom leaves his family behind and travels to the land of the Bashkirs. Upon his arrival, they prove to be friendly yet strange people and offer Pakhom kumiss to drink. Pakhom gives the Bashkirs several gifts, as instructed by the passing merchant, and they eagerly look to repay his kindness. Pakhom requests the opportunity to purchase some of their land. The Bashkir elder soon arrives and agrees to sell Pakhom as much land as he can circumnavigate in one day for the price of a thousand roubles, provided Pakhom returns to his starting point by sunset. Pakhom readily agrees. That night Pakhom experiences a strange dream, in which the Bashkir elder, the passing merchant, and the traveling peasant each transform into the Devil, who then laughs at a dead and nearly-naked figure at his feet. Pakhom realizes that the dead figure is in fact himself. Upon waking, however, he brushes off the dream. He sets his eyes on the land waiting to be claimed, grabs his spade, and begins his walk. Despite the growing heat of the sun, Pakhom easily covers approximately six miles of land, marking his way with the spade and shedding his clothing to keep cool. By midday, Pakhom has grown uncomfortable under the relentless sun, but he pushes on. After having walked ten miles, he realizes must hasten his pace to ensure that he returns by sundown. Pakhom rushes back and arrives at his starting point just as the setting sun crosses the horizon. He then promptly drops dead from exhaustion. His workman uses the spade to dig Pakhom's grave, answering the story's title question. In the end, a man needs only enough land to bury him.

- Genre: Novel, Bildungsroman, Family Epic, Historical Fiction - Title: How the García Girls Lost Their Accents - Point of view: Various - Setting: The Dominican Republic and the United States - Character: Yolanda García. Description: - Character: Sofia García. Description: - Character: Sandra García. Description: - Character: Carla García. Description: - Character: Carlos García. Description: - Character: Laura de la Torre. Description: - Character: Mundín García. Description: - Character: Dr. Payne. Description: - Character: Rudy. Description: - Character: Victor Hubbard. Description: - Character: Chucha. Description: - Character: Doña Charito. Description: - Character: Don Jose. Description: - Character: Dr. Fanning. Description: - Character: Mrs. Fanning. Description: - Theme: Language, Storytelling, and Identity. Description: - Theme: Immigration and Assimilation. Description: - Theme: Sexuality and Relationships. Description: - Theme: Revolution, Patriarchy, and Feminism. Description: - Theme: Racism and Social Class. Description: - Climax: The Garcías leave the Dominican Republic and move to New York. - Summary: Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia García are four young sisters in the Dominican Republic in the 1950s. They have a large extended family who all live on the same property. The family is wealthy and well-respected. One day, Yolanda finds a family of stray cats and takes a kitten from its mother to keep as a pet. She later feels guilty, and Yolanda has visions of the mother cat for the rest of her life. Carlos, the girls' father, often travels to New York and brings back gifts. After one trip he brings Carla a toy bank made of metal, shaped into the image of the Virgen Mary ascending to the sun. Carla gives the bank to one of the family's maids, and when Carlos and Laura find out, they fire the maid. The girls take art lessons at a neighbor's house. At the house, Sandra accidentally comes across a naked man with a chain around his neck sculpting a statue of Mary. Later, the sculpture is revealed at church, and Sandra sees that the man sculpted the statue's face in her likeness. Yolanda is close with her cousin Mundín, but their parents try to separate them because they are different genders. Mundín coerces Yolanda into showing him her genitals. The Dominican Republic is under the rule of Rafael Trujillo, a militant dictator. The government comes after the Garcías because Carlos is involved in political groups conspiring to take down Trujillo. After a run-in with the secret police, the family flees to New York City. In New York, the Garcías are uncomfortable as they struggle with money and live above a racist neighbor. Shortly after arriving, the family goes out to dinner with an American couple, the Fannings. Sandra witnesses Mrs. Fanning drunkenly kiss Carlos in the bathroom. Sandra and Carlos are disturbed, and Carlos tells Sandra not to tell Laura about the incident. Yolanda, now a fourth grader, sees snow for the first time and panics, thinking it is a nuclear bomb. Carlos is a doctor, and he eventually begins a private practice. The family's financial situation improves, and they move to Long Island. Carla is in middle school, and her classmates bully her because she is Dominican. A man also exposes himself to Carla as she walks home from school one day. Yolanda becomes a precocious English student, and her teachers ask her to write a speech for the school. Yolanda draws inspiration from a Walt Whitman poem. When she reads the speech to Carlos, he tears it up in anger, calling it disrespectful. Yolanda compares him to a dictator. Tension between the girls and their parents grows as the girls come of age. As a teenager, Sofia gets in trouble when Laura finds marijuana in her room. As punishment, Sofia stays in the Dominican Republic for a year. There, she dates her misogynistic and controlling cousin Manuel. When Yolanda is in college, she has a relationship with Rudy that ends because Yolanda refuses to sleep with him. The experience damages Yolanda's self-confidence for many years. She wants to fit in with her classmates but feels different from them because she is Dominican. Yolanda later marries a man named John. She loves him, but he is abusive. Yolanda feels like he doesn't understand her because they come from different cultures and because John doesn't speak Spanish. Descending into a mental breakdown, Yolanda completely loses the ability to make sense of John's speech. She leaves him and moves back in with her parents. Laura and Carlos admit Yolanda to a mental institution when Yolanda begins to communicate only through lines of literature that she has memorized. Yolanda falls in love with her therapist, Dr. Payne. She hallucinates a black bird crawling out of her mouth and attacking Dr. Payne. Sandra also has a mental breakdown wherein she thinks she is experiencing evolution in reverse, and that she is turning into a monkey. She reads obsessively, hoping that books can help her remember how to be human. Sofia meets Otto while she is traveling in Colombia. The two have a romantic relationship, but Otto returns to Germany and Sofia returns to her parents' house in New York. Carlos finds Otto's letters to Sofia and explodes in anger when he realizes that Sofia slept with Otto. Immediately afterwards, Sofia moves out of her parents' house. She marries Otto, and Carlos refuses to speak to her for years. Later, Sofia has a son with Otto. Carlos is happy because the baby is the first boy in the family, and it is named after Carlos. Carlos agrees to have his birthday party at Sofia's house—the event coincides with Sofia's son's christening. Sofia tries to make her father's birthday perfect, hoping to reconcile with him. Everyone plays a game wherein Carlos is blindfolded, and he must guess who is kissing him on the cheek. Every time, he guesses each of his daughters' names except Sofia's. Offended, Sofia kisses her father's ear using her tongue. This angers Carlos and ends the party. Now well into adulthood, Yolanda travels to the Dominican Republic. She visits her aunts and cousins, and she struggles to speak fluent Spanish to them. Yolanda's aunts ridicule her for being Americanized, and because Yolanda is unaware of how dangerous it is to be a solo female traveler in the area. Yolanda drives around the island in search of guavas. At one point she gets lost and panics when she encounters two men who seem dangerous, but the men help change Yolanda's flat tire and leave her unharmed. Yolanda's family assumes that she will soon return to the U.S., but she secretly hopes to start a new life in the Dominican Republic.

- Genre: Short Story - Title: How to Become a Writer - Point of view: Second Person - Setting: The story follows Francie through different domestic and academic settings including her childhood home, school, and university. - Character: Francie. Description: Francie is the protagonist of "How to Become a Writer." As a teenager, she begins to write creative pieces—first poems, then stories—in response to the failures and disappointments of her everyday life. In college, she switches from a child psychology major to pursue creative writing, and her dogged commitment to writing exasperates her boyfriend, her roommate, and her mother. Despite repeated criticism about her nonsensical plots, Francie keeps writing stories in which two people blow themselves up in absurd circumstances—a motif that represents her inability to make sense of her parents' divorce and her brother's wartime injuries. Francie tends to compare herself with others: when she begins college, she judges those around her as either more or less intelligent than herself, preferring to define herself by contrast than to find similarities with her peers. Francie finds writing to be more of a struggle than a delight, but even though she attempts other career paths, including law school, she can't keep herself from writing, which suggests that a creative life is sometimes more of an inevitable fate than a simple aspiration. - Character: Francie's Mother. Description: Francie's mother, unlike Francie's father, is a consistent presence in Francie's life. Her practical attitude is a strong contrast to Francie's creative, illogical behavior. During Francie's childhood, her mother is often preoccupied by issues including her divorce from Francie's father and the fact that her son, Francie's brother, is serving in Vietnam. This preoccupation manifests in her lack of interest when it comes to Francie's writing. Years later, when Francie changes her major to creative writing, Francie's mother seems perplexed and frustrated, and she gives Francie a book with tips on becoming a business executive. She doesn't try to discourage Francie from writing, but it's clear she, along with most of Francie's peers, doesn't understand her persistence. Her confusion contributes to the loneliness of Francie's creative life, as it's something not even the people closest to Francie can understand. - Character: Francie's Brother. Description: Francie's brother serves in the military as a soldier in the Vietnam War. He returns with severe injuries when Francie is in college. Though it's unclear how close Francie and her brother are to each other, Francie's inability to write about her brother or his injuries implies that he once represented a sense of stability in her life, and when his life is threatened, that stability vanishes. In effect, his injuries reveal to Francie the volatility of the world around her. - Character: Francie's Father. Description: Francie's father is married to Francie's mother during Francie's childhood, though the two divorce each other when Francie is at college. As a teenager, Francie suspects her father of cheating on her mother, and his absence from the story—in contrast to her mother's sporadic appearances—suggests Francie's relationship with him is a distant one. His divorce from Francie's mother is the catalyst for one of the many explosive stories Francie writes, which reflects the unprocessed trauma it caused her throughout her adolescence. Because of this, despite the weak bond between Francie and her father, he's perpetually present in her creative work. - Character: Francie's Boyfriend. Description: Francie's boyfriend is considered by those around him to be funny, though Francie isn't convinced by his sense of humor. When Francie struggles to write, he suggests she go cycling, which implies he doesn't understand or value Francie's creative priorities. Francie's roommate considers him a bad choice for Francie. When she suggests Francie only writes about him, Francie disagrees so stubbornly it's clear that her roommate might be right, which implies that Francie is more preoccupied with her boyfriend than she'd like to be. - Character: Francie's Roommate. Description: Francie's roommate is a caring presence in Francie's college life. When Francie shares with her a particularly absurd idea for a new story, she takes Francie out for a drink, which demonstrates, on one hand, her affection for Francie, and on the other hand, her inability to understand or empathize with Francie's creative ambition. Her suggestion that Francie only writes about her boyfriend shows that her comprehension of Francie's work only extends to the things she knows about her—a sign that Francie is not yet a fully accomplished writer and that her roommate, like her mother, will never totally understand her, despite caring for her in practical ways. - Character: Mr. Killian. Description: Mr. Killian is Francie's high school English teacher who makes a critical comment about the nonsensical plot of her first short story. Rather than accepting his criticism, Francie writes a secret, angry response to it. Still, this experience seems to contribute to Francie's resilience as she goes on to receive similar criticism over the following years. - Theme: Creativity and Perseverance. Description: "How to Become a Writer" illustrates that the pursuit of creativity demands relentless perseverance that is sometimes hard to understand. Written in the second person (addressing the main character as "you"), the story takes the form of a self-help guide, but the inclusion of specific details from Francie's life makes it immediately obvious that this story is anything but a guide. In fact, the story's form pokes fun at the idea that becoming a writer could ever be a clear-cut, linear process; instead, it's a road paved with criticism and despair. Francie's first poem is a haiku sequence through which she responds to her failed ambitions of becoming "President of the World." This initial creative moment begins the pattern of outsized ambition, failure, and perseverance that characterizes Francie's creative habit. Though her peers and teachers rarely react positively to any of the stories she brings to class—stories that attempt to depict absurd, dramatic moments of violence—Francie continues to write them. When the people around Francie, including her roommate and her boyfriend, attempt to persuade Francie to focus on other activities, and when Francie's mother expresses disappointment that Francie didn't continue to pursue child psychology instead of creative writing, Francie ignores them and keeps writing. It's not as though Francie is immune to disappointment and hopelessness. In fact, she doesn't even particularly enjoy being a writer, and she insists she wouldn't list it amongst her top 20 fantasies in life. But it seems that no matter how frustrating she finds writing, and even though she has little evidence to prove her creative potential, Francie will sacrifice relationships and financial stability to pursue it. The thrill of creating something entirely new is enough to drive her onward. Others' bemused reactions to Francie's perseverance show that it's not logical behavior, but more of an obsession: she simply can't help herself. The story therefore suggests that a life of creativity is nothing like a typical career in which each accomplishment leads to the next and effort is rewarded by progress. Instead, a creative life is more of an inescapable fate than a career aspiration. It's a life that demands perseverance in defiance of perpetual discouragement—even, perhaps, in defiance of all logical reason. - Theme: Violence, Trauma, and Isolation. Description: Throughout "How to Become a Writer," Francie writes stories whose plots revolve around acts of absurd violence. Her first story features an elderly couple who accidentally shoot each other with a malfunctioning gun, and she goes on to write stories that are essentially just copies of this first structure. Whenever Francie turns in a story featuring one of these explosive deaths or injuries, her peers and teachers comment on the story's nonsensical plot, and one classmate even questions Francie's sanity. These unexpected, inexplicable acts of fictional violence baffle Francie's teachers and classmates. Eventually, it becomes clear that these fictional explosions are symbolic expressions of the violence and trauma at the center of Francie's life. Francie's parents' divorce, her brother's wartime injury, and the volatile backdrop of the Vietnam War itself are all emotionally charged aspects of Francie's life, and are also all things she struggles to write about in a straightforward way. When she attempts to tell the story of her parents' divorce, she writes instead about an elderly couple getting blown up by a landmine they find in their kitchen. The absurd violence of Francie's fiction demonstrates her inability to make sense of her parents' ruptured relationship; she can only describe the trauma of such a change through a baffling, momentous explosion. Some trauma, however, is not only unexplainable but completely unspeakable for Francie. When it comes to writing the story of her brother's wartime injury, she can't find the words. Francie's failures as a writer—either through her unintelligible plots or her inability to write at all—align with her deepest traumas, and as a result, she's never truly able to depict those traumas in ways other people can understand. When she tries to, the resulting product confuses and alienates her peers. Through this pattern, the story demonstrates that moments of violence and emotional turmoil are often impossible to describe or express, and because of this, they can be profoundly isolating. - Theme: Sex vs. Love. Description: In "How to Become a Writer," Francie, the protagonist, finds the idea of sex uncomfortable and threatening. As a teenager, she's compelled to investigate the subject by poring over the sex manuals and erotic magazines she finds in the houses where she babysits, but what she finds is perplexing. Francie doesn't understand how people who love each other could perform the sexual acts she sees in those pages: for her, sex is not only distinct from love but completely at odds with it. When Francie has sex for the first time, it's a painful and life-altering experience—something she survives, not something she enjoys. After she breaks up with her college boyfriend, she begins to date and have sex with men who treat her roughly with shouted commands rather than gentle whispers. Francie sees this development as beneficial to her writing, which suggests that sex remains confusing and estranging rather than fulfilling for her. And it is seemingly for this reason—for the complexity related to having intercourse—that she feels like sex itself is worth writing about. Through Francie's uncomfortable encounters with both the subject and the act of sex, then, the story demonstrates that even—or perhaps especially—when sex has nothing to do with love, it's still a highly intimate and volatile experience that can profoundly alter a person's sense of self. - Climax: Francie, feeling discouraged in her writing pursuits, decides to apply to law school. - Summary: "How to Become a Writer" takes the form of a self-help column, employing the second-person point of view ("you") as if to instruct the protagonist, Francie, on the steps to take in order to become a writer. From the very first sentence, whose advice is to try something other than writing, it's clear that the story is poking fun at the idea of a step-by-step guide to becoming a writer. As a teenager, Francie searches for a way to express her feelings of failure and frustration in writing. She tries poetry but settles on the short story form, though her teacher, Mr. Killian, criticizes the strange plot of the first story she hands in, which depicts an elderly couple shooting each other by accident. Francie's success as a babysitter prompts her to major in child psychology in college. In her freshman year, she finds herself in a creative writing course due to a computer error and decides not to drop it. Francie's teacher criticizes her stories' bizarre plots, which usually involve sudden explosions in domestic settings, while her advisor instructs her to focus on the courses in her major. Francie continues to take creative writing courses, though her peers consistently struggle to understand the plots of her stories. Her boyfriend and roommate don't seem to understand her desire to write—yet writing is the only thing that excites her. When a professor encourages her class to write about their own lives, she reflects on the three major events of the last three years: she had sex for the first time, her parents divorced, and her brother returned from the Vietnam War severely injured. She addresses the first two events in her writing, but when it comes to the third, she can't write anything. Francie's mother comes to visit and despairs at Francie's choice to switch her major to creative writing. Francie continues to write stories featuring seemingly random explosions. Eventually, she applies to law school but then decides not to go. Over the next few years, she continues to write while taking temporary jobs. She drifts away from her friends, breaks up with her boyfriend, and begins to date men who enjoy rough sex. Though she insists to those around her that writing was never one of her ambitions, she withdraws her savings and quits her jobs to focus on writing.

- Genre: Fantasy - Title: Howl’s Moving Castle - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: The fictional Kingdom of Ingary - Character: Sophie Hatter. Description: The protagonist of the novel, Sophie is the eldest of three sisters—so she believes she's destined to be a failure. Sophie isn't surprised when her stepmother Fanny takes Sophie on as an apprentice in the family hat shop. Sophie soon attracts the attention of the evil Witch of the Waste—who curses Sophie to become an old woman. Sophie figures the new persona fits, but she also becomes far more confident as an old woman. Sophie seeks refuge in Wizard Howl's moving castle, where she strikes a deal with his fire demon Calcifer: if she breaks the contract between Howl and Calcifer, Calcifer will lift her curse. Posing as a cleaning lady, Sophie sews, cleans, and looks for clues to figure out how the contract works. Though Sophie is unwilling to admit it, she develops a crush on Howl. Sophie also learns that she's a witch with a unique gift: she can talk to things and bring them to life. Using this gift, Sophie manages to break Howl and Calcifer's curse during the novel's final battle. She gives Calcifer his own life rather than leaving him to live off of Howl's heart, and she gives Howl his heart back. Once the curse lifts, Sophie and Howl decide to live happily ever after. - Character: Wizard Howl. Description: Howl is a 27-year-old wizard who lives in a moving castle. Most people believe he's evil, as he supposedly eats girls' hearts. This is, however, exaggerated: Howl regularly breaks girls' hearts, but he doesn't eat them. Rather, Howl is trying to make himself look bad so the King doesn't send him to look for Prince Justin or Wizard Suliman. Much of Howl's power comes from a contract he made with a fire demon, Calcifer, though he's a skilled wizard in his own right. However, when Sophie moves in posing as the cleaning lady, she discovers that Howl is vain, self-absorbed, and dramatic—he spends hours in the bathroom each morning and throws a tantrum when he dyes his hair the wrong color. But Sophie also discovers that Howl is generous, compassionate, and loyal. The Witch of the Waste sent a curse after Howl a year before the novel begins, and Sophie manages to save Howl from the curse. However, once Sophie manages to thwart the curse and break Howl's contract with Calcifer, one part of the curse does come true: Howl can finally commit to one woman. He and Sophie plan to live "happily ever after" together. - Character: Calcifer. Description: Calcifer is Howl's fire demon. He's bound to Howl's hearth by a contract—and he promises to lift the curse on Sophie if she figures out how to break the contract between him and Howl. Despite being an evil-looking demon, Calcifer is caring, kind, and usually willing to offer up tidbits of information. Within the castle, he acts as a judge of character: Howl mostly allows anyone in the castle, so long as Calcifer likes them (and Calcifer often likes people who treat him like a person, rather than as an evil demon or as though he doesn't exist). He feels lonely and constricted in the hearth and desperately wants to see what the world is like beyond it. Throughout the novel, he drops several hints to Sophie about the terms of his contract, such as that Howl is "heartless" and that Calcifer was once a falling star. Sophie breaks the contract at the end of the novel, when she "talks life" into Calcifer. This means he no longer has to rely on Howl's heart to keep him alive, and it frees Calcifer. But Calcifer decides to return to the hearth, provided he can come and go. - Character: The Witch of the Waste. Description: The antagonist of the novel, the Witch of the Waste is an old woman who lives out in the middle of a wasteland known as the Waste. She made a deal with a fire demon, which has enabled her to live a very long life in the form of a much younger woman. While Sophie finds the Witch cruel and calculating (the Witch puts a curse on Sophie, after all), Howl suggests that the Witch is actually a sympathetic figure: she's just unloved. Despite this, the Witch engages in behavior that horrifies Sophie, such as murdering Mrs. Pentstemmon and trying to assemble a perfect human out of body parts taken from Wizard Suliman, Prince Justin, and Howl. Howl spends much of the novel trying to evade a curse the Witch sends after him which, when it "takes," will allow her to use Howl's head on her perfect human. However, it's ultimately revealed that much of the Witch's diabolical plan is actually the work of her fire demon, Miss Angorian. The Witch crumbles into a pile of bones at the end of the novel and Howl later crushes her heart, thereby killing Miss Angorian. - Character: Miss Angorian. Description: At first, Miss Angorian appears as Neil's new English teacher in Wales—but really, she's the Witch of the Waste's fire demon. She's a beautiful young woman, with shiny black hair, olive skin, and big eyes. She's sharp, cold, and rejects Howl's romantic advances, insisting instead that she's still devoted to Ben Sullivan, her missing fiancé. For her part, Sophie fully believes that Howl is courting Miss Angorian and in love with her. However, it eventually comes out that anything to do with Miss Angorian's love life is a lie. The Witch of the Waste and her fire demon have a similar contract as Howl and Calcifer, wherein the fire demon is kept alive because it has access to the Witch's heart. Howl discovers that rather than this being an equal partnership, Miss Angorian has been in control of the Witch for some time—and Miss Angorian plans to kill the Witch and enter into a new contract with a perfect human she's constructed from various parts of Howl, Prince Justin, and Wizard Suliman. Though she successfully kills the witch, Howl ultimately kills Miss Angorian by crushing the Witch's heart. - Character: Michael. Description: Michael is Howl's teenage apprentice. He's a kind, handsome boy, and he's in love with and plans to marry Martha Hatter (though he knows her as Lettie). Michael performs most of the grunt work around the castle, such as putting spells together and selling them to customers. He adores Howl, as Howl took him in several years ago after Michael was orphaned. By working with Calcifer, he attempts to manage some of Howl's bad impulses; for instance, Michael tries to keep money hidden so there's money to live on, since Howl often spends all the money he earns on clothes. Despite Michael's good heart, he's often a bit clueless—he initially thinks Howl is dead when Howl throws a dramatic tantrum and fills the castle with green slime. But Sophie grows to love and appreciate Michael, as he's loyal, generous, and genuinely loves and cares about his chosen family. - Character: Lettie Hatter. Description: Lettie is Martha and Sophie's middle sister. She's considered the most beautiful, and she's also the most ambitious—though as the second-born, she's not destined for greatness. Because of this, when the girls' father dies, Fanny apprentices Lettie to the local bakery; Lettie will be able to marry and live a mediocre life. However, Lettie and Martha switch places, so Lettie ultimately apprentices with the witch Mrs. Fairfax. Soon after Sophie turns into an old woman, Howl begins courting Lettie—but when Lettie lets on that Sophie is her sister, Howl continues to court her but is really just trying to get information out of her about Sophie. For her part, Lettie is concerned for Sophie's safety, so she sends Percival, the dog-man, to protect Sophie from Howl. Lettie seems to be in love with Percival, but at the end of the novel, when Percival turns back into the two men who made him up (Prince Justin and Wizard Suliman), Lettie accepts Wizard Suliman's offer to take her as an apprentice. - Character: Martha Hatter. Description: Martha is Sophie and Lettie's younger sister; she's Fanny's biological daughter. As the third-born, Martha is supposedly destined to be wildly successful. Because of this, when her father dies, Fanny apprentices Martha to Mrs. Fairfax; this will give Martha the best chance at success. However, what Sophie and Fanny don't realize is that Martha isn't very ambitious. She just wants to get married and have 10 children. To achieve this goal, she and Lettie switch places so that Martha is actually apprenticed at a local bakery. There, she meets Michael and falls in love with him. When Sophie initially visits Martha and discovers her sisters switched places, Martha expresses concern for Sophie: she believes Fanny is exploiting her. - Character: Fanny. Description: Fanny is Sophie and Lettie's stepmother and Martha's mother. She was a young, pretty shop assistant at the hat shop when Sophie's father married her, and she made a point to treat all three of her daughters exactly the same. A sensible and practical woman, Fanny finds all three girls apprenticeships when her husband dies and money gets tight. However, she and Sophie both misjudge Lettie and Martha: Martha isn't as ambitious as they expect her to be, while Lettie is wildly ambitious. Martha also tells Sophie that she believes Fanny is exploiting Sophie to run the hat shop while she spends lots of money. Because Sophie briefly believes this, she leaves home after the Witch curses her without saying goodbye to Fanny. Fanny ultimately marries a wealthy man and, when she reconnects with Sophie, makes it clear that Sophie and Martha misjudged her. Indeed, with her new perspective as an old woman, Sophie sympathizes with Fanny: Fanny is still young and beautiful, and she was no doubt as bored at the hat shop as Sophie was. - Character: Mrs. Fairfax. Description: Mrs. Fairfax is a witch, an old friend of Fanny's, and she takes Lettie on as an apprentice. She's a maternal-looking blond woman, and from her home in Upper Folding, Mrs. Fairfax crafts spells that use honey from her bees. Initially, Mrs. Fairfax takes Martha on as an apprentice—but when she discovers that Martha and Lettie have used a spell to switch places and identities, she tells Lettie to become her true self. She'd rather teach someone who wants to learn. Despite being successful, Mrs. Fairfax insinuates that she's not a particularly advanced witch. She encourages Lettie to court Howl in the hopes that Howl might offer to teach her, and she later encourages Lettie to accept Wizard Suliman's offer to teach her. However, Mrs. Fairfax is adept at identifying curses: she knows who Sophie is when Sophie visits, posing as Lettie's great-aunt; and she realizes that Percival is also under a curse. - Character: The Dog-Man/Percival. Description: Percival is, unbeknownst to him, a combination of Wizard Suliman and Prince Justin's body parts. The Witch of the Waste assembles the men into two bodies, one that's her perfect human and the other, Percival, whom she uses as a servant. As a person, Percival doesn't remember who he is or much about his past. He's a red-headed man with absolutely no personality, spark, or defining characteristics. When the Witch has had enough of Percival, she curses him to become a dog and turns him out. He seeks out Lettie and then, with her prodding, Sophie—he's supposed to protect Sophie from Howl. He occasionally turns back into a person to dispense information, and when he turns back into a dog, he becomes a different breed each time. Howl eventually discovers that the dog in the house is a cursed human and returns Percival to his human state. Percival disappears at the end of the novel, when Wizard Suliman and Prince Justin are magically put back together. - Character: Wizard Suliman/Benjamin Sullivan. Description: Wizard Suliman was the King's Royal Magician until the Witch kidnapped him and he disappeared into the Waste. He came from Wales, like Howl, and was originally named Benjamin Sullivan. Suliman was the first to begin trying to fight the Witch by planting flowers on the edge of the Waste. When he was kidnapped, he hid some of his magic and personality in a scarecrow, which he tasked with finding the rest of his body parts—the Witch plans to use parts of Suliman's body to create her perfect human. The non-perfect parts make up parts of Percival, while Howl purchases what turns out to be Suliman's skull on a whim. At the end of the novel, once Suliman has been returned to his body, he takes Lettie on as an apprentice. - Character: Mrs. Pentstemmon. Description: Mrs. Pentstemmon is an elderly, renowned witch in Ingary. She trained both Wizard Suliman and Howl, though Howl was her last (and best) student. Mrs. Pentstemmon is very invested in Howl's moral state, and she encourages Sophie to break Howl's contract with Calcifer so Howl can remain good. She also is the first to inform Sophie that she herself has magical powers. However, hours after Sophie visits Mrs. Pentstemmon, the Witch of the Waste kills the old lady—Mrs. Pentstemmon wouldn't tell the Witch something about Howl. Because Howl respects and idolizes Mrs. Pentstemmon so much, he insists on going to her funeral in disguise. - Character: Megan Parry. Description: Megan is Howl's sister; she lives in Wales with her husband and two children, Mari and Neil. Megan and Howl have a difficult relationship, as Megan feels like Howl is abusing her kindness and support by storing things at her house and doing nothing with the education she helped pay for. (She doesn't know about Howl's successful life in Ingary.) Once Sophie sees how condescending and disapproving Megan is when she speaks to Howl, she understands how and why Howl has turned into a "slitherer-outer"—Megan is intimidating. - Character: Prince Justin. Description: Prince Justin is the King's younger brother. After fighting with the King, Justin disguises himself, goes looking for Wizard Suliman, and is ultimately kidnapped by the Witch. The Witch plans to use parts of Justin's body to create her perfect human. At the end of the novel, Justin is returned to his body. - Character: The Count of Catterack. Description: The Count of Catterack is a small, nervous man who runs off with Jane Farrier. At one point, Sophie sells him a fake spell to help him win a duel, not realizing who he is. She later learns that he was supposed to be looking for the missing Prince Justin when he met Jane. - Theme: Destiny vs. Free Will. Description: Howl's Moving Castle follows 18-year-old Sophie, the eldest of three sisters who live in the fictional kingdom of Ingary. In Ingary, it's considered a terrible fate to be the eldest of three children: the eldest is destined to "fail first, and worst." So Sophie simply accepts it as fate when the evil Witch of the Waste curses Sophie to become an old lady, as Sophie figures it's just part of her destiny. Destiny, according to Sophie, isn't worth fighting: it will do what it wants, and all she can do is sigh and move on. However, Sophie is the only one in the novel who accepts destiny as an inarguable fact—and for the most part, other characters manage to thwart destiny to make themselves happy. For instance, as the youngest of three, Sophie's sister Martha is supposedly destined to be wildly successful, and to help her become successful, the girls' mother Fanny apprentices Martha to a witch. But Martha actually just wants to get married and have children, so she and Lettie, the ambitious (but destined to be mediocre) middle sister, swap apprenticeships—something that upsets no one, and makes both girls happy. Martha and Lettie's ability to essentially thwart what's supposed to happen and pave their own ways suggests that destiny is more malleable than Sophie thinks. Indeed, it's implied that Sophie's curse making her old is so difficult to lift because Sophie believes so fully that she's just supposed to accept her fate. Put another way, it's Sophie's unwavering belief in her own future failure that renders her incapable of changing anything about her life. It's only when she accepts that she does have some control that the curse lifts, and Sophie realizes that she, too, has the right to make her own choices that lead to her happiness. - Theme: Appearances and Assumptions. Description: In Howl's Moving Castle, few things are as they seem. Old people look young, young people look old, kings and princes look unassuming, and unlikely heroes appear evil. By presenting so many people, non-human beings, and objects that defy all expectations, the novel highlights the problems that come with prejudging someone. In some cases, a person's inclination to make assumptions simply reflects their upbringing. For instance, Sophie, who's from Market Chipping, has been raised to believe that Wizard Howl is evil—so evil that he literally eats girls' hearts and steals their souls. However, she learns later that Howl isn't at all evil, and that the rumors are ones that he allowed to spread specifically in Market Chipping to make himself look bad (he doesn't want to attract too much attention for looking good). It takes Sophie almost a month, however, to not only believe that Howl isn't evil, but also to be able to voice to others that he's kind and compassionate. In other cases, people's assumptions reflect their fears or their selfishness. Sophie is terrified of the scarecrow that continues to call at the moving castle, believing it's evil, and it's only when she's willing to stop and think more critically about it that she learns the scarecrow contains part of the missing Wizard Suliman and is on the side of good. Similarly, it takes Howl about a week to realize that the dog Sophie takes in isn't actually a dog—he's a man cursed to take a dog's form. This is something Howl would've noticed immediately, other characters insist, had he not been so vain and caught up in his own world. Being able to look critically at someone and notice what they're hiding, the novel suggests, not only makes one a better person—it's the only way one can provide other people the help they actually need. - Theme: Family. Description: In many ways, Howl's Moving Castle is a story about family—about the difficulties of maintaining relationships with one's blood family, and of the power of chosen family members to fill gaps left by one's blood family. Howl has a strained relationship with his sister, Megan, who believes Howl is wasting his education and doing nothing with his life. But Megan believes this in part because she lives in Wales (which isn't magical) and doesn't know about the close chosen family Howl has built for himself in the magical world of Ingary. There, Howl acts as a father figure and mentor to his teenage apprentice, Michael. And Howl and his fire demon Calcifer have a close, if somewhat strained, relationship, due to the fact that they have a contract that binds Calcifer to Howl's hearth. Teenage Sophie ultimately joins Howl's chosen family after the Witch of the Waste curses Sophie to become elderly. Sophie fears that her stepmother and sisters won't understand or even recognize her in her new form, so it seems like a better idea to simply leave them without saying goodbye. However, Sophie ultimately gets the best of both worlds when, at the end of the novel, she reconnects with her family and, when the curse lifts, is willing to admit that she's fallen in love with Howl—it's implied that they will get married after the novel ends, thereby formalizing their chosen family unit. And at the same time, Sophie breaks Calcifer and Howl's contract, freeing them from any formal obligation to each other—and yet, Calcifer decides to return to Howl's hearth, so long as he can come and go. This suggests that committing to someone willingly (rather than feeling obligated due to blood ties or a contract) is one of the most important elements in creating a strong and supportive family. - Theme: Magic and Coming of Age. Description: Over the course of Howl's Moving Castle, teenage Sophie comes of age. This process occurs for her as she slowly discovers her magical abilities and accepts that she is indeed capable of great things—if only she believes in herself. The novel suggests Sophie is magical early on when, during her apprenticeship in her stepmother Fanny's hat shop, Sophie begins talking to the hats she trims. Unknowingly, Sophie charms the hats when she tells them what kind of a lady should purchase and wear them. The evil Witch of the Waste then curses Sophie to become an old lady, thereby depriving Sophie of her youth and, in theory, of her ability to come of age. However, as an old woman, Sophie continues to "speak life into" things, such as her walking stick, a scarecrow, and even Wizard Howl's suits, and she finally accepts her magical abilities at the end of the novel. Accepting her own power also allows the curse to lift, returning Sophie to her teenage self—but her time as an old woman gives Sophie the perspective that the novel suggests only comes with age. Sophie is far more confident after spending a month as an elderly person, something that the novel implies prepares her for a lifelong romantic relationship with Howl after the novel's close. Howl's coming of age is also tied to accepting magic—in his case, the Witch's curse on him. As the Witch's curse slowly comes true, Howl becomes increasingly honest and kind. Ultimately, he learns to commit to one woman (Sophie), rather than breaking heart after heart—a practice the novel characterizes as youthful selfishness. For both Howl and Sophie, their respective coming of age journeys are tied to their willingness to accept a new form of magic and believe in their ability to do difficult things. - Climax: Sophie frees Calcifer from his contract and revives Howl. As she does, the curse the Witch of the Waste put on her lifts, returning Sophie to her teenage self. - Summary: In the magical land of Ingary, teenage Sophie knows she's destined to fail in life because she's the eldest of three children. So it's no surprise to Sophie when, after her father dies, her stepmother Fanny sends the youngest daughter Martha (who's destined to be successful) to apprentice with the witch Mrs. Fairfax, the middle sister Lettie to be an apprentice at the local bakery, and takes Sophie on as an apprentice in the family hat shop. Sophie is good at sewing and trimming hats, and the hat shop is soon doing very well. But Sophie grows increasingly shy and feels like an old lady, as she never has anyone to talk to. Finally, on May Day, Sophie works up her courage to go visit Lettie. The crowds are upsetting, and Sophie is terrified when a handsome man in a blue and silver suit offers to buy her a drink. At the bakery, Sophie is shocked: Lettie and Martha have switched places, and Martha insists that Fanny is exploiting Sophie. A few weeks later, a grand lady who turns out to be the evil Witch of the Waste enters the hat shop, inexplicably says she doesn't appreciate competition, and curses Sophie to become a 90-year-old woman. Since Sophie can't tell anyone she's under a spell, she decides to leave. She toddles out of Market Chipping, speaks kindly to a scarecrow, and finds a walking stick when she rescues a dog from some brambles. After nightfall, desperate for someplace to warm up, she spots a frightening sight: the moving castle that belongs to evil Wizard Howl, who supposedly eats young girls' hearts. Figuring she's safe because she's old, Sophie shouts for the castle to stop and finds one door that opens. She tells Howl's assistant, a teenage boy named Michael, that she needs Howl's help and is prepared to wait for Howl all night. She spends the night by the fire and in the middle of the night, Howl's fire demon, Calcifer, observes that Sophie is under a spell. The two strike a deal: if Sophie can break the contract between Howl and Calcifer that binds Calcifer to the hearth, then Calcifer will break the curse on Sophie. However, Calcifer can't tell Sophie anything about the terms of the contract—she'll have to figure it out. In the morning, Sophie is shocked to discover that Howl is the young man who tried to buy her a drink on May Day. Since the castle is absolutely disgusting, Sophie decides to pose as a cleaning lady; this way, she can stick around and discover the terms of Calcifer and Howl's contract. Fortunately, the castle is quite small: it's actually Howl's home in Porthaven, but the door can open to four different places (the moors, Porthaven, Kingsbury, and someplace mysterious). Over the next few days, as Sophie scrubs, she discovers that Howl is vain and arrogant. Calcifer and Michael do most of the work, while Howl spends his days out courting. Howl is also working hard to avoid being hired by the King to find two missing men, Prince Justin and Wizard Suliman—both of whom the Witch kidnapped recently. The scarecrow Sophie spoke to tries twice to enter the castle, but Calcifer and Howl tell it to go away. Soon, Sophie discovers that Michael is dating Martha (who's still posing as Lettie), while Howl is dating the real Lettie. Worried for Lettie, Sophie convinces Michael to take her to Mrs. Fairfax's house in Upper Folding to warn Lettie. They take seven-league boots, hoping to get there before Howl—but Lettie is already visiting with Howl and looks very much in love when they arrive. Michael helps Mrs. Fairfax corral a dog, which she says keeps trying to bite Howl. That afternoon, Michael asks Sophie for help with a spell. The spell gives instructions that seem impossible to complete, but Sophie suggests they try to accomplish the first instruction: catching a falling star. Though Sophie and Michael get close to catching a star, they're unsuccessful. When Howl gets home later, sees the spell, and learns what Sophie and Michael did, he takes them both through the mysterious door into a land called Wales. There, he visits his sister, Megan, and her family. The "spell" is actually her son Neil's English homework, and the spell Michael was supposed to work on is now with Neil's English teacher, Miss Angorian. Miss Angorian turns out to be young and beautiful, and she reads what turns out to be a poem by John Donne. Howl flirts with her and when he returns to the castle, he reveals that the Witch put a spell on him. Now, it's catching up—they're just waiting for the impossible things in the poem to occur. The following day, since the King wants to appoint Howl Royal Magician, Howl takes Sophie to badmouth him to the King. First, he takes Sophie to visit his old tutor, Mrs. Pentstemmon, to practice speaking to a powerful person. Mrs. Pentstemmon tells Sophie that Sophie has the magical power to "talk life" into things, such as her walking stick. She also tells Sophie to break Howl's contract with Calcifer so that Howl doesn't become evil; a contract with a fire demon is what made the Witch of the Waste go bad. Then, Sophie visits the king. She's unsuccessful: the King appoints Howl Royal Magician and tasks him with finding Prince Justin. As Sophie tries to find her way back to the moving castle after this, she runs into the Witch—who's just come from killing Mrs. Pentstemmon. Michael is terrified of the Witch's curse, but Howl is just upset about Mrs. Pentstemmon. However, Howl is also spending a lot of time in Wales, no doubt courting Miss Angorian—and spending so much time in the rain gives him an awful cold. He still insists on going to the funeral, however. While Howl is sleeping, someone knocks at the castle door and a greyhound enters. It turns into a man, says Lettie sent him to watch over Sophie, asks Sophie to not tell Howl, and then turns into an Irish Setter. Howl goes to the funeral disguised as a dog—and comes home with the Witch in pursuit. Once he's escaped her, he says they must move Calcifer and change where the castle's doors open. He decides to buy the former hat shop in Market Chipping; they can sell flowers. Once the move is complete, the castle's doors open onto Market Chipping, a rundown mansion, a field of flowers, and Wales. While everyone else is asleep that night, Sophie learns that Calcifer was once a falling star. Running the flower shop is easy: Sophie and Michael collect flowers from outside the castle's moving entrance and sell them in Market Chipping. However, Sophie isn't happy. She becomes increasingly unhappy when the scarecrow tries to enter the flower shop, but it goes away when Sophie tells it to. That same day, the dog-man manages to turn back into a person momentarily and shares that Lettie knows Sophie is under a spell. Finally, Miss Angorian calls at the castle—but, jealous and annoyed, Sophie sends her away. By now, Sophie is in such a temper that when Howl comments on her new sheepdog, Sophie snaps that it's a cursed man. Howl and Calcifer turn the dog back into a man named Percival; Michael is convinced he's actually Prince Justin. To try to improve Sophie's mood, Howl sends Sophie to kill weeds in front of the mansion with Percival. Percival implies that he didn't actually get to Sophie in time to protect her from Howl's charm—and Sophie discovers, to her dismay, that both Howl and Michael know she's under a curse and have been trying to lift it. Howl insists Sophie is keeping the curse on herself, but Sophie is so enraged that she vows to leave the next day. The next day is Midsummer Day, so Sophie spends her morning picking flowers and making garlands while Howl, who spent the night drinking, sleeps. Just as she prepares to leave around midday, Fanny, Martha, Mrs. Fairfax, and Lettie all show up—and they all know Sophie is cursed. Miss Angorian joins the party, but she soon goes outside to admire the flowers. Suddenly, Calcifer shouts that the Witch found Megan's family, so Howl races out of bed to rescue them. Soon after, the scarecrow shows up, but Calcifer insists it means no harm. As the scarecrow enters, the Witch's voice booms through the castle: she has Miss Angorian in the Waste, and Howl must come rescue her. Fearing Howl won't forgive her if his latest love dies, Sophie puts on the seven-league boots and hurries to the Waste. There, the Witch shows Sophie the perfect man she's creating out of body parts from Wizard Suliman and Prince Justin; she just needs Howl's head to complete her project. When Howl bursts in moments later with the scarecrow, the Witch disintegrates. As Howl and Sophie race back to the castle, Howl explains that Miss Angorian is the Witch's fire demon, and she's power hungry. As they enter the castle, Miss Angorian picks Calcifer out of the hearth and squeezes the black thing he's attached to—it's Howl's heart. Howl faints. Sophie tells her stick to hit only Miss Angorian and scoops Calcifer up. She breaks the contract by telling him to live another thousand years, plucking him off of Howl's heart, and putting the heart back into Howl. As she does this, she turns back into a teenager. When Howl comes to, he crumbles the Witch's heart, causing Miss Angorian to disappear—and where the scarecrow and Percival were, Prince Justin and Wizard Suliman appear. Sophie and Howl decide to live "happily ever after," and Calcifer returns to the hearth. He's happy to stay, as long as he can come and go as he pleases.

- Genre: Novel, Satire - Title: Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard - Point of view: Third-Person Omniscient - Setting: Shahkot, a small town in India - Character: Sampath. Description: - Character: Kulfi. Description: - Character: Mr. Chawla. Description: - Character: Pinky. Description: - Character: Ammaji. Description: - Character: Hungry Hop Boy. Description: - Character: The Spy. Description: - Character: District Collector. Description: - Character: Chief Medical Officer. Description: - Character: Brigadier. Description: - Character: Verma. Description: - Character: Mr. Gupta. Description: - Character: Dr. Banerjee. Description: - Theme: Absurdity and Chaos. Description: - Theme: Nature vs. Modernity. Description: - Theme: Traditions, Customs, and Expectations. Description: - Theme: Exploitation of Spirituality. Description: - Climax: As Shahkot's government arrives in Sampath's orchard to remove a group of troublesome monkeys, they discover Sampath has somehow turned into a large guava. They give chase as the monkeys carry the guava deep into the wilderness. - Summary: During what's supposed to be the monsoon season, the small town of Shahkot, India experiences a prolonged and terrible drought. A strange woman named Kulfi begins to act even stranger than usual, as her pregnancy seems to give her powerful, exotic cravings for food that the drought has made difficult to acquire. Her husband Mr. Chawla and her mother-in-law Ammaji try to explain Kulfi's odd behavior to the curious neighbors, but the cravings only intensify. One day, after Kulfi scrawls elaborate crayon drawings of all sorts of food on the walls of her house, the monsoon finally arrives. At that same moment, Kulfi goes into labor and gives birth to her child, and the Red Cross drops long-awaited food and supplies into Shahkot. The neighbors suggest she name her newborn boy Sampath, which means "good fortune." Twenty years later, Sampath is a restless and absent-minded young man who works at the Shahkot post office. He still lives in the same house where he was born, with his mother Kulfi (whose odd behavior and cravings have persisted), his demanding father Mr. Chawla, and his kindly grandmother Ammaji. He also has a headstrong teenage sister named Pinky, who lives in the same tiny house with them. Sampath has never done well in school, and his career prospects seem to be just as bleak, to the annoyance of Mr. Chawla. Sampath hates his dull job at the post office, only able to entertain himself by secretly reading through the private mail of the citizens of Shahkot. Sampath is fired from his job one night at the wedding of his boss's daughter, where he gets drunk and makes a fool of himself by stripping and dancing in a fountain. Overwhelmed by despair over his depressing circumstances, Sampath has a sudden epiphany when he accidentally causes a guava fruit to burst in his hands. The morning after he's fired, he takes a bus to the outskirts of town, enters an abandoned guava orchard, and climbs the largest guava tree he can find. Resting up in the tree, he finally feels at peace. Bewildered by his behavior, his family tries to bring him down at first, but Kulfi seems to understand why her son wants to live up in a tree. During one attempt to bring him down, Sampath speaks to a crowd gathered around his tree, telling them surprising things he only knows because of his snooping through people's mail in the post office. Believing his knowledge to be miraculous and otherworldly, the crowd spreads the word that Sampath has become some sort of holy man. Realizing that he could make a profit from this situation, Mr. Chawla allows Sampath to remain in the tree and live as a famous wise man. As Sampath's family finds creative ways to take care of him from below, Sampath continues giving "sermons" and improvised advice to his reverent visitors for the fun of it. One regular visitor is secretly a spy from the Atheist Society who's determined to expose Sampath as a fraud. But he seems to have no luck with this as Sampath's fame grows along with Mr. Chawla's fortune. Sampath seems happier than ever, and Kulfi is also content, as she has complete freedom to forage for exotic ingredients for the elaborate meals she cooks for Sampath. One day, a group of monkeys appears in Sampath's orchard and takes a liking to him. But before long, they discover alcoholic beverages brought to the orchard by one of Sampath's visitors. The monkeys become drunk and violent, and they're soon hooked on alcohol, seeking it out wherever they can find it. Soon enough, the monkeys begin terrorizing the town of Shahkot in their unruly search for alcohol. The inept government officials of the town come up with various plans to solve this problem, but nothing seems like a good enough idea. Eventually, the monkey crisis becomes a controversy that divides the people of Shahkot, as some believe the creatures deserve respect, while others simply wish to get rid of them. Sampath feels sick and overwhelmed as his visitors argue furiously about the monkeys. He ran away and started living in this tree to escape from his responsibilities, but now he's being forced to face new, more stressful expectations. He realizes that the peace and simplicity of the grove has been ruined, and he longs to escape before he's trapped in this life forever. One morning, as Shahkot's government officials and military arrive to forcibly remove the monkeys from the orchard (and the Shahkot area), they discover that Sampath has somehow transformed into a large guava. The monkeys carry the guava away from the pursuing crowd, into the wilderness, and out of sight. At the same time, the spy from the Atheist Society has climbed a tree directly above Kulfi's large cooking pot, which he suspects contains drugs intended for Sampath. But the branch he's clinging to snaps, and the spy falls into the bubbling cauldron. The crowd wonders about the source of the splashing noise as they slowly approach the cooking pot.

- Genre: Novel - Title: Human Acts - Point of view: Various - Setting: Gwangju, South Korea - Character: Dong-ho. Description: - Character: The Writer. Description: - Character: Jeong-dae. Description: - Character: Jeong-mi. Description: - Character: Eun-sook. Description: - Character: Jin-su. Description: - Character: The Narrator. Description: - Character: Yeong-chae. Description: - Character: Seon-ju. Description: - Character: Seong-hee. Description: - Character: Dong-ho's Mother. Description: - Character: The Older Brother. Description: - Character: The Middle Brother. Description: - Character: Dong-ho's Father. Description: - Character: President Chun Doo-hwan. Description: - Character: The Interrogator. Description: - Character: The Translator. Description: - Character: The Publisher. Description: - Character: Mr. Seo. Description: - Character: The Professor/Yoon. Description: - Character: Park Yeong-ho. Description: - Character: Jeong-dae's Father. Description: - Character: The Writer's Father. Description: - Theme: Human Connection. Description: - Theme: Bodies and Vulnerability. Description: - Theme: Language, Memory, and Power. Description: - Theme: Youth, Courage, and Naivety. Description: - Theme: Afterlife and the Soul. Description: - Climax: Dong-ho, only in middle school, is killed by South Korean soldiers while trying to peacefully surrender. - Summary: It's May 1980, and Dong-ho is a middle-schooler living in Gwangju, a city on the southern tip of South Korea. Almost by accident, Dong-ho has become involved in the student protests against military dictator Chun Doo-hwan. Alongside fellow activists Eun-sook, Seon-ju, and Jin-su, Dong-ho helps clean and classify the bodies murdered by state soldiers. Dong-ho takes his job seriously, laying the Taegukgi over the dead and lighting candles to honor the corpses. Though most of the protestors are students, Dong-ho is the youngest of all, and his work worries both his mother and his middle brother. A few days ago, Dong-ho watched as soldiers shot down his best friend, Jeong-dae, in the middle of a mass protest. Last week, Jeong-dae's sister Jeong-mi (long the object of Dong-ho's affections) disappeared. Dong-ho blames himself for both of these losses, obsessing over what happens to people's "fluttering" souls when they die. Tonight, Chun Doo-hwan's soldiers are coming back into Gwangju, and everyone knows there will be carnage. Dong-ho's mother pleads with him to leave the Provincial Office where he works, but Dong-ho refuses, promising that he will be home by dinner. The story shifts perspective, and now Jeong-dae, recently murdered, is narrating from beyond the grave. To his horror, Jeong-dae's body has been taken to a clearing, where it is thrown at the bottom of a pile of corpses. Jeong-dae senses that his sister Jeong-mi has also been killed, and he longs to punish the soldiers who have murdered her. Though there are other souls in this clearing, Jeong-dae cannot figure out how to communicate with any of them. His only hope is to find Dong-ho and watch over his still-living friend. After a few days, while his body rots and swells and turns black, Jeong-dae learns that the soldiers have come to burn the pile of corpses. He is initially relieved, believing that being rid of his body will allow his soul to roam Gwangju more freely. But as his body goes up in smoke, Jeong-dae realizes with despair that Dong-ho, too, has been murdered. Five years later, Eun-sook is working in a book publisher's office. While working on the company's latest book, a Korean translation of some protest plays, Eun-sook is called into the police station for her involvement in the piece. While at the station, the interrogator slaps Eun-sook seven times. For the next week, Eun-sook resolves to forget one slap each day. Though years have passed, Eun-sook is still haunted by her memories of the Gwangju massacre, so she rarely leaves her house other than to go to work. At the end of the week, Eun-sook brings the book to the censor's office. She is horrified to see that the censors have blotted out entire pages (even though usually they only cross out a few words). But the play's producer, Mr. Seo, is firm that the show will go on, honoring the victims of Gwangju even though Chun Doo-hwan's government is still in power. When Eun-sook attends the premiere, she sees the actors silently mouthing the censored words. One young actor, wearing trackpants, reminds her of Dong-ho. Five more years pass, and an unnamed narrator reflects on the months that he was imprisoned for protesting in Gwangju. While in prison, the narrator was forced to share all of his meals with the silent, effeminate Jin-su. Both men are subjected to many forms of torture, including one that involves mutilating their hands with a pen. The narrator contrasts the experience of feeling like "raw meat" in prison with the memories of protests, when he felt that he and the crowd of activists shared "the sublime enormity of a single heart." Over the course of his time in prison, the narrator befriends Jin-su and a younger boy named Yeong-chae. Yeong-chae leads the prisoners in several small acts of protests, though he also bursts into tears whenever he thinks of his favorite sweet treats. In his innocence and courage, Yeong-chae reminds both the narrator and Jin-su of Dong-ho. Now, Yeong-chae has been institutionalized and Jin-su has killed himself. The narrator, too, has struggled with alcoholism and depression, and he lashes out at the professor (Yoon) who is interviewing him about the Gwangju Uprising. The narrator believes that the only thing all humans have in common is their ability to be cruel to each other, like "ravening beast[s]." In 2002, Seon-ju is working as an environmental activist. For the most part, she is secretive about her role in the Gwangju protests, ignoring Yoon's requests for an interview. But when Seon-ju learns that her old friend, labor activist Seong-hee, has fallen gravely ill, she feels newly motivated to tell her story. As Seon-ju tries to work up the nerve to visit Seong-hee in the hospital, she is haunted by regret, her narration interrupted by a series of confused, half-remembered vignettes (which the novel calls "Up Risings"). Finally, Seon-ju reveals the truth of what happened to her in the years after Gwangju: she was sexually assaulted, brutalized to the point that she can no longer have children or stand any form of sexual intimacy. Seon-ju blames herself for Dong-ho's death, wishing she had sent him home instead of merely sharing gimbap with him. But Dong-ho's memory also gives Seon-ju strength, and she resolves to keep going in tribute to the murdered young boy. Eight years later, Dong-ho's mother still sometimes hallucinates Dong-ho on the streets of Gwangju. She replays the day of her son's death, wondering if she could have done more to bring him home and resenting the other young activists for refusing to let her grab Dong-ho before the killing began. Dong-ho's mother also laments renting out the annex of their family hanok to Jeong-dae and Jeong-mi, though she knows Dong-ho's friendship with Jeong-dae was a highlight of his life. Dong-ho's older brother has moved away, but usually when he visits, he and the middle brother fight, blaming each other for Dong-ho's death. Meanwhile, Dong-ho's mother gets to know other grieving parents, and they join together to protest, despite arrests and injuries. After Dong-ho's father dies, however, Dong-ho's mother loses steam. Now, all she can do is remember, thinking back to the poems Dong-ho used to create. In 2013, the writer—a stand-in for author Han Kang herself—is beginning to write a book about the Gwangju protests, told from the perspective of Dong-ho and those who loved him. The writer has a personal connection to the uprising: her family used to live in the hanok that they then sold to Dong-ho's parents. Though the writer moved to Seoul a few months before the protests began, the writer's father stayed in touch with many friends in Gwangju. The more the writer studies the Gwangju protests, visiting the 5:18 Research Institute and the house where she used to live, the more she becomes obsessed with Dong-ho and the pain he suffered. Before she leaves Gwangju, the writer visits Dong-ho's grave, lighting a candle to pay her respects.

- Genre: Short story - Title: Hunters in the Snow - Point of view: Third person limited - Setting: The woods outside of Spokane, Washington - Character: Tub. Description: As his name suggests, Tub is fat, slow, and the butt of Kenny and Frank's jokes. He is the story's protagonist, but he has none of the heroism or charisma of a traditional leading character. Although he is the story's most sympathetic character, Tub is more pathetic than admirable, unable to stand up to Kenny's bullying and gratefully accepting Frank's friendship after Kenny is out of the picture, even after Frank has failed to stick up for him. Tub has kids but doesn't have the self-possession or maturity one expects from a responsible adult. He is ostracized for being overweight, but this is not what he is ashamed of: he is ashamed of his "double life"—his compulsive overeating when alone—so he lies to Kenny and Frank and diets in front of them, pretending he is overweight because of his "glands." Unlike Kenny, Tub is neither malicious nor aggressive, but he does snap when pushed: first, from fear, when he shoots Kenny in self-defense, and second, from anger, when, unable to take any more abuse about his size, he grabs Frank by the collar. Tub is the only character in the story who shows any real loyalty: he expects Frank to stick up for him, and when Frank confesses to him that he is leaving his wife and children for a fifteen year-old babysitter, Tub says that, as Frank's friend, he'll always be on his side. Tub's intentions are good, but his theory of friendship seems misguided when one considers Frank's treatment of him—making fun of him under Kenny's influence, and only switching his loyalty to Tub once Kenny has been shot. - Character: Frank. Description: Frank is, in many ways, the most powerful of the three friends, profiting from Kenny and Tub's evident dislike of each other by switching sides when it is convenient. He believes that "[t]here are all these forces" which "you just have to go with." Kenny calls this Frank's "hippie bullshit," but it could equally be seen as Frank's philosophy of opportunism and his slightly Machiavellian passivity. Likewise, he could be seen as the most romantic and passionate of the three men—he tells Tub he is in love with his "whole being"—but Frank's supposed sensitivity is what leads him to the selfish and destructive plan to desert his wife, Nancy, and their children, in pursuit of the underage Roxanne Brewer, who is a fifteen-year-old babysitter. His response to Tub's confession about his compulsive overeating is also morally dubious. He orders Tub four plates of pancakes and watches with evident pleasure as Tub eats them all. Frank says it is "[b]eautiful," as if indulging Tub's damaging habit gratifies Frank's aesthetic sensibility. - Character: Kenny. Description: Bullying, cunning, and brutal, Kenny is the ringleader of the friend group, but he is a genuine friend to neither Frank nor Tub. He obviously dislikes Tub, whom he mocks mercilessly for being fat, and, though he recruits Frank to gang up against Tub, he seems to have little regard for Frank either, threatening to betray Frank's shameful secret about his illicit infatuation with "a certain babysitter." Kenny has his mind set on violence and cruelty, and, unable to find a deer to shoot, he takes out his frustration by shooting the farmer's dog. But he is not only aggressive, he is also sly: he doesn't tell Tub and Frank that the farmer actually asked him to shoot his old, sick dog, and, pretending to shoot it out of hatred, he makes Tub think he is going to shoot him, too. Kenny's prank backfires, literally and dramatically, when Tub shoots Kenny in self-defense. Although there is nothing redeeming about Kenny and some justice in his fate, by the end of the story one feels sorry for him: severely wounded, freezing, and reduced to reciting the sentence "I'm going to the hospital," Kenny is totally neglected by Tub and Frank who, carried away by their revived intimacy, have unwittingly (or, perhaps, half-wittingly) taken a wrong turn on the way to the hospital. - Character: Farmer. Description: Described as "a thin man with lank hair," the farmer owns the land on which Kenny, Frank, and Tub want to hunt. Although his dog whom he loves is too old and sick to eat, he is unable to put the dog out of his misery and so he asks Kenny to shoot the dog for him. He blames his inability to shoot his dog on the fact he lacks a gun, but the woman with the sleeping child (presumably his wife) tells him that he is simply spineless. The farmer simply shrugs at this accusation of weakness—as if he is too weak-willed even to defend himself. - Character: Woman With Sleeping Child. Description: This woman, who is pale and sweating, is sitting by a smoking stove in the farmhouse with a sleeping child on her lap. Presumably, she is the farmer's wife but she is never explicitly referred to in these terms. Other than giving Tub and Frank directions for a shortcut to the hospital, the only time this woman speaks is when she tells the farmer that he is too weak to shoot his dying, suffering dog. This intolerance for and heartless exposure of weakness parallels the preying on each other's flaws that characterizes the Tub, Frank, and Kenny's relationships with each other. - Character: Farmer's Dog. Description: The farmer's dog is big, black and so old that he can't "chew his food anymore." Like the human characters in the story, his frailty makes him aggressive: he runs out and barks at the three men as they pass, but when Kenny, pretending to be a dog, snarls back, the dog retreats, "peeing a little" as he goes, incontinent through fear or age. Kenny shoots the dog dead at the request of the farmer who is unable to do the deed himself. - Theme: Friendship and Cruelty. Description: "Hunters in the Snow" is the story of a three-way friendship that is based on exclusion and harm. Tub, Frank, and Kenny are three friends who go on a hunting trip together, but from the very beginning their friendship is characterized by cruelty: at first, Frank and Kenny gang up on Tub, and then Tub and Frank align against Kenny. The story thus raises the question of whether the three men really are friends, or whether they are, as Wolff's title suggests, merely three "Hunters in the Snow," loosely bound by their annual tradition of hunting in the woods outside of Spokane, Washington. As the hunting trip unfolds, Wolff suggests that friendships or alliances that are based on shared aggression rather than affection are unfulfilling and harmful and are not genuine friendships at all. While Kenny, Frank, and Tub are supposedly friends, all of them mistreat each other. From the beginning of the story, Kenny and Frank are late in picking Tub up (leaving him waiting in the snow for an hour), and when they do eventually arrive, Kenny tries to scare Tub by nearly running him over with the truck. Though Tub bears the brunt of Kenny's abuse, Kenny is also nasty to Frank: he makes fun of Frank for his "hippie bullshit" and threatens to betray Frank's secret about "a certain babysitter" (fifteen-year-old Roxanne Brewer, whom Frank has fallen in love with). The men's friendship is held together by exclusion and betrayal rather than kindness and goodwill. The story's scenario itself—a hunting trip—emphasizes that the men's friendship is based on harm rather than affection: they are bonding over an activity that includes trying to kill something else for fun, and in the absence of deer, they turn on one another. In addition, Kenny and Frank's alliance against Tub illustrates how the men's friendship rests on ridicule and disloyalty. The two men bond by calling Tub rude names, laughing at him for being overweight, and intentionally walking ahead of him, leaving him to struggle on his own through the fences and deep snow in the woods. Furthermore, although Kenny is the ringleader of this behavior, he is not its source. This becomes clear when the men's alliances shift and Tub and Frank gang up on Kenny. Rather than becoming kinder, their dynamic becomes even crueler, with Tub and Frank abandoning a freezing and severely wounded Kenny in the back of the pickup truck in order to eat pancakes together and chat. Perhaps the most insidious aspect of Kenny, Frank, and Tub's friendship is that the rare moments in which the characters seem to make genuine overtures to intimacy are when they are most vulnerable to abuse. Frank, for example, confides in Kenny prior to the story's start about the underage babysitter he's in love with, but Kenny leverages the secret by threatening to tell Tub, thereby gaining power over Frank. Similarly, Tub confides in Frank that the source of his weight problem is not a complicated medical issue involving his glands, but rather his compulsion to overeat. Frank then uses this knowledge to harm Tub, ordering four plates of pancakes, slathering them with butter and syrup, and then watching Tub eat them all. While Frank seems at first to be signaling to Tub that he doesn't need to hide his addiction, it becomes clear that the pancakes are Frank's way of proving his superiority and power over Tub by feeding Tub's addiction and tempting him into behavior that makes him feel bad about himself. Even the moments that appear to be reflective of a healthy, compassionate friendship, then, are still rooted in maliciousness. This demonstrates that toxicity in relationships is not always blatant—it often is disguised, which can make it even more pernicious. - Theme: Narcissism, Neglect, and the Dereliction of Duty. Description: In "Hunters in the Snow," Tub tells Frank that he doesn't "pay attention very much," and this description could be applied to almost all the other characters—including Tub, whom Frank scolds for thinking he is "the only person with problems." Throughout the story, Wolff highlights the ways in which friends and family members fail to fulfill their duties to each other, and people who seem to love each other actually neglect each other, generally by doing nothing at all when some kind of response is called for. Ultimately, Wolff suggests that the neglect that punctuates the story is rooted in self-absorption and it has dangerous and even deadly consequences. In the story, indifference to other people's needs comes from self-absorption, or being overly preoccupied with one's own problems. When Tub shoots Kenny in an act of self-defense, for example, the three men rush to the hospital. However, on the way to the hospital, Tub and Frank stop twice—first for coffee, then for an indulgent stack of pancakes—leaving the Kenny to bleed and freeze in the back of the truck. In prioritizing their own comfort, Tub and Frank seriously and dangerously neglect Kenny. There are also other smaller, less obvious, instances of inattention peppered throughout the story. The woman with the child in the farmhouse sits by a stove that is "smoking badly"—yet the woman does nothing. The smoking stove—especially in proximity of the child—could be dangerous. However, the woman seems lost in her own world and fails to take action.  In this story, people do not just fail to notice what is going on around them—they also fail to react to what they do notice. The most profound cruelties in "Hunters in the Snow" do not derive from blindness, but rather from passively looking on and failing to intervene. For example, when Kenny maliciously makes fun of Tub, Frank "smile[s] and looks off," laughs along, or accuses Tub of being sensitive. Later in the story, when Tub shoots Kenny as an act of self-defense, Tub and Frank respond inadequately to the fact that Kenny is severely wounded. Even the farmer lacks a sense of urgency, as he calmly (and almost without interest) observes Kenny's gunshot wound and states, "I suppose you want to use the phone." Furthermore, the men find out that the nearest hospital is fifty miles away, and there are no ambulances available to come and retrieve Kenny, suggesting that even the local institutions are indifferent to the community's needs. Later, having carelessly forgotten the directions to the hospital at a tavern, Tub and Frank end up taking a wrong turn on the way to the hospital. The story ends without Kenny getting to a hospital—and with little assurance that he ever will, considering Tub and Frank's blissful unconcern for Kenny's rapidly declining health. Neglect and derelictions of duty are particularly harmful when they proceed from love. For example, the farmer's deep affection for his dog means that he can't put the dog out of its misery, even though it is "old and sick" and can't "chew his food anymore." The farmer seems to use his love for the dog, then, as a justification for neglecting it. In addition, later in the story, Frank tells Tub that he is in love with fifteen-year-old Roxanne Brewer and is considering leaving his wife for the underage girl. Love is thus invoked as both the cause and the justification for Frank abandoning his duties to his family. Wolff focuses on these kinds of cruelty—neglect, inattention, and passivity—in order to show that they are no less cruel for being less obvious or direct. - Theme: Secrets and Deception. Description: In "Hunters in the Snow," Kenny, Frank, and Tub all keep and share shameful or sensitive secrets, such as the real reason for Tub's weight problems, or Frank's love for his kids' fifteen-year-old babysitter. The characters form alliances with one another by sharing these secrets, punish others by withholding secrets, and leverage secrets to gain power over others. In this way, Wolff shows that establishing intimacy through sharing secrets is risky, as secrets can be betrayed or weaponized. While Frank and Kenny's alliance against Tub is clear from the beginning, their shared secrets simultaneously cement and undermine their relationship. Prior to the story's start, Frank has told Kenny his secret—that he is in love with a fifteen year-old babysitter—which seems to demonstrate a closeness between the two men that Tub does not share. However, when Frank tells Kenny that he "talk[s] too much," the secret becomes less a bond than a faultline. In order to reassert power over Frank, Kenny threatens to divulge Frank's secret to Tub, thereby turning an emblem of their friendship into a weapon. By contrast, when Frank and Tub share their shameful secrets with each other, they both seem to accept their friend's secret. Tub thinks that Frank will conclude he is "[p]retty disguisting" for confessing that he is overweight due to overeating, but Frank doesn't. Likewise, Frank fears that Tub will think he is "a complete bastard" for being in love with the babysitter, but instead Tub says that "when you've got a friend it means you've always got someone on your side, no matter what." While this might seem positive and accepting, it's also worth considering whether these reactions are appropriate. After all, being in love with an underage girl and compulsively overeating are not necessarily things that ought to be uncritically affirmed or endorsed. Besides, having a friend "on your side, no matter what" is ominous: after all, Tub and Frank are "on the same side" with regards to neglecting wounded Kenny, and Frank and Kenny were "on the same side" when mocking Tub. Perhaps these friendships would be stronger, actually, if the characters thought independently and acted according to what they thought was right. Furthermore, even though Frank doesn't try to leverage Tub's secret by telling it to anyone, he does use it to manipulate Tub. When Tub reveals to Frank his deepest secret (that he is overweight because he compulsively overeats and not because of a problem with his "glands"), Frank baits Tub into overeating in order to control and humiliate Tub by exploiting his weaknesses. After watching Tub demolish four plates of pancakes, he says that it is "Beautiful." This might look like being supportive but, by encouraging Tub to do something that makes him feel bad about himself, Frank does not seem to have Tub's best interests at heart. There is, however, an aspect of this sharing of secrets that is not uniformly negative, but is instead potentially redemptive. Frank's response to Tub's secret, for instance, is potentially helpful in that Tub says he is most tormented not by his weight, but by keeping his overeating a secret. It is possible, then, that Frank—by making Tub perform his secret in public—has released some of Tub's shame (this may be why Tub says he has "never been so full"). Furthermore, there is an element of justice in Kenny's fate. Kenny's secret (that he killed the dog because the farmer asked him to) is different from the other secrets in that it does not point to Kenny's personal weakness: it is the farmer who is presumably ashamed of not having the strength to shoot his suffering dog. Kenny therefore keeps this secret not out of shame, but rather because he wants to scare Tub into thinking he is going to shoot him, too. Kenny's purely malicious deception quite literally backfires, and so Kenny is, in this sense, punished for his secrecy by his injury. - Theme: Man vs. Nature. Description: "Hunters in the Snow," a story of three men taking to the woods for a deer hunt, highlights how mankind is a threat to nature. Although the hunt itself is inherently violent, it is Kenny's aggressive behavior at the end of the fruitless hunt that specifically showcases the way that humans treat nature with violence and aggression. However, since the hunters are constantly thwarted by and forced to submit to nature—such as when the freezing cold winds make the men prioritize stopping for hot coffee over rushing Kenny to the hospital after he has been shot—the story ultimately asserts that nature is more powerful than humans. During the hunt, Kenny is violent towards nature. He aggressively states, "I hate that tree," and shoots a nearby tree. When the farmer's dog runs out into the woods, Kenny claims, "I hate that dog," and shoots the dog, who is instantly killed. Kenny's assertion of dominance over the tree and the dog represents his general attempt to assert human primacy over the natural landscape and animals through violence. The hunt itself also demonstrates mankind's violence toward nature, as the men kill deer for sport and entertainment. Although this particular hunt proves fruitless for the three men, other people have better luck—seen by the cars topped with deer carcasses outside of the tavern—suggesting that mankind's aggressive treatment of the natural world is widespread. Despite mankind's violence, nature is still the more powerful force, since the men must constantly submit to the demands of nature. As Tub, Kenny, and Frank struggle to tromp through the heavy snow (earning Tub several bruises on his shins from the icy snow crust), it is clear that nature has the upper hand. Although the men discover deer tracks, they are unable to find the deer, demonstrating nature's ability to outwit the incompetent hunters. Nature even has the power to end the men's hunt entirely—as darkness falls, the men know they have no choice but return to the truck. Later, on the way to the hospital, the icy wind dictates when the men stop for food and warmth. Even though Kenny has just been shot and needs medical treatment immediately, it is the weather, not the men themselves, that decides if and when that will happen. By detailing the three men's ill-fated hunt, Wolff encourages his readership to recognize and respect nature's power and be cognizant of humankind's impact on the natural world. - Climax: When Tub shoots Kenny in the stomach - Summary: On a cold, snowy day in Spokane, Tub (who, as his name suggests, is tubby) is waiting, armed with a rifle, on the side of the road. Suddenly a truck swerves around the corner and mounts the curb, nearly running Tub over. He drops his rifle and two sandwiches and some cookies fall out of his pocket. The truck eventually comes to a halt and Tub goes over to it. The driver of the truck, Kenny, is laughing hysterically at having scared Tub by nearly running him over. Tub is angry with Kenny and Frank, who is in the passenger seat, because they are an hour late picking him up. Though Frank doesn't join in with Kenny's laughing, he doesn't take Tub's side, but tells him to "be mellow." Tub gets into the truck with Kenny and Frank, and the three of the drive into the country, towards some woods where they are to go hunting. The truck is freezing because the windshield has been broken by "juvenile delinquents," so they have to stop twice for coffee to warm up. They arrive at the woods—the same woods they've hunted in, unsuccessfully, for the last two years. Cold and restive, the three men squabble and Kenny threatens to divulge a secret that Frank has told him about "a certain babysitter." Frank is angry but Kenny only laughs. They set off hunting. Tub trails behind, struggling to get through the fences and trudge through the snow. Rather than helping him, Kenny and Frank simply watch him struggle. After two hours and no success, they stop for lunch. Tub barely eats anything because he is trying to lose weight. Frank makes fun of Tub for being fat and Kenny laughs hysterically, again. Tub blames his fatness on his "glands." They continue hunting, Frank and Kenny looking for tracks along one bank of a creek, with Tub on the other bank. Still unable to keep pace, Tub stops looking for tracks and just tries to catch up. With daylight fading and no sign of deer, they all decide to walk back along Tub's side of the creek. Almost immediately, Kenny spots some tracks and reproaches Tub for missing them. They follow the tracks, and when they come to a no hunting sign, they decide to go to the farmhouse to ask the farmer's permission to hunt on his land. Heading back to the truck, Tub falls behind again. Tired and dispirited, Tub sits down alone and eats the sandwiches and cookies that he didn't eat for lunch. Kenny and Frank have already started driving, and Tub has to run to catch the truck. While Kenny goes into the farmhouse, Tub chides Frank for failing to stick up for him. He asks Frank about the babysitter, but Frank tells him to "mind your own business." Kenny re-emerges having gotten permission to hunt on the farmer's land. The farmer's dog snarls at them, and Kenny, pretending to be a dog, snarls back until the dog retreats. They start following the deer tracks again, but lose them in the woods. Kenny is furious and argues with Frank. They walk back to the farmhouse and the farmer's dog runs out again. Kenny says, "I hate that dog" and shoots it. Then Kenny turns to Tub and says, "I hate you." Believing that Kenny is going to shoot him, too, Tub shoots Kenny in the stomach. Kenny crumples to the ground, while Frank barely reacts and Tub weeps. Tub suggests they call an ambulance. Leaving Kenny bleeding in the snow but taking his rifle, Tub and Frank go into the farmhouse to find a phone. The farmer, somehow guessing what has happened, is unsurprised and unfazed, but lets them in. In the house, there is a pale and sweating woman holding a sleeping child. While Frank goes to call the ambulance, Tub confesses to the farmer that Kenny shot his dog. To Tub's surprise and horror, the farmer reveals that he asked Kenny to shoot the dog because it was old and sick. There are no available ambulances and so Frank and Tub decide to drive Kenny the fifty miles to the nearest hospital. The woman gives them some complicated directions for a shortcut. Frank and Tub carry Kenny to the truck on some boards. It is dark and slippery and Tub falls, dropping Kenny who screams in pain. Frank calls Tub a "fat moron" and Tub, enraged, grabs Frank by the collar and tells him to stop talking to him like that. Frank apologizes. They lift Kenny into the back of the truck and set off. Once driving, Frank tells Tub that he would have shot Kenny, too, if he'd been in Tub's position. Freezing because of the truck's broken windshield, they stop at a tavern to warm up, leaving Kenny in the truck. In the tavern, Frank confesses to Tub that he is leaving his wife and kids because he is in love with Roxanne Brewer, a fifteen year-old babysitter. Frank worries that Tub will think him a "complete bastard," but Tub tells him that he will always take his side because they are friends. They set off again. Tub has left the directions to the hospital at the tavern but Frank assures him he can remember the way. They get cold again and stop at a roadhouse to warm up. This time it is Tub's turn to make a confession. He tells Frank that his being fat has nothing to do with his glands, but that he overeats compulsively. In response, Frank orders Tub four plates of pancakes, slathers them in butter and syrup, and then watches Tub eat them all. They drive on and Tub reveals to Frank that the farmer had asked Kenny to shoot the dog. They both laugh. Meanwhile, Kenny is in the back of the car, bleeding, freezing, and being driven in the wrong direction.

- Genre: Science fiction / Horror - Title: I Am Legend - Point of view: Third person limited (following Robert Neville's point of view). - Setting: Los Angeles, 1976-1978 - Character: Robert Neville. Description: The main character of I Am Legend, Robert Neville is the last human being to survive after a vampire plague hits Los Angeles in the year 1975. While his friends and family become vampires, Neville converts his house into a fortress, and spends his days traveling around the city, killing any sleeping vampires he can find. Over the course of the book, Neville tries to understand the causes of the vampire plague. He also battles depression and alcoholism—without anyone left to talk to, whiskey is one of the few pleasures left to him. Throughout the book, Neville expresses his fear and hatred for the vampires, and it's his goal to rid the city of vampires altogether. However, after he meets Ruth, a "living vampire," Neville begins to see the truth: from the perspective of the vampires, Neville is a hideous monster, who spends his waking life killing vampires in their sleep (just as vampires are said to spend their waking lives killing slumbering humans). Thus, as the novel comes to a close, Neville seems to see the world through the eyes of a vampire: he is the monster, the antagonist, and the "legend." - Character: Ruth. Description: A ranking officer in the "new society" of living vampires (i.e., vampires who retain their intelligence and memory, and who live at peace with their vampire bacteria by taking special pills). Toward the end of the novel, Ruth shows up near Robert Neville's house, pretending to be a normal human being. The two share a romantic connection, and though she's seemingly been sent to kill Neville, she only knocks him out, and then leaves him a letter telling him to leave Los Angeles immediately. In the end, Neville is captured, and Ruth mercifully offers him poison capsules so that he won't have to suffer an execution at the hands of the vengeful new society. - Character: Ben Cortman. Description: Ben Cortman is Robert Neville's friend and neighbor and, after he becomes infected with the vampire germ, one of Neville's most dangerous enemies. Every night, Cortman stands outside Neville's house, shouting for him to come outside. Over the course of the novel, Cortman becomes more than just Neville's enemy: he becomes Neville's reason for living. As Neville becomes more comfortable in his role as a vampire-killer, he begins to enjoy hunting for Cortman during the day—indeed, he doesn't know how he'd spend his time if he ever managed to catch Cortman. In the end, then, Cortman symbolizes the strange symbiosis between vampires and human beings—one of the novel's most important themes. - Character: Virginia Neville. Description: Virginia Neville is Robert Neville's dead wife. She succumbs to the vampire plague, and Neville buries her in a cemetery. To his horror, Virginia comes back from the dead and menaces him—he's forced to kill her for a second time, and bury her once more. Although Neville's love for Virginia is one of the crucial aspects of his character, we're given almost no information about Virginia's personality—she's an important, but somewhat one-dimensional character. - Theme: Otherness. Description: Richard Matheson's I Am Legend is a science fiction adventure and a terrifying horror story. But unlike most works of horror, I Am Legend is not a black-and-white tale of "us versus them"; in other words, a story in which a hero fights off a monstrous villain. Matheson's novel is set in a futuristic version of Los Angeles, in which Robert Neville, the last man left on Earth, fights against a terrifying race of vampires. However, the book does not simply glorify Neville and demonize the vampires. Instead, Matheson uses Neville's interactions with the vampires to study the concept of "otherness"—the way that one group interacts with and conceives of a radically different group. As I Am Legend goes on, it becomes clearer and clearer that there are no real heroes or villains in the book: just two groups (humans and vampires), each of which fears, and is equally alien to, the "Other." One of Matheson's most important points about otherness is that the Other is both repulsive and attractive. In the year 1976, Robert Neville navigates the city of Los Angeles, looking for sleeping vampires to kill with a wooden stake. He's terrified of vampires, and for good reason: Every night, they gather outside his house and yell for him to come outside (presumably so that they can bite him and infect him with their vampire plague). But although Neville despises vampires and considers them a threat to his very existence, he's curiously drawn to them. He spends all his time learning about vampires, feels sexually attracted to female vampires, and repeatedly expresses sympathy for them. In part, Neville's feelings of attraction for the vampires stem from his loneliness and sexual frustration. But at the same time, he seems to feel a profound sense of connection between himself and the vampires: they are, after all, just human beings who've contracted a disease. By portraying the Other—the race of vampires—as both terrifying and sympathetic, Matheson complicates the typical horror novel scenario. Instead of a heroic human being fighting off demonic vampires, Matheson portrays a morally ambiguous human being fighting against morally ambiguous vampires. (See Survival and morality theme.) Neville hates vampires, and thinks of them as being totally "Other" than himself; however, he also seems to realize, deep down, that humans and vampires aren't so different. At the end of I Am Legend, Matheson brings the concept of Otherness "full circle" by showing that Neville is just as "Other" to the vampires as they are to him. After being captured by a race of intelligent vampires, Neville is sent to be executed for his "crimes" against their race. As he marches to his death, Neville realizes that, from the perspective of the vampires, he is a monster. Just like a vampire, he's snuck into his enemies' homes and killed them in their sleep. Neville's realization leads him to utter the book's final line, and title: "I am legend"—the suggestion being that, to the vampires, Neville is a terrifying, supernatural creature who needs to be destroyed before he can kill again. In short, at the end of the book, Neville finally sees through the eyes of the Other—he sees the world from a vampire's perspective, and comes to understand that he, too, is a foreign, alien being. Over the years, various scholars and critics have interpreted I Am Legend as a metaphor for the experience of homosexuals, African Americans, or immigrants. Indeed, the vampires in Matheson's novel could represent any and all minority groups that have been demonized and treated as the "Other" in the United States. While it's all-too easy to portray an unfamiliar group as foreign, frightening, and unknowable, Matheson's novel shows that Others may be just as frightened of "us" (whatever that might mean) as we are of them—and that, in fact, the distinction between "us" and "them" may be less important than what "we" have in common. - Theme: Grief, Loneliness, and Depression. Description: I Am Legend contains a surprising amount of psychological insight about grief, loneliness, and depression. The novel's main character, Robert Neville, is the last human being left on Earth—everyone else has been turned into a vampire. Neville thus has to deal with the psychological effects of being completely alone—a fate that is, in some ways, worse than becoming a vampire. Without any human connection whatsoever, Neville is forced to take refuge in his memories of other people. Every day, it's suggested, he thinks about his wife, Virginia, and his child, Kathy, both of whom died in the vampire plague of 1975. Neville's memories of his wife and child are horrific: after Kathy succumbed to the plague, he burned her body. Furthermore, after Virginia died of the plague, Neville buried her underground; when she rose from the grave, a full-fledged vampire, Neville was forced to kill her with a wooden stake. The way that Neville relives the death of wife and his child day after day suggests the symptoms of trauma. While some human beings overcome their trauma by interacting with other people—in essence, diluting their old, traumatizing memories with new, happy ones—Neville has no one to talk to: he's all alone with his depression. As a result, he spends his time drinking heavily and playing loud music, in a vain effort to escape his own grief. Neville tries many different remedies for his grief, loneliness, and depression, none of which "cure" him entirely. Throughout the novel, he drinks heavily—a remedy that staves off depression temporarily, but ultimately makes it worse. More successfully, he tries to set himself a routine: driving around Los Angeles to kill vampires, researching the science of vampirism, fortifying his house, etc. Routine gives Neville the strength to survive his new life; it gives him a sense of control over his own destiny, and provides him with something to look forward to when he goes to bed every night. Finally, Neville seizes the opportunity to make connections with an outsider—first a dog, and then a woman named Ruth, whom Neville believes to be a human being (but who is actually a vampire). In both cases, Neville risks his own safety in order to bond with an outsider: his hunger for someone to talk to easily outweighs the possibility that his new acquaintance will hurt him. But in both cases, Neville fails to forge an emotional connection between himself and his new acquaintance. The dog succumbs to the vampire plague, and Ruth betrays Neville to her fellow vampires. Ruth's betrayal steers Neville (and the novel) toward a frightening conclusion: as the last human being left on Earth, Neville will never truly escape his own loneliness and depression. The other potential interpretation of the book's final line (in addition to the one discussed in the Otherness theme) is that Neville has finally come to accept his own mortality and his own isolation from the rest of the world. As the last member of the human race, his days are numbered—soon, he, and the entire human race, will fade into a distant memory. - Theme: Survival and Violence. Description: In I Am Legend, Robert Neville spends his days traveling around Los Angeles, driving stakes into the hearts of vampires—in effect, murdering them in their sleep. Neville is sometimes sympathetic to the vampires (see Otherness theme), yet he continues to kill them, reasoning that if he doesn't, they'll kill him at night. In general, the novel studies the lengths to which ordinary people will go to survive in a time of crisis. In particular, Matheson is interested in the way that people use "survival" as a justification for their acts of violence—to what extent is there a valid reason to kill? After he survives the vampire plague, Neville is forced to face a simple fact: if he doesn't protect himself, vampires will kill him. Thus, survival becomes the dominant theme of his life. Indeed, he converts his house into a fortress, so that the vampires won't be able to attack him in his sleep. In general, Neville sees himself as playing a defensive role: he sees the vampires as an aggressive force and a threat to his survival. Because he sees himself in a purely defensive role, Neville can always justify his own acts of killing. At several points in the novel, he feels guilt or regret while killing sleeping vampires with a wooden stake. However, whenever this happens, he convinces himself that he's doing the right thing: he refuses to be on the losing side of a "kill or be killed" situation. Strictly based on these scenes, the novel seems to imply that survival is the most basic, fundamental value; put another way, nothing Neville does is more important than surviving. Even if survival is the most important part of Neville's life, I Am Legend shows some of the moral challenges of using survival to justify one's violent deeds. Over the course of the book, Neville becomes increasingly numb to the act of killing vampires. In the earliest chapters, he feels pain and regret for his killings, and compensates by drinking heavily. Later, he seems to get an almost sexual pleasure out of killing vampires. As the years go by, however, Neville seems to become totally desensitized to the violence. Toward the end of the novel, when Neville meets Ruth, Matheson makes it clear how much of a toll killing has taken on Neville. He explains to Ruth how he kills vampires, and becomes genuinely puzzled when Ruth points out that what he's doing is barbaric and cruel. Indeed, insofar as she's capable of expressing sympathy and concern for others, Ruth comes across as far more "human" than Neville in this scene, despite the fact that she's really a vampire. Three years of systematic killing have turned Neville into an insensitive, emotionless wreck. Whether or not his killing is justified for survival's sake, it has stripped him of his humanity. At the end of the novel, Neville finally seems to recognize some of the dangers of violence. After learning of a new race of intelligent vampires, he watches the new vampires slaughter other vampires, seeming to enjoy themselves while doing so. When he questions Ruth about the brutality of the new vampire society, Ruth offers the same unconvincing excuse that Neville offered her: they're just trying to survive. Ruth's words suggest that survival isn't always a valid justification for violence; more often, it's just an excuse to behave sadistically and cruelly. Neville's final words to Ruth—"don't make it too brutal"—have an important double meaning. On one hand, Neville is asking Ruth to make his execution as painless as possible; at the same time, however, Neville seems to be warning Ruth against building a brutal, violent vampire society. Over the past three years, Neville has lived in his own brutal "society"—every single day, he's killed dozens. A few minutes from death, he seems to see the danger of basing one's existence on acts of violence. In general, I Am Legend suggests that a life of violence destroys the killer's soul as well as the victims' lives. Survival is important, but there seems to be little point to killing to survive when killing deprives us of our humanity. - Theme: Science. Description: Another important theme of I Am Legend is the power—both benevolent and malicious—of science. Throughout the book, Robert Neville studies the science of vampirism. In the process, he empowers himself and gives himself a new purpose in life. By researching epidemiology, bacteriology, and other "ologies" at the Los Angeles Public Library, Neville comes to realize that vampires aren't supernatural monsters—they're just human beings suffering from a serious disease. Neville's discovery helps him conquer his own fear of the vampires. Because he no longer sees them as indestructible demons, he sleeps better at night, and instead of dreading tomorrow, he finds himself looking forward to the future. Furthermore, the science of vampirism helps Neville expand his moral horizons: he realizes that the vampires are the victims of their own germs, and feels sympathy for them. Perhaps most importantly, science empowers Neville by giving him something important to do every day. Neville is a natural scientist: he's intensely curious about the vampire plague, and plans various experiments and tests to further his knowledge. He finds that, when he's studying the vampires, he looks forward to each new day instead of dreading it, and goes for hours without fearing the vampires at all. In generally, I Am Legend suggests that fear and anxiety are often rooted in ignorance—by embracing the power of science, Neville staves off some of his own anxiety and conquers some of his fears. In spite of Matheson's obvious love for biology and medicine, I Am Legend doesn't offer an entirely uncritical view of science. Like so many science fiction books of the era, the novel portrays science as a potentially dangerous force that's capable of leading to great destruction. In the process of studying the science of vampires, Neville develops some sympathy for the vampires; however, his sympathy isn't enough to dissuade him from killing them. Neville uses his scientific training to kill vampires with expert efficiency—a violent, destructive act that ultimately leaves him a hardened, emotionless man. (See Violence theme.) In this sense, science enlightens Neville but also gives him even greater powers of destruction. Indeed, Matheson strongly implies that the deadly vampire plague itself is the result of runaway scientific experimentation. In flashbacks, we learn that the vampire plague may have originated from the nuclear fallout from a recent world war, or from germ warfare. While Matheson offers only a brief discussion of the origins of the vampire plague, the discussion is crucial for situating I Am Legend in its proper historical context. Less than a decade after the Hiroshima bombing—a "triumph" of physics that must have seemed like science fiction—many Americans regarded science and technology as being incredibly dangerous. Ultimately, I Am Legend is typical of science fiction written during the Cold War era insofar as it presents science as empowering but inherently dangerous. Neville empowers himself by learning about vampires, but his empowerment doesn't necessarily make him a better man—only a more efficiently destructive one. - Climax: The "new society" breaks into Robert Neville's house. - Summary: The year is 1976—one year after a deadly plague sweeps the world, killing virtually all human beings. After their deaths, the world's human beings rise from the grave and become vampires: sensitive to light, garlic, and mirrors, dormant during the day, and impervious to bullets. In the city of Los Angeles, a man named Robert Neville has managed to survive by converting his house into a fortress. Every day, he travels across the city, impaling sleeping vampires with wooden stakes, and every night, he barricades himself in his house to hide from the vampires (who only come out in the dark). All night, Neville hears the sound of his old friend and neighbor, Ben Cortman—now a vampire—shouting, "Come out, Neville!" Neville has several close calls with the vampires. One evening, his watch stops, so that he's forced to drive home after sunset and fight past Ben Cortman and the other vampires. Neville narrowly manages to return to his house alive. Afterwards, he drinks heavily and falls into depression. In flashbacks, we learn that Neville has been devastated by the death of his wife, Virginia Neville, and his daughter, Kathy Neville. In 1975, the year of the plague, there were widespread reports of dust storms and genetically mutated bugs and insects that spread the plague across the world. The government instituted a law that all victims of the plague be burned in a huge pit; after the death of his daughter, Neville followed this rule. However, when Virginia died, Neville couldn't bear to burn the body; instead, he dragged it to a cemetery and buried it underground. To his horror, Virginia rose from the dead and walked back to the house—afterwards, it's strongly implied, Neville was forced to "kill" his vampire wife for a second time. In an effort to stave off his depression and loneliness, Neville tries to learn about the vampires. During the day, he kidnaps sleeping vampires from their hiding places, and takes them back to his house. There, he waits for them to wake up, and then dangles crosses in front of their faces—he finds that some, but not all, of the vampires are repulsed by the sight of a cross. Neville also learns that it's possible to kill vampires by piercing their bodies anywhere—it doesn't have to be the heart, contrary to folklore. Neville also tries to kill vampires by injecting them with allyl sulphide, the pungent chemical found in garlic. However, the allyl sulphide fails to provoke any reaction in the vampires he tests. Neville manages to isolate the vampire germ: he does this by teaching himself about medicine, extracting blood from vampires as they sleep, and looking at the blood under a microscope. Finally, Neville realizes that there are two distinct kinds of vampires: living vampires and the "true undead." The former kind of vampire is a human being who's currently suffering from the vampire plague, but who still has some control over their own mind; the latter kind is a corpse that has risen from the grave, and is now wild and feral. One day, Neville discovers that there's a live dog outside his house. The dog appears to be infected with the vampire germ; however, it can still walk around in the sunlight. Neville, desperate for companionship of any kind, feeds the dog hamburger meat, and tries to convince the dog to live in his house. However, the dog seems to be frightened of Neville. Over time, the dog becomes more and more sick with the vampire germ, until, one day, it dies. Neville resists the temptation to drink heavily after the dog's death. Instead, he throws himself into his research. He hypothesizes that some vampires are frightened of crosses because the cross reminds them of their former, Christian lives. However, vampires who were Jewish or atheist in life may not be afraid of the cross at all. The novel then jumps ahead two years: it's now 1978, and Neville has become more confortable in his new life. He spends his days hunting the neighborhood for Ben Cortman's sleeping body—indeed, the hunt for Cortman is the best part of Neville's life. One day, Neville is shocked to discover a woman running through the streets. The woman is initially reluctant to stop and talk to Neville, but eventually she agrees to go back to his house. At home, Neville learns that the woman is named Ruth, and that she lived with her husband until her husband died the previous week. Neville is highly skeptical of Ruth—he's suspicious that she's infected with the vampire germ, since Ruth is disgusted by the smell of garlic. During his time with Ruth, Neville tells her some things he's learned in the past two years. He's learned that vampires are immune to gunfire, because the vampire germ creates a "powerful body glue" that can absorb bullets. He also tells Ruth that he's immune to the vampire germ, probably because he was bitten by a vampire bat during his time fighting in Panama. Neville explains that he spends his days killing vampires in their sleep, and Ruth asks him how Neville can be so laid-back about killing them. Neville, in spite of himself, begins to feel guilty. That night, it's implied, he and Ruth sleep together. Neville insists on testing Ruth's blood; he does so, and immediately sees that she's heavily infected with the vampire germ. But as he looks into the microscope, Ruth knocks him out and leaves the house. When Neville comes to, he finds that Ruth has left him a note, explaining that she's a member of a "new society" of living vampires: vampires who haven't yet succumbed to the ravages of the germ, but who take special pills to stave off the germ's effects. Neville killed Ruth's husband, also a living vampire, in his sleep. Ruth further explains that her fellow vampires sent her to spy on Neville; however, she decided not to hurt Neville after she fell in love with him. Late at night, Neville sees members of Ruth's new society walking outside, killing the dead vampires. Neville despises the new society vampires for their cool, casual attitude toward murder. He sees the vampires of the new society killing his old enemy, Ben Cortman, and feels a strange wave of sympathy for Cortman. Then, the new society vampires break into his house. Terrified that he's going to be killed, Neville defends himself with a pistol, but the vampires overpower him. Neville wakes up in a cell, with Ruth next to him. Ruth explains that the new society vampires are going to execute Neville: in their eyes, Neville is a horrifying monster who has mercilessly killed their kind for the last three years. She offers Neville some poison capsules to make his execution less painful. Neville takes the capsules and walks out of his cell, toward the new society vampires, who are about to kill him. As he faces death from the poison, Neville realizes the truth: although he's spent the last three years fearing vampires and thinking of them as hideous monsters, he is the monster to them. Neville has devoted his existence to killing the living vampires: from their perspective, he is the danger, the monster, and the "legend."

- Genre: Psychological horror - Title: I’m the King of the Castle - Point of view: Third person limited, moving between several different characters' viewpoints (primarily Charles's and Edmund's) - Setting: Warings Manor in the village of Derne in the English countryside - Character: Charles Kingshaw. Description: Charles Kingshaw is one of the two main characters in I'm the King of the Castle, along with Edmund Hooper. He has also been described as one of the most psychologically accurate child characters in all of English literature. Charles comes to Warings with his mother, Helena Kingshaw, shortly after the novel begins. At Warings, Charles is at first lonely and then frightened of Edmund Hooper. Edmund plays nasty tricks on Charles, exploiting Charles's fear of birds and dead animals and leaving him in a nearly constant state of terror while at Warings. Like Edmund, Charles is capable of feeling deep hatred, but, unlike Edmund, Charles doesn't seem to have the capacity or the desire to do harm to others. As a result, he spends the novel locked in a power struggle with Edmund, but never manages to get the upper hand. In the few instances when Charles does humiliate Edmund or assert his own power, Charles is unable to make anything of his advantage, and ultimately remains subservient to, frightened of, and in some ways dependent upon, Edmund. To illustrate Charles's frightened state of mind, Hill frequently shows him running through a list in his mind of all the negative possible outcomes of a scenario, no matter how unlikely. This ultimately proves to be Charles's greatest weakness: he allows himself to be overcome with fear, to the point where he's too paralyzed to fight back. Charles's ability to frighten himself is perhaps clearest at the end of the novel, when a simple note from Edmund that reads "Something will happen to you" is enough to give Charles nightmares and, ultimately, drive him to commit suicide. - Character: Edmund Hooper. Description: Edmund Hooper is, along with Charles Kingshaw, one of the two central characters in I'm the King of the Castle. Though Edmund is only eleven years old for most of the novel, he's spiteful, greedy, and sadistic—possessed of a capacity for pure evil, it seems, which sets him apart from the two other children in the novel. Edmund's evil arguably stems from his relationship to his property: because he is the heir of Warings (the Hoopers' manor), he believes that he has the right to inflict pain and suffering on Charles Kingshaw, whom he sees as an irritating outsider who has no right to live at Warings. Edmund is obsessed with death and the macabre, as evidenced by his fascination with stuffed birds and his family's collection of moths. He also has a tremendous talent for lying convincingly, which he often does with the goal of getting Charles in trouble. Edmund embodies a strange mixture of adult-like cunning and manipulation with purely childish behavior and impulses—for example, he wets his pants because he's afraid of heights. It is this combination of precocity and immaturity—a preternatural talent for evil, paired with some embarrassing habits that many boys of eleven have outgrown already—that makes Edmund such a monstrous character. (It's also worth noting the ironic contrast between Edmund's aristocratic sense of entitlement and his surname, which, in English tradition, is associated with barrel-makers—in other words, humble, working class people.) - Character: Joseph Hooper. Description: Joseph Hooper is the father of Edmund Hooper: a middle-aged father who, by his own admission, is dull, talentless, and unremarkable in almost every way. Although Hooper is a relatively minor character in the book, he's one of only three adult characters (the others are Alice Boland and Helena Kingshaw) whose private thoughts Hill reveals to readers. In comparison with his child, Edmund Hooper, Joseph seems surprisingly simple-minded in his thinking: he seems to have made peace with his own mediocrity rather than trying to better himself. Joseph's motivations in the novel are simple: he wants to do a good job of raising his son, Edmund, but fails to recognize what a manipulative child he is and therefore fails to understand him. More importantly, though, Joseph wants a romantic companion after the premature death of his wife. Hill implies that this is the reason Joseph sends for a new housekeeper (Helena Kingshaw)—the event that sets the plot of the novel in motion. - Character: Helena Kingshaw. Description: Helena Kingshaw is the mother of Charles Kingshaw. A middle-aged woman's who has lost her husband, Helena moves to Warings in part to find work and in part with the hope of finding a wealthy husband in Joseph Hooper. In many ways, Helena is the most ambiguous character in the novel. Her son, Charles, regards her as a negligent parent because she barely pays attention to him and often seems to favor Edmund Hooper over her own son. It is often unclear if Helena is actually as negligent as Charles portrays her, or if this is only Charles's impression of his mother, seen from his childish perspective. At times, however, Hill gives readers access to Helena's inner thoughts; at these times, it often does appear that Helena neglects her child, prioritizing her own financial security over Charles's happiness. More strongly than any of the other characters, Helena is conscious of and attracted to the Hoopers' wealth and their family estate. She's eager to marry a wealthy man who can support her (and her child), and she's willing to overlook certain things in order to ensure that this happens. - Character: Anthony Fielding. Description: Anthony Fielding first appears late in the novel, but he's one of the most important people in Charles Kingshaw's life. The child of a working-class family, Anthony is calm, self-possessed, and matter-of-fact about everything, even when other boys try to intimidate him. While he shares the same social class as Charles, Anthony is mature and fearless where Charles is frequently paranoid or unsure of himself. Anthony gives Charles some valuable advice about self-reliance, assuring Charles that Edmund Hooper, while he may be intimidating, will not bring physical harm to Charles. As wise as this advice is, it does nothing to make Charles feel better: Edmund has already gotten inside Charles's head. Anthony can't understand it, but Charles is unable to control the fear he feels for Edmund. - Character: Ellen Hooper. Description: Ellen Hooper is the deceased wife of Joseph Hooper. She dies some six years before the novel begins, and Hill says very little about her. The absence of detail about Helen makes for an interesting contrast with the abundance of detail about Charles Kingshaw's deceased father, whose influence is still strongly felt at Warings, his old home. - Character: Mrs. Alice Boland. Description: Alice Boland is the housekeeper and caretaker of Warings, and the only person who lives at Warings from the very beginning of the novel to the very end (Edmund Hooper and Joseph Hooper only move there after Edmund's grandfather's death). Even so, Boland is a minor character in the book. The fact that Joseph hires another maid for Warings when he already has a perfectly suitable one suggests that Joseph isn't interested in a maid—rather, he is looking for a wife. - Theme: Property and Class. Description: Susan Hill's novel I'm the King of the Castle is a meditation on the effects of having property, as seen from the perspective of two eleven-year-old children. Edmund is the son of Joseph Hooper, the owner of Warings, a large English country manor. Charles, on the other hand, is the son of Helena Kingshaw, a working-class maid whom Joseph hires to work at Warings. In spite of their young age, both Edmund and Charles are highly attuned to the differences between their families: Edmund knows he's richer than Charles, and he never lets Charles forget it. By exploring the relationship between Edmund and Charles, Hill makes a nuanced distinction between property (the literal, material things that Edmund and his family own) and class (the more abstract sense of superiority that Edmund possesses, which gives him great power over Joseph). As a direct result of his family's property, Edmund feels an overwhelming sense of power and entitlement. Because he's richer than Charles, and "owns" Warings (in the sense that he'll inherit it one day), he feels he has the license to boss Charles around and treat him however he wants. The first time Edmund ever meets Charles, he immediately feels superior to his working-class guest. It's clear to Edmund that Warings is the source of his family's power and that Charles is socially inferior to him because he "has nowhere." Edmund mocks Charles for living in a flat (i.e., apartment) and being unable to afford tuition at boarding school, among other attributes that signal his family's status as lower class. Edmund's point is childish but brutally clear: he has more than Charles, and that makes him more powerful than Charles. Although the root of Edmund's power over Charles is his family's property, Edmund doesn't seem to derive power from his property in any concrete way. For instance, there is never a point in the novel when Edmund threatens to kick Charles out of Warings—Edmund is just a kid, after all, and could never do such a thing. Likewise, Charles continues to feel subservient to Edmund even after he becomes a member of the Hooper family, suggesting that class consists of something more than just the property one owns or one's family ties. The significance of property and class in the relationship between Edmund, Charles becomes clearer, perhaps, when Charles asks Edmund why Edmund had locked him in the shed. Edmund sneers and replies, "because I felt like it." The implication is that Edmund, because of the confidence and sense of superiority that he derives from his class, feels that he can treat Charles however he wants with impunity—and it soon becomes clear that he's right. By portraying Charles and Edmund's interactions in this way, the novel suggests that the value of property is not solely monetary. Rather, property is valuable because it allows people to assert their power over others psychologically. Put differently, property gives people a general, intimidating air of superiority and sense of power. In this way, Hill makes a crucial distinction between property—the literal, physical Warings manor—and class—the abstract, psychological advantage that people often enjoy over others as a result of having property. Even when Charles sneaks into the wood surrounding Warings and Edmund follows him, Edmund succeeds in maintaining his position of power over Charles. However, away from home, Edmund becomes noticeably less confident, having left behind the source of his power—his family's property. In the woods, Edmund can no longer point to Warings as a constant reminder of his superiority to Charles. Conversely, Charles is stronger and more resourceful than Edmund, meaning that he has more literal, physical power. And yet, Edmund continues to hold the same psychological advantage over Charles. Even when Edmund is frightened, weak, and sickly, he can make Charles obey him because he has already done such an effective job of conditioning Charles to fear and respect him. In this way, even when Edmund and Charles wander away from Warings, the dynamics of class follow them. In other words, Edmund knows how to press his class advantage over Charles even when he has lost his property advantage. It is perhaps because Charles feels hopeless that he will ever be seen or treated as Edmund's equal that he eventually commits suicide. Even after he is given all the same advantages as Edmund—the same house, family, education, and clothes—he can still feel the oppressive weight of Edmund's class-based sense of superiority pressing down on him. Property is material, while class is psychological—and, Charles ultimately concludes, inescapable. Unable to get out from under Edmund's thumb, he ends his life. - Theme: Childhood. Description: I'm the King of the Castle is a book about children, but it's not exactly a children's book. Like another disturbing work about young people, William Golding's Lord of the Flies, the novel paints a dark picture of human nature, suggesting that children—contrary to the way in which they're often portrayed—are born with the capacity for cruelty, destruction, and evil. Hill's novel revolves around two young characters, Edmund Hooper and Charles Kingshaw, whose minds (particularly Charles's) she explores with detailed psychological realism. By emphasizing their frustration, anger, and sadistic behavior, Hill suggests that both boys are capable of doing awful things. Through Hill's portrayal of the thought processes of the two main characters, she shows that the dependence of children on their parents often gives them a sense of entitlement—in other words, they feel that they deserve certain things, not just from their parents but from the world at large. Children often have a keen sense for when they've been treated unfairly, and they're forever comparing what they receive to what other children receive. For example, when Charles Kingshaw moves to Warings with his mother, Helena Kingshaw, he notices almost right away that he and Edmund Hooper aren't treated equally. Confused and frightened, he clings to the logic of fairness. Charles feels that he is entitled to as much love and attention as Edmund receives. Therefore, when his mother pays more attention to Edmund than to him, or when Edmund steals one of Charles's models, Charles is quick to cry foul, because he perceives other people's behavior as being unfair. But of course, Charles isn't alone in feeling this strong sense of entitlement. Edmund—both because he's a particularly nasty child, and because he is accustomed to getting whatever he wants—feels that he's entitled to treat Charles cruelly and effectively make him his servant. Charles and Edmund's needs frequently come into conflict with one another. Charles wants a room to himself, and the freedom to play and be happy, while Edmund, who is much greedier, believes he alone is entitled to all of Warings, meaning that he's unwilling to allow Charles even his tiny amount of independence and pleasure. When Charles and Edmund's needs clash, Edmund quite often emerges the victor, causing Charles to grow frustrated and even fantasize about killing Edmund. By portraying the entitlement, greed, and frustration of these two very different children, Hill raises the question of whether children are innately good. The novels shows children as being capable of both good and bad behavior and having both good and bad thoughts. Both characters seem to have an innate sense of right and wrong, but they also both have destructive and even murderous tendencies. Over the course of the book, Edmund bullies Charles in various horrific ways. He preys on Charles's fears of birds and dead animals, waging a full-scale psychological war on his nervous guest. He seems to have an almost preternatural instinct for what will scare Charles most. And because he seems to have almost no sense of compassion, he never hesitates to hurt Charles. Charles is a more complex character, whose thoughts and emotions Hill studies in greater detail. There are many times when Charles has the opportunity to hurt Edmund without fear of punishment. On many of these occasions, he does the right thing by helping Edmund instead of hurting him—and even saves Edmund's life by pulling him out of a stream. At other points in the book, Charles contemplates pushing Edmund off a high staircase and wishes, over and over again, that Edmund would die. It's crucial to recognize that Charles feels a strong instinct to help Edmund and a strong instinct to hurt him. Charles acts morally, but Hill makes it clear that he's possessed of destructive capabilities. By depicting Charles in this way, Hill offers a portrait of childhood that is dark but not necessarily cynical. She recognizes that children sometimes want to do good, and she also recognizes that this instinct sometimes swallowed up by another, darker instinct. Edmund is an example of a child with almost no good in him. Charles, by contrast, is a much more nuanced character: because he hesitates to give in to evil or destructive impulses, he often finds himself under Edmund's control. At the end of the novel, he finally gives his destructive instincts an outlet, but he does so by drowning himself. Hill's depiction of childhood is in many ways astonishingly accurate, and yet in other ways seems incomplete. Even though the novel is about two children, it never touches upon the wildness, goofiness, or whimsical sense of carelessness and fun that virtually all kids—no matter how miserable—experience at some point. Nor does the novel delve into the small acts of kindness and gentleness that children are capable of. Perhaps Hill omits these positive attributes, so often found in stories about children, in order to emphasize a larger point. In her book, children are deeply conflicted and possessed of inner demons. Adults, by comparison, are portrayed as being surprisingly naïve, with simplistic desires and ways of thinking about the world. By portraying adults in the way children are usually portrayed in books, and vice versa, Hill refutes the cliché that children are either simple or purely "good." On the contrary, she suggests that children, because of the intensity of their emotions and the depths of their self-interest, are capable of being even more wicked than adults. - Theme: Fear and Psychological Manipulation. Description: I'm the King of the Castle is full of frightening moments for its characters. The main character, Charles Kingshaw, spends most of the novel in a frightening new place, Warings manor, while the other main character, Edmund Hooper, torments him with nasty pranks designed to confuse and terrify him. Even as Charles becomes more familiar with life at Warings, he continues to be consumed by fear, almost as if his emotions have a life of their own. Edmund knows how to exploit these fears, and by doing so he keeps Charles under his control. In this way, the novel suggests that the most insidious power often comes from psychological manipulation, not physical force. Fear is often an irrational and uncontrollable emotion—so it can be particularly difficult for a child to overcome it. Unable to master his fear, Charles tries to simply endure it. Throughout the book, Charles can't prevent his own mind from racing through all the dangerous possibilities surrounding the things he fears. The list of concrete things that frighten Charles doesn't seem like much—a tree, a stuffed bird, a moth—but in each case, the novel shows how Charles's own imagination blows these things out of proportion, transforming them into nightmares. Elsewhere in the novel, Edmund's mind runs wild in a similar manner. While climbing up an old English castle, he becomes so anxious about the possibility of falling that he gets dizzy and falls. Edmund doesn't feel afraid because he is falling. Rather, he falls because he's afraid—an excellent metaphor for the way fear often originates in the mind, rather than in an inherently "fearsome" thing or experience. Perhaps the best example of this principle arrives at the end of the novel, when Charles receives a note from Edmund, which simply says, "Something will happen to you." Even though the note itself is extremely vague and open-ended, Charles, against his own will, allows the note to terrify him. He imagines various horrific scenarios—far more horrific than anything Edmund himself would ever do to him. Eventually, Charles drowns himself—making a self-fulfilling prophecy of Edmund's note. Edmund gets frightened just as easily as Charles does, if not more so. But where Charles allows his imagination to run wild, Edmund is able to muster enough confidence and self-control to suppress his fears when he isn't being directly confronted with them. In part, he's able to do so because he's more comfortable in his position at Warings than Charles is—the very experience of living at Warings isn't new and frightening for him in the way it is for Charles. But Hill also suggests that Edmund is simply a more confident, aggressive child than Charles—and he knows how to exploit Charles's imagination. Charles, even when he understands exactly what Edmund is trying to do, is powerless to prevent himself from feeling afraid. This becomes especially clear when Edmund and Charles go into the wood together. Edmund is more frightened than Charles, but he's nevertheless able to intimidate and maintain control over Charles, as he does in the rest of the novel, by exploiting Charles's debilitating fears. It's crucial to notice that Edmund doesn't assert his power over Charles with physical force. By wielding fear as a psychological weapon rather than using physical force, Edmund very effectively manipulates Charles. It could even be argued that the central conflict in I'm the King of the Castle isn't between Charles and Edmund—it's between Charles and his own fears. In the end, Charles's subconscious fears consume him. Overwhelmed by Edmund's manipulation, but unable to control his irrational fears, Charles takes the only option he feels is left to him: suicide. - Theme: Imprisonment and Escape. Description: I'm the King of the Castle examines different kinds of physical and psychological imprisonment. Warings, the large English manor house to which Charles Kingshaw and Helena Kingshaw move, could be considered a prison: it's large, bleak, isolated from the rest of the world, and controlled by people who enforce rigid hierarchies. By this logic, Charles Kingshaw can be seen as a prisoner: he's trapped in a lonely, miserable place, where his only companion is the cruel and sadistic Edmund Hooper, who torments Charles on a daily basis. Overwhelmed, Charles attempts to escape from the house, packing supplies and sneaking away in the early hours of the morning. This is not simply to escape his mistreatment, but it's also to prove his own power after being told consistently that he is fully dependent on the Hoopers' generosity. Understood in this way, Edmund isn't just trying to escape because he's unhappy; he wants to prove to himself that he can survive on his own, without the Hoopers' help. But his escape from Warings is a crushing failure. Just as he's about to leave the house and run into the woods, Charles becomes consumed by anxiety, remembering almost every negative thing that's ever happened to him. It's as if the house itself is trying to prevent his escape and pull him back into its clutches. Sure enough, it's not long before Edmund has tracked down Charles in the wood. And less than a day later, adults have arrived to take them both—prisoner and guard—back to Warings. Charles's attempt to escape from Warings suggests a second, arguably more dangerous kind of imprisonment: psychological imprisonment. Throughout the book, Edmund "gets into [Charles'] head," succeeding in frightening him in various sadistic ways. Eventually, Charles reaches the point where he feels Edmund watching him even when he's on his own. Charles isn't physically imprisoned in Warings, but he seems psychologically bound to the oppressive dynamic of the house: he becomes incapable of imagining a world without Warings, Edmund, and the debilitating fear that traps him even more profoundly than the house's physical isolation. Even while Edmund and Charles are in the wood together, physically removed from Warings and all it represents, Charles finds himself following Edmund's commands with unthinking obedience. Charles behaves this way in part because, Hill writes, he's always been an unusually obedient kid, taking other kids up on their orders and dares. But perhaps more importantly, Charles obeys Edmund because he sees Edmund as the only source of truth in his disorienting new life at Waring. This becomes particularly clear when Edmund calmly tells Charles that their parents will be getting married soon—a prophecy that comes true before the novel's end. Both before and after this incident, Charles dislikes much of what Edmund tells him, but it never occurs to him to question any of it. In other words, Edmund's power over Charles lies, at least in part, in his seeming to know more than Charles. At one point, Edmund claims that he is a popular, powerful boy at boarding school—a bold claim for which he offers no evidence—but instead of questioning Edmund, Charles believes his tormentor instantly, and begins to grow more frightened both of boarding school and of Edmund in general. The scene captures the essence of the psychological nature of Charles's imprisonment: too frightened and confused to work out the truth for himself, he remains psychologically dependent on Edmund, in effect seeing the world exactly the way Edmund wants him to see it. Ultimately, because he feels both physically and psychologically "trapped," Charles stages the only sort of escape he feels is left to him by taking his own life. - Theme: Nature. Description: Throughout the novel, Hill depicts nature in two opposing ways: in its wild forms, and as dead, controlled, or otherwise "tamed." Hang Wood (the forest that surrounds Warings), is an example of "wild nature," while the Hooper family's vast moth collection, which has been carefully preserved, arranged, and classified, is the defining example of "tamed nature." Charles Kingshaw, the novel's main character, is strongly associated with nature in its wild and unrestrained forms. Edmund Hooper, the novel's second main character, is strongly associated with tamed nature. The oppositional relationship between these two different ways of thinking about nature parallels the antagonistic relationship between Charles Kingshaw and Edmund Hooper, and reveals important things about both characters. Edmund's fascination with tamed nature is representative of his desire to control everything around him. On his first night at Warings, Edmund studies the family's moth collection, familiarizing himself with these emblems of tamed nature at the same time that he's adjusting to his new status as heir to Warings. For Edmund, the moths are a symbol of his family's power and prestige (the moth collection is one of the world's greatest), inseparable from his own sense of social superiority to other people. Elsewhere in the book, Edmund is shown to be fascinated with stuffed crows, the circus, and other emblems of nature that has been tamed or controlled, reflecting his own desire to exert control over the world. When he's exposed to the natural world itself, however, he becomes almost petrified with fear. In the wood, for instance, Edmund has no easy way of asserting his authority or controlling his surroundings. Trees, wild animals, rushing water, and the "boom" of thunder act as constant reminders of his own powerlessness and insignificance. Almost exactly the opposite is true of Charles. The one time in the novel when he's shown to be completely at ease is when he's walking through the wood by himself. The surreal sights and overwhelming sounds of the natural world are comforting to him for exactly the reason they're so unnerving for Edmund: they remind him that he's far from Warings, and therefore unconstrained by the unacknowledged caste system that dominates his life and his relationship with Edmund. More generally, Charles seems to like nature because he can be alone—far from bullies, his mother, and all the other people who make him feel anxious. Unsurprisingly, Charles is frightened by emblems of nature under control: stuffed birds, animals at the circus, and the moths in the Hoopers' collection all make him physically ill. These sights seem to remind him of his own feeling of being trapped in a society dominated by an oppressive class structure: at Warings, for instance, he feels as helpless and imprisoned as a bug in a glass case. In short, Charles's and Edmund's comfort and symbolic association with different states of nature mirror the basic difference between them: Charles craves freedom while Edmund craves power. But, like every other relationship in the book (Edmund and Charles, Joseph and Helena), the relationship between wild nature and tamed nature is set off balance or corrupted by Edmund's influence. Throughout the novel, but particularly toward the end, Edmund ruins Charles's otherwise positive relationship with the natural world. On several occasions, Charles becomes nauseated with the natural world in its free, live form—for example, when he's attacked by a crow and when he hears an owl hooting. It's as if Edmund has poisoned the one happy, fruitful part of Charles's life: his affinity for nature. As the novel proceeds, and Edmund's control over Charles's thoughts and feelings becomes more and more powerful, Charles's nausea with all nature becomes more pronounced, culminating in the ambiguous manner of his suicide. Consumed, Charles returns to the wood, the only place in the novel where he's been shown to feel completely comfortable. There, he drowns himself in a stream. It's important to notice the irony: the wood, a symbol of living nature and wilderness, has become the site of Charles's death. The suggestion is that Edmund, by indirectly but undeniably causing Charles's death, has turned Charles himself—once associated with nature in its wild forms—into a symbol of "nature tamed," just like the collection of dead moths or the stuffed crow. And so Charles's suicide represents a symbolic victory: Edmund triumphs over Charles, death triumphs over life, and tamed nature triumphs over wild nature. - Climax: Charles Kingshaw drowns himself - Summary: Following the death of his father, a man named Joseph Hooper moves back into his father's home, a large English mansion called Warings. Joseph has an eleven-year-old son, Edmund Hooper, and his wife, Ellen Hooper, died six years ago. At first, Edmund is lonely and bored at Warings, which he considers a dull, ugly place. He's fascinated by the Red Room, a room of the house that contains the Hoopers' vast collection of moths. Joseph, lonely after the death of his wife, arranges for a woman named Helena Kingshaw to come to Warings to serve as his "informal housekeeper." Helena brings her eleven-year-old son, Charles Kingshaw, with her. Charles and Edmund immediately dislike each other. Edmund mocks Charles for being from a working-class family. He also learns that Charles's father has died, and criticizes Charles's father for not supporting his wife and child. Around Joseph and Helena, Edmund is sweet to Charles. But in secret, Edmund plays nasty tricks on Charles. Recognizing that Charles is frightened of birds, Edmund places a stuffed crow in Charles's bed at night, making Charles so frightened that he can barely move. Edmund also locks Charles in the Red Room, knowing that Charles is scared of moths. While Helena and Joseph become closer with each other, Charles plans to sneak away from Warings forever. He packs supplies, including food and a flashlight, and waits for an opportunity to run away into the woods surrounding the manor. Edmund realizes what Charles is planning to do, and assures Charles that he'll follow him wherever he goes. One day, Helena and Joseph leave to explore London together, and Charles seizes the opportunity to run away. He goes into the woods, conquering his anxieties. But while he's exploring, he realizes that Edmund has followed him there. In the woods, Edmund is frightened of the dark trees and mysterious animals. Even though Charles is more confident and less frightened than Edmund, Edmund continues to bully Charles. He tells Charles that, very soon, Helena and Joseph are going to be married. Charles realizes that, even in the woods, Edmund is still in charge. Charles goes off by himself to look for a way out of the wood, and when he returns, he finds Edmund floating face down in a stream. Charles saves Edmund's life. The next morning, men come and rescue Edmund and Charles, after searching for them for hours. Back at Warings, Edmund tells Joseph and Helena that Charles pushed him into the stream. Charles is furious, but Helena believes Edmund's story. She scolds Charles for running away from home, and Charles becomes so angry with her that he refuses to tell her the full truth about what happened. A few days later, Edmund torments Charles by locking him in a shed. Charles knows that soon he'll be sent to the same boarding school that Edmund attends. Edmund is popular, and he promises to use his power to make Charles's life a living hell. Charles becomes increasingly overwhelmed by Edmund's sadistic bullying. Joseph and Helena continue to get closer. One day they drive Edmund and Charles out to visit an old castle in the countryside. Charles climbs to the top of the castle, and Edmund chases after him. At the top, Edmund becomes so afraid of heights that he loses his balance and falls, breaking several bones. Doctors rush Edmund to the hospital; once again, Helena seems to blame Charles for Edmund's accident, even though Charles had wanted to help Edmund maintain his balance. In the following weeks, Charles tries to enjoy his time apart from Edmund. He makes a new friend, a working-class kid named Anthony Fielding, who seems far more comfortable and self-assured than Charles could ever be. Fielding tells Charles not to be so frightened of Edmund, and reminds him that Edmund can't actually "do" anything to him. Helena spends lots of time visiting Edmund in the hospital, which Charles resents greatly. Finally, Joseph works up the courage to ask Helena to marry him. Edmund returns to Warings, where he's forced to spend all his time in bed. Helena forces Charles to spend time with Edmund, even though Edmund continues to scare Charles and bully him in different ways. Edmund likes that Helena is spending so much time with him, even though he doesn't particularly like Helena. Charles occasionally steals away from Warings to spend time with Fielding, his only friend. Eventually, Helena finds out about Fielding, and invites him to come to tea with Edmund at Warings. This enrages Charles, since he thinks he's losing his only friend and, moreover, his "only secret." Around the same time, Joseph and Helena announce that they're getting married, meaning that Charles and Edmund will become brothers. At Warings, Fielding is calm and collected as Edmund tries to scare him. Charles becomes frustrated when he realizes that Edmund treats Fielding differently than he treats Charles. He becomes so upset that he stubbornly refuses to spend more time with either Fielding or Edmund. On the night before Charles and Edmund are set to leave for boarding school together, Charles wakes up and sneaks away from Warings. Furious with Helena, Edmund, and himself, he returns to the only place where he's ever felt completely comfortable—the woods. There, he finds the stream where he saved Edmund's life, and drowns himself. The next day, men find his body. When Edmund learns about Charles's drowning, he feels triumphant, since he believes that in some way, he caused Charles's death. Helena embraces Edmund, and he smells her perfume.

- Genre: Short story, Realism, Feminism - Title: I Stand Here Ironing - Point of view: First person - Setting: Unspecified urban, working class neighborhood - Character: The Narrator. Description: The narrator is a working class woman and mother of five children. The entire story occurs as the narrator, while ironing clothes, worries about her oldest daughter Emily. Given that she was nineteen when her daughter Emily was born and Emily is nineteen at the story's start, it's safe to assume that the Narrator is about 38 years old. She has worked extensively outside the home at a number of jobs, as well as acting as the primary caretaker for her children. She was a single mother for some time after Emily's father left the family and then remarried a few years later to a man described only as Bill. The narrator reveals little about her own background and instead tells her story through the lens of her relationship with Emily. Although the narrator seems to be a hardworking and responsible mother, she is overcome with feelings of guilt and uncertainty about the mistakes she might have made in raising Emily, and hopes that Emily will have a richer life than she, the narrator, did. - Character: Emily. Description: Emily is the oldest daughter of the narrator. At the time of the story's telling, Emily is nineteen years old and seems to be thriving; her mother describes her as lovely and notes her popularity as a comedian at school. However, the narrator also receives a call, presumably from Emily's school, stating that Emily needs help, which suggests that she may be struggling socially or academically. Emily had a difficult childhood characterized by anxiety and illness, and at times, because of poverty or nervous illness, she had to live away from her mother in childcare that she hated. Emily also had a strained relationship with her sister Susan, who was pretty and carefree while Emily was quiet, nervous, and worried about her appearance. The narrator states that Emily often had to help take care of her younger siblings and that, due to economic challenges and her mother's overwhelming responsibilities, she did not enjoy the warm, stable home life that her siblings did. - Character: Susan. Description: Susan is Emily's younger sister and the second child of the narrator. Susan is a few years younger than Emily and is described as beautiful, confident, and clever. The narrator suggests that Susan had an easy childhood compared to Emily's and does not struggle socially or academically. As a child, Susan was often in conflict with Emily, who resented her beauty and quick wit. The narrator also notes that Susan was drawn to Emily's prized possessions and often broke or lost them accidentally. - Character: Ronnie. Description: Ronnie is the narrator's youngest child and the brother of Emily and Susan. He is a baby at the time of the story's telling. He uses the word "shoogily" to express the concept of comfort, a word that the narrator says Emily invented. His calm presence suggests that family life has gotten significantly more secure and stable since Emily's childhood, and his use of Emily's word indicates that her difficult childhood may have paved the way for her siblings' comfort. - Theme: Poverty, Labor, and Domestic Life. Description: In the 1950s, when "I Stand Here Ironing" was published, family life and domestic labor were often depicted as idyllic: housewives wore clean dresses, cooked perfect meals, and cared for well-behaved children while their husbands worked. Tillie Olsen's depiction of domestic life as gritty, banal, and difficult contrasts with these romanticized representations, reminding readers that American domestic life was not always glamorous, particularly for poor families. The narrator's poverty traps her in grueling and repetitive chores and prevents her from fulfilling herself and giving her daughter Emily the best care. Still, the narrator's labor remains meaningful even as poverty constrains her, and in part because of the labor she has done throughout her life she is ultimately able to imagine a future in which Emily may live a freer life than she did. "I Stand Here Ironing" therefore makes a case for viewing domestic labor and family life as complex and wrenching, yet worthwhile. Throughout the story, Olsen's narrator describes her work as a young mother in violent terms. The first line of the story, for example, mentions the "torment" that the narrator perceives while ironing, which is an outwardly peaceful activity. The narrator further describes the cries of infant Emily as "battering" and later, when Emily goes to nursery school, she notes the "lacerations of group life." These vivid word choices evoke war and bodily harm, indicating the intensity of the narrator's struggle as she begins her life as a young mother. Although her family's life is not marked by overt abuse or tragedy, the day-to-day realities that she and her young daughter face suggest that domestic life is not a haven from the dangerous world outside but rather an extension of it. Despite the hardship that characterizes her life as a young mother, though, the narrator also notes several instances of peace and joy in those years. When Emily is born, for example, the narrator says that "she was a miracle to me." The narrator's ongoing devotion to Emily — even through the times of strife and difficulty — indicates that that sense of the miraculous continues to underlie the relationship between the two. Although the family does not have much money, Emily still finds a way to have "precious things" by collecting objects like beads and pebbles. While Emily's collections are monetarily worthless, they comfort her and provide a means for her to interact peacefully with her sister Susan. The narrator also mentions that Emily had moments of "lightness and brightness," even as an unhappy child. These fleeting moments indicate that even at its darkest, their shared life was buoyed by joy. In light of the family's simultaneous poverty and surprising joy, the narrator doesn't simply despair at the outcome of her homemaking efforts: she ultimately wonders whether the imperfect home she provided might still be enough to make Emily's life better than the narrator's own has been. This sense of hope amid adversity advances the idea that domestic life does not have to be perfect to be worthwhile. When Emily finally enters the scene at the end of the story, she appears to the reader as a surprisingly normal teenager. Her cheerful presence causes her mother, and the reader, to reconsider all of narrator's previous worries. The narrator wonders: "Why were you concerned? She will find her way." This turn suggests that the narrator's labors, while lacking in many ways, may nonetheless have accomplished the essential goal of raising a healthy child. Though the narrator continues to think of Emily with some sadness, she notes that "there is still enough left to live by." Her hope for Emily is modest but meaningful: that Emily know "that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron." This hope suggests that Emily may have a future in which domestic obligation—while perhaps still a burden—does not completely define her, marking a significant step forward from the life her mother has led. - Theme: Female Identity. Description: For the narrator and her two daughters, being a woman is both a source of power and a burden. Since the men in their lives are unreliable, the story's women have learned to be self-sufficient and resilient, which helps them through difficult times. However, even without individual men supporting them, the influence of male-dominated culture still affects them, causing them to see themselves through impossible beauty standards and creating conflict between them. Women, Olsen suggests, must fill countless conflicting roles simultaneously, and these paradoxical demands make it nearly impossible for an individual woman to live up to all of society's expectations of her. In the story, then, femininity operates as a key to resilience, but also a liability. While nothing in the story explicitly states that women are more powerful than men, Olsen implies it by depicting all of the male characters as absent, irrational, or helpless. The narrator mentions men only in passing, which makes clear by omission that her struggles and accomplishments are all her own. Emily's unnamed father, for instance, vanishes early in the story after saying good-bye to his family in a note, and the narrator does not mention him again. By leaving him largely absent and making even his departure silent, Olsen hints at his essential voicelessness and lack of influence. The father of the narrator's other children is presumably present throughout much of the story but his are never mentioned, making him effectively absent as well. The boy that Emily loves during childhood also remains nameless. He comes across as irrational and incomprehensible, rejecting Emily even though she brings him his favorite candy. Again, the narrator quickly moves on from recalling him, indicating that attempts to understand him are a waste of time. Similarly, the narrator reveals that her second husband is named Bill but says nothing else about him or his role in the family. The only other named male character is the infant Ronnie, the narrator's youngest child. Ronnie is sweet but helpless, relying completely on the narrator's care and even on Emily for his notion of comfort, which he expresses using a nonsense word that Emily invented. Again, the narrator meets Ronnie's needs in a matter-of-fact way with little comment, suggesting that being the sole source of support is second nature to her. Ronnie's total reliance on the narrator illuminates Olsen's broader representation of gender dynamics: while male characters remain useless and nondescript, women like the narrator and Emily assume both the burden and the power of defining the world. And yet even though the individual men in their lives are ineffective, the expectations of patriarchal society still constrain Emily and the narrator, most notably through standards of female beauty. The narrator describes Emily as "beautiful at birth," but notes that later on Emily was "thin and dark and foreign-looking at a time when every little girl was supposed to look or thought she should look a chubby blonde replica of Shirley Temple." The narrator links this difference in appearance to Emily's social and emotional struggles and notes that Emily's conventionally beautiful sister, Susan, had none of the same struggles. The narrator recalls trying to convince Emily that she was beautiful "to the seeing eye" but then adds that "the seeing eyes were few or non-existent. Including mine." That the narrator herself could not always appreciate Emily's genuine beauty shows that even when beauty is present, it often goes unappreciated, making its pursuit useless. Even the appearance of non-human entities demonstrates the deceptive nature of beauty. The narrator describes the home where Emily lives as a child as "a handsome place, green lawns and tall trees and fluted flower beds." But Emily and the other children are miserable living at the home, despite its pleasing appearance. Beauty, then, is unreliable, which further reduces its value and limits the power of those who do possess it. While Emily aspires to conventional female beauty, the narrator is more circumspect, suggesting that this outward measure of power lacks substance. The societal pressure to live up to arbitrary standards of beauty is one way in which female identity is a burden to the narrator and her daughter. Like female beauty, relationships between women are also simultaneously empowering and limiting in this story. Love between the female characters sometimes strengthens them, but gendered social pressures often introduce anxiety and stress into those otherwise loving relationships. For example, the narrator acknowledges that, as Emily's mother, she is expected to have some special understanding of her daughter. However, she finds herself distant from Emily, musing: "She has lived for nineteen years. There is all that life that has happened outside of me, beyond me." This separation leaves the narrator wondering whether she has failed as a mother, even though she demonstrates to readers all the ways in which she has shown love and support to Emily throughout her life. The narrator's relationship with Emily is undeniably meaningful, but the narrator senses that society expects an even deeper, almost magical bond. In this way, the role of mother leaves the narrator despairing in the face of impossible expectations, despite all the positive elements of her relationship with Emily. Furthermore, Emily's younger sister Susan acts mostly as an antagonist in this story, even though she looks the part of the pretty, perfect young girl. Far from comforting Emily, Susan's presence causes "corroding resentment" in her sister. The narrator implies that this resentment stems from the discrepancy between Susan's easy compliance with gendered expectations and Emily's parallel inability to live up to those same standards. For Susan and Emily, the pressures of female identity transform the mutual support of sisterhood into painful competition. Love between female peers is also presented as dangerous at the convalescent home where Emily lives for some months due to her anxiety. After her close friend is moved to another residence, Emily tells her mother: "They don't like you to love anybody here." One of the only times that the narrator and her two daughters seem to be at peace together is when the narrator keeps both daughters home from school, "to have them all together." That the narrator chooses to do this, even though Emily's teachers get angry at her absences, suggests that deviating from social structures and expectations may be the only avenue to achieve conflict-free female relationships. - Theme: Time. Description: In this story, the passage of time is both damaging and generative. Time tyrannizes the narrator by rushing her into choices she wouldn't ordinary make and by trapping her in routines that she feels unable to break. However, the passage of time also hints at the potential for progress and growth beyond old limitations, as when the narrator suggests that Emily might have a better future than the narrator's own. That time is simultaneously damaging and hopeful suggests that, in this story, growth and pain are inextricably linked. The narrator spends the entire story trying to separate the good and the bad of Emily's development, but perhaps this isn't possible. Just as the passage of time connects negative changes to positive ones, human potential—whether the narrator's or Emily's—can only be reached through painful experiences. The narrator frequently states that she made certain parenting choices because of time pressures. When the story opens, for example, the person on the phone asks that the narrator "manage the time" to talk about Emily. This simple request seems impossible to the narrator, who feels that there will never be enough time "to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total." This reaction immediately makes clear that, for the narrator, time is overwhelming and impossible to manage. Throughout the story, the narrator seems beholden to time: she recounts that she always nursed Emily "till the clock decreed," even when doing so was painful. Similarly, she sends Emily to nursery school because "they said" she was old enough — that it was time for Emily to go. The narrator repeatedly ignores her own instincts in order to do as the clock tells her. This opposition between the narrator's natural impulses and the clock's external force indicates that the forward motion of time is not just inconvenient; it is actually a painful restriction on the narrator's sense of self. In an extension of the clock's tyrannical force in the narrator's life, it soon becomes a genuinely terrifying presence for Emily. When her parents leave her home alone, she is afraid to feel the time passing and tells them that "the clock talked loud" and scared her. Olsen suggests that the terror Emily feels is tied to the fact that time passing means permanent change, since Emily is especially afraid on the night that her sister Susan is born. That Emily reacts to such change with fear rather than excitement illustrates the reality that, in this story, growth is portrayed as being necessarily painful. While time passing is actively frightening when it pushes people to action, time is perhaps more powerful in the story when it fails to produce change at all, as in the narrator's life of repeated actions and chores. This stasis, however, can have unexpectedly positive effects. The narrator says of her years with several young children: "I do not remember them well." Instead of recalling specific memories, she mentions a series of repetitive chores and activities that absorbed her and Emily. For example, the narrator mentions the constant process of "trying to get lunches packed, hair combed, coats and shoes found" She calls these patterns part of "Emily's seal," indicating that such repetition may eventually have come to dominate Emily's life. Meanwhile, Emily jokes that if she were to paint a picture of her mother, she would show her "standing over an ironing board." While this domestic labor has been crucial to helping Emily (and presumably her siblings) progress through childhood, it has simultaneously trapped the narrator in one place. This tension between imprisonment and forward motion underscores the broader point in the story that growth cannot be achieved without a related sense of restriction. The story's title and structure reinforce the idea that the narrator's life is marked by stasis. All of the story's action takes place in recollection, with the repetitive movement of the iron serving as the narrator's only real motion throughout. The title, too, states the narrator's action in plain present tense, seeming to suggest that, for the narrator, the present will always mean ironing. However, the narrator conveys complex and meaningful information to the reader while stuck in this pose, even though she says initially that she won't be able to. Only by surrendering to time's strictures, it seems, can the narrator make progress toward the goals she fears are impossible. Indeed, even Emily herself seems to be reborn from the repetitive days of her childhood into the older, freer Emily who appears at the end of the story. Despite the tensions and pain that the passage of time brings to the narrator and Emily, it is also responsible for the glimmers of hope that appear toward the end of the story. Emily's offhand comment about dying from an atomic bombing indicates that for her, the idea of the future will always contain fear and danger. Still, she makes the comment cheerfully, while giving her mother a kiss. This tonal contrast demonstrates that Emily, unlike the narrator, has moved beyond being paralyzed by her fear of the clock's voice. The fear remains, but Emily has grown into a young woman who can acknowledge the pressure of the future without letting it immobilize her. The narrator expresses tentative hope that Emily's future will be better than the narrator's past. Although the narrator seems unsure of whether this wish will come true, it already has in one important way. Emily is 19, the same age that the narrator was when Emily was born, but instead of caring for an infant and working for pay, Emily is taking exams and performing as a comedian. Already, Emily has begun to reinvent herself in a way that was impossible for her mother. This transformation illustrates that although many challenges remain, the passage of time has caused a generational shift that provides new opportunities for Emily. - Theme: Obedience vs. Self-Expression. Description: Throughout the story, the narrator and her daughter Emily attempt to meet society's expectations of them: Emily tries to be a good student and daughter while the narrator tries to be a good mother and homemaker, each defining her success based on social norms and judgments. Starting in Emily's early childhood, the narrator discovers that obedience to these societal standards does not always lead to positive outcomes, but she also feels that speaking up can be just as dangerous as silently complying. The narrator's weighing of the relative costs and benefits of fulfilling versus resisting social norms animates the entire story, but she never comes to a final conclusion about which attitude is better. That the narrator remains caught between obedience and self-expression illustrates Olsen's broader point that all actions come with both costs and benefits, and that deciding which choices are "correct" is impossible. Both the narrator and Emily largely conform to the demands placed on them by others. However, the narrator worries that in both of their cases, complying with rules may have been more costly than she realized at the time. For example, the narrator makes parenting choices that she doesn't necessarily agree with when authority figures direct her to do so. Perhaps the most notable example of this is when she sends Emily to the convalescent home on the advice of a clinic and keeps her there for eight months, even though she knows that Emily hates being there. She worries that this experience, despite seeming like the correct choice at the time, has harmed Emily in the long term. Emily herself is also compliant throughout childhood, never throwing tantrums even when she hates going to school. Comparing Emily's silent cooperation to more rebellious natures of her other children, the narrator wonders: "What was the cost to her…of such goodness?" Later, when Emily goes to elementary school, her quiet presence and inability to be "glib or quick" causes her teachers to mistake her for a "slow learner," demonstrating that behavior considered "good" in one situation can easily be construed as "bad" in another. Later on, Emily's silent compliance allows her sister Susan to steal Emily's ideas for jokes and riddles and tell them "to company for applause." Not only does Emily's polite avoidance of confrontation cause her to lose credit for her own creative work, but it likely also increases tension in her strained relationship with Susan. Throughout the story, quiet obedience comes with a painful cost. Just as unquestioning cooperation turns out to be costly, though, so too does self-expression come with unexpected burdens. When Emily first succeeds in a comedy performance, for instance, the narrator reflects: "Now suddenly she was Somebody, and as imprisoned in her difference as she had been in her anonymity." She goes on to note that along with the joy of Emily's new skill comes the pressure to "do something about her with a gift like that." However, the narrator knows that without resources to support Emily, "the gift has as often eddied inside, clogged and clotted, as been used and growing." That image of stagnation suggests that becoming acquainted with the self is perhaps as risky as ignoring it, since awakening a gift of expression means accepting the possibility that it might go to waste. This potential outcome clearly frightens the narrator and seems to sway her back toward the idea of obedience that she previously rejected. Toward the end of the story, the narrator comments that Emily, in a talkative mood, "tells [her] everything and nothing." Though the narrator has often wished for a closer relationship with Emily, she seems to write off Emily's outpouring of words as unimportant. This suggests that the narrator distrusts the meaning conveyed by straightforward speech, which perhaps betrays her lingering bias toward the repeated physical actions and habits that have characterized her life with Emily. Even as she wishes for the benefits of self-expression, the comforts of obedience call to her, leaving her stranded between these opposing values. The narrator's inability to decide whether conformity or self-expression is better echoes Olsen's more general attitude that some things are impossible to know. When Emily asks her mother why the boy she likes prefers another girl, for instance, the narrator stays silent, calling Emily's inquiry "the kind of question for which there is no answer." This suggests that the narrator—even as her thoughts are obsessively directed towards answering the central question of how to help Emily—might know that finding a single answer is impossible. Indeed, in the end, the narrator knows even less than she started with; at that point she doesn't even know whether Emily needs help at all. She asks, "Why were you concerned [about Emily]?" but at the same time she suspects that "probably little will come" of Emily's potential. Perhaps, then, no behavior or choice can be considered "correct"—all come with costs and benefits, and one can never know if another outcome might have been better. - Theme: Responsibility and Guilt. Description: As she guides the reader through her detailed account of Emily's upbringing, the narrator is motivated in equal parts by her sense of responsibility and by her sense of guilt for having failed Emily. Both motivations stem from her love for Emily, but when combined, they seem to create a toxic emotional atmosphere that makes the narrator doubt even her own experiences and memories. Through her examination of the effects of guilt and responsibility on the narrator, Olsen indicates that these feelings, while powerful motivators, can ultimately degrade the human relationships they shape. Though she does not say so directly, the narrator's account indicates that she has sacrificed an enormous amount of her time and energy caring for Emily and her siblings. Although the grinding poverty of her life sets the narrator apart from her era's ideals of family life, she still lives up to these ideals in her own way: she devotes herself to supporting her family, stops working outside the home as soon as she can, and successfully raises five children with little fanfare. These actions and the narrator's casual reference to them demonstrates how deeply ingrained her sense of responsibility is. Even though the narrator claims not to remember much of Emily's childhood, her story proves otherwise. The simple fact of her recounting it in such detail provides further evidence of her responsible, thorough approach to parenting, in which a simple call from Emily's school triggers a rigorous examination of Emily's childhood. Again, the feeling of responsibility to represent Emily accurately arises automatically in the narrator, even when she doesn't believe she's able to live up to it. While the narrator's account clearly displays her deep embrace of maternal responsibility, the narrator herself is far more overtly concerned with her maternal guilt. She remains preoccupied with her perceived failures, and as much as she tries to figure out the reasons for Emily's trouble, she keeps coming back to herself as the true cause. This almost compulsive focus illustrates the poisonous side of embracing responsibility and the corrosive effect that it can have on an individual's psyche. The story begins with a request for the narrator to talk about Emily, but the narrator fears that she will be overwhelmed if she does so, saying: "I will become engulfed with all I did or did not do, with what should have been and what cannot be helped." The narrator indicates that thinking about her daughter at all causes deep feelings of inadequacy, rather than pride in the various ways that she did succeed as a mother. Reflecting on Emily's relationship with her sister Susan, the narrator says, "I have edged away from it, that poisonous feeling between them, that terrible balancing of hurts and needs I had to do between the two, and did so badly, in those earlier years." In evaluating her work as a mother, the narrator focuses not on the amount or difficulty of the work she did, but on what she perceives she did badly. Olsen implies that responsibility itself makes the narrator focus on negative outcomes, keeping her stuck between her obligation to her daughters and her concern that she is failing them. In addition to causing the narrator pain, the dual pressures of responsibility and guilt ultimately make it harder for her to continue the effort of parenting Emily. Of raising small children, the narrator comments that "the ear is not one's own" but rather belongs to the calls of the child. Olsen seems to say that, paradoxically, this very state of devotion causes the listener's sense of self to vanish, thus reducing her ability to fulfill the role of mother. The narrator often lacks confidence in her own version of events, admitting of one memory: "I do not even know if it matters, or if it explains anything." She wishes to do as directed and make meaning out of Emily's story, but after her long years of combined responsibility and doubt, she is left unsure how to do so. Toward the end of the story, the narrator finds that her attempts to understand her past with Emily have left her less able to tolerate the remarks of the real, present-day Emily. She says: "Because I have been dredging the past, and all that compounds a human being is so heavy and meaningful in me, I cannot endure it tonight." Again, Olsen demonstrates that delving into the burdens of motherhood does not necessarily improve one's ability to act as a mother; in fact, such exploration may do the opposite. - Climax: Emily enters the room where the narrator is ironing - Summary: "I Stand Here Ironing" is a first-person account in which the narrator thinks about her relationship with her nineteen-year-old daughter, Emily. The story begins with a request from an unidentified character (most likely a teacher or counselor at Emily's school) for the narrator to come and talk about Emily, whom the official feels "needs help." This request sets off the narrator's long rumination about Emily's childhood and her own role as a mother. The narrator is at home ironing the entire time that she relates these reflections to the reader. The narrator begins by suggesting that she feels overwhelmed by contemplating Emily's life, but she describes it in great detail nonetheless. She tells the reader that Emily was a beautiful baby whom she, the narrator, loved deeply from her birth. However, Emily's father leaves the family shortly after Emily is born and the narrator is forced to find work and leave Emily in daycare. Eventually, the family's fortunes worsen and the narrator sends Emily to live with the father's family for a stretch of time. When Emily returns, she is thin, nervous, and prone to illness, changes that cause the narrator guilt and sadness. The narrator sends Emily to nursery school during the day, even though she knows Emily hates it. Although Emily tries to avoid going to school, the narrator notes that Emily never openly rebels, and she wonders "what was the cost" to Emily of behaving well even when she was miserable. The narrator goes on to describe the rest of Emily's childhood, during which Emily is serious, anxious, and often sick. The narrator recalls that clocks in particular frightened Emily. At one point, Emily becomes ill enough that the narrator and her new husband choose to send her away to live at a convalescent home for eight months, where Emily becomes even more unhappy. When Emily returns home, she is distant from both family and peers and continues to worry intensely about school and her appearance. The narrator gives birth to another daughter, Susan, who is cheerful and conventionally beautiful. Emily resents Susan and is often in conflict with her, and the narrator fears that she has failed to mediate the relationship between the sisters. Later on, Emily helps care for three more younger siblings while the narrator is busy working and managing the household. Again, the narrator suspects that these domestic burdens made life difficult for Emily and worries that she, the narrator, was too distracted to adequately express her love for Emily. Toward the end of the story, the narrator describes Emily's transformation into a successful comedian who performs at her high school and other events. Though Emily has found a way to express herself joyfully, the narrator still worries, convinced that she will not have the resources to support Emily's talent. At the story's climax, Emily herself enters the room where the narrator has been ironing and reflecting throughout the story. Emily is in a cheerful, talkative mood, and the narrator suddenly wonders why anyone would worry about her. Emily makes a joke about dying in an atom bomb attack and then goes to bed, leaving the narrator to face the full, complex reality of her daughter's existence. The narrator concludes that she will "never total it all" but hopes that even if Emily does not live up to her full potential, she will still have a richer and happier life than her mother has had.

- Genre: Historical Fiction - Title: I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem - Point of view: First Person - Setting: The hills and plantations of Barbados; the Atlantic Ocean; Salem, Massachusetts, and various other cities and towns across New England - Character: Tituba. Description: Tituba, the daughter of an Ashanti woman named Abena and the white man who assaulted her, is the protagonist of Maryse Condé's novel. After losing both her mother and her adoptive father Yao at a young age, Tituba finds a home in the swamps of Barbados with Mama Yaya, a local healer, who teaches her how to form potions and communicate with the dead. Tituba's life is disrupted when she falls in love with a handsome man named John Indian, who pulls her into plantation life; eventually, Tituba is forced into slavery and brought to Salem, Massachusetts by a minister named Samuel Parris. Because she is such a skilled healer and because of the prejudice that runs so deep in Salem, many of the villagers (led by the teenaged Abigail) immediately associate Tituba with the devil. After being accused and nearly executed as a witch in the infamous Salem witch trials, Tituba strikes up relationships with an outspoken woman named Hester and Benjamin d'Azevedo, a kindly Jewish merchant. Eventually, Tituba makes her way back to Barbados, where she is killed in the process of planning a slave revolt. Yet despite this life filled with trauma, Tituba remains gentle and forgiving, in part because she does not want to become like most of the white people around her, "knowing only how to do evil." Even amidst her growing awareness of anti-Blackness and misogyny makes it harder and harder for her to stay hopeful, Tituba is able to find moments of love, passion, and joy, however fleeting. And after her death, Tituba's loving presence remains in the memories of those she helped to heal, persisting in "the crackling of a fire between four stones, the rainbow-hued babbling of the river," and Condé's novel itself. - Character: Mama Yaya. Description: Mama Yaya is a Nago healer who lives on the outskirts of Darnell Davis's plantation in Barbados. After Tituba is orphaned at the age of 7, Mama Yaya takes her in, and she quickly educates the little girl about how to use tropical plants and incantations to heal and change behavior. Even more importantly, Mama Yaya also shows Tituba how to connect with the dead—so though Yaya dies when Hester is 14, she continues to be a mentor from the afterlife. Though Mama Yaya is consistently generous and kind, she is realistic about the challenges Tituba faces as a Black woman: she emphasizes that "there is no end to the misfortune of Black folks" and continually stresses that "men do not love. They possess." But to help Tituba survive these challenges, Mama instructs her about the necessity of community, explaining that building strong relationships with others allows for life beyond life. In that sense, Mama Yaya embodies two of the novel's major themes. On the one hand, she shows that through love and kindness, people can endure even beyond the grave. But in her healing and incantation, all of which she passes on to Tituba, she also proves that nature can (when used and appreciated correctly) be a critical source of knowledge. - Character: John Indian. Description: John Indian is Tituba's first lover, and despite his many flaws, he is also the love of her life. The two meet when John Indian, born to an indigenous father and a Nago mother, is enslaved on Susanna Endicott's plantation in Barbados; shortly after, the two marry, and John forces Tituba to come live with him on Endicott land. Though John is initially a good partner to Tituba, he is known for his womanizing, and (much to his wife's chagrin) he is consistently unfaithful. Unlike Tituba, John Indian has few qualms about cruel and dishonest behavior—instead, he believes simply that "the duty of a slave is to survive!" To do this, John Indian often plays into white people's stereotypes of Blackness, claiming that doing so allows him to "wear a mask" and be "free" underneath. John Indian's determination to "survive" at all costs—in contrast to Tituba's emphasis on goodness and generosity—is even more on display during the Salem witch trials; whereas Tituba is reluctant to testify against anyone, John becomes one of the main accusers (alongside Abigail and little Anne Putnam). John Indian thus illustrates both the need for a kind of proto-feminism and the pitfalls of putting survival above all. - Character: Hester. Description: Hester becomes Tituba's closest and most important friend after they meet in a jail cell near Salem. A prosperous white woman who has been outcast from Puritan society for having a brief affair with a minister, she now self-identifies (perhaps anachronistically) as a "feminist"; frequently, she complains that "life is too kind to men, whatever their color." Hester is based on Hester Prynne, the heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter and one of the most important characters in all of American literature; in Hawthorne's text, she is jailed for committing adultery and made to wear a scarlet "A" on her breast as a reminder of her crime. While imprisoned, Hester—who, as the daughter of a minister, is both familiar with and scornful of Puritan ways of thinking—teaches Tituba how to testify to doing witchcraft in such a way that she exonerates herself. Though Tituba feels the stirrings of sexual attraction to Hester, Hester commits suicide before Tituba can act on these feelings. By alluding to The Scarlet Letter and linking her own protagonist to the protagonist of that much earlier work, Condé suggests that there is a pattern to the misogyny and hypocrisy of Puritan life. - Character: Benjamin Cohen d'Azevedo. Description: Benjamin d'Azevedo is an older, wealthy, Jewish merchant from Portugal. He purchases Tituba after the conclusion of the Salem witch trials, because he distrusts the Puritans and so does not put stock in their accusations of people. As the father of nine children and a widower, Benjamin mostly relies on Tituba to do household chores, though she also uses her powers to connect him to his deceased wife Abigail d'Azevedo. Benjamin and Tituba become romantically involved, and though her new paramour is physically unattractive, Tituba thinks fondly of their sexual life together (which is "like a drunken boat on a choppy sea"). Benjamin reflects that "our God knows neither race nor color," and his own experiences as a Jew allow him some insight into the persecution Tituba faces as a Black woman; still, he initially refuses to grant Tituba her legal freedom. However, after his children are killed in a fire, Benjamin regrets his role as an enslaver, and he frees Tituba and buys her passage back to Barbados. - Character: Abena. Description: Abena is Tituba's mother. As an Ashanti woman enslaved by Darnell Davis, Abena lives in constant fear of violence and sexual assault. When Darnell does indeed try to rape her, she strikes back, which then leads Darnell to have her publicly hanged as punishment. In life, Abena struggles to show affection to her daughter—because she is the product of a white man's rape—but in death, Abena's spirit becomes an essential guide and source of solace to Tituba. Along those lines, Abena repeatedly tries (and fails) to steer Tituba away from sex, lamenting that women "can't do without men." - Character: Yao. Description: Yao is an Ashanti man who has been captured, enslaved, and brought to Barbados; now, he too works on Darnell Davis's plantation. Yao serves as both a mentor and a lover to Abena, and though he is not Tituba's biological father, he nevertheless treats her as his own daughter. After Abena is hanged, Yao kills himself, as he does not want to live in a world without his beloved wife. Fortunately, though, Mama Yaya shows Tituba how to contact Yao's spirit even after his death. Throughout I, Tituba, Yao is the model of a gentle and generous masculinity; both Mama Yaya and Abena encourage Tituba not to settle with any man unless he is as tender as Yao. - Character: Christopher. Description: Christopher is the leader of a group of maroons living high in the hills of Barbados. Having heard of Tituba's healing powers, and inspired by the legend of the invulnerable maroon Ti-Noel, Christopher hopes that Tituba will make him immortal; she agrees to try, and the two become lovers. But Tituba is unable to prevent Christopher from dying—because "death is a door nobody can lock"—and their relationship sours. Soon after, Tituba learns that she is pregnant with Christopher's child, though given his coldness towards her, she decides she does not want him in her child's life. - Character: Iphigene. Description: Iphigene is a young, enslaved man who, after being nearly beaten to death by a plantation overseer, ends up in Tituba's care. At first, Tituba views Iphigene like a son, and the two bond over having lost their mothers to white violence in childhood; by the end of the novel, however, Tituba and Iphigene (whom Tituba frequently describes as "beautiful") become lovers. With Tituba's urging, Iphigene also becomes the leader of a massive slave rebellion—but before he can successfully complete his plan, Iphigene is thwarted and killed by white soldiers. Fortunately, though, he and Tituba remain close, even in the afterlife. - Character: Susanna Endicott. Description: Susanna Endicott is an elderly widow and landowner in Barbados. Though she claims to be anti-slavery, she has kept John Indian in bondage since he was a little boy—and once he marries Tituba, she also claims Tituba as her property. Susanna repeatedly tries to convert Tituba to Christianity, and she frightens Tituba with concepts of Satan and inescapable evil. Susanna is also one of the first people to suggest that Tituba is a witch, capable only of evil magic. When Tituba grows tired of Susanna's gossip and frequent humiliations, she uses Mama Yaya's teachings to make her sick; soon after, Susanna dies, but not before selling Tituba and John Indian to Samuel Parris. As a profoundly racist, inhumane white woman, Susanna represents the limits of female solidarity. - Character: Samuel Parris. Description: Samuel Parris is the brutal, hypocritical minister of Salem. After purchasing Tituba and John Indian as slaves from Susanna Endicott, Parris brings them to New England; from the moment she meets him, Tituba is horrified by him, comparing him variously to a "bird of prey" and to Satan himself. Though he claims to be a man of God, Parris is actually more concerned with profiting off of the villagers of Salem than he is with saving their souls. Perhaps more than any other character in the novel, then, Parris epitomizes what John Indian calls "the hypocrisy of the white man's world," in which even the most outwardly religious people are capable of great prejudice and cruelty. - Character: Elizabeth Parris. Description: Elizabeth Parris is the quiet, sickly wife of Samuel Parris. As they travel to Boston and then to Salem, Elizabeth and Tituba connect over their shared hatred of Parris; Elizabeth is especially resentful of her husband's refusal to acknowledge sex and sexuality as vital parts of life. But though Tituba invests deeply in her friendship with Elizabeth—at one point, even saving her life when she is about to succumb to sickness—Elizabeth extends no such courtesy. Instead, once her daughter Betsey begins to have seizures, Elizabeth joins the ranks of the white Puritans accusing Tituba of witchcraft. Elizabeth's betrayal of Tituba is one of the most painful in the entire narrative. - Character: Betsey Parris. Description: Betsey Parris is the young daughter of Samuel and Elizabeth Parris. Initially, she and Tituba form a close bond, but Betsey is susceptible to the stories of witchcraft that Abigail circulates. Halfway through I, Tituba, Betsey turns against Tituba, blaming her mysterious seizures on her old friend. Ultimately, when Tituba tries to confront Betsey about this shift, Betsey reveals her virulent anti-Blackness: "you're a Negress," she tells Tituba. "You can only do evil. You are evil itself." Betsey Parris thus demonstrates that even the youngest, most seemingly innocent white people can hold tremendous bigotry. - Character: Abigail. Description: Abigail (whose full name, historical records reveal, is Abigail Williams) is the teenaged niece of Samuel Parris and the central figure behind the witchcraft panic. As the leader of the young women in Salem, Abigail presses Tituba for stories about the devil and then uses these stories to accuse Tituba and several other women in the town. Abigail often pretends to be possessed, causing Tituba to fear "the power of her imagination." In Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, another famous text about the Salem witch trials, Abigail is the primary antagonist. - Character: Sarah Goode. Description: Sarah Goode is one of the poorest residents of Salem village, often begging for money and sleeping outside because she cannot afford a home. She is also the mother of little Dorcas Goode. Though initially Tituba feels sympathy for Goodwife Goode, that sympathy melts once—as soon they are placed in the same room—Sarah Goode begins to call Tituba a witch. Frustrated by this betrayal, Tituba ultimately accuses Sarah Goode of witchcraft in her trial. - Character: Sarah Osborne. Description: Sarah Osborne is somewhat of a pariah in Salem; though she is wealthy, she has not attended church for many years, and as both Tituba and later historians suggest, she is dogged by rumors of sexual impropriety. Sarah Osborne is one of the first women to be accused of witchcraft—and almost immediately, in a bid to save herself, she tries to shove the blame onto Tituba. On the stand, Tituba accuses Goodwife Osborne (along with Goodwife Goode) as a witch. - Character: Judah White. Description: Judah White is an herbal healer and one of the few Black women living in New England. She connects with Tituba in the forest outside Salem, explaining that she and Mama Yaya know each other in the spirit world. She teaches Tituba how to substitute New England nature—like black cats and autumn leaves—for the tropical plants Tituba is used to using in her healing. - Character: Deodatus. Description: Deodatus is a sailor whom Tituba meets while on board the ship from New England back to Barbados. Deodatus remembers what happened to Tituba's mother Abena, and the two form a connection based on their shared trauma and loss; in particular, Deodatus makes Tituba reflect on "this ability our people have of remembering." Once Tituba arrives in Barbados, Deodatus remains a friend, introducing Tituba to Christopher and bringing her into the maroon colony. - Character: Ti-Noel. Description: Ti-Noel is legendary across Barbados for having founded the first maroon colony on the island. It is said that Ti-Noel is invincible, and his legacy inspires everyone from Tituba to Christopher. Though the factual details of Ti-Noel's life are never quite known, Tituba learns that he is Iphigene's father. Ti-Noel's presence in legends and stories gives weight to the idea that people can live on in loved ones' recollections. - Character: Samantha. Description: After helping Samantha's mother deliver her baby, Tituba becomes attached to the little girl—and even after Tituba dies, her love for Samantha lingers. It follows, then, that in the afterlife, Tituba chooses her as a kind of spiritual "descendent," and reflects that no "kind of motherhood could be nobler." As she grows older, Samantha keeps Tituba alive in her memory, learning to recognize her spiritual mother in the waving of tropical plants or "the sound of the wind." - Character: Darnell Davis. Description: Darnell Davis is a prominent white plantation owner and slaveholder in Barbados, who purchases both Abena and Yao and pairs the two of them together. He is a hateful man, who mistreats his wife Jennifer, and who torments the enslaved people on his land with constant work and violence. After he tries to assault Abena and she fights back, Darnell has her publicly hanged. Later, when Darnell returns to England, he separates all of the enslaved families on his plantation. In his cruelty, Darnell embodies white violence and disregard for Black life and connection. - Character: Mary Sibley. Description: Mary Sibley is a working-class resident of Salem. She is the first to greet Tituba and the Parris family upon their arrival, and she epitomizes the kind of casual racism and paranoia that Tituba will encounter for the rest of her time in New England. Like many other Puritans in the town, Goodwife Sibley wants Tituba to use her powers for cruelty. Later, Sibley herself comes under suspicion as a witch. - Character: Goodwife Anne Putnam. Description: As the wife of Thomas Putnam, one of the wealthiest men in all of Salem, Goodwife Putnam holds lots of social and political power within the village. Throughout the novel, she is shown to be gossipy and unkind; she also frequently claims to have visions of demons. In I, Tituba, as in history, Anne Putnam and her family are behind many of the most rancorous accusations in Salem. Tituba believes the Putnams were motivated in their rancor by a desire to settle some land disputes. - Character: Little Anne Putnam. Description: Little Anne Putnam is Goodwife Putnam's daughter and one of Abigail's best friends. Anne helps to catalyze the frenzy in Salem when, while a crowd of villagers watches, she has a fit and claims to see the devil himself. Later, Anne Putnam (along with Abigail) becomes one of the most viciously vocal accusers. - Character: Rebecca Nurse. Description: Rebecca Nurse is one of the most widely beloved residents of Salem village, until she is charged with witchcraft and executed. Though she is usually kinder to Tituba than some of the other villagers, she, too, believes that Tituba is capable of evil magic—and she, too, tries to use this evil magic to her own ends. - Character: John Proctor. Description: John Proctor, the stoic, honorable protagonist of the 1957 play The Crucible, is also a minor character in I, Tituba. A well-respected farmer in Salem during the witch trials, Proctor is consistently a voice of reason and an ally of Tituba's; the fact that he falls under suspicion shows just how out of control the witch trials have become. In The Crucible, John Proctor sleeps with and then rejects the much-younger Abigail, sparking her desire to seek revenge and accuse the Proctor family. - Character: Elizabeth Proctor. Description: Elizabeth Proctor is the kind, quiet wife of John Proctor; though she is a minor character in I, Tituba, she is a major character (and the moral center) in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible. She volunteers to take Dorcas Goode in when her mother Sarah Goode is jailed. Though Abigail tries to accuse Elizabeth of witchcraft, Tituba defends her. - Character: Sarah. Description: Sarah is a young, Black, enslaved woman in Salem. The woman Sarah works for is particularly violent, causing Sarah to seek Tituba's help in getting revenge. When Tituba encourages Sarah to be better than the white people who enslave her, Sarah pushes back, arguing that Tituba must change her values to respond to her situation; or as she puts it, "knowledge must adapt to society." - Character: Dr. Griggs. Description: Dr. Griggs is a doctor in Salem who also bills himself as a witchcraft expert. Initially, he and Tituba often collaborate to heal various residents of the village. But after Tituba is accused, Griggs turns against her, despite having no tangible evidence to point to any wrongdoing. Griggs exemplifies the racism and the mob mentality that allows so many of Tituba's neighbors to instantly accuse her. - Character: Dorcas Goode. Description: Dorcas Goode is the young daughter of Sarah Goode. Dorcas grows up with little money or stability, and when her mother is initially accused and jailed, the only people who will take her in are John and Elizabeth Proctor. Later, Dorcas is placed in Tituba's jail cell, and she becomes an object of sympathy for Tituba. - Theme: Surviving vs. Enduring. Description: For Tituba, the novel's protagonist, every day is a struggle to survive: as a Black woman living in the 17th century, she faces the quotidian brutality of slavery, the constant threat of fatal white violence, and the ravages of disease and childbirth. John Indian, Tituba's husband, instructs Tituba to protect herself at any cost, whether that means playing into white people's stereotypes of her, changing her core beliefs, or betraying the other people in her life—"the duty of a slave," he argues, "is to survive."  But while Tituba spends her time using tropical plants and incantations to help the people around her stave off injury and illness, she is often hesitant to look out for herself in the same way. This reluctance stems in part from Tituba's determination never to compromise her own goodness and integrity, even if she must sometimes put herself at risk to protect these values (as she does by refusing to name names during her time in the Salem witch trials). But it also comes from Tituba's knowledge, learned from her beloved teacher Mama Yaya, that people can live on after death in their loved ones' minds; indeed, Tituba has spent much of her time on earth being guided by the spirits of her mother Abena and her surrogate father Yao, both long deceased. Thus, rather than emphasizing flesh-and-blood survival above all else, the novel shows that there is more than one way to endure—and that remaining true to one's values can be just as important as remaining alive. - Theme: Slavery and Daily Life. Description: Throughout much of her life, Tituba lives in slavery. Though the historical record says very little about Tituba—the real-life woman who played a central role in the 17th-century Salem witch trials—the novel works to fill in the blanks, imagining Tituba's interiority and her lived experience of enslavement. As it follows Tituba from her childhood in Barbados to her adulthood in New England, the novel shows just how much every aspect of daily life is impacted by the horrors of slavery. Enslaved families are constantly being ripped apart, as white planters can—on a whim—sell spouses away from each other or kill beloved parents (such that enslaved families are often "defeated, dispersed, and auctioned off"). Sex and romance, too, are transformed by enslavement: the story begins when Tituba's mother is raped by a white sailor and Tituba is "born from this act of aggression," leading her to live the rest of her life in fear of being assaulted by various white men. Anti-Black racism makes Tituba a source of suspicion for the mostly white communities of New England; frequently, Tituba is arrested, stoned, or threatened with execution. And even when there is no direct violence, it is difficult to create pleasure or meaningful connection, because white slaveholders demand so much brutal work—as Tituba and her husband John Indian learn, when the entire day is spent laboring, it is hard to find time for anything else. On the one hand, therefore, I, Tituba demonstrates how profoundly and horrifically slavery shapes every aspect of Tituba's lived experience; even when Tituba starts to connect with people who have never been enslaved, she realizes that they can never fully understand each other because, having lived free, they do not "exist in the same universe." But on the other hand, if slavery as an institution works to disrupt every aspect of daily life, Tituba also discovers that finding everyday pleasure under slavery is itself an act of rebellion. Whether it is engaging in passionate sex, dancing with friends, or growing delicious food, Tituba and the people she influences are able to defy an unspeakably cruel institution with small moments of joy—to find moments of "uncertain happiness" despite being "constantly under threat." - Theme: Nature as Knowledge. Description: I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem is filled with descriptions of the natural world: Condé details "the shadow play of the flamboyant, calabash, and silk-cotton trees" of Tituba's native Barbados and contrasts this lushness with the sparse forests and "white mottled sky" of Salem, Massachusetts. From a young age, Tituba has learned from skilled healer Mama Yaya how to use tropical plants, alongside incantations and animal sacrifices, to heal others or to change their behavior. But when she arrives in Salem, she finds that none of the plants and animals she has long relied on exist in this new climate; she must substitute black cats and raw potatoes for the snakes and herbs she used on her native island. Thus Tituba learns that just as "nature changes her language according to the land," she must change her healing practices according to nature. It follows, then, that the kind of natural magic that Tituba does in warm Barbados is very different from the kind she is able to accomplish in bitterly cold New England; as a young, enslaved woman named Sarah puts it, "knowledge must adapt itself to society." In addition to using different plants—and in addition to feeling less connected to the "invisible world"—Tituba finds that while spells said on the island are usually used to heal, spells said in America often do more harm than good. Ultimately, I, Tituba therefore demonstrates that there is tremendous knowledge to be found in nature, if (like Tituba) one knows where to look. But the novel also suggests that people are fundamentally shaped by their environments, and that an inhospitable environment can lead to inhospitable (or even cruel) people—as it does in Salem. - Theme: Desire, Patriarchy and the Difficulty of Feminism. Description: Throughout the novel, Tituba is continually betrayed by men; as her mother Abena warns her, "men do not love. They possess." From Tituba's childhood, when a plantation owner tries to assault her mother, to her marriage, when her husband John Indian refuses to defend her against accusations of witchcraft, Tituba is consistently reminded that men are more likely to do harm than good. And yet while the men in her life hurt the people around them, they escape punishment, leaving the women around them to face the consequences; "life is too kind to men," Tituba often reflects, "whatever their color." But even when Tituba, spurred to action by her friendship with an outspoken woman named Hester, begins to think of herself as a feminist, she cannot fully separate herself from men. (Note that Condé's use of the word feminist is anachronistic, as the feminist movement had not yet formed in the 17th century). Instead, Tituba finds herself caught between her ideological frustration with patriarchal society and her intense carnal desire for various men (most prominently her husband John Indian). And if Tituba's sexual longing provides one obstacle to her burgeoning feminism, her complex relationships with white women are an even bigger stumbling block. Though Tituba initially believes she has found allies in people like Elizabeth Parris, who seems to resent her brutal husband Samuel just as much as Tituba does, Elizabeth is quick to turn on Tituba at the first sign of danger. By the end of the narrative, Tituba is convinced of the need for a unified feminist effort: because patriarchy is so prevalent and female desire is so complex, only by standing together (as she does with Hester) can women find solace and strength. But at the same time, the novel also stresses the importance—and the difficulty—of a truly intersectional feminism, where Black women are given the same rights and freedoms as their white counterparts. - Theme: Archival History vs. Memory. Description: I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem is based on historical records surrounding the Salem witch trials of 1692; indeed, at one point during the novel, Condé reprints word-for-word the record of Tituba's testimony, pulled straight from the Essex County Archives. But though Condé herself draws from these archives, Tituba spends much of her own narrative fretting that she will not be accurately remembered in historical documents. And indeed, while many of the white people who were accused in Salem have been rehabilitated by large amounts of historical research, no such thing is true of Tituba, who is written about only as "a slave originating from the West Indies and probably practicing 'hoodoo.'" At first, then, the novel shows how profoundly racist many historical archives are; they erase Tituba (and the other enslaved Black women in the town) almost entirely. But while archival history diminishes Tituba, she ends the novel by explaining that "there is a song about Tituba"—it just isn't written down. Instead, Tituba's memory lives on in the minds of her spiritual descendants (like a young girl named Samantha) and in the many people whom she helped heal. Moreover, in the book's closing paragraph, she reflects that she also lives on in the nature she loved so much: in "the crackling of a fire between four stones, the rainbow-hued babbling of the river, and the sound of the wind." And finally, Tituba lives on in the novel itself; all of I, Tituba can be viewed as a corrective to the faulty archives, as Tituba is finally granted the full, complex biography she deserves. The narrative thus demonstrates a new kind of history, contained not in the pages of an archive but in landscapes and loved ones' hearts. - Climax: Tituba is accused of witchcraft by the villagers of Salem, and she must choose between naming others as witches or facing execution herself. - Summary: Tituba tells the story of her early life: her mother Abena is an Ashanti woman who was captured, enslaved, and taken to Barbados. While on the ship, Abena is assaulted by a white sailor, resulting in Tituba's birth; Tituba is then raised by Abena and her lover, a gentle Ashanti man named Yao. When Tituba is 7, Darnell Davis, the owner of the plantation, assaults Abena, who uses a cutlass to defend herself. Darnell responds by publicly hanging Abena. Yao kills himself, and Tituba, traumatized, leaves the plantation. Now an orphan, Tituba finds solace with Mama Yaya, a reclusive healer. Mama Yaya teaches Tituba how to use tropical plants, sacrifices, and incantations to cure illness and change others' behavior. She also shows Tituba how to communicate with the dead. Though Mama Yaya dies when Tituba is 14, Tituba continues to seek guidance from her spirit (as well as the spirits of Abena and Yao). After Mama Yaya's death, Tituba builds herself a small cabin on the edge of the plantation. She also begins to travel around the island, healing the sick as Mama Yaya once did. A few months later, Tituba falls for John Indian, a charismatic man born to a Nago mother and an indigenous father. The spirits of Mama Yaya and Abena counsel Tituba against this attraction, because John has a reputation as a womanizer. Nevertheless, Tituba crosses the island to meet John Indian for a dance, and he affectionately calls her his "little witch." The two become a couple, but John refuses to live with Tituba in her cabin. Instead, he insists she join him on the Endicott plantation, where he has been enslaved for his entire life. Though Tituba cannot believe herself, her love is intense enough to motivate her to willingly rejoin "the white man's world." After a brief honeymoon period, in which Tituba and John have lots of passionate sex, Susanna Endicott (the plantation owner) shows her true colors. Susanna forces Tituba to clean for hours on end; she also forcibly tries to convert Tituba to Christianity, introducing her to the terrifying concept of Satan. Over time, Tituba's resentment of Susanna grows, and finally, she poisons her. While Susanna slowly dies, she hints that Tituba is a witch—and then announces that she has sold both Tituba and John Indian to a man named Samuel Parris. Though Tituba protests that she was never Susanna's property, it is too late; Parris plans to bring both Tituba and John with him to New England. While on board the ship that will bring her to America, Tituba gets to know Samuel Parris's sickly wife Elizabeth, bonding over their shared hatred of Parris. Tituba develops a fondness for Betsey, Elizabeth's young daughter, though she distrusts Parris's niece Abigail, a clever, manipulative teenager. When the family finally arrives in Boston, Elizabeth falls deathly ill. In a moment of quick thinking, Tituba finds New England herbs to substitute for the tropical plants she normally uses to heal—and she is able to bring Elizabeth back to health. Tituba, John, and the Parris family spend the year in Boston while Parris, a minister, tries to find a parish that will hire him. John works in a tavern, where he notices the "hypocrisy" of the white Puritans. Meanwhile, Tituba meets a woman named Judah White, who knows Mama Yaya in the spirit world and who teaches Tituba how to use owls and black cats to conduct magic (because "nature changes her language according to the land"). During this time, Tituba gets pregnant, but not wanting to bring another child into slavery, she aborts the baby. Parris at last gets a job in the rural village of Salem, Massachusetts. Once in Salem, Tituba is swarmed by Abigail and the other local teenaged girls. The girls beg Tituba to tell them stories about witchcraft, and they accuse specific women—poor Sarah Goode, pariah Sarah Osborne, and soft-spoken Elizabeth Proctor—of consorting with the devil. One day, Betsey begins to have seizures, and her parents worry that she is possessed. They immediately blame Tituba for Betsey's plight. All of the townspeople, including those whom Tituba had been friends with, label her a witch. Parris, along with some other ministers from nearby towns, torture Tituba and sexually assault her in an attempt to make her confess. Tituba refuses to admit to crimes she did not do—or to falsely name others—and so she is taken to jail. She is placed in a cell with Sarah Goode and Sarah Osborne, both of whom turn against her immediately. Tituba then is moved to a cell with a beautiful young woman named Hester, who has been imprisoned for adultery. Hester, an avowed "feminist," helps Tituba prepare for her trial. The first-person account is interrupted by Tituba's real-life trial testimony, excerpted from the archival records. In her testimony, Tituba accuses Goode and Osborne, but nobody else. After the trial, Parris congratulates Tituba on a job well done, which horrifies her. Tituba summarizes the rash of accusations that spreads across Salem and beyond. Some of the most respected people in the village are executed for witchcraft. To her dismay, Tituba learns that John Indian—determined to "survive" at any cost—has joined the ranks of the accusers. Eventually, the chaos dies down, and Tituba is sold to a Jewish merchant named Benjamin Cohen d'Azevedo. Benjamin has recently lost his wife, and in addition to caring for his nine children, Tituba uses her powers to allow him to commune with his wife's spirit. Eventually, Tituba and Benjamin become lovers—though Benjamin refuses to grant Tituba her legal freedom. One night, the villagers, consumed by anti-Semitism and anti-Blackness, burn the d'Azevedo home to the ground. Benjamin and Tituba survive, but all the children perish. Benjamin blames himself for this tragedy, and he frees Tituba out of remorse, giving her a ticket back to Barbados. On the ship, Tituba befriends Deodatus, an enslaved man who knew of her mother. Upon arriving in Barbados, Tituba realizes that she no longer knows anyone on the island. Deodatus introduces her to a group of maroons (former slaves who have escaped into the hills). Christopher, the leader of the maroons, has heard that Tituba has magical powers, and he hopes she will make him "invincible." The two become lovers. When Tituba tells Christopher that "death is a door nobody can lock," he becomes cold and cruel; she leaves him and returns to her old cabin. Soon after, Tituba realizes she is pregnant. Around the same time, she begins caring for a young, enslaved man named Iphigene, who has been nearly beaten to death by a white overseer. Wanting a better world for her child, Tituba and Iphigene plot a revolt—but before their plan can come to fruition, the white slaveholders execute them both. Tituba reflects that though very little is written about her in archival history, she lives on in the memories of those she helped to heal, and that her "song" can be heard in "the crackling of a fire between four stones, the rainbow-hued babbling of the river, and the sound of the wind."

- Genre: Young Adult Fiction - Title: If I Stay - Point of view: First Person - Setting: Oregon, United States - Character: Mia Hall. Description: Mia Hall is the seventeen-year-old protagonist of If I Stay, and the novel is told from her point of view. A passionate and talented cello player from Oregon, Mia is likely Juilliard-bound after she graduates from high school. She is close with her Mom, Dad, and eight-year-old brother Teddy, as well as with her Gran and Gramps, her father's parents who live nearby. Quiet but driven, Mia spends most of her time with her family, her boyfriend, Adam, and best friend, Kim. Music is very important to Mia, as her parents were members of the punk rock scene in their younger days, and she grew to have a deep love of classical music. She often feels out of place in her family, though, due to her commitment to classical music rather than rock. - Character: Adam Wilde. Description: Adam is Mia's boyfriend. He is one year older than Mia, and graduated from their high school the year prior. He continues to live in Mia's town due to his role as guitarist in the local band Shooting Star, which is quickly gaining popularity. Adam is confident and more outgoing than Mia is, which initially led Mia to feel that he was teasing her when he first expressed interest in her. However, Adam won Mia over by taking her to a Yo-Yo Ma concert on their first date. Though Mia often feels out of place at Adam's punk rock concerts, Adam soon proves that he doesn't care that she isn't engaged in the same kind of music that he is, and he loves her for who she is as a person, someone with her own unique tastes. - Character: Kim Schein. Description: Kim is Mia's best friend. When they first met in middle school, Mia and Kim hated each other, mostly because teachers and other students assumed the two girls were already friends due to their similar looks and quiet demeanors. Continually being lumped together in the classroom led to name-calling via passed notes, and finally a fight on the playground in the sixth grade. After physically exchanging blows, however, the girls are quickly able to laugh about their feud, and finally become fast friends. Kim's mother, though well meaning, is overbearing, and makes her wear certain clothing and imposes strict curfews on her daughter. Kim is Jewish, and attends Jewish camp each summer in New Jersey. Kim is an aspiring photographer, and wants to work for National Geographic one day, just like her uncle does. Mia admires Kim for her personal strength and resilience, though is upset that Kim and Adam don't become fast friends when Mia and Adam begin dating. - Character: Kat Hall (Mom). Description: Kat is Mia's Mom. Kat is strong, sassy, and fiercely protective of her family. She met Mia's father in her early twenties, when they were both fans and members of the punk rock scene of the Northwest. She currently works for a travel agency. Though always a rocker chick at heart, she respects and supports Mia's love of the cello. - Character: Denny Hall (Dad). Description: Denny is Mia's Dad. He and Mia's Mom married when they were twenty-three, and had Mia soon after. Teddy was born ten years later. Denny is a middle-school English teacher—though he played guitar and wrote songs for a popular local band for many years, he quit when Teddy was born in order to spend more time with his family. Though Denny's friend Henry becomes angry with him for leaving the band, he maintains that his family will always come first, and that he was making an obvious choice, not a sacrifice. Once Dad and Mom recognize that Mia has a true gift with the cello, he works to support her passion, and finds her a teacher to study with, his friend Professor Christie. - Character: Teddy Hall. Description: Teddy is Mia's eight-year-old younger brother. Mia was present at his birth, and she was the first person he every laid eyes on. Mia's Mom jokes that Teddy "imprinted" on Mia, since Mia has a mother-like connection and influence over Teddy. Teddy loves eight-year-old things such as SpongeBob and banging on drum sets. His birth is the reason Dad quits his band and devotes more time to the family. While he survives the initial impact of the car crash, he later dies in the hospital. - Character: Gran. Description: Gran is Dad's mother. She and Mia's grandfather, Gramps, live near Mia's family, and are very involved in their lives. Gran is a perpetually positive person who loves to garden and believes that deceased family members become angels that are reincarnated into birds, sent to watch over her and her family. Mia is inspired by Gran's past—as a young girl from Massachusetts, Gran decided to begin a new life in the Northwest and moved alone to Oregon, where she met Mia's grandfather. Gran loves that her son and his family are so involved in music, and also works to support Mia's talent and passion for the cello. - Character: Gramps. Description: Gramps is Dad's father. He is a man of few words, but supports and loves his son's family and their involvement in music. He is sad when Mia's Dad leaves his band, because Gramps loved listening to the music Dad played and the lyrics that he wrote, which Gramps found to be like poetry. Gramps also supports Mia's passion for the cello, and escorts her to San Francisco for a weekend for her Juilliard audition. While Mia is in a coma, he is the only person to privately let her know that he will understand her decision if she decides to leave. - Character: Nurse Ramirez. Description: Nurse Ramirez is a young nurse who cares for Mia in the Portland hospital. She is sympathetic to Adam and Kim's wishes to see Mia, and covertly helps them when they try to use diversion tactics to get into the ICU, against the rules of the older head nurse. She tells Gran and Gramps that Mia is "running the show"—that Mia is the one who can decide whether or not she will emerge from her coma. - Character: Henry. Description: Henry is one of Dad's former band mates, and his best friend. Henry used to be a "drunk playboy," but when he began dating Willow, a nurse, he changed his ways. While he is angry when Dad leaves the band, he apologizes months later when his own baby daughter is born, and tells Dad that he finally understands what it means to put one's family first. - Character: Willow. Description: Willow is a family friend of the Halls who is married to Henry, and together they have a baby daughter. Willow is a nurse at a hospital in the Oregon town where she and the Halls live. Willow takes care of Teddy until he passes away. Willow becomes an advocate for Adam and Kim in the Portland hospital where Mia is airlifted for treatment after the accident. She speaks with the head nurse to make sure that they are able to visit Mia, despite the fact that they are not technically family members. Like Mom, Willow is fiercely protective of her family, and she transfers this affection to Mia when Mia's own family is gone. - Character: Mrs. Schein. Description: Mrs. Schein is Kim's mother. Though well-intentioned, she is often overbearing, and imposes strict restrictions on what Kim can wear and do. She initially doesn't let Kim visit Mia's house, due to the fact that the two girls physically fought, but she is eventually won over by the kindness of Mia's family. Mrs. Schein is inconsolable and distraught when she learns of the car accident. - Character: Professor Christie. Description: Professor Christie is Mia's cello teacher. She is a professor of music at a local college, and a friend of Mia's Dad. Though she is skeptical of young Mia's abilities at first, after listening to her practice the cello, she agrees to take over her studies and find her other students to play with. Professor Christie encourages and coaches Mia to apply to Juilliard, and believes she has a real chance to become a professional musician. - Character: Brooke Vega. Description: Brooke Vega is the lead singer of a locally famous band called Bikini, which Shooting Star was planning to open for on the day of the accident. At Adam's request, Brooke and her band come to the hospital to stage an impromptu show as a form of distraction while Adam and Kim attempt to get into Mia's hospital room to see her. Though the distraction doesn't work too well, it is a testament to how much Adam and his band care about Mia that they were able to convince a rock star to risk getting arrested on her behalf. - Character: Mr. Dunlap. Description: The man who was driving the car that hit Mia's family's car. Mr. Dunlap survived the accident – which truly was an accident as he swerved because of snow on the road – but Mia shows her empathy by compassionately wondering what it is like for Mr. Dunlap to have been the cause of an accident that took the lives of a family. - Character: Great Aunt Glo. Description: Mia's great aunt, and the sister of Gran. Great Aunt Glo died some years before the accident, and requested that her ashes be scattered in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. While Mia is in a coma, Gran goes on a walk and sees a crossbill, a rare bird in that part of Oregon. Gran believes that the bird is a reincarnation of Glo that has returned to show support for Mia. - Theme: Sacrifice and Choice. Description: If I Stay is a novel that explores the kinds of sacrifices that inevitably accompany choices. As a teenager, Mia is at the crossroads of many major life decisions. For example, as a talented cellist, Mia has to decide whether to pursue her study of the instrument at Juilliard in New York City, or whether she will remain with her boyfriend, Adam, in the Pacific Northwest. Other characters have important choices to make as well, like Mia's Dad, who quits the band he has been part of for years in order to pursue a degree in teaching and better provide for his growing family. The consequence of this decision is that his friend Harry, whom he has played with in the band for years, becomes very angry at what he perceives to be disloyalty. However, Harry comes to understand Mia's father's decision when he himself becomes a father. The novel thus suggests that as we grow and take on more responsibilities, it becomes necessary to make choices not just for ourselves, but also for the welfare of the people around us. Of course, in the wake of a car accident that kills her parents and brother and puts Mia in a coma, the major decision facing Mia is whether she will remain in the land of the living—with her grandparents Gran and Gramps, her best friend Kim, her boyfriend Adam, and her future with classical cello—or if she will move on to death to join her Mom, Dad, and brother Teddy. If Mia continues to live, she will get to live out the hopes and dreams her parents had for her, but will have to cope with the pain of her loss. If she goes on to die, losing Mia and her entire immediate family will further devastate those close to her. This central, fundamental choice that Mia must make gives the novel much of its drama. Yet with all of the different sorts of choices faced by so many different characters in the novel, the profound choice Mia faces here also serves as a metaphor for the fact that in life, one will always have to make decisions that result in difficult consequences, and those choices inevitably result in also making sacrifices. While two choices in life may seem equally appealing, pursuing both options is often impossible, and there are consequences involved in what is lost—and gained—when choosing one path over another. It is therefore a part of life and growing up that we must cope with the consequences of the decisions we make, and the sacrifice of what we choose to leave behind. - Theme: Music and Harmony. Description: The characters in If I Stay are connected by a deep love and respect for music. While a profound emotional response to music brings characters together, differences in taste and lifestyle also push them apart. Respecting the musical choices and tastes of characters in the novel therefore becomes a metaphor for accepting others for who they are, and also for accepting one's own unique talents and tastes. This idea manifests in a motif of harmony in the novel, which comes to represent the blending of not just different notes and genres of music, but also the perfect mixing of different personality types and tastes.Mia's Mom and Dad, as well as her boyfriend Adam, are all lovers of rock music—as the novel is set in the punk and alternative scenes of the Pacific Northwest. Rock music is what brought together Mia's parents, and it is what Adam loves and hopes to pursue as a career. However, Mia is a lover of classical music, a genre which is often associated with people who are quieter and more traditional, and she often feels out of place among her parents and Adam, who bond over their mutual interests and styles, to the extent that Mia often wonders if she is adopted. Yet Mia makes a concerted effort to understand the music her parents and Adam love, and her loved ones, in turn, attempt to understand her love of the cello and classical music. These efforts to reconcile and connect come to a climax when she plays the cello along with her Dad and Adam, who play the guitar. Together the three of them create a new kind of harmony, one of both people and music: classical music blends with rock, as do the personalities of people who prefer one genre to the other. Mia is an exceptionally talented cellist, and hopes to study it at Juilliard in New York City. She is drawn to the cello because she finds it "humanlike" when she first sees one in school as a child. Her love of the cello is also symbolic of her profound appreciation for the small but close circle of people in her life. While some musicians play multiple instruments, she is drawn to and focuses all her energy on just one—just as she is very close to her immediate family, and socializes almost exclusively with Kim and Adam. Conversely, the people in her life who love rock music tend to have multiple pursuits within music, such as writing songs as well as playing them on the guitar, and they participate in a band rather than playing solo. By attempting to understand the appeal of rock music and playing in a band (an orchestra or quartet, in the case of the cello), Mia begins to open herself up, emotionally and musically. The cello is a symbol of the "family" Mia will have to return to if she decides to stay. The cello is what will bring her to New York to study at Juilliard, but it is also what will continue to separate her from Adam. Ultimately, as Mia faces her choice of whether to follow her parents into death or stay behind and live, it is Adam playing cello music for Mia that prompts her to decide to stay. This is a metaphor for the deep understanding in the musical tastes of the other that bonds the two teenagers and is the basis for their love. When Adam and the cello are finally combined, Mia is reminded of what she will lose if she dies, and she is convinced to remain and cope with the loss of her parents. - Theme: Love, Family, and Relationships. Description: The importance of love and family is a driving force in If I Stay, as many of the choices and sacrifices made within the novel are done for the sake of loved ones. However, love can also complicate these decisions, and can sometimes be the very thing that must be sacrificed. Thus, characters in the novel must balance making decisions for the sake of love, while also understanding and learning when they must let love go. They subsequently learn how to cope with the loss of someone or something they love. If Mia chooses to stay, she will live on with Adam, Kim, Gran and Gramps, as well as her musical future. However, she will also have to cope with the loss of Mom, Dad, and Teddy for the rest of her life. Similarly, if she pursues the cello at Juilliard, she will be separated from Adam by distance, which will possibly cause the end of their relationship. In choosing to continue her own life, Mia makes the sacrifice of losing her parents and also sacrifices the peace that would come with her death. She must gain the strength to make one decision and cope with the other difficult choices that inevitably arise as a repercussion. These reverberating decisions, she realizes, are one of the complexities of life.Mia's grandfather, Gramps, her father's father, whispers to a comatose Mia that while he wants her to live, he will accept and understand if she wants to give up fighting. Gramps is the only character who expresses this kind of understanding to Mia (Adam, Kim, and other loved ones want her to keep fighting). While Adam and Kim want their friend to stay alive, Gramps acknowledges that living in a world without her family would be very painful for Mia. Mia, in her coma, wishes that he could be a kind of "death proxy," and make the decision for her. Yet, of course, Mia is the only person that can make this choice for herself, signifying the fact that as one grows up and gains more responsibility, parents and grandparents can no longer make all the tough decisions on behalf of their children. A strong bond of love and understanding, however, means family members and loved ones will support each other on whatever path they choose. In Mia's flashbacks, we see that Mia is distraught when she realizes that her best friend Kim and boyfriend Adam do not become fast friends when Adam and Mia begin dating. However, Kim and Adam are unperturbed by the fact that they do not immediately bond over their mutual love of Mia. The non-relationship between Kim and Adam is symbolic of the discrete parts of life that don't always have to connect to still make a person whole. These separate parts of her life do come together when Mia's loved ones attempt to convince her to stay, however—Adam and Kim bond as they cope with Mia's coma. It is then that Mia realizes how the separate parts of her life, regardless of their lack of intersection, make her life whole. A family, the novel suggests, like a rock band or classical orchestra, functions best when each distinct part serves to support the group, while remaining true to its individuality. It is harmony, not homogeneity, that creates the perfect blend. Thus, If I Stay argues that a fulfilling life is inherently composed of complex relationships and the different kinds of love they require. - Theme: Life and Death. Description: At its core, If I Stay is predicated on one decision: whether, after the car accident that kills her parents and brother and puts her in a coma, Mia decides to stay alive, or whether she decides to die. She is able to make this decision while in an out-of-body experience, in which she can see everything that is happening around her regarding her care in the hospital, but cannot interact with anyone or anything. It is in this state that she reflects on her past life experiences, and how they have influenced her as a person and brought her to this moment.Mia vacillates between wanting to stay behind, and wanting to move on into death along with her Mom, Dad, and brother Teddy. Leaving the world of the living would mean that she would be with her parents, and would not have to live with the grief of their deaths. It would also mean that she would not have to face the inevitable tough decisions of life, such as whether or not to pursue cello in New York City, away from her boyfriend Adam. However, if she stays alive, she will be able to continue to cherish the memories she shared with her family, and these experiences will forever shape her future. Ultimately, Mia makes the decision to stay behind, and to come to terms with the sacrifices and rewards of continuing to live and be the sole survivor of the car crash. Mia's choice is a metaphor for the fact that making difficult decisions is a part of life and a part of having agency over one's own life. Conversely, part of taking agency and making these tough decisions is understanding when it is time to make the choice to let something go. While Mia is tragically forced to make a life-or-death decision at a younger age than most, her choice is a response to the universal question everyone must face at some point: how to experience the joys in life, while coping with the sorrows that inevitably accompany them, and how to carry the memories of what has been lost along the way while continuing to move forward. - Climax: Adam plays Yo-Yo Ma for Mia, and Mia decides to live. - Summary: Seventeen-year-old Mia Hall lives in a small town in Oregon with her Mom (Kat), Dad (Denny), and eight-year-old brother, Teddy. On one snowy morning, school is cancelled, leaving Mia and Teddy, as well as their father, an English teacher, with the day off. Mia's Mom decides to take the day off from her job at a travel agency in order to spend the day with the rest of her family. They eat breakfast, and Mia's Mom jokes that she's surprised Mia isn't spending the day practicing the cello. Mia is a talented cellist, and has recently auditioned for The Juilliard School in New York City, where she hopes to study the following year, after she graduates from high school. Everyone piles into the family car, and they start to drive. They plan to visit Willow and Henry, family friends who have a baby daughter, and to have dinner with Dad's parents, Gran and Gramps, who live nearby. Mia falls asleep while her parents drive, and suddenly wakes up to find the car "eviscerated." The car has been totaled by a pickup truck, due to the snow on the roads, which is unusual for their part of Oregon. Mia finds her mother and father dead from the accident, and sees her own body, unconscious, still in the vehicle. She realizes she is having a kind of out-of-body experience: she cannot feel any pain, and appears to be able to move around as she pleases, though no one can see her. An ambulance soon arrives. Mia's parents are declared dead on arrival, and she is taken to a nearby hospital, where she is then airlifted to a hospital in Portland. In Portland, Mia undergoes an operation to treat her extensive injuries. After the surgery, she is brought to the intensive care unit, where her body is stable, though in a coma. Though her grandparents are allowed to visit her, the head nurse does not allow Adam, her boyfriend, and Kim, her best friend, to visit because they are not relatives. Adam, who is a guitarist in a popular local rock band called Shooting Star, concocts a scheme to have Brooke Vega, the lead singer of an even more famous local band called Bikini, play an impromptu concert in the hospital to distract the nurses while Adam and Kim sneak into the ICU to see Mia. While the scheme doesn't work, the family's friend Willow, who is a nurse at another hospital, is able to use her connections to let Adam and Kim in to see Mia. As Mia cannot speak to anyone to ask about Teddy, she had assumed that Willow had previously been busy taking care of Teddy back in their local hospital. When she sees Willow in Portland, however, she deduces that Teddy is no longer alive. This realization causes Mia's physical body to go into cardiac arrest, and she is rushed into surgery again to fix a perforation in her abdomen. Mia is brought back into the ICU after surgery, stable though still in a coma. Nurse Ramirez, a young nurse in the hospital, tells Mia's grandparents that Mia is "running the show," meaning that it is up to her whether or not she will emerge from the coma. Mia realizes that her emotions and decisions in her out-of-body experience directly connect to her physical body, and that it is up to her to decide whether she will live or die. If she chooses to live, she will have to cope with the grief of the loss of her parents, while if she decides to die and join her immediate family in death, she will forfeit her entire future with the cello, as well as her love of Gran, Gramps, Kim, and Adam. Mia weighs the pros and cons of living and dying through a series of flashbacks, in which she recalls memorable moments with her family, such as Teddy's birth, for which she was present, and the trajectory of her relationship with Adam. Though Mia and Adam love each other, they had recently experienced tension in their relationship: Adam, who is one year older than Mia, is still living in their Oregon town because his band, Shooting Star, has quickly been gaining popularity and he has the potential to succeed as a musician. Should Mia be accepted to Juilliard, and Adam choose to remain in Oregon, an entire country will separate them. Mia is unsure if their relationship will survive the distance. Mia makes it through the night. Exhausted, she feels as if she is ready to go to sleep, which will likely lead to her death. Adam comes to see Mia, puts headphones on her ears, and plays her the cello music of Yo-Yo Ma. The music brings up emotions and memories for Mia, both from the past and the future. She summons the strength to decide to stay, and squeezes Adam's hand, indicating that she has woken up from her coma, and has decided to live.

- Genre: Novel - Title: If on a winter’s night a traveler - Point of view: Various - Setting: Europe and the fictional countries of Ataguitania and Ircania - Character: The Narrator. Description: - Character: You (The Reader). Description: - Character: Ludmilla (The Other Reader). Description: - Character: Lotaria. Description: - Character: Ermes Marana. Description: - Character: Silas Flannery. Description: - Character: Uzzi Tuzii. Description: - Character: Irnerio. Description: - Character: Italo Calvino. Description: - Character: Mr. Cavedagna. Description: - Character: Corinna. Description: - Character: Madam Miyagi. Description: - Character: The Woman Who Sells Suitcases. Description: - Character: Ponko. Description: - Character: Mr. Okeda. Description: - Character: Mr. Kauderer the Farmer. Description: - Character: Bookseller. Description: - Character: Chief Gorin. Description: - Character: Mr. Kauderer the Meteorologist. Description: - Character: Miss Zwida. Description: - Character: Franziska. Description: - Character: Faustino Higueras. Description: - Character: Valerian. Description: - Character: Arkadian Porphyrich. Description: - Character: Jan. Description: - Theme: The Act of Reading. Description: - Theme: Academia and Publishing. Description: - Theme: Censorship and Government Oppression. Description: - Theme: Love, Lust, and Anxiety. Description: - Climax: The Reader decides to marry Ludmilla. - Summary: The narrator informs you, the Reader, that you're about to read If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino, so you should get ready and find a comfortable position. He warns you that Calvino has a reputation for changing his style from book to book, but he reassures you that you should still be able to understand and perhaps even enjoy his new book. You begin to read If on a winter's night a traveler, which involves a mysterious narrator with a suitcase. The narrator seems to be a spy or a criminal, since he is at a remote train station trying to secretly swap his suitcase with someone else's and is afraid of being caught. But just as you're at a suspenseful moment in the story, it cuts off due to a printing error, and so you go find the bookseller to see what the problem is. While at the bookstore to return your book, you meet an attractive young woman named Ludmilla, the Other Reader, who also has a defective copy of the book. The bookseller offers you a Polish novel that he claims will continue the story you're in the middle of reading. You decide to swap phone numbers will Ludmilla in case either of you has any more problems with the book. As it turns out, the next story you read, Outside the town of Malbork, doesn't have anything to do with the first one. It involves a young narrator who is apprehensive about leaving the farming family he lives with because Ponko, the son of a nearby family, has to leave home to save himself from a blood feud his family has with a rival family. This story also ends abruptly. Frustrated again, you call Ludmilla to see if she's having a similar experience. Instead, Ludmilla's sister Lotaria answers the phone. You're disappointed, but then Ludmilla finally answers the phone herself. You and Ludmilla go to a university to find Professor Uzzi Tuzii and hopefully hear the rest of the story. Uzzi Tuzii begins telling a story translated from the dead language of Cimmerian that's called Leaning from the steep slope. It contains the diary entries of a narrator who, due to his fascination with the beautiful and mysterious Miss Zwida, seems to accidentally get himself involved in a scheme to break someone out of prison. Eventually, Professor Uzzi Tuzii gets so distracted with explaining the story that you can no longer follow what's happening. Still at the university, you and Ludmilla go to a seminar on feminism where Lotaria is studying with Professor Galligani, a rival of Uzzi Tuzii's. Lotaria reads you a new story called Without fear of wind or vertigo. It involves a narrator in a city that is preparing to be attacked during a period of revolution. At the very end of the story, the narrator realizes that his good friend, Valerian, is secretly holding a death warrant with the narrator's name on it. At that point, Lotaria stops the story and says everyone in the class should have enough to discuss for the next month. You decide to go straight to the publishing house to see learn more about the issue, and there you meet Mr. Cavedagna, a small man who seems to be the person the company sends out to fix problems. From him, you learn about the mysterious translator Ermes Marana who deliberately makes counterfeit translations of books that don't resemble the originals at all. Mr. Cavedagna gives you some photocopied pages of a story called Looks down in the gathering shadow to read. You start it and see that it is a story about a narrator who is trying to dispose of the body of a man named Jojo, only to be seemingly betrayed by his accomplice Bernadette at the last minute. You run out of pages in that book, so you go to a café to meet Ludmilla. She's late, so you start on a new book you picked up at the publisher called In a network of lines that enlace. It involves a narrator who seems to hear ringing telephones whenever he's out running. One day, he answers a strange telephone and becomes involved in the kidnapping plot of his student Marjorie. Eventually, you can't read any more because you've become impatient waiting for Ludmilla. She calls you and invites you to her house, but when you arrive, she doesn't seem to be there. You explore the house and learn more about Ludmilla. Eventually she returns, and you talk more about reading. When you leave her again, you take a copy of the book that you think is identical to the one you were just reading, but in fact the title is subtly different: In a network of lines that intersect. This story involves a rich, paranoid narrator who collects kaleidoscopes and fakes his own kidnappings for his protection, only to end up accidentally trapped in a room full of mirrors. Later, the pulp novelist Silas Flannery records some thoughts in his diary in which you, the Reader, appear as a minor figure. People believe that aliens are communicating with him to guide his next novel, but Flannery himself remains skeptical, even though he has been experiencing strange memory-loss issues recently. Flannery seems to have an almost supernatural power to control the world he lives in, so he sends the Reader away to go read a book called On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon in order to give Flannery himself a chance to see Ludmilla alone. The new book involves a young man in Japan who is interested in a young woman named Makiko but who ends up getting caught having sex with Makiko's mother, Madam Miyagi. The focus shifts back to you, the Reader. Before you can read any more of the Japanese story, you land in the country of Ataguitania (in search of Marana), and the authorities confiscate the book because it's banned. You soon meet a woman named Corinna, who reminds you a lot of Lotaria and who claims to have a copy of the book that she can lend you. You get thrown in prison. Corinna seems to be an authority figure there, and she tries to reassure you. Corinna confuses you, since she goes by many other names and seems to have so many jobs, but she also intrigues you, and at one point, the two of you begin having sex. When the two of you are interrupted, you start doing what you were originally supposed to do: reading a story on the computer for a prison experiment. The story is called Around an empty grave, and it involves a narrator named Nacho's quest to find his real mother after the death of his father, the well-known womanizer Don Anastasio Zamora. Eventually, you have to stop reading because the Ataguitanian police are sending you to do a secret mission in the rival country of Ircania. You learn that despite having very different politics, Ircania also believes in censorship. You try to prevent the confiscation of a book by an author called Anatoly Anatolin, but when you arrange a meeting with Anatolin, he only manages to sneak you a few pages before cops rush out and arrest him. Anatolin's book is called What story down there awaits its end? and is about a narrator who seemingly has the power to make parts of the world disappear. You stop in the middle to try to put in requests at a library for all the previous books you haven't finished, but your efforts are unsuccessful. You and seven other readers talk about reading, and one of them happens to mention that ancient stories only end in two ways: with the death of a hero and heroine or with their marriage. Hearing this, you immediately decide to marry Ludmilla. Later, while married, the two of you lie in bed as you begin to finish reading If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino.

- Genre: Short story, Modernist fiction, WWI fiction - Title: In Another Country - Point of view: First person limited - Setting: Milan, Italy - Character: The Narrator. Description: An American soldier injured in World War I, the unnamed narrator—widely accepted to be Hemingway's autobiographical alter ego Nick Adams—is undergoing treatment at a hospital in Milan. Before the war he used to play football, but no longer can due to his leg injury. He spends every afternoon at the hospital in the machines that are meant to heal him and the other officers seeking treatment, although he doubts their effectiveness. While at the hospital he also learns Italian grammar from the major, but worries about sounding foolish when he cannot get it right. Though largely isolated from the foreign environment surrounding him, the narrator does manage to befriend four other military officers his own age who are also seeking treatment at the hospital. The narrator has earned a medal for his contribution to the war, though the other boys have earned their medals for more daring acts, causing him to feel insecure about his own courage. Though they drift apart, the narrator remains friends with the boy with no nose who was injured only an hour into his first battle, as he feels more comfortable with someone else who has also not proven their bravery. - Character: The Major. Description: Previously the greatest fencer in Italy, the major's hand has shrunk down to the size of a baby's following a wartime injury. He receives treatment from the machines next to the narrator. Though the major humors the doctor's optimism about his chances for recovery, he confesses to the narrator that he has no confidence in the machines' ability to heal him. He also tells the narrator he does not believe in bravery and teaches him Italian grammar so that he can communicate more naturally. Later, after his young wife dies suddenly of pneumonia, the major angrily tells the narrator not to marry, and that men should never put themselves in a position to lose anything. Afterward, he apologizes for his rudeness and bears his tears with "soldierly" dignity. He spends his subsequent treatment sessions staring out of the window. - Character: The Doctor. Description: The doctor oversees the officers' treatment in the machines at the hospital. The doctor is always optimistic about the machines' ability to heal the soldiers' physical wounds. He brings in photographs of the machines' alleged previous successes, although the narrator notes he always thought he and his comrades were meant to be the first test subjects. Later, it is the doctor who tells the narrator the details about the death of the major's wife. After her death, the doctor frames the photographs next to the major's machine, but the major doesn't look at them at all. The doctor's optimism borders on naivete, and suggests the medical community is not adequately prepared to deal with soldiers' psychological trauma. - Character: The Boy With No Nose. Description: An officer the same age as the narrator, he was injured in his first hour in battle after joining the military fresh from the academy. He came from an "old"—meaning from a wealthy, high-class—family, and the hospital could never recreate the noble nose of his forbears. Later, he moves to South America, likely because of the shame of losing his inherited features. He and the narrator remain good friends, the narrator says, because neither of them had proved their bravery on the battlefield, and as such feel comfortable together. - Character: The Boy With Three Medals. Description: The narrator describes him as a tall boy from Milan with a "very pale face" who had been awarded three medals. He had served as a lieutenant in the Arditi, an elite force in the Italian army during World War I, but planned to be a lawyer. The narrator says he has become a "little detached" as he "had lived a very long time with death." - Theme: Isolation. Description: As a wounded American officer receiving medical treatment in Italy during World War I, the unnamed narrator of "In Another Country" is an outsider in terms of his nationality, class, and wartime experience. Despite developing a certain kinship with other wounded Italian soldiers receiving treatment in the same hospital, the narrator—widely accepted to be Hemingway's autobiographical alter ego Nick Adams—remains deeply isolated from the people and world surrounding him. Hemingway explores the nature of belonging throughout the story, ultimately suggesting that people shun that which they do not understand, and that meaningful connection requires, above all, empathy. Various details indicate and reinforce the narrator's status as an outsider in a foreign land. Most obviously, as the story's title declares, the narrator is an American in another country. Though the narrator bonds with some Italian officers at the hospital over their shared wartime experiences, his nationality remains a barrier to more genuine friendship. The other men specifically believe that he has received special treatment and commendations solely by virtue of being from the U.S.: after learning of his foreign origins the other soldiers' "manner changed" toward him, the narrator notes, adding, "I was never really one of them." What's more, the narrator struggles to master Italian grammar, making communication—and, it follows, connection—in this environment all the more difficult. When referring to an Italian major recuperating in the same hospital, for instance, the narrator notes, "I was afraid to talk to him until I had the grammar straight in my mind." He worries about meeting the major on his level and cannot be comfortable until he can perform adequately. Although, perhaps irredeemably, a foreigner in others' eyes, the narrator still finds some semblance of connection with the other officers on the basis of their similar social status and experiences during the war. The other patients the narrator befriends are also officers, and they are drawn together by this distinction as a defensive reflex: the narrator notes, "We walked the short way through the communist quarter because we were four together. The people hated us because we were officers." Italian communists—who in these streets would be largely working class—were anti-war during WWI, marking the passing military officers as enemies because of their different social status and values. The four officers, although different themselves in terms of nationality and military distinction (one has three medals, for example), thus find themselves belonging together as friends "against the outsiders." The officers "were all a little detached" from everyday life following their encounters with death, the narrator further explains. Their friendship centers on their daily visits to the hospital, where the officers' experiences have isolated them from the majority of society that has not seen such suffering. They thus seek comfort in the company of those who know their struggle first-hand. Again, despite their efforts to return to normal daily life, those who cannot share or understand their viewpoint ostracize them. Through the officers' shared isolation from civilian society, Hemingway shows it is really understanding that determines belonging. Indeed, the men feel "held together by there being something that had happened that they, the people who disliked [the officers], did not understand." The public's lack of understanding drives animosity and division, furthering the officers' detachment from the rest of society. Hemingway suggests, by highlighting its absence, that empathy could help heal the officers' emotional suffering. Instead they are isolated due to others' ignorance, as the author condemns humanity's propensity to shun, rather than embrace, the unknown. Of course, this pattern also manifests among the officers themselves. The narrator prefers to spend his time with the boy with no nose, who was injured an hour after joining the war, because neither of them have proven their courage in battle as the other officers have: "But I stayed good friends with the boy," the narrator says, because he "could never be accepted either." The officers themselves drift apart, with those who earned medals for acts of bravery on one side, and those who didn't on the other. Even among those who draw together in defense against the public's lack of empathy, then, find themselves divided, underlining how instinctively people separate themselves from the unfamiliar. In exploring and contrasting the characters' interwoven layers of belonging and isolation, Hemingway ultimately highlights that understanding allows people to bond, while ignorance divides. In exposing this tendency to shun the unknown, Hemingway further advocates greater empathy for veterans' suffering and detachment from society. They have become outsiders on their own streets, and that is a hurt the hospital's machines working to treat their physical injuries cannot heal. - Theme: Loss, War, and Trauma. Description: Set on the side-lines of World War I, many of the characters in "In Another Country" are recovering from both physical and mental injuries sustained amid the horrors of the battlefield. But while undergoing a sort of physical therapy treatment in Milan, the narrator discovers that emotional trauma, too, persists long after the fighting has ended, and that loss is an inevitability not experienced solely within the arena of warfare. The sudden death of the Italian major's wife, in particular, proves perhaps more psychologically unsettling than battle itself—a fact that imbues everyday life at once with a sense of dreadful unpredictability and immense value. The irony, of course, is that the soldiers have ostensibly fought to protect civilian life, yet it here proves something distinctly out of their control. By presenting the trauma of war alongside more mundane—yet acute—civilian pain, Hemingway underscores the universality of loss and the inherent, unavoidable fragility of life itself. The officers in the hospital in Milan are treated on a daily basis for various physical injuries from the war, and their wounds are a visible reflection of the scars that battle has left on their lives. The narrator loses the use of his knee, the major's hand has shrunken to the size of a baby's, and there is a boy with no nose. They are each left with wounds that impair their physical abilities and leave them marked men, whose scars bear permanent witness to the horrors of war. Each of the patients' bodily losses further reflects their lost hopes, callings, and/or social status. The narrator, for example, is a former football player. The major had been "the greatest fencer in Italy" before the war but can no longer even wield a sword. The boy who lost his nose "came from a very old family," and the fact that the doctors "never get [his reconstructed] nose exactly right" suggests an irreparable break in that esteemed lineage; the shame the boy feels at no longer fitting in among the higher classes, Hemingway implies, later drives him to live in South America. The war has thus taken away many identity-defining characteristics from the soldiers, leaving a lasting impact beyond mere physical inconveniences. While visible injuries change the course of the officers' lives, their emotional suffering causes them to lose sight of who they once were altogether. The narrator describes an elite officer who had been awarded three medals: "He had lived a very long time with death and was a little detached. We were all a little detached and there was nothing that held us together except that we met every afternoon at the hospital." After their time in battle, it seems, the officers find themselves unable to slip back into their previous lives; they have lost their sense of how to interact on a day-to-day level after the horrors they have witnessed have so thoroughly detached—or distanced—them from everyday life. Their new daily routine offers them a semblance of normality that keeps them going, but their treatment schedule does nothing for their psychological suffering and they remain disconnected from society. Toward the end of the story, the Italian major's young wife dies from pneumonia. Previously, the major had been shown to take his physical impairment with good grace, teaching the narrator Italian grammar during sessions and humoring the doctor's optimism. However, dealing with the loss of a loved one leaves him changed in a way that losses experienced during the war apparently hadn't. He warns the narrator angrily never to marry, as a man "should not place himself in a position to lose," and he spends his subsequent treatment sessions staring out the window. With no resolution offered, Hemingway leaves the major alone in the (probably useless) machine, engaging with nothing at the end of the story. The major's impossible instruction to the narrator—to never to place himself in a position to lose anything—further presents loss inevitable both on the battlefield and in everyday life. The question is not whether something will be lost, then, but whether it is worth opening oneself to greater suffering by embracing temporary connection in the first place. The major asserts that if something can be lost, then it will be lost: "'He'll lose it,' he almost shouted. 'Don't argue with me!'" While portrayed as melodramatic and overly pessimistic because of his grief, the major's words hold weight. War and the sheer unpredictability of life can bring all things to an end, and that is a risk that everyone—soldier or not—faces. It is impossible to insulate oneself from loss, however, which is something Hemingway ultimately presents as a universal fact of life. Yet read optimistically, the major's powerful response to his wife's death can be taken as an implicit admission of the incredible value of loving human relationships—which are, in many ways, what the soldiers sacrificed so much to protect in the first place. - Theme: Courage. Description: "In Another Country" takes place on the fringes of World War I, during which some of the characters earned medals for bravery. The narrator feels insecure about his own courage, however, as it has largely been untested; his medals were awarded for being wounded and "an American," and he is not accepted by those who earned theirs for more daring feats. Though he draws a line between those he sees as bold "hunting-hawks" and those, like himself, who are more timid and afraid of death, Hemingway shows that this rigid conception of bravery is both misguided and damaging. Instead, the story presents courage as something exemplified not just by feats of daring, but by the continued decision to hold fast to hope in the face of suffering. The narrator sees bravery as an innate characteristic that comes naturally to certain people, and this simple, black-and-white approach pushes him to cast all men as either courageous or cowardly. The narrator specifically describes the three other officers who received medals as "like hunting-hawks," and this use of natural imagery suggests their bravery is instinctive and something that separates them as a higher breed of man. The narrator then asserts he could never be as brave as these "hawks": "I knew that I would never have done such things, and I was very much afraid to die." He sees his fear as a defining characteristic, which he places in opposition to the other officers' natural courage. He knows he is not naturally a hawk and thinks the other officers gradually shun him because they see this weakness. Such a rigid conception of bravery, then, only serves to create insecurity on the one hand and superiority on the other. What's more, this reductive idea of courage creates an impassable boundary between bravery and cowardice; one can never try or learn to be brave if bravery is something one either is born with or not. Hemingway presents an opposing viewpoint through the Italian major that receives treatment alongside the narrator, challenging the medal winners' perspective. The major in fact does "not believe in bravery," despite his high rank in the military and his successful career as "the greatest fencer in Italy." Fittingly, the major's main act of bravery in the story is decidedly quiet. After telling the narrator his young wife has just died, "carrying himself straight and soldierly, with tears on both his cheeks and biting his lips, he walked past the machines and out the door." He makes a choice to continue with dignity in the face of terrible loss. The major's courageous response to his devastating news may not be rewarded by a medal of valor, but it is an example of genuine bravery—that is, enduring in the face of great suffering. Indeed, this has been the major's general approach to his post-war life. He doubts the machines' ability to heal his hand, calling the whole endeavor "nonsense," yet still diligently attends his daily therapy. After his wife's death, he still decides to continue with the potentially pointless therapy, although he admittedly seems to have even less hope than before. Through this, Hemingway suggests the major's grit and persistent determination in the face of near-certain failure as an act of courage as laudable as any on the battlefield. Considering this new, broader idea of bravery prompts a reassessment of the narrator's viewpoint. For one thing, the "hunting-hawks" are hardly impervious to pain and fear. The narrator notes, "We were all a little detached," because of their familiarity with death. The other soldiers' thus still bear emotional scars despite their bravery, and their continued anguish—much like the major's—again demonstrates that courage is not a one-time occurrence. Instead, their persistent struggle against their suffering, physical and psychological, is a choice, rather than an innate instinctual reaction, and that is what reveals their true courage. Speaking of his fellow soldiers, the narrator further notes, "there was nothing that held us together except that we met every afternoon at the hospital." This reveals that, again like the major, the officers continue to attend their physical therapy sessions—effectively choosing hope over giving in to despair or resignation, despite the fact none of them believe in the therapy machines' ability to heal them. Hemingway shows their long road to recovery as a battle in itself, one that requires relentless bravery, a type that anyone can achieve if they set their mind to it. Through the officers, Hemingway also shows the value of community in helping the men stay on that path to recovery. They draw courage from one another, finding support through their shared understanding and experience. This fact makes any divisive concept of bravery seem all the more counterproductive. Hemingway thus challenges the black-and-white notion of courage as a natural instinct, a latent virtue waiting to be proven. Instead, he shows bravery is a constant choice made in the face of hardship—a choice that is open to anyone. - Climax: The Italian major tells the narrator about his wife's death - Summary: It is a cold and windy fall in Milan, Italy. Though he is not fighting anymore, the narrator notes that World War I is always in the background. Every afternoon the narrator goes to a hospital where he and the other patients sit in machines designed to heal their war-related injuries. The narrator has hurt his knee and his machine tries to get his leg to bend again. Next to him, the major receives treatment for his withered hand. The major listens politely to the doctor as he shows him photographs of successful previous cases, but does not hide his skepticism. There are three other "boys" the narrator's age who also receive treatment every day at the hospital. Except for the American narrator, all are from Milan, and the four of them stick together as they walk through to communist quarter to the Café Cova. The people in the communist quarter shout anti-military slogans at the officers as they pass by. Sometimes the boy with no nose joins the group as they walk; he wears a handkerchief across his face, and had been injured only an hour into his first battle. The four officers, not including the boy with no nose, have all received medals for their contributions to the war. The boy with three medals had been an elite lieutenant and is distant because of his experiences with death. In fact, all of the officers are "a little detached," and the only thing anchoring them to daily life is their routine at the hospital. They feel like bonded together because other people don't understand what they've been through. The other officers ask the narrator about his medals, but seeing his papers, they realize he was basically awarded for being an American. The others had performed dangerous, daring feats to earn their medals, and as such no longer really consider the narrator one of them, though he is still "a friend against the outsiders." Sometimes, the narrator imagines achieving the same heights of valor as the other officers. But walking back alone through the cold streets, he thinks he could never be a "hunting hawk" like them. He is too afraid of death, often lying awake at night terrified of returning to the front. He remains friends with the boy with no nose, however, because he had had no chance to prove himself either; they feel comfortable together, neither of them hawks. The major comes to the hospital everyday even though he does not believe in the machines' ability to heal him, calling it all "nonsense." He teaches the narrator Italian grammar. One day, he asks the narrator what he will do when he returns home. When he says he plans to marry, the major responds angrily, telling the narrator men shouldn't marry as they should not put themselves into a position where they could face loss. Not meeting the narrator's eye, he asserts that if something can be lost then it will be lost, and storms out to another therapy room. Later, he returns to apologize for his rudeness, and explains his wife has just died. Crying yet still refusing to meet anyone's eye, the major walks out of the room, remaining tall and dignified as he does so. The doctor informs the narrator the major's young wife died unexpectedly from pneumonia. At their next session, the doctor has put up more photographs illustrating the machines' successes. The narrator notes this is odd, as he always thought they were the first batch of soldiers to trial them. It doesn't matter to the major anyway, as he simply stares out the window.

- Genre: Novel/True Crime - Title: In Cold Blood - Point of view: Third person omniscient - Setting: Holcomb, Kansas - Character: Perry Edward Smith. Description: Son of John "Tex" Smith and Julia "Flo" Buckskin. Murdered the Clutter family with the aid of Dick Hickok. A sensitive, artistic type who entertains fantastic dreams of treasure hunting and working as an entertainer in a night club, Perry is seemingly driven to a life of crime by his traumatic childhood. He is handsome and "actorish," but a motorcycle accident has disfigured the lower half of his body. He is in chronic pain due to the accident and is addicted to aspirin. He may be a paranoid schizophrenic. He is half-Cherokee. - Character: Richard Eugene "Dick" Hickok. Description: Son of Mr. and Mrs. Hickok. Murdered the Clutter family with the aid of Perry Smith. The son of modest farmers, Dick was a high school sports star who couldn't afford to go to college; his unrealized dreams may have turned him to a life of crime. Dick has been married twice and has three sons from his first marriage. His pedophilic tendencies lead him to prey on pubescent girls. An automobile accident has disfigured his face and has left him prone to fainting spells and headaches. - Character: Herb Clutter. Description: Proprietor of River Valley Farm, husband to Bonnie Clutter, and father of Eveanna Jarchow, Beverly English, Nancy Clutter, and Kenyon Clutter. Murdered by Perry Smith and Dick Hickok. Herb is a devout Methodist, a hard worker, and a valued citizen of Holcomb, Kansas. A university-educated man, he pulled himself up by the bootstraps to become a prosperous farmer and rancher. By all appearances normal, Herb seems to harbor some secret unhappiness. His marriage is by all accounts troubled. - Character: Bonnie Clutter. Description: Wife of Herb Clutter, mother of Eveanna Jarchow, Beverly English, Nancy Clutter, and Kenyon Clutter. Murdered by Perry Smith and Dick Hickok. Bonnie is a "nervous" woman who has a history of post-partum depression and other mental illnesses, all of which were treated with little to no success. Her mental illnesses appear to make difficult her relationships with her husband and children. - Theme: Dreams Failed, Dreams Achieved. Description: In Epic of America (1931), James Truslow Adams wrote that the American Dream is "…a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position." The notion of striving for dreams – the American Dream in particular – is central to In Cold Blood. Characters struggle with how to achieve their dreams, they scrutinize who has and hasn't achieved their dreams, and they struggle with whether their own dreams can ever become reality, and feel resentment when their dreams turn out to be beyond their reach. The murder central to the plot – the murder of the Clutter family – seems to be the result of murderers Perry Smith and Dick Hickock's inability to respectively achieve the American Dream. On the one hand, Perry – crippled by a motorcycle accident, haunted by memories of a childhood wracked by poverty and abuse – is never able to achieve the American Dream of a middle-class existence, in spite of being an intelligent and hard-working individual. It's perhaps because the achievement of this dream is so far beyond his reach that he ends up turning to a life of crime, with the ultimate goal of using his ill-gotten gains to escape to a life of treasure hunting in Mexico. Dick, on the other hand, in spite of a relatively stable lower-middle-class childhood, is frustrated by the normal means by which he might achieve the American Dream. In an effort to take a short cut to the life he dreams of, he turns to a life of crime – primarily through "hanging paper" (writing bad checks) and, ultimately, hatching a plan with Perry to rob the Clutters.In contrast to Perry and Dick, the Clutters represent (to us, to their fellow townspeople, and to Perry/Dick) the ideal achievement of the American Dream. Herb Clutter is a self-made man who pulled himself up by the bootstraps to become a well-to-do farmer and rancher. He's married, he has four children, he owns his own land, and he's engaged with his community. However, in spite of their success, all is not perfect with the Clutters. Bonnie and Herb's marriage is troubled (Bonnie is mentally ill, and the couple hasn't shared the same bed in years). This may be why Herb, like Perry and Dick, harbors dreams beyond what he currently has – in an uncharacteristically impractical move, he plants an orchard of fruit trees along the banks of the river that runs through his property, in a way creating his own version of Eden. - Theme: Christianity. Description: The notion of Christianity as a force of redemption and salvation is explored in numerous ways throughout the book. It's emphasized from the beginning that Garden City is a strongly religious (and specifically Christian) town. The Clutters are a Methodist family, and their Methodist frugality and temperance seem to be tied in with their apparent achievement of the American Dream. Although Perry outwardly shuns Christianity – Catholicism in particular, given that he was at one point living in an orphanage run by abusive nuns – mysticism, the divine, and Christian culture are nonetheless very important to him. Since childhood, Perry has been subject to visions of a golden parrot – a huge, cross-shaped bird that descends upon him in times of crisis. Perry is convinced that this vision (which is most likely a symptom of paranoid schizophrenia) is divine – an avenging angel, or possibly even Jesus. Perry forms an unlikely friendship with the prison chaplain's clerk, Willie-Jay – a relationship that becomes very influential in his life. Christians and Christian principles surface throughout the book as possible antidotes to killing and violence – the death penalty is opposed by a number of Christians (including Herb's brother), and Christianity is often presented (especially by Willie-Jay) as a possible means for turning Dick and Perry from a life of crime. Christianity isn't always presented in a positive light, however. Bonnie, for example, descends further into guilt and depression after briefly leaving her husband to live a new life in a different city; she "had liked it too well, so much that it seemed to her unchristian…." - Theme: Evil. Description: Primarily explored through the seemingly motiveless and random killing of the Clutters, In Cold Blood grapples with the question of what is and isn't evil. Characters – especially criminals – often hold conflicting and ambiguous attitudes toward evil. Perry, for example, seems to be of the opinion that his killing of the Clutters wasn't necessarily an evil act. When asked by his staunchly Christian army buddy Don Cullivan whether he felt any shame or guilt for the murders, Perry simply shrugs. "Soldiers don't lose much sleep," he says. "They murder, and get medals for doing it. The good people of Kansas want to murder me – and some hangman will be glad to get the work." On the other hand, Perry has strong disapproval for what he calls "pervertiness" – he feels that Dick's pedophilic tendencies are evil, and he goes so far as to prevent the rape of young Nancy Clutter before she's shot in the head. The question of who is capable of carrying out evil acts is also dealt with, primarily through a biographical and psychological exploration of Perry and Dick. In reading Perry's psychological profile, one ultimately might question whether or not his crimes were actually evil, given that he seems psychologically predisposed toward certain acts of violence. To further complicate matters, Perry comes off as a highly sympathetic character, calling into question whether he himself is evil. After the final verdict, a young Oklahoman reporter remarks, "'Perry Smith. My God. He's had such a rotten life -'" The banality of evil – that is, the idea that evil is often committed as a matter of course, sometimes as part of someone's job – is also explored. The hanging of Perry and Dick, for example, is clearly an act of state sanctioned murder – but does this mean the hangman is committing an evil act? - Theme: Normal vs. Abnormal. Description: Dick constantly asserts that he's "a normal," even though he has deeply abnormal physical features (his face is crooked thanks to a car accident) and even though he's capable of committing various crimes – up to and including murder. The question of what's considered normal and abnormal is repeated throughout the book. For example, what is a normal marriage/family? In spite of being the perfect couple, Herb and Bonnie have a troubled marriage. Dick and Perry, on the other hand, could be said to have a happy marriage – they even go on a veritable honeymoon in Mexico after murdering the Clutters. The book also questions what a normal person might look like. Herb, the proverbial everyman, is of average build and has fine, even features. On the other hand Perry, albeit handsome, is often referred to as having feminine facial features, and has stunted and warped legs thanks to a motorcycle accident. In Cold Blood also questions the notion of normal mental health. Bonnie, in spite of having a supposedly perfect life, suffers from bouts of "nervousness" that often result in her hospitalization. By the end of the book, Perry is pronounced mentally ill; Dick, in contrast, is pronounced sane, in spite of his inhumane actions. The book also grapples with sexual norms. What is normal sexuality? What kind of person possesses normal sexuality? And what is normal masculinity? Perry – sexually inexperienced, never married - is staunchly against "pervertiness" – homosexuality, pedophilia, and rape. Conversely, Dick– married twice, father of three children, and the epitome of what Perry considers masculine - is a pedophile and a rapist. On a metatextual level, one could also argue that the close relationship between Dick, Perry, and the book's author, Truman Capote (who was openly homosexual throughout his life), further complicates these questions of sexual norms. - Theme: Innocence vs. Experience. Description: Prior to the massacre of the Clutter family, Holcomb, Kansas (a small town adjacent to the county seat of Garden City) is portrayed as a kind of Eden before the fall – a quiet, innocent town where nothing of note happens. (Of course, it's later revealed in the book that the region had its share of horrifying crimes long before the Clutters were murdered, but it's a time that's only remembered by the town's elderly citizens.) Following the murder of the Clutters, the town becomes a hotbed for suspicion and fear – Holcomb – and, by extension, Garden City - has become a place where terrible things can happen. Each character in the story goes through a fall from innocence. In Perry, for example, this is dealt with through a discussion of nature vs. nurture – how much of his murderous nature is natural, and how much of it was beaten into him through a lifetime of hard knocks, starvation, and sadness? Perry is ultimately a sympathetic character due to his natural (or seemingly natural) good qualities – he loves music and art, abhors sexual perversion, and loves animals. His fall from grace is essentially thrust upon him, via his abusive, alcoholic parents. This fall from grace is also characterized in his wilted, mangled lower body, which came about as a result of a crime-related motorcycle accident – something that could be seen as a literal fall from grace. - Climax: Dick Hickok and Perry Smith are captured in Las Vegas - Summary: The year is 1959 and the setting is River Valley Farm, located in Holcomb Kansas (a suburb of Garden City). The residents of that farm, the Clutters, are a prosperous farming and ranching family who have seemingly achieved the American Dream. Herb, the father, is a devout Methodist whose work ethic has made him a wealthy and popular man. Bonnie, Herb's wife, suffers from nervousness, and it's speculated that her marriage to Herb is troubled. Nancy and Kenyon are their well adjusted, hardworking teenage children. One night in mid-November, four gunshots ring out across Holcomb, signaling the deaths of four members of the Clutter family. The murderers are Perry Smith and Richard "Dick" Hickok, two recently paroled men who have been led to believe that Herb Clutter is in possession of a large amount of cash. Perry is a dreamy, artistic man scarred by a motorcycle accident and his traumatic childhood. Dick is a "normal" guy with a shoddy work ethic who has a history of writing bad checks. While robbing the Clutters, Dick and Perry are dismayed to find that the Clutters have virtually no cash on hand. They kill the Clutters anyway, shooting each in the head at point-blank range with a 12-gauge shotgun. Dick and Perry flee to Kansas City, where they start writing bad checks. They take their ill-gotten gains and flee to Mexico, where Perry dreams of becoming a treasure hunter. As news of the murders spreads, the citizens of Holcomb and Garden City are filled with terror and disbelief. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) is put on the case, though there is little evidence to help them find the killers (all they have are two footprints). The case is finally cracked when Dick's former cellmate, Floyd Wells (who was once an employee of Herb Clutter's), reveals that Dick had divulged to him his plan for robbing and killing the Clutters. Armed with this lead, the KBI launches a nationwide manhunt for Dick and Perry. Meanwhile, Dick and Perry, having gone broke in Mexico, have returned to the United States and are plotting to write more bad checks. They return to Kansas City, where they write enough bad checks to fund a trip to Florida. Tensions rise and fall between Perry and Dick. Perry is upset with Dick's spendthrift ways, and is disgusted with his penchant for raping young girls. Dick, on the other hand, is frustrated with Perry's "womanly" behavior and far-fetched dreams of treasure hunting. After going broke in Florida, the two make their way to Las Vegas, where months back Perry had mailed some of his belongings from Mexico (including the boots he and Dick had worn the night of the murders). They are arrested in Las Vegas, just as they stop to collect the final box of belongings from a rooming house. A trial is held in Garden City. Dick and Perry are ultimately sentenced to death, and they are sent to Death Row at Kansas State Penitentiary. They remain on Death Row for years, given that Dick insists that their trial was unfair and applies for several appeals. Perry briefly goes on a hunger strike, during which time he's accosted by visions of a golden parrot (an image he seems to connect with Jesus); he decides to eat again when he receives a postcard from his father that fills him with rage. Dick and Perry are hanged on April 14th, 1965. The primary investigator in the Clutter case, Alvin Dewey (a personal friend of the Clutters) is present for the hanging. The hanging doesn't bring him closure. Instead, he finds solace in a chance meeting he had with Nancy's best friend, Susan Kidwell, whom he runs into at the Clutter's grave plot. Susan fills Alvin with hope for the future – she seems to represent a renewed age of innocence for Holcomb and Garden City.

- Genre: Short Story - Title: In the American Society - Point of view: First Person - Setting: Suburb in the Northeastern U.S. - Character: Mr. Ralph Chang. Description: Mr. Chang is the protagonist of "In the American Society." He is married to Mrs. Chang and the father of two daughters, Callieand Mona. A Chinese immigrant, Mr. Chang takes over a pancake house, and the business makes the family wealthy. Mr. Chang struggles to reconcile his Chinese business practices with American ways of life. Inspired by his grandfather's generosity as a wealthy man in a Chinese village, Mr. Chang believes in putting the needs of the community before the needs of his family. As a result, he doles out extra paychecks to his employees and interferes with legal proceedings against the undocumented workers Booker and Cedric. While he is clearly motivated to sustain the business, he also undermines his own success by placing unreasonable demands on his employees and causing them to quit. His family recognizes his stubbornness and sometimes pokes fun at it, but they honor his preferences, as he considers their loyalty a form of love. Mr. Chang's heated interaction with Jeremy Brothers and storming out of Jeremy's party suggest his refusal to fully assimilate to American society. - Character: Mrs. Chang. Description: Mrs. Chang is the wife of Mr. Chang and the mother of Callie and Mona. Before Mr. Chang became wealthy through the pancake house, she worked her way up to manager in a grocery store; . Mrs. Chang is an independent woman who develops opinions about town issues like zoning and takes care of her own car maintenance. More recently, she turns her attention to material interests associated with well-to-do housewives, like interior decorating and nice shoes. In contrast to Mr. Chang, Mrs. Chang appears adept at fitting into her American surroundings. She charms the other guests at Jeremy Brothers's party, although it's clear that her social graces come at a cost to her sense of integrity (her conversation partner speaks knowingly about "the Orient" and attempts Chinese). Although she toys with the idea of joining the town country club at the beginning of the story, Mrs. Chang is fully aware of the challenges of being an immigrant in an American suburb. Her ultimate priority is loyalty to Mr. Chang, even when she knows that his bad business decisions will cost the family. - Character: Callie. Description: Callie is the oldest of the two Chang daughters. She is quieter and more pensive than Mona, and it's also clear from her commentary that Callie feels stuck between her parents' Chinese world and her new American society. She is more aware than Mona of the racial inequalities in her hometown, as evidenced by her knowledge of the country club's discrimination against its Black applicants. Instead of speaking with Mona's brash confidence, she makes gentle suggestions and attempts comforting remarks to help her parents adjust to their new American environment. Although Mona claims early in the story that Mr. Chang does anything Callie wants, Mr. Chang becomes frustrated by her adherence to American ways, at one point criticizing her fear and wishing he'd had a son. - Character: Mona. Description: Mona is Callie's younger sister and Mr. Chang and Mrs. Chang's youngest daughter. She is highly assimilated into American life, as evidenced by her effortless friendship with Annie Lardner. Mona uses American slang and displays a breezy confidence that the Changs will get accepted into the country club. She takes more initiative than her sister Callie. However, her efforts usually backfire. Mona is the one who decides to fill a suggestion box at the restaurant full of fake customer complaints, hoping it will lead her father to hire more help and free her from working in the pancake house. Similarly, Mona tells her friend Annie that the Changs want to join the local country club, leading to an intrusive visit from Annie's mother Mrs. Lardner, who volunteers to write the Changs a reference letter. - Character: Mrs. Lardner. Description: Mrs. Lardner is the mother of Mona's friend Annie. She offers to write the Changs a recommendation letter to her country club, after Mona lets slip that her mother might want to join. Mrs. Lardner comes across as well-intentioned but ignorant. She is "honored and delighted" to write a reference letter for the Changs, but she shows no understanding of the country club's racist history Her revelations about her own heritage—she confides in Mrs. Chang that her "natural father" was Jewish—are also tinged with prejudice, as she considers this fact "a secret," presumably because it would interfere with her own reputation among the country club set. Mrs. Lardner reveals the contrast between appearances and reality in American society. Her words show a willingness to include the Changs in her American community, but her actions—asking Callie to cater hors d'oeuvres, failing to integrate the Changs into the crowd at Jeremy Brothers's party—show a disregard for their actual well-being and sense of belonging. - Character: Jeremy Brothers. Description: Jeremy Brothers is Mrs. Lardner's friend, for whom she throws a "bon voyage bash" before he departs for a 6-month trip to Greece. At the party, it becomes clear that Jeremy is a drunken predator, and his racist behavior against Mr. Chang creates an unpleasant scene. Jeremy represents the stereotypically privileged male in American society. Besides being the story's antagonist, he serves as a foil to Mr. Chang. Where Mr. Chang is hard-working, Jeremy is frivolous and leisurely; where Mr. Chang feels uncomfortable at the party filled with country club members, Jeremy is right at home; where Mr. Chang has his loving family surrounding him, Jeremy has alienated his loved ones. If Mr. Chang is most comfortable in "his own society," as Mrs. Chang claims, then Jeremy is the quintessential member of "the American society." - Character: Booker. Description: Booker is an undocumented Taiwanese immigrant who starts working as a busboy at Mr. Chang's pancake house. He proves to be a diligent and talented worker, but he's often out sick, leading Mr. Chang to hire Booker's undocumented friends like Cedric when Booker is out. Mr. Chang feels a strong sense of loyalty to Booker and Cedric, who remind him of his own struggles as a new immigrant in the U.S. He calls the two "my boys" and shows his loyalty by bailing them out of jail when the immigration police catch wind of their whereabouts. Although Booker (along with Cedric) initially praises Mr. Chang's legal savvy, he ultimately flees town before his trial, leaving only a letter thanking Mr. Chang for his generosity and apologizing for not paying back the bail money. - Character: Cedric. Description: Cedric is Booker's friend and fellow Taiwanese immigrant, whom Mr. Chang hires when Booker is out sick, and then on a more regular basis. Cedric is a jokester, calling Mona and Callie "shou hou—skinny monkeys," then winking at them as he filches used cigarettes from ashtrays for a single puff. Despite his jocular personality, the rest of the kitchen turns against Cedric, possibly out of racism or a sense of displacement inside their restaurant. On the one hand, Cedric is an underdog struggling to make ends meet in the U.S. without employment papers. On the other hand, the kitchen's hostility against him introduces some doubt as to his honesty. This doubt remains after he and Booker run away to avoid trial without repaying their bail to Mr. Chang. Their letter, which calls Mr. Chang a great boss and thanks him, reveals loyalty to their manager without acknowledging the difficult situation they've put him in. Cedric's circumstances—and their effect on Mr. Chang—show the complexities of trying to succeed in American society as an immigrant worker. - Character: Fernando. Description: Fernando is the head cook at Mr. Chang's pancake house, who accuses Cedric of being a thief. It's possible that Fernando discriminates against Cedric based on his Taiwanese ethnicity or undocumented status. His attitude to Cedric portrays the growing racial tension in Mr. Chang's restaurant, while also sowing questions about Cedric's trustworthiness. When Fernando himself turns out to be the crook—he is caught stealing meat from the kitchen and suspects Cedric was the tip-off—it starts to seem like his accusations were also an attempt to deflect attention away from his own misdeeds. Mr. Chang fires him and promotes Cedric, whom Fernando punches in the mouth. As though physical violence were not enough of an affront, Fernando also calls the immigration police. His action leads to more hardship for Cedric, Booker, and Mr. Chang. - Theme: The Difficulties of Assimilation. Description: In "In the American Society," the Chang family contends with two opposing forces: the drive to assimilate into American life and the impulse to respect Chinese customs. Ralph Chang, a Chinese immigrant (and the narrator Callie's father), takes over a pancake shop in hopes of saving money for his daughters' college educations. His business quickly succeeds, and the Changs become wealthy. Before long, however, tensions arise between Mr. Chang and his employees as he tries to make Chinese practices work within an American context. Because Mrs. Chang is more highly assimilated than her husband, having already worked her way up to a managerial position at the supermarket where she's employed, she wavers between acceptance of and frustration at Mr. Chang's loyalty to Chinese customs. When he insists on doling out extra paychecks to employees in need, Mrs. Chang either sighs and tells her daughters, "'Your father thinks this is still China,'" or becomes incensed by his charity, yelling "'But this here is the U—S—of—A!'" Mr. Chang's allegiance to Chinese customs continues to affect his American business. He wants his employees to help him around his house, asking them to "fix radiators and trim hedges," as loyal employees might have done in China. Feeling that they're being treated like servants, his workers quit. Mr. Chang then hires fellow immigrants, who reveal they don't have work permits. When they get arrested, Mr. Chang's sense of loyalty leads him to pay his employees' bail; however, they flee without fully paying him back, citing their fear of the American legal system. Mr. Chang's difficulty reconciling his Chinese customs with American expectations culminates in the story's final party scene. The rude, all-American Jeremy Brothers publicly humiliates Mr. Chang, whose family comes to his side before ditching the party with him for the pancake shop. This final gesture in "The American Society" implies that assimilating into American life—whether by running a successful business or joining a country club—does not shield immigrants like the Changs from hardship and discrimination. Indeed, Mr. Chang's experiences throughout the story suggest that no matter how materially successful he becomes, he continues to be caught between Chinese and American cultural expectations. Ultimately, this culture clash will prevent him from assimilating fully. - Theme: Success, Race, and Immigration. Description: At the beginning of "In the American Society," the Chang family appears to attain the American dream. Mr. Chang takes over a successful pancake business, and the family gets rich. They purchase a station wagon with air conditioning, Mr. Chang enjoys a new recliner, and Mrs. Chang quits her supermarket job and starts taking an interest in "espadrilles, and wallpaper." Soon, however, the realities of being an immigrant business owner start to puncture Mr. Chang's success. For one thing, his employees take offense to his expectations of them. When Mr. Chang asks the headwaitress Gertrude to scratch his back, she quits and makes a racially insensitive remark, implying that Mr. Chang treats his workers more like slaves than paid employees. Despite Mr. Chang's outward success, racial undertones seem to have emerged in the restaurant dynamics, hinting at greater disharmony to come. The challenges presented by the U.S. immigration system also threaten to undermine Mr. Chang's success. Because Mr. Chang empathizes with an undocumented immigrant named Booker, he hires him as a busboy. He understands Booker's struggle—the busboy came to the U.S. on a student visa "but had run out of money and was now in a bind," with only a fake Social Security card to his name—so Mr. Chang goes out of his way to help the new hire. Even though Booker and his undocumented friend Cedric prove to be good employees, the other staff resent them and claim Cedric is a crook. Before long, the head cook Fernando is stealing meat, there's a fistfight, and the immigration authorities put Booker and Cedric in jail. Even though Mr. Chang himself doesn't get in trouble for hiring the men, his failure to successfully advocate for them in the long run suggests that his sympathy to undocumented workers is a dead end for his business. The unfortunate turn of events at the pancake shop, spurred on by racial tensions in the kitchen and the reckoning of harsh immigration policies, illustrates that immigrant business owners aren't fully in control of their own success. Rather, broader cultural and political pressures can make comfort and success precarious for immigrant business owners. - Theme: The Illusion of Belonging. Description: After Mr. Chang becomes wealthy from running his pancake shop, Mrs. Chang starts showing interest in joining the country club. She has reservations, such as the necessity of a referral letter from a current member, but her daughter Mona—who wants to swim in the country club pool—makes light of these concerns, telling her mother, "Annie's mom'd write you a letter in a sec." Soon after, Annie's mom, Mrs. Lardner, shows up at the Changs' house and insists she would be "honored and delighted" to write a letter for "you people" (the Changs). She confides to Mrs. Chang, "It's a secret of course, but […] my natural father was Jewish. Can you see it? Just look at my skin." From these remarks, it's clear that Mrs. Lardner assumes that to be non-white or non-Christian is to have something to hide—hardly a comforting sentiment to share with her Chinese acquaintances. Moreover, her comparison between being secretly half-Jewish and being Chinese suggests that she sees some equivalence between her situation and the Changs', but her conclusion is ill-conceived, as she is able to hide her heritage and join the country club, which the Changs cannot do. After the Changs are declined membership in the country club, Mrs. Lardner invites them to a "bon voyage bash" she is throwing for her friend Jeremy Brothers, promising introductions to other country clubbers to help with future membership bids. When the Changs arrive, however, they are treated less like guests than imposters or service workers. One navy veteran speaks to Mrs. Chang about his time stationed "in the Orient" and attempts to speak Chinese; meanwhile, Mrs. Lardner corners Callie into serving hors d'oeuvres. The most egregious offense comes from Jeremy Brothers, who drunkenly shouts at Mr. Chang, "This is my party, my party, and I've never seen you before in my life," before bellowing, "WHO ARE YOU?" Although Mrs. Lardner rushes over and Jeremy apologizes, their casually racist behavior sends a clear unwelcoming message and implies that the Changs will struggle to fit in no matter how successful they are in other ways. These scenes suggest that the sense of belonging immigrants might experience in the U.S. is often illusory and compromised by racist behavior, even from those who claim to accept them. - Theme: Loyalty and Family. Description: For the Chang family, loyalty is a core value, albeit one that is applied unevenly. Within the Changs' marriage, loyalty is paramount and equal to love in importance. After Mrs. Chang voices her hesitation about moving forward with the country club idea, citing her husband's distaste for wearing suit jackets and joining "the American society," Callie notes, "My mother could not simply up and do as she pleased. For to embrace what my father embraced was to love him; and to embrace something else was to betray him." In other words, for Mrs. Chang to join the country club anyway would be a disloyal act and a demonstration that she doesn't really love Mr. Chang. Mrs. Chang's loyalty to her husband holds steady, even when his employment practices undermine the family's security. Ultimately, then, Mr. Chang's definition of loyalty differs from his wife's. He feels the deepest sense of duty towards his employees and fellow Chinese immigrants, even when their behavior threatens his family's livelihood. For example, he gives his workers extra money beyond what they've earned, and he endangers the pancake shop by hiring undocumented Booker and Cedric. When Booker and Cedric are caught by police, Mr. Chang bails them out of jail and tries to seek legal help. "What about your family?" Mrs. Chang demands. "What about your wife?" She is angry about the risks he's taking, but once her husband makes up his mind, she just "scrutinize[s] her hem," a gesture that underscores her submission to her husband's judgment. When it turns out that neither Booker nor Cedric feel particularly loyal to Mr. Chang—they run away to avoid trial—Mr. Chang is left to consider what loyalty means to him in his new American society. However, the end of the story—when Mr. Chang and his family leave Jeremy Brothers's disastrous party, his daughters complimenting his performance and Mrs. Chang taking responsibility for the mishap—suggests that his family's loyalty is what Mr. Chang can count on most. - Climax: When Jeremy confronts Ralph Chang at his party, yelling, "WHO ARE YOU?" - Summary: Mr. Chang, a Chinese immigrant and father of two daughters, takes over a pancake house in the American suburbs, hoping the business will eventually pay for his children's college tuition. The pancake house does succeed, and the Chang family gets rich "almost immediately." As a result of their newfound wealth, Mr. Chang and his wife Mrs. Chang undergo some lifestyle changes. He buys a reclining chair, and she stops working at the supermarket, instead becoming a housewife and developing an interest in "wallpaper, and espadrilles." Eventually, Mrs. Chang starts talking to her daughters Callie and Mona about joining the local country club. Mona encourages the idea, believing that her friend's mom will write the Changs the necessary recommendation letter. However, Mrs. Chang lets the idea go, claiming that Mr. Chang would be displeased and prioritizing her loyalty to him. Having achieved some success, Mr. Chang starts emulating the practices of his wealthy grandfather, who was known in China for his generosity to the villagers. Mr. Chang starts giving out extra paychecks to his employees, but he expects their loyalty in return. When they start to quit, tired of the personal chores he asks them to do, the restaurant takes a downturn. Mr. Chang has difficulty hiring a new busboy, but he eventually employs Booker and Cedric, two undocumented Taiwanese workers in whom he sees his younger self. They are good workers, but their presence causes a stir in the kitchen. The head cook, Fernando, insists Cedric is a thief. When Fernando himself is found stealing meat, he blames Cedric for ratting him out and punches him. Mr. Chang fires Fernando, while Cedric stays on. Meanwhile, Mona has let it slip to her friend Annie that the Changs want to join the country club. Annie's mom, Mrs. Lardner, visits Mrs. Chang and volunteers to write the reference letter, though some of her friendliness has a racist undertone, like calling the Changs "you people." Mrs. Chang is upset at the way the situation unfolds and gets angry at Mona, while Callie reveals that the country club has a racist history. Soon after, Mr. Chang comes home from work with the news that the immigration police have found and arrested Booker and Cedric (thanks to a police call from bitter Fernando). He bails them out and commits to finding them legal help, much to Mrs. Chang's chagrin. When they run away, leaving only a letter to Mr. Chang apologizing for not paying him back the bail money, Mr. Chang feels let down. The Changs are then rejected from the country club. Mrs. Lardner then invites the Changs to a party for her friend Jeremy Brothers, where they will meet other country club members. Although Mr. Chang hates wearing a suit jacket, he buys one for the party. The family arrives and has some trouble mingling with the other guests. Drunk, Jeremy Brothers approaches Mr. Chang and starts harassing him, saying he doesn't know who he is, and finally yelling, "WHO ARE YOU?!" Mrs. Lardner tries to fix the situation, but Jeremy continues to be insulting. He tells Mr. Chang he is overdressed and pulls off his suit jacket to read the label, making fun of the price tag that's still on. Mr. Chang, incensed, throws his suit jacket into the pool, and the family leaves Jeremy's party. Callie and Mona are proud of their father for standing up for himself. When Mr. Chang admits that his car and house keys are still in his suit pocket in the pool, the family decides to wait out the rest of the party at the pancake house.

- Genre: - Title: In the Lake of the Woods - Point of view: - Setting: - Character: John Herman Wade. Description: The protagonist of the novel, John Wade is a politician whose career comes to an abrupt halt after it's revealed that he was involved in the infamous My Lai massacre of 1968 during his time as a soldier in Vietnam, when he went by the nickname "Sorcerer." While there is too much contradictory evidence about John to form an adequate description of his character, one of the most common topics mentioned in descriptions of John is his fondness for magic, manipulation, and deception. His love for these things begins with his love for magic tricks as a child and continues through his relationship with Kathy, during which he often followed her, and his career as a politician, when he was able to exercise his love for trickery and deception constantly. John kills two men while he's a soldier in Vietnam: an old Vietnamese man and another American soldier. John has a difficult relationship with his father, who criticized John for his weight and later killed himself; it's implied that John feels a deep need to be loved and praised because of his relationship with his father. After his wife, Kathy, disappears during a visit to Lake of the Woods (a rural lake and vacation spot in Minnesota and the Canadian border), John is the target of much suspicion. The narrator leaves it up to us whether to believe that John, haunted by memories of Vietnam, killed his wife and hid her body, or whether he was uninvolved in her disappearance. - Character: Kathleen "Kathy" Terese Wade. Description: The wife of John Wade, whose mysterious disappearance while she and her husband are at Lake of the Woods is the subject of the novel. Kathy first meets John while they're both college students, and stays in touch with John during his time as a soldier in Vietnam. Throughout the book, we hear various analyses of Kathy and her relationship with John from a variety of sources. One common observation about Kathy is that she loves John, and considers it her duty to take care of him after he returns home from Vietnam, traumatized by the war. It's often implied that Kathy enjoys John's deception and manipulation, whereas other people find it frightening. When John embarks on a career as a politician, Kathy works in the admissions department of the University of Minnesota, but finds her duties as a politician's wife to be irritating. It's left largely up to reader how to interpret Kathy—whether, for instance, we should see her as a deceptive, unfaithful wife, or a warm, loving woman who never gave up on John even after evidence of his wrongdoing came to light. Further, it is never made clear whether she was murdered or purposely ran away and disappeared. - Character: Narrator. Description: In the Lake of the Woods is narrated by an unnamed Vietnam veteran, whose reasons for researching John Wade's life and compiling the research into a book are left largely unexplained. Most of the time, the narrator isn't a conspicuous "presence" in the book: he narrates what happened, and that's all. At other points, however, he suggests that he is distorting the facts, and reveals that he's been to many of the same places in Vietnam that John visited as a soldier. The question of why the narrator is telling this story is at least as important as the question of what happens to Kathy. The fact that this question is arguably impossible to answer suggests that the mysteries in O'Brien's novel can never be solved. - Character: Anthony "Tony" L. Carbo. Description: John Wade's campaign manager. A fat, unattractive man, Tony seems utterly amoral throughout much of the novel, often telling John that he should avoid talking about the issues and focus on his "image." In spite of his apparent cynicism, Tony has a crush on Kathy, and often tells her that he'd willingly lose weight if it meant that he'd have "a shot" with her. Kathy suggests that Tony isn't as cynical as he seems, and puts up an appearance of cynicism to disguise his true idealism. - Character: Claude Rasmussen. Description: An old, wealthy, and intelligent man, a longtime donor to the Democratic Party, and husband to the much younger Ruth Rasmussen, Claude Rasmussen is an ambiguous character for much of In the Lake of the Woods. It is Claude who invites John to stay on his property for a few weeks after John loses the primary election, effectively ending his political career. Later, when Kathy disappears, Claude offers John his company and help, but often seems to be withholding outright sympathy. Claude tells John that he can't say he voted for him, but also can't say he didn't vote for him—it's this kind of ambiguous "support" that characterizes his relationship with John for most of the book. Toward the end, however, Claude reveals that he's highly sympathetic to John's experiences as a soldier in Vietnam, and understands that John has been expressing his sadness over Kathy's disappearance in unusual ways. He leaves John the keys to a boat, allowing him to flee to Canada before John can become bogged down in a police investigation. - Character: Vincent "Vinny" R. Pearson. Description: A pale-skinned part-time detective who also runs a Texaco gas station, and the cousin of Myra Shaw, Vinny served in Vietnam, and resents John because of John's role at My Lai. He works with Sheriff Arthur Lux after Kathy's disappearance, and is immediately suspicious of John. Long after the case of Kathy's disappearance is accepted as an unsolvable mystery, Vinny continues to insist that John killed her. - Character: Richard Thinbill. Description: A young soldier who serves alongside John in Charlie Company, and witnesses enormous brutality at Thuan Yen, though he claims to be innocent of any wrongdoing. Richard Thinbill is ultimately responsible for bringing John's presence at the massacres to the public eye. Richard shows signs of PTSD, and often comments on the flies surrounding the dead bodies at My Lai and Thuan Yen. - Character: Ruth Rasmussen. Description: The wife of Claude Rasmussen, who takes care of John Wade after Kathy's disappearance. Ruth Rasmussen is in her fifties, and married to the much older Claude. She insists that John is a good man, and innocent of any role in Kathy's disappearance. She frequently compares the strength of John and Kathy's marriage to the strength of her marriage to Claude—a comparison that readers can take sincerely or ironically. - Character: Sheriff Arthur J. Lux. Description: The local sheriff near Lake of the Woods who is responsible for investigating Kathy's disappearance. Lux remains largely neutral during his investigation, especially when compared with his colleague, Vincent Pearson. Nevertheless, he seems to become suspicious of John's role in Kathy's disappearance toward the end of the novel, and obtains a court order allowing him to dig up the land around John's cottage in the hopes of finding Kathy's body. - Character: Lieutenant William "Rusty" Calley. Description: A young American lieutenant who orders the troops under his command to murder innocent Vietnamese villagers, including women and children, at Thuan Yen. Calley is the only soldier who doesn't show any signs of guilt for his actions, and later tries to intimidate his troops into keeping silent about the acts of murder they've committed. Calley is the only soldier ever convicted for his role in the My Lai massacre. - Character: Paul Wade. Description: Paul Wade (mentioned by name only once in the novel) is John's father, and the husband of Eleanor Wade. He plays an enormous role in the novel, insofar as he influences his son's fondness for deception, manipulation, bullying, and charm. John's father is a popular figure in his community, and John loves him deeply. At the same time, his father is a drunk, and frequently bullies him, calling him fat and effeminate for wanting to practice magic. Eventually, Paul commits suicide by hanging himself. John is in high school at the time, and is devastated. John learns to use fantasy to repress his sense of sadness, and imagines having long, loving conversations with his father long after his father's death. It's suggested many times that Paul's death gives John a deep need to be loved, a need which influences his decision to enter politics as a career and to marry Kathy. It's also implied that John learns to go by many names because his father called him names as a child. - Character: Lizzie Borden. Description: Infamous "murderess" of the late 19th century who was tried and acquitted of killing her parents with an axe. The debate over whether or not Lizzie Borden was guilty of her crime continues to be a subject of interest for historians and conspiracy theorists, a fact that is itself highly interesting to the narrator. - Character: Lee Harvey Oswald. Description: The supposed assassin of John F. Kennedy, and a veteran of the American military, Lee Harvey Oswald is at the center of a huge number of conspiracy theories concerning the Kennedy assassination. There are those who maintain that Oswald was a "fall guy," meant to disguise the fact that a powerful organization—maybe the CIA, maybe the Freemasons, maybe the Teamsters—killed Kennedy. The narrator is interested in Oswald because of what he reveals about the psychology of conspiracy theorists. - Theme: Vietnam, Authorship, Interpretation. Description: Reading the first few pages of In the Lake of the Woods, it becomes clear that the novel is written in an unconventional style. There are fairly normal-seeming chapters written in the third person. But there are also chapters that consist of nothing but pieces of evidence; furthermore, most of the evidence consists of quotations from other people, some real, some fictional. There are also chapters that illustrate how certain events might have transpired. Read side-by-side, these hypothetical chapters often contradict one another. Finally, there are occasional footnotes, in which the narrator speaks in the first person, revealing that he, like his main character John Wade, fought in Vietnam and visited My Lai. (In real life, the author Tim O'Brien served in Vietnam and went to My Lai a year after the massacre.)In one sense, O'Brien writes this way because it's the best—arguably the only realistic—way to convey the experience of an American soldier in Vietnam. In contrast to the way earlier American wars had been conducted, Americans were being told multiple, contradictory things about who the enemy was, where the enemy could be found, and how Vietnamese civilians should be treated. After atrocities like the My Lai Massacre, many American soldiers and commanders lied about their complicity in the war, while on the home front, American politicians misrepresented the success and conduct of American soldiers. By reading In the Lake of the Woods, then, the reader can be said to experience a low-stakes version of the moral conundrum of the American soldier in Vietnam. The reader must decide which elements of the story are truth and which are fiction, which parts are misdirection and which parts, if any, should be believed.But O'Brien doesn't only describe Vietnam in this fragmented, chaotic fashion—all of In the Lake of the Woods is written in this way. O'Brien isn't just aiming for heightened realism; he also wants readers to rethink authorship and reading. At the end of the novel, for instance, the narrator—and Tim O'Brien, a similar but nonetheless separate entity from the narrator—leaves us to decide what happened to John Wade and Kathy Wade. Kathy might have left John, or she might have killed herself. John might have killed her, or they might have run off together.In order to decide what happened to the characters, the reader is forced to make moral judgments about John and Kathy. By deciding that John killed Kathy, for instance, one falls into the moral judgment that John is guilty of murder in Vietnam, and that his murderous tendencies overwhelmed his life of respectability. More broadly, this might suggest that all humans have the capacity for evil, or that some of the soldiers who fought in Vietnam became evil as a result of their experiences there.There's no way to tell whether this opinion is right or wrong—and this is precisely the point. In other novels, the author acts as a kind of "military commander," telling the reader exactly what happens and how to feel about it. By playing with the more normal techniques of authorship, O'Brien neglects or rejects the usual duties of the author. He wants the reader to be active, not passive, and to be forced to consider and interpret the full complexity of reality, to face the impossibility of ever knowing "the truth", whether in wartime Vietnam or peacetime Minnesota. - Theme: War, Memory, and Trauma. Description: All of the major characters in In the Lake of the Woods struggle to deal with traumatic events from their pasts. John Wade, the protagonist, endured verbal abuse from his father and then lost his father to suicide. Most disturbingly, he later witnessed and participated in the infamous My Lai Massacre in Vietnam. At My Lai, American soldiers were ordered to murder Vietnamese women and children with the explanation that they were "dangerous." While some soldiers refused to carry out the order, many killed innocent civilians without question. We learn that John killed two unarmed people in Vietnam: an old man carrying a hoe, and a fellow soldier.John's reaction to his experiences in the Vietnam War fits the classic definition of trauma given by Sigmund Freud (who's quoted several times in the novel): an event so disturbing and stressful that the mind doesn't know how to incorporate it into the memory, and thus relives it endlessly. As Freud's definition would suggest, John experiences his memories of Vietnam—and also of his father—as if they're happening to him in the present. At many points in the novel, John talks with his father as if he's still alive, and has visions of My Lai that border on hallucination.John tries to cope with trauma by repressing it—trying to make himself forget that it ever happened to him in the first place. While this strategy seems successful—John spends years as a loving husband and a successful politician—it actually causes John to experience sudden "bursts" of trauma. He yells out in his sleep, and after evidence of his actions in Vietnam comes out, his relationship with Kathy Wade, his wife, seems to deteriorate almost immediately. In no small part, John's memories are traumatic because they seem to remind him who he really is: in other words, beneath his façade of charisma and kindness, he's still "Jiggling John," the child his father used to mock. O'Brien (who served in Vietnam, has experienced post-traumatic stress disorder, and has many friends who have experienced it, too) has no illusions: it's incredibly difficult to deal with trauma. Nevertheless, he uses his novel to suggest a healthier way of coping with disturbing memories than the one John adopts. The form of In the Lake of the Woods itself implies that it is better to deal with the past by addressing it and treating it as a reality than it is to pretend that it never happened. O'Brien accumulates information about his subjects, John and Kathy Wade. He compares their actions with the actions of other, similar people—other soldiers who fought in Vietnam, for instance. At the same time, he delves into the characters' deep thoughts and feelings—thoughts they would be reluctant to share with anyone else.There is nothing inherently successful about O'Brien's project; trauma is a terrible thing, and in many cases it's impossible to make it any better. O'Brien also acknowledges that there is a limit to how much he, in the guise of the narrator, can know about John and Kathy. He ends the novel unsure whether John killed Kathy, Kathy killed herself, or the both of them ran off together. The entire novel, then, can be seen as a frustrating, inadequate attempt to perform the kind of therapy that John must perform on himself. Nevertheless, O'Brien acknowledges that the human mind has the ability to heal itself and overcome trauma over time. The only way to allow for this healing is to confront memory and trauma oneself by talking about it explicitly—hopefully John will do so. - Theme: Evil, Human Nature, and Freedom. Description: In his descriptions of the war in Vietnam, O'Brien confronts the concept of evil. In the village of Thuan Yen, American soldiers—many of them young and seemingly innocent—murder unarmed men, women, and children, sometimes because their commanders tell them to do so, and sometimes because they want to do so themselves. At one point, speaking in a footnote, the narrator of In the Lake of the Woods claims that it was "the sunlight" that made the soldiers in Vietnam commit their atrocities. While this could suggest that the soldiers aren't fully accountable for their actions, the universal and constant presence of sunlight everywhere suggests that all humans are capable of committing atrocities—in other words, that it's within human nature to kill and obey orders to kill.During the Peers Commission court-martial for soldiers involved in the massacre of civilians in Vietnam, American soldiers are vilified and called monsters. Later, when it comes out that John Wade was involved in the massacre at Thuan Yen, and killed two people— one a fellow American soldier, and the other an unarmed old Vietnamese man—the voters of Minnesota come to think of John Wade as an "evil" man. The assumption here is that John, in taking other human lives, was a free agent who chose to kill, and thus should suffer the consequences.O'Brien can't possibly deal with all the issues of evil, human nature, and freedom that arise from the Vietnam War in only 300 pages. Nevertheless, he devotes a significant portion of his book to trying to explain how John came to kill other people. On one hand, he provides copious evidence for the influences that "led" John to kill: his troubled relationship with his father and his conflicted feelings for Kathy, for instance. He also describes John's behavior when he shot a fellow soldier as a "reflex." On the other hand, he doesn't absolve John of all guilt by placing the blame on other people—it was John, not Kathy, not his father—who felt the urge to kill and hurt other people.While humanity may have the potential to commit atrocities, O'Brien suggests, human behavior can't be classified according to easy dichotomies like "good" and "evil," or "innocent" and "guilty." It's not right to say that John is solely responsible for his actions, and it's not right to say that all the blame lies in other people. Similarly, it would be wrong to argue that all humans are evil because they're capable of murdering innocent people, just as it would be wrong to say that humans are good and the soldiers in Vietnam are somehow sub-human. It is, however, possible to condemn John's actions while also feeling sympathy for him—how much condemnation and how much sympathy one gives him is ultimately the reader's choice, not O'Brien's. - Theme: Appearance, the Unknowable, and Magic. Description: When In the Lake of the Woods was first published, many readers were irritated that Tim O'Brien didn't solve the mystery he'd laid out: he didn't reveal what happened to Kathy Wade. While it's true that there's no way to determine to a certainty what happened, this shouldn't be seen as a fault of the novel: In the Lake of the Woods is largely about mysteries without solutions. As O'Brien says several at several points, life itself is a mystery without a solution—put another way, there's always more mystery than certainty in a person's life. On one hand, O'Brien presents John Wade, Kathy, and the other characters as puzzles. It takes us half the novel, for instance, to learn that John's father killed himself when John was a teenager. And even when we learn this, we sense that there's an even bigger secret in the form of John's relationship with his father—a relationship which O'Brien can try to convey in all of its complexity, but ultimately can't. On the other hand, O'Brien's novel is about appearances, and, more often than not, the appearance of total goodness: charm, charisma, politeness, kindness, etc.:The most troubled characters in In the Lake of the Woods are the ones who seem the most "normal" to other people. John's father, a depressed alcoholic, is a beloved figure in his neighborhood, and John himself takes up magic, and later politics, to make himself seem likable. It's almost as if the appearance of wholesomeness and likability are evidence of some deep-down, unknowable sadness or neurosis.This tension between what is seen and what lies beneath is the essence of magic. As O'Brien argues throughout his book, the "charm" of magic is that the audience knows things aren't what they seem (the magician isn't actually making the rabbit disappear), and yet wants to believe that things are what they seem. The tension between appearance and truth is more interesting and satisfying than truth by itself could ever be—it wouldn't be any fun to know the secret behind every magic trick, after all. The psychology of magic helps explain why Kathy stays with John even after she senses that something isn't quite right with him—she enjoys the mystery of his personality. In much the same way, this is why O'Brien doesn't provide a solution to the mystery of Kathy's disappearance. The solution by itself couldn't possibly be as entertaining as all the possible explanations for how she disappeared, taken together.Enjoying the mystery more than the solution can be dangerous—for instance, by accepting the "mystery" of John's personality, Kathy accepts and in some ways encourages his trauma and neurosis. And yet O'Brien the author can't entirely disavow this way of dealing with mystery, since he treats the mystery of Kathy's disappearance in much the same way. Ultimately, appearance and the unknowable reach a stalemate. It's impossible to know everything about everyone. In the absence of perfect information, humans make up scenarios and possibilities to explain what they don't understand. The result is a feeling of "magic"—failing to understand a phenomenon and enjoying the sense of uncertainty. Rather than judge this feeling as being entirely "good" or "bad," O'Brien suggests that it's a part of human nature. - Theme: Love and Relationships. Description: While In the Lake of the Woods is a mystery and a war novel, it's also a love story. The characters are motivated by their love for other people, and, perhaps even more importantly, their desire to be loved in return. One of O'Brien's most important points is that the way people express their love for one another often parallels the way they loved and were loved by their families. John Wade's tense relationship with his father—his father is a charming, likable man, but also an alcoholic who verbally abuses his son and later hangs himself—has a major influence on the way John treats his friends and wife. The absence of unconditional love from his father makes John crave love from other people, and inspires him to perform magic tricks and take up politics as a career. He wants other people to love him so that he feels happier, but he often shows little respect for these other people. Indeed, he controls and manipulates them, as if they're tools whose only use is to make him feel better about himself.At the same time, John wants to love other people—he tells Kathy that he wants to go into politics to help people. It wouldn't be right to say that John is lying when he says this to Kathy. In reality, John's idea of love is both sincere and insincere. He's torn between treating people as means to an end and respecting them for their own thoughts and feelings.Kathy's love for John is as complicated as John's love for her. She recognizes that John "needs" love to a greater extent than other people, and for the most part, she is happy to supply it, even when it isn't returned. Patricia, Kathy's sister, often criticizes Kathy for putting up with John's rudeness and manipulation—at one point, we discover that Kathy knows that John follows her wherever she goes, and doesn't do anything about it. For much of her marriage to John, Kathy seems to think of love as an act of unconditional giving. She loves John, and seems to be satisfied with being a means to the end of his happiness.The love between John and Kathy, or between John and the people of Minnesota whom he serves, is based on the denial of information. John hides his own personal history, both from Kathy and his constituents, but insists on knowing everything about other people, using manipulation and deception to gain this information. The most obvious problem with this kind of love is that it doesn't last. Eventually, Kathy responds to John's deception with deception of her own—she has an affair with a dentist named Harmon. Similarly, the voters of Minnesota eventually learn about John's experiences in Vietnam, and end their "relationship" with John.Toward the end of his book, O'Brien implies another model of what love could be. Instead of being an asymmetric relationship, with one lover keeping secrets yet demanding to know everything about his partner, love could consists of the reciprocal exchange of information, based on mutual respect. Thus, John and Kathy could exchange some but not all of their secrets with one another, providing sympathy and support as they do so. There's no guarantee that John and Kathy reach this kind of love, or if it's even possible. O'Brien leaves it up to the reader to decide if John and Kathy learn from their mistakes and develop a more equal relationship. - Climax: - Summary: John Wade and Kathy Wade are a couple in their forties. John is a politician in Minnesota who has just lost a campaign for the U.S. Senate by a huge margin. He and Kathy have come to stay in a cottage near Lake of the Woods, a massive lake that joins Minnesota with Canada. They are both secretly depressed, but pretend to be happy by talking about having children and visiting faraway places. Throughout the novel, there are chapters consisting of evidence. In the first of these, we learn that Kathy Wade disappeared during her time in Lake of the Woods. Various witnesses, including Kathy's sister, Patricia, suggest that foul play was involved, and may have involved John. We learn that John had an alcoholic father, and that John's political career ended after information about his past came to light. When John was young, he loved his father, Paul Wade. His father committed suicide when John was fourteen years old. Afterwards, John cried and had long imaginary conversations with his father, in which his father said that he loved John. John and Kathy spend their last day together walking around Lake of the Woods. They eat at a Mini-Mart, where they have an argument that Myra Shaw, a waitress, witnesses. John unplugs the phone in his cottage, seemingly because he doesn't want to think about his electoral defeat. He and Kathy don't make love that night. There are also chapters of "hypotheses" about what happened to Kathy. In the first of these, Kathy wakes up in the middle of the night and leaves John for her lover, a dentist. In the next collection of evidence, we learn that John fought in Vietnam, where he had the nickname "Sorcerer." The narrator cites biographers who say that the experience of war leaves a lasting, unforgettable impact on all soldiers. As a child, John loved to perform magic tricks. Even in college, when he met Kathy, he performed "tricks" on her—he would follow her wherever she went, enjoying the sense of control he felt, and the thrill of deceiving other people. He told Kathy that he wanted to go into politics to help others, but secretly, he knew that he liked politics because he enjoyed manipulating others. John joins the army and spends two years in Vietnam—Kathy suggests that he's only doing so to bolster his chances of political success later on. As "Sorcerer," he performs tricks for his fellow troops, who see him as good luck. When John returns to the United States, he continues to stalk Kathy, and uncovers evidence that she was having a relationship with someone else. Nevertheless, he marries her. John often thinks that he must lie about his actions in Vietnam. The night before Kathy's disappearance John woke up, muttering "Kill Jesus," and then went to boil water for tea. He poured the boiling water onto a plant, killing it instantly. He then boils more water and carries it to the bedroom. John has trouble remembering what happens next, but he recalls going to the boathouse and possibly getting in the lake. The next morning he notices that Kathy isn't next to him in bed but goes back to sleep. The next hypothesis for Kathy's disappearance proposes that Kathy was scared by John's behavior that night. As a result, she decided that John was beyond her help or sympathy, and got in the boat to get as far away from him as possible. As a child, John's father made fun of his weight by calling him "Jiggling John." Nevertheless, John's father was a popular figure in his community, and many of John's friends wished he was their father. John turns to magic as a way of escaping from his father's bullying. In Vietnam, John performs tricks for the soldiers, and sends Kathy letters in which he compares their love to two snakes eating each other until nothing is left. He shoots another soldier, PFC Weatherby; the narrator doesn't explain why he does so. Afterwards, John tries to tell himself that he's innocent of the crime, and that killing Weatherby was a mere "reflex." Back in the United States, John runs for Minnesota state senator, and wins. John has begun yelling out in his sleep, though, and Kathy senses that he's hiding secrets about his behavior in Vietnam. Nevertheless, she stays married to him. Later, John runs for Lieutenant Governor, and wins. On the day that Kathy disappears, John thinks of how he will explain to her why he killed the plants. He thinks that Kathy is out for a walk; in her absence, he drinks heavily. Around 6pm, he begins to think that something is wrong, and then notices that the boat is missing from the boathouse. He goes to speak to Claude Rasmussen, the old, rich, Democratic donor who invited John and Kathy to stay in his cottage at Lake of the Woods. Claude, with his younger wife, Ruth, gives John food, and listens to his story. He takes John back to John's cottage, where he notices that the phone is unplugged. The narrator quotes from magic books. The implication is that magic is exciting because the audience knows the magic isn't real, but still wants to believe that it is. In the next chapter, the narrator describes John's role in the infamous My Lai massacre of 1968. John shoots an old Vietnamese man carrying a hoe, and sees other soldiers, led by Lieutenant William Calley, kill women and children. The narrator hypothesizes that Kathy, frightened of her husband, left the house and took the boat out onto Lake of the Woods. There, Kathy may have hit a rock and drowned. After speaking to Claude, John gets a visit from the police officers investigating Kathy's disappearance. Sheriff Arthur J. Lux, thinks that Kathy is probably fine, and says that he voted for John. The other, Vincent Pearson, distrusts John. He was also a soldier in Vietnam, and doesn't like what he's read about John's behavior in the war. John calls Patricia, Kathy's sister, and tells her to come to Lake of the Woods. The narrator gives evidence of the court-martial that took place after the My Lai Massacre. Soldiers insist that they were only following orders, or that they killed women and children to take revenge for own their dead friends. After the massacre, John extends his tour in Vietnam for another year as a kind of penance while also changing documents to make it seem like he wasn't at My Lai. When he comes back to the United States, he runs for state senator, hiring Tony Carbo, a fat, experienced campaign manager who encourages John to focus on his image, not the issues. Tony seems to have a crush on Kathy, and asks John if he has any "dirt." John insists that he doesn't, but Tony says that he knows John is hiding something. At one point, Kathy tells John that she's pregnant, but John encourages her to get an abortion, since it's a bad time for him to start a family. Kathy does so, even though she wanted children. It's also possible, the narrator suggests, that Kathy became lost. As she tried to find her way back to shore, she may have thought about her own affair with a dentist named Harmon—an affair that John eventually found out about. She thinks about an evening she spent gambling in Las Vegas with Tony when she had felt a sense of pure optimism. Later, when John lost his Senatorial race, Tony immediately defected to the campaign of the winning candidate, Ed Durkee. This "betrayal" angered Kathy, who had thought of Tony as a friend. Kathy might have been thinking about these things, the narrator acknowledges, as she left John's cottage on the day of her disappearance. The narrator also hypothesizes that Kathy might have killed herself by overdosing on Valium, thinking before her death that she wanted more out of life than John could ever give her. After John calls her, Patricia arrives at Lake of the Woods. She distrusts John. Patricia tells John that Kathy was frustrated with John's secrecy, a suggestion that John rejects. In the next section of evidence, the narrator comments extensively in a footnote, revealing himself to have been another solider in Vietnam. He refuses to argue that the soldiers at My Lai were innocent, but also argues that humans are by nature capable of evil things. He also adds that it was the "sunlight" that made the soldiers behave as they did. In Vietnam, following the My Lai Massacre, Lieutenant Calley tries to intimidate his troops into keeping quiet about their war crimes. One soldier, Richard Thinbill, who hasn't killed anyone at My Lai, asks John about his crimes, and John admits that he shot two people. John laughs hysterically, and Thinbill encourages him to do so, saying that honesty is the best policy. Later, in the court-martial, Thinbill names John, who he only knows as "Sorcerer," as a killer of two men. During the Senate campaign, Ed Durkee finds this information and leaks it to the press, leading to John's defeat in the Senate campaign. In Lake of the Woods, Claude, Patricia, and John look for Kathy on the water, and Patricia criticizes John for seeming not to care about Kathy at all. Later, John quarrels with Vincent Pearson, and senses that everyone is beginning to believe that he's guilty of killing Kathy. That night, he strips and jumps into the cold water of Lake of the Woods, thinking that he's no better than his father, who killed himself when John was fourteen years old. Then, he remembers Kathy's eyes, and climbs out of the water. Two weeks later, John receives a call from Sheriff Lux explaining that the huge fleet of boats searching for Kathy has found nothing. Afterwards, Claude tells John that the police are going to dig around John's cottage on the suspicion that John killed Kathy and buried her there. In the next section of evidence, it's suggested that John developed his sense of trickery and his fondness for manipulation from his father. Ruth and Eleanor suggest that the narrator is obsessed with solving the mystery of Kathy's disappearance. In a footnote, the narrator admits his obsession, but says that the mystery of Kathy's vanishing is more beautiful than any one solution could ever be. The narrator suggests that John may have killed Kathy by pouring boiling water on her face and then weighing her body down with stones in the lake. John takes a boat Claude left him and drives north. He reads Claude's letter, in which Claude advises him to head to Canada to "start over." It's revealed that John disappeared shortly after Kathy, and various characters comment that it's possible that he and Kathy are both alive and living somewhere together. The narrator muses that he'll never solve the mystery of Kathy and John's disappearance. Nevertheless, he's written the novel to address his own memories of Vietnam, which aren't much different from John's. He proposes that, since there's no one answer to the mystery, one might as well propose the happiest solution. Thus, he proposes that John and Kathy faked their disappearance, met up later, and are starting a new life somewhere. The narrator concludes by suggesting that John was a man, not a monster, and that he was guilty of nothing but living his own life.

- Genre: Short story, allegorical fantasy - Title: In the Penal Colony - Point of view: Third person - Setting: A penal colony on a tropical island - Character: The Explorer. Description: A protagonist with an ambiguous moral compass, the explorer is a distinguished visitor to the penal colony implied to have a European background. As the explorer witnesses the officer's dying way of life, he comes to represents a Western, liberal mindset. Invited to attend the execution by the new Commandant,the explorer is initially bored with the officer's explanation of the apparatus and its specific method of execution. However, his indifference soon shifts to horror as he learns the exact nature of the punitive system in the penal colony and the inhumane methods used to dispense the officer's idea of justice. Nevertheless, throughout the story the explorer downplays his authority and does not intervene in the execution of the prisoner despite his private misgivings. The explorer couches his lack of action as deference to cultural difference in order to absolve himself of culpability. When the officer pushes the explorer to speak up about preserving the use of the apparatus, however, the explorer tells him he will not support the officer, pointing out that because the new Commandant does not support the officer, his way of life is likely over anyway. When the officer then straps himself to the apparatus, the explorer seems to believe that the officer is doing the right thing—dying for his convictions. Ultimately, the explorer's conscience does get the best of him as he tries in vain to save the officer before his death. As he leaves the island, the explorer notably prevents the soldier and prisoner from coming with him—thereby further distancing himself from any connection with life on the penal colony. Though he condemns the officer's version of justice, the explorer's cowardly, self-serving actions also suggest that the West is not immune to inhumanity and cruelty. - Character: The Officer. Description: The story's antagonist, the officer acts as judge, jury, and executioner in the penal colony and is the last person who adheres to the rule of law created by the old Commandant. The officer is obsessed with the apparatus, a machine created by the old Commandant to torture and kill prisoners. The officer also took part in the early development of the apparatus and demonstrates this fondness for the device through his loving attention to every detail of the machine, which literally etches a sentence onto the body of the condemned and as it slowly kills them over the course of twelve hours. In an effort to continue the way of life he's known (and fiercely believes in), the officer gives a detailed explanation of the apparatus to the explorer, who he believes can convince the new Commandant to reinvest in apparatus and all it represents. The officer reflects an older, authoritarian society in which the few elite rule over the masses and use their authority to maintain power while cruelly inflicting punishment on anyone who breaks their rules. He does not give prisoners any chances to defend themselves, believing that anyone accused of a crime is guilty and that entertaining any counterarguments is a tedious and unnecessary part of a system of justice. At the end of the story, the officer maintains his allegiance to the old Commandant by sacrificially offering himself on the apparatus and sentencing himself to the crime of being unjust. This suggests a biblical parallel with Christ's crucifixion, underscoring the fanaticism of the officer's beliefs. In its final execution, however, the apparatus begins to break down, ultimately killing the officer by driving a spike through his head. The parallel fates of the officer and the machine demonstrate the finality of his system of justice. - Character: The Soldier. Description: A man in charge of watching the prisoner and assisting with the execution. The soldier is unable to understand the explorer and the officer as they converse in French and is generally uninterested in the execution itself, although he dutifully follows the officer's commands and helps to strap the prisoner to the apparatus. After the prisoner is freed, the soldier helps him gather his clothes and is reluctant to save the officer after he straps himself to the apparatus—suggesting he has more in common with the prisoner than the higher ranking official. Throughout the story, the solider is primarily a mute presence who finally speaks near the end when he gives the explorer a brief explanation about the old Commandant's grave and tries to escape the penal colony with the prisoner, only to be thwarted by the explorer. The soldier's attempt to flee suggest that even though the apparatus and the officer are gone, life is still undesirable in the penal colony. - Character: The Prisoner. Description: A man sentenced to death for failing to wake up and salute his captain's door, an arbitrary and absurd conviction. The prisoner is described as a stupid and naïve individual, representative of the average person in the penal colony who lacks power. The prisoner is guarded by the soldier and sentenced to die by the officer. Before being put on the apparatus, the prisoner takes a keen interest in the officer's explanation of the machine despite the fact that he does not understand the officer's French. The prisoner delights in his freedom when the officer eventually sets him loose and chooses to sacrifice himself to the apparatus instead. As he sees the officer beginning to be tortured, the prisoner senses that change is coming to the penal colony and attributes this shift to the explorer. The prisoner also tries to escape from the penal colony with the soldier by running after the explorer, who nevertheless leaves the pair standing on the dock. The prisoner recognizes that the change he feels coming to the penal colony is not enough to want to make him stay, but he is unable to escape despite his newfound freedom. This suggests a certain insurmountable class or cultural hierarchy between the prisoner and explorer, who can come and go as he chooses. - Character: The Old Commandant. Description: An authoritarian leader and inventor of the apparatus, the old Commandant is dead at the outset of the story but at one point had the power to command the respect of the entire penal colony. The old Commandant was very close to the officer, making him his right-hand man and enlisting the officer's help in constructing the apparatus. The old Commandant also conferred the power of judge, jury, and executioner to the officer, who remains worshipful of the old Commandant even after his death. The old Commandant represents systems of justice that are dehumanizing and have no regard for the rights of individuals. This is in contrast to the new Commandant, who does not approve of the old Commandant's ways and is slowly decommissioning the use of the apparatus and the officer's power. The old Commandant's gravestone, which claims he will rise again and tells his followers to have faith, has a messianic quality that strengthens the story's suggestion that religion has a part to play in authoritarian systems of power. - Character: The New Commandant. Description: The current leader of the penal colony who replaced the old Commandant. The new Commandant does not appear in the story in person, though he is clearly loathed by the officer. The new Commandant invites the explorer to view an execution during his visit to the penal colony, a move that the officer assumes is made to further devalue the old Commandant's system of justice and the apparatus. Despite the officer's criticisms, the new Commandant has made seemingly positive changes to the penal colony, such as holding conferences that the public can view as a way of participating in political life. The new Commandant represents a societal shift in the penal colony toward a more liberal, Western mentality further reinforced when the explorer tells the officer that he will not try to convince the new Commandant to keep using the apparatus. Even with the new Commandant's changes, it is suggested by the prisoner and the soldier's attempted escape at the end of the story that life on the penal colony remains unpleasant. - Character: The Dockworkers. Description: A group of poor, humble men who spend time at a teahouse in the penal colony. The dockworkers show the explorer the grave of the old Commandant and collect a few coins for their trouble. These men reinforce the state of the average person in the penal colony—listless and powerless. - Theme: Tradition vs. Progress. Description: "In the Penal Colony" is a story of the planned demonstration of an execution using a machine called the apparatus by the military officer of a penal colony on a foreign island. The officer, well acquainted with the apparatus, sets up the machine and explains its use to a foreign guest, the explorer, all the while detailing how the machine has fallen out of favor with the new Commandant and the residents of the island. In a bid to continue the old way of life, the officer tries to convince the explorer to make a case for using the apparatus to the new Commandant. Kafka's tale shows a shift in society from highly concentrated hierarchal authority represented by the officer to a more liberal, modern society represented by the explorer. In condemning the officer's stubborn devotion to decaying machinery and the backwards "justice" it represents, Kafka's story suggests the futility of clinging to outdated tradition in the face of forward progress. The irrelevancy of the apparatus is reflected in its physically dilapidated state. The officer repeatedly points out how the device used to be a marvel of engineering elegance and ingenuity. Now, however, it is loud and often breaks. The officer further lacks the necessary spare parts to repair the apparatus, as the new Commandant—"always looking for an excuse to attack [the] old way of doing things"—withholds the necessary funds and sends along only "shoddy material." New laws also prohibit the officer from using acid to increase prisoners' pain, leading him to lament that the apparatus can "no longer wring from anyone a sigh louder than the felt gag can stifle." And where large crowds once gathered to gawk at the proceedings, now "the execution has no support from the public, a shabby ceremony-carried out with a machine already somewhat old and worn." Together these details present a physical manifestation of the fact that the apparatus—and the entire system of "justice" it represents—is in a state of continual decay and no longer has a place in society. The officer is aware that his way of administering justice is changing. Nevertheless, he upholds slavish devotion to the apparatus, wistfully dreaming of returning it to its former glory—a desire that is clearly futile in the face of the progress suggested by the explorer. The explorer quickly notes that the officer's uniform is "far too heavy for the tropics," and that the latter is also "amply befrogged and weighed down by epaulettes." The uniform is a direct link to the officer's home country and the tradition therein, and the fact that it is wholly out of place in the colony reflects the officer's failure to adapt to his changing circumstances; he is literally "weighed down" by tradition. The officer further worries that the explorer will liken his methods to torture in the Middle Ages yet fails to internalize the antiquated nature of the justice he upholds. Indeed, the explorer muses that the new Commandant is going to bring in "a new kind of procedure which the officer's narrow mind was incapable of understanding." By bringing in a new way of dealing with offences, the new Commandant shifts away from the painful and absurd punishment of the old Commandant, creator of the apparatus, and his sole remaining devotee: the officer. The officer also says the new Commandant holds his conferences in public with a gallery that is "packed with spectators." This contrasts with the public who, during the time of the old Commandant, would gather to watch the apparatus work. This comparison suggests that the public is participating in the way the society is run rather than being entertained and kept in line by grotesque displays of execution. The entire world around the officer is progressing, then, and he clings to the past at his peril. The officer's death and the destruction of the apparatus make it clear that the ways of the new Commandant and the explorer are significant social changes that cannot be reversed. The officer abandons the sentencing of the prisoner telling him that he is free to go, all the while looking like an "old man." Comparing the officer to an old man underscores the age of his opinions and procedures and that by letting the prisoner go, the officer is allowing the traditional structure he supported collapse. After observing the officer strip naked, the prisoner senses that "some great change was impending." This clearly demonstrates that the officer, naked and deprived of any weapon, lacks his former authority in this new, modern society. As the apparatus breaks down, it changes from a machine that is delicate and has an exquisite way of administering torture to a machine that only murders. The true purpose of the machine is laid bare as its wheels start to fly out and its structures collapse: to maim and murder, rather than to truly assist in the process of justice. The officer does not experience the redemption he suggests other men found before they died but continues to look "calm and convinced." The apparatus gave insight and redemption to past prisoners, according to the officer, but his argument turns out to be a lie. This is an argument in the story for the failing of such hierarchical forms of authority even if the adherents, like the officer himself, cannot admit to its failings. The officer dies at the hands of the machine he knows better than anyone, and the social order in the penal colony is forever changed. No more adherents to the old way of dealing out justice remain, and the new Commandant is a leader who does not appeal to such absurd and brutal methods. Even still, the flight of the prisoner and the soldier show that no penal colony is appealing; however, the explorer's approval of the change suggest that the shift at work is a movement toward a liberal, democratic society. - Theme: Power and Justice. Description: "In the Penal Colony" explores what constitutes due and fair process in society. Kafka centers the plot on the planned execution of a prisoner who, instead of receiving a trial, has been sentenced to death by a high-ranking officer who automatically assumes that every man who is charged with a crime is guilty. The crime of the prisoner is one of disrespecting authority, further centering the importance of power structures in this world. What's more, the prisoner doesn't even know what he's been accused of, underscoring the fact that the penal colony's justice system is unconcerned with protecting or rehabilitating individuals. Kafka's story ultimately argues that "justice" used only to maintain power and punish transgressors isn't really justice at all. The descriptions of the prisoner, the most powerless character in the story, illustrate the disparity of power in the penal colony. He is described as "stupid-looking" and compared to a "submissive dog" that would not try to escape his punishment even if he weren't tied up. Such a description suggests the dehumanization of the powerless in this society, who are so robbed of dignity and autonomy that they passively accept the orders of their superiors. To the "horror" of the explorer, the prisoner joins their tour of the apparatus examining the machine with "uncertain eyes" without being able to understand the object of conversation. Later, after being released, he begins to play with the soldier and their end of wrestling "in jest." These depictions reinforce a view of the prisoner as childlike—at least in the eyes of his superiors—and create the picture of a naïve individual who has no capacity for directing his own behavior and needs to be ruled by those in power. The prisoner's crime is also notably one of disrespecting authority. As a servant for a captain in the colony, the prisoner had been ordered to sleep outside the captain's door and wake to salute that door every hour to prove his alertness. The prisoner, rather understandably, slept through the 2:00 A.M. salute. The order had been an absurd show of power in the first place, and the prisoner's sentence—to have "HONOR THY SUPERIORS!" etched into his skin by the apparatus until he dies—is an equally absurd and cruel punishment. A society built on deference to authority above all else, Kafka suggests, is inherently at odds with the nuance and reason required of genuine justice. The officer is wholly unconcerned with the idea that the prisoner should learn of his punishment beforehand or have any hope of defending himself, which reflects a single concentration of power that intends on keeping individuals in line rather than allowing them a chance to learn and mend their ways. The officer explains the prisoner does not even know of his offense, saying, "There would be no point in telling him. He'll learn it on his body." The officer's opinion that divulging the sentence would be pointless shows the punishment is not about rehabilitation. Instead, the man is used as an example to maintain the social order. The officer explains that his one principle is that "Guilt is never to be doubted," and shares with the explorer that any differing opinions are merely interferences with justice. The prisoner's guilt is a predetermined condition based on the charges of a superior officer. The foregone conclusion of guilt shows that the only truth in a brutal hierarchy is the truth that is decided by those in authority. When explaining the justice system, the officer says the prisoner would "have told lies" were he given a chance to defend himself and that a trial would have been a "confused tangle." Even explaining this point is a waste of time for the officer, who is more intent on impressing the explorer with the intricacies of the apparatus itself than the intricacies of why the apparatus is being used in the first place. If justice is a means to deter future crime, then Kafka's story would suggest that there can be no justice without an understanding of that crime in the first place. As such, justice cannot exist in a society in which the punishment is meant solely as a display of power and is more important than the crime or, indeed, than an individual's life at all. The officer's sentence and death, in turn, solidifies this idea that any system of justice within the matrix of such strict hierarchical power is faulty. The officer shows the explorer that his own sentence, which will be written on his body, is to "BE JUST!" This shows that the officer, by letting the prisoner go, believes that he is violating his code of justice. Ironically, however, it is only through this final act of letting the prisoner, likely an innocent man, go—a direct inversion of power structures—that the officer does something that approaches justice. The explorer, for his part, cannot "decipher" the officer's sentence for the prisoner and for the officer himself, try as he might. This shows that the officer's idea of justice is only relevant to the elite who hold power and does not have broader meaning to those who do not participate in that type of society. Right before his death, the officer doesn't receive the "promised redemption" that others had found after the brutal inscription of their sentence. This suggests that in fact the officer did not commit a crime by letting the prisoner go free and that ultimately his view of justice is faulty. Even as the prisoner is freed from death by the apparatus, he notably is still stuck in the penal colony—that is, a place where criminals are sent to be separated from "just" society. Both the prisoner and the soldier who'd been charged with guarding him follow the explorer as the latter leaves the colony via boat, with the implication that they, too, would like to escape from what is essentially a giant prison. Given that absurd display of crime and punishment within the story, the question arises as to whether any of the prisoners in the penal colony deserve to be there in the first place, or if they, too, were victims of a system designed to maintain power at whatever cost; perhaps their own transgressions back home were just as arbitrary as the prisoner's "crime" of falling asleep on the job. Kafka thus broadens his critique to condemn purely punitive justice at large and encourage consideration of the purpose of any justice system itself. - Theme: Religion. Description: Religious fervor is an explicit undercurrent throughout "In the Penal Colony." The old Commandant, who used to run the penal colony and is rumored to someday return, is reminiscent of an authoritarian god, while the officer acts as his lone remaining disciple. So devoted is the officer to the way of life embodied by the old Commandant that he follows his savior into death, sacrificing himself to his beloved apparatus in a sort of perversion of Jesus Christ's Crucifixion. The foreign explorer views the officer's dated and brutal beliefs with repulsion befitting his status as a more modern and worldly citizen. At the same time, however, the explorer—and, really, all those who have turned towards a society based on reason rather than blind faith—equivocates in his condemnation, lacking the officer's conviction when it comes to his own vision of morality. As such, Kafka's story grapples with how the modern turn away from religion is in many ways a step towards progress, yet also leaves human beings without the clear, guiding conviction they once enjoyed. The officer's description of the old Commandant and the rules of the penal colony allude to the symbolic and allegorical connection to religious belief. The officer tells the explorer about the old Commandant and his "perfect" design of the penal colony. Further, the officer explains that the rules that must be followed are "doctrines" and the sentences inscribed on prisoners are similar to the biblical language of the Ten Commandants. These details suggest that the system of authority that the officer follows has a deep religious emphasis. The officer says that the "prophecy" that the new Commandant cannot alter any of the old designs has come true. This points to his unquestioning belief in the ways of the old Commandant that is guided by a prophecy, which is an explicit connection to ways that religions operate. The officer's fervor for his way of life is clearly demonstrated when he strips off all his clothes before getting onto the apparatus himself. The explorer observes that this is due to the deterioration of the "judicial procedure" that the officer believes in so strongly and believes that he would do the same under similar circumstances, thus justifying the action in the officer's context. These details reinforce the allusion to the officer's devotion as religious belief to the system of order created in the penal colony by his "god," the old Commandant. The explorer and other residents of the penal colony lack the same disciplined zeal that the officer possesses, further reinforcing religion's ability to imbue life with order and motivation—for better or for worse. The officer explains that the adherents to the old Commandant's ways have "skulked out of sight" because the colony's new leader does not have an "atom" of the old Commandant's power. This shows that the people were principally motivated by the force of the old Commandant rather than meaningful consideration of the system of justice he created and enforced; without a leader who inspires such blind devotion, they are no longer motivated. The new Commandant notably has not outlawed the use of the apparatus despite his discomfort with it. Rather, he gives "shoddy material" to the officer to use the apparatus and takes control of the money for the machine. These are slow changes that do not reflect the sweeping use of power by the old Commandant. The explorer is also hesitant to openly express his disdain for the apparatus, his aversion to conflict proving stronger than his belief that such a tool and the justice it represents is morally wrong. All these details suggest that the new order, the new Commandant, the explorer, and the residents of the penal colony that no longer attend the executions are not motivated by any guiding frameworks that make them act with force or conviction. Nevertheless, the fate of the officer and the old Commandant suggests that the way of life they enforce is doomed. The officer places himself on the apparatus instead of the prisoner, making himself a martyr to his system of justice. The officer's dies by the sentence "'BE JUST!'" and hopes to find the same sense of enlightened redemption he believes he witnessed in other prisoners' eyes in his last hours. However, he is not redeemed and is instead finally killed by a piercing blow from a "great iron spike." The death parallels that of Jesus Christ, who offered himself up for humankind and was ultimately killed with a spear—further supporting the connection between the officer and old Commandant's system of justice and religion, and perhaps suggesting that both have no place in modern society. The old Commandant's gravestone suggests that he will "rise again" in order to lead his adherents. This messianic promise shows that the old Commandant and his system fall squarely within the same structures that dictate religious belief, one that is—rather ironically—rejected by the priests in the penal colony who will not let the old Commandant be buried in the local cemetery. In the absence of an authoritarian god, all the characters, particularly the people of the penal colony, lack the motivation to take specific action. They attend forums that the new Commandant holds rather than executions, and there is indeed more nuance to this existence. Yet there is clearly little industry or motivation to live or work within the society; these men may have comparative freedom, but it is unclear if they have any purpose. The benefit of this existence is complicated by the end of the story as the soldier and prisoner try to flee the colony with the explorer: the absence of a strict god may lead to freedom, but with that comes the burden of finding meaning for oneself. - Theme: Culture and Otherness. Description: Though it is unclear where the central officer in "In the Penal Colony" is from, the explorer is clearly distinguished as a Westerner who is conditioned with European ways of thought. The explorer is the onlooker of a planned execution of a prisoner that he quickly learns is unaware of his crimes and did not receive a trial that included any sort of defense. The explorer is highly regarded by the residents of the penal colony, especially the new Commandant, and ultimately disapproves of the procedure. The actions and position of the explorer is one of a power imbalance between Western culture and a different culture. However, Kafka complicates this relationship throughout "In the Penal Colony" by showing that neither the explorer nor the residents of the culture of the island are totally willing to embrace universal values such as inhumanity or cruelty. The explorer holds esteem in the other culture of the penal colony because he is explicitly denoted as Westerner. The officer notes that the explorer is described as a "famous explorer" who has been influenced by "European ways of thought" and as such will have influence over the new Commandant. That the explorer has more social capital than the officer suggests the superiority of the explorer's position. As the prisoner reflects on the fate of the officer he believes that the "foreign explorer had given the order for it." The prisoner is happy and satisfied at this result, and by ascribing the new change to the explorer he is also amplifying the explorer's power from the position of the culture of the penal colony. Before the explorer leaves the teahouse, he passes out "a few coins" to the dockworkers who are described as "poor, humble creatures." This again positions the explorer as an agent of higher status who confers value on the laborers and can afford to distribute wealth. All these details reinforce the status of the explorer and the position of Western culture as superior to the other culture of the penal colony. The explorer balks at the apparatus, yet his sense of (decidedly Western) propriety—and his cowardice—stops him from interfering. Throughout the officer's explanation of the apparatus, the explorer is uninterested and ultimately concludes that "The injustice of the procedure and the inhumanity of the execution were undeniable." The explorer also believes that the officer will be incapable of understanding anything different than what he knows. These judgements show a strong sense of superiority that the explorer maintains over the officer and how this sense somewhat ironically prohibits him from even attempting to "better" the officer. As the explorer considers the apparatus disapprovingly, "with a frown," he immediately justifies its use by explaining to himself that the penal colony use "extraordinary measures" that it is basically a necessary part of military discipline. By allowing himself to accept the procedure as necessary the explorer diminishes the cruelty of the practice for his own comfort. When the prisoner joins the officer and the explorer to get a closer view of the apparatus, the explorer's impulse is to "drive him away" because the man's close presence induces guilt that he is "probably culpable" in the execution. By showing his squeamishness in the face of guilt, the explorer is further demonstrating he cares more about himself and being polite than anything else. By the explorer's reaction to the officer's tour of the apparatus and his passive stance to the groundwork of the execution, it is clear that his main priority is to be comfortable and to be polite. Kafka thus subtly undermines assumptions of Western superiority and authority. The explorer's hesitancy to intervene in the use of the apparatus and the life of the culture of the penal colony is an indication that Western culture does not value human life universally. Even as the officer is disrobing, and it is clear to the explorer what is about to happen, he continues to believe that he has "no right to obstruct" what is happening and even goes so far as to explicitly state that the officer is doing "the right thing." This is extreme apathy and complacency on the part of the explorer, whose own commitment to humanity is suspect based on his unwillingness to get involved. When explaining his position to the officer, the explorer says, "I fear the end of your tradition is at hand, even without any humble assistance from me." This shows that the explorer is unwilling to participate in the change of the procedure on the island (one that he knows is undeniably unjust and inhumane) and that he shirks from using the power that is granted to him by this foreign culture. The story ends with the soldier and prisoner wanting to leave the island with the explorer. However, the explorer threatens them with "a heavy knotted rope" that keeps them from leaping into the boat. This is the only action taken by the explorer—to deny the soldier and the prisoner freedom. The explorer is unable to allow himself to help anyone except the dockworkers to whom he passes out a few coins. These points show that though Western culture may be deemed to be superior and more humane, in actual practice it lacks the conviction to affirm the value of human life and dignity. The actions of the explorer and the high position of esteem that he carries in the penal colony point to privilege and enlightenment that is deservedly undermined by Kafka in the story. The explorer is incapable of saving the officer or helping the soldier and prisoner find a new life outside of the penal colony. Though the explorer has Western values that can identify inhumanity, cruelty, and injustice, this worldview does not assist the man in actually acting in service of these values. Kafka thus shows that the superiority of Western culture in the face of Otherness is an illusion; despite the cherished values that a person with power might espouse, if they do not use their power to act, they are complicit in perpetuating barbaric acts of violence. - Climax: The officer fails to achieve redemption on the apparatus and instead dies a brutal death. - Summary: The apparatus, the machine used to execute prisoners in the penal colony, is the focus of attention for the officer despite an unenthusiastic response from the residents of the penal colony. The prisoner, who is to be executed, is guarded by a soldier, who looks on as the officer explains the nature of the apparatus and the methods of execution to the explorer, a visitor to the penal colony whose fame and notoriety comes from his background as a Westerner with a European education. Giving a brief history of the penal colony in the tropical heat, the officer talks of the old Commandant, who he believes perfected society on the penal colony, including inventing the apparatus, and made the officer his right-hand man. As the officer gets into the detailed components of the machine, the explorer's interest is piqued. Even the prisoner moves to get a closer look at the intricate machine that will eventually write out his sentence onto his flesh. The explorer derails the officer's long-winded explanation of the apparatus by inquiring about the prisoner's sentence and trial. Frustrated at the new Commandant for not explaining his methods to the guest (a duty the old Commandant always took seriously), the officer explains the prisoner is never told of his crime, instead, he learns of his wrongdoing when the apparatus writes the sentence on his body right before his death. To the officer, who, conveniently, is also the judge of crimes, any sort of defense is forestalling the inevitable because he believes that anyone accused of a crime is consequently guilty. The longer the officer explains the workings of the apparatus, the more the explorer is uncomfortable with the system of justice and the cruel form of execution, which becomes more absurd with the increasing level of detail in the apparatus. The explorer begins to feel guilty for even witnessing the execution, but he calms himself by suggesting he has no right to interfere with the cultural norms on the island. While loading the prisoner onto the apparatus, the officer tells the explorer that he needs help to maintain this authoritarian system of justice and continue to use the apparatus. Evidently, the new Commandant does not approve of this judicial system, and instead prefers to holds conferences that are open to the public. The officer hopes the explorer will make a case for the old Commandant's system of justice and the new Commandant will see the error of his ways. The explorer responds that he cannot support the officer—even if he will do nothing to stop the present execution—and he cannot tell the new Commandant that the apparatus is the proper way to administer justice. Upon hearing this, the officer quietly releases the prisoner, tells him that he can go free, writes his own sentence, feeds it into the apparatus, and then disrobes and places himself on the apparatus. The explorer looks on and concedes that the officer's actions demonstrate his appropriate conviction to his beliefs. The officer judges himself to be guilty of the crime of failing to uphold justice because he cannot maintain the old order. As the officer dies, the apparatus falls apart in front of the explorer, soldier, and prisoner, who do reluctantly try to save the officer from the malfunctioning apparatus, which is now brutally murdering (instead of methodically torturing) its victim. After the officer's death, the explorer goes to the teahouse to view the grave of the old Commandant, whose headstone suggests he will someday return to the penal colony. The explorer distributes some money to a group of dockworkers before leaving the teahouse and walking to a boat to take him to his ship. The soldier and prisoner follow, but the explorer does not allow them to board the boat with him and instead leaves them on the island.

- Genre: Historical fiction - Title: In the Time of the Butterflies - Point of view: Third person limited and first person, switching between the sisters - Setting: Dominican Republic - Character: Patria. Description: Patria Mercedes Mirabal Reyes is the oldest of the Mirabal sisters and the most religious. She wants to become a nun, but she gives this idea up and marries Pedrito at age sixteen. She has three children: Nelson, Noris, and Raúl Ernesto. Patria originally resists the underground movement, but she joins Minerva after witnessing the massacre in Constanza. Patria is never imprisoned, but she is murdered along with Minerva and Mate. - Character: Dedé. Description: Bélgica Adela Mirabal Reyes, who goes by the nickname Dedé, is the only sister to never join the resistance movement and to survive past 1960. She falls in love with the revolutionary Virgilio but never acts on her feelings and marries her non-revolutionary cousin Jaimito instead. Dedé wants to join her sisters' movement, but she finds her courage lacking and submits to Jaimito's demands to not make trouble. After her sisters are murdered by Trujillo's regime, Dedé becomes a kind of "oracle" for the butterflies, living in their house all her life, raising their children, and telling their story to the world. - Character: Minerva. Description: María Argentina Minerva Mirabal Reyes is the most outspoken and rebellious of the sisters and the first to join the movement against Trujillo. She desires freedom from her father's rules and then from Trujillo's police state. Minerva encounters Trujillo in person as a young woman, when he tries to seduce her. She graduates law school but Trujillo denies her license. Minerva marries Manolo and helps start the militant resistance movement, and she becomes "Butterfly #1." She has two children, Minou and Manolito. - Character: Mate. Description: The youngest sister of the family, Antonia María Teresa Mirabal Reyes, who goes by María Teresa or Mate, looks up to Minerva and spends most of her time initially thinking about clothes and boys. She joins the resistance movement when she falls in love with Leandro Guzman. Mate then becomes "Butterfly #2" and helps stockpile weapons. She is imprisoned along with Minerva, and is tortured by Johnny Abbes. - Character: Papá. Description: Enrique Mirabal Fernandez is the father of the sisters, a wealthy farmer and merchant. He cheats on his wife and has three illegitimate daughters. Papá tries to avoid making trouble with Trujillo, but is briefly imprisoned. Minerva realizes that while Papá puts on a show of being strong, he is actually the most needy of the Mirabals. He dies in 1953. - Character: Mamá. Description: Mercedes Reyes Camilo is the mother of the sisters. Mamá originally avoids trouble with Trujillo and wants her daughters to get married young, but later in life she becomes rebellious and outspoken. Originally illiterate and of the opinion that young women should get married, over time she learns to read and comes to believe that young women should be educated. She outlives the butterflies by 20 years, and helps raise their children. - Character: Rafael Trujillo. Description: The dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930-61, and the antagonist of the novel. Trujillo seized power as the head of the army and then rules behind puppet presidents. He sets up a "personality cult" around himself, elevating himself almost to godhood and plastering his face and name everywhere. His rule provides economic stability, but is also a time of murder, fear, and the dissolution of civil liberties. In the novel he appears during three confrontations with Minerva. He is assassinated by his former cronies a year after, and to some extent because of, the butterflies' deaths. - Theme: Dictatorship. Description: In the Time of the Butterflies focuses on the authoritarian regime of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, which lasted from 1930 to 1961. As a megalomaniacal dictator, Trujillo's personality takes over every aspect of life, and he becomes the personal antagonist of the novel. Throughout the book Alvarez shows the various ways a dictator affects both politics and daily life, from the fear of saying Trujillo's name in an uncomplimentary way, to being murdered in public for threatening him. She also links Trujillo to other, more globally famous dictators like Hitler and Mussolini. As a single person and also the head of the government, Trujillo can act as both a character – a man who tries to seduce Minerva, or who takes personal revenge by not letting her use her law degree – and as a constant looming force of oppression.Trujillo first took power as the head of the nation's army, helping to overthrow the former president Vasquez and then setting himself up as president. He ruled for 31 years after that, usually behind puppet "presidents." Trujillo set up a "personality cult" around himself, calling himself the nation's "Benefactor" and rewriting history books so that the peak of history was his birth. He renamed the country's capital "Trujillo City," statues of him were erected everywhere, and churches had to post the slogan "God in Heaven, Trujillo on Earth." Trujillo's reign was a time of economic prosperity and stability, but most of this ended up benefiting Trujillo's family and friends, and the cost of this stability was the loss of all civil liberties and a system of espionage, torture, and murder. The Mirabal sisters (the Butterflies) are then set as antagonists to this dictator, and the plot of the novel consists of their struggle against Trujillo's pervasive presence as they try to both lead personal lives of their own and also bring down the brutal dictator. - Theme: Freedom and Imprisonment. Description: The idea of imprisonment or entrapment pervades both the Trujillo regime and the lives of the Mirabal sisters in the novel. The Dominican Republic as a whole is basically imprisoned by Trujillo's police state, and Minerva describes leaving home as leaving "a small cage to go into a bigger one, the size of our whole country." No rival political parties are allowed to exist, and political prisoners and executions number in the thousands. The Mirabal sisters and their husbands are almost all imprisoned by Trujillo at some point, and even when they are released, Minerva and María Teresa are still kept under house arrest.There is also a more personal kind of imprisonment for the sisters, as they are at first trapped by their restrictive home life, where they must ask their father permission to do anything, and then by the expectations of society to get married and settle down. Minerva feels this imprisonment the most, and she compares herself to the family's rabbits in their pens. But unlike the rabbits, who fear to leave their comfortable cages even when Minerva tries to set them free, Minerva and her sisters desperately long for freedom. This struggle against "cages" is fought with weapons and words against Trujillo, and also within the hearts of each Mirabal sister. All of them except for Dedé end up joining the resistance movement against Trujillo, and they become national symbols of freedom. The sisters themselves find freedom only in death, but their martyrdom helps bring about Trujillo's downfall. Dedé, the only survivor, still seems trapped by the memory of her sisters and their growing fame, but she also lives to see the freedom they helped bring to the Dominican Republic. - Theme: Religion. Description: Religion is a powerful force in the lives of the novel's characters and in the politics of the Dominican Republic, which is a predominantly Catholic nation. Patria is the most religious of the sisters, and goes through the most personal religious struggles. She starts out wanting to be a nun, gives this up to get married, loses her faith after her baby is born dead, and then regains it with a vision of the Virgin Mary. In the political realm, the Catholic church remains neutral regarding Trujillo for years, which the sisters become bitter about. Patria's shift into resistance coincides with that of the priest Padre de Jesús and other Catholics, after they witness a massacre during a religious retreat. Soon afterward the Catholic leadership finally decides to take a stand against Trujillo, and they condemn him from the pulpit. The regime responds with a full-on war against the church, but one of the most inspiring parts of the novel is when the Catholic church finally stands up for its people and fights Trujillo in its own way.Alvarez also explores another interesting aspect of religion in the novel – the connection between a dictator and God. Part of Trujillo's "personality cult" involves associating himself with God – his slogan is "God and Trujillo," he is referred to as the country's "Benefactor," and people think of him as constantly watching over them, whether benevolently or malevolently. In Mamá's house there is even a portrait of Trujillo next to a picture of Jesus. This especially affects the religious Patria, who thinks of Jesus as divine justice and Trujillo as earthly power. They are a dichotomy of good and evil, but Patria also grows angry with God for allowing Trujillo to rule on earth. Eventually she even starts "praying" to Trujillo, asking him to spare her family. She tries to think of Trujillo as only a man, but finally concludes that he must be "the evil one become flesh like Jesus." Ultimately Trujillo's propaganda works – he does become a kind of "god" – but it is an evil god, and even the church rises up against him. - Theme: Women. Description: In the Time of the Butterflies revolves around the Mirabal sisters, women living in a very patriarchal, "macho" society. Their personal struggles are part of the power of their story, as they stand not only as symbols of rebellion against Trujillo, but at the same time as loving, independent women with husbands and children. Alvarez shows how the resistance against women in politics can even be propagated by the women themselves, as both Mamá and Patria initially express sentiments that women are inferior to men, or else are somehow "purer" and so shouldn't dirty themselves with politics. In talking to the interview woman in the present day, Dedé says that women "followed their husbands," but she knows that this is an excuse, as she is the only sister who actually did this. We also see sinister aspects of sexism in how the Trujillo regime treats women, as the "secretary of state's" real job is picking out pretty girls for Trujillo to seduce or rape.One of Alvarez's goals for the novel is to portray the "butterflies" as real women and not just legendary martyrs, and she does this by showing the personal lives of the Mirabals as they go through traditional coming-of-age rites: menstruating, falling in love, Mate obsessing over clothes, and eventually all of them getting married and having children – all while they fight against Trujillo and become national heroes. The butterflies are icons of Dominican culture, but Alvarez also humanizes them as normal women who overcame obstacles and struggled against oppression. - Theme: Courage vs. Cowardice. Description: The Dominican populace is divided and afraid under Trujillo, and every character has their own struggle between courage and cowardice. There are spies and informers everywhere, and people distrust even their own family members. Among the Mirabal sisters, who are all normal, middle-class women encouraged to not make trouble, each sister must make her personal choice between courage and cowardice once she experiences the evils of the Trujillo regime. Minerva is the most naturally courageous and outspoken sister, and the one who leads the other sisters in political activity, but even she finds it difficult to keep up her role as a national symbol of courage. Patria struggles with the pacifism and neutrality of her faith and husband, but she ultimately chooses to risk her life and join the rebellion. María Teresa is the vainest and youngest of the girls, but she also joins the underground early and is the only sister to experience direct torture from the SIM.Dedé is then the only sister to accept her fear and choose to avoid getting involved with the "butterflies." At first she seems like a coward for this, and her guilt haunts her for years, but in the end Alvarez shows how Dedé too has been brave. She has a martyrdom as hard as her sisters, as they all died young, but she has to live with their loss and her own guilt for decades. She then manages to overcome this and become the "oracle" of the butterflies, telling the world their story. The legend of the Mirabals grows after their deaths and they become larger-than-life figures of courage, but through Alvarez's storytelling we also see each woman's struggle with cowardice and fear, which makes them even more inspiring. The butterflies are not "naturally" brave, but are ordinary women who made the choice to be brave. - Climax: The Mirabal sisters approach their ambush - Summary: The novel takes place in the Dominican Republic, both in 1994 and under the Trujillo regime. In 1994, Dedé Mirabal lives in the house where her three sisters used to live. The dead sisters are known as the "butterflies," and they are martyrs and national heroes. In 1994 Dedé talks to an interviewer about her sisters, and her narrative is interrupted with memories. The story shifts between the four sisters from 1943 to their deaths in 1960: Dedé's memories, Minerva's point of view, Patria's point of view, and entries from María Teresa's diaries. Minerva convinces Papá to allow them to go to a Catholic school, and there she meets Sinita, a girl whose family was killed by Trujillo. Minerva watches Trujillo seduce and abandon a girl at her school, Lina Lovatón. Patria is the most religious sister, and she wants to become a nun until she discovers her own sexuality. She marries a farmer named Pedrito at age sixteen, and has a son Nelson and a daughter Noris, but her next baby is stillborn. This shakes her faith, and she is especially affected by a portrait of Trujillo located next to one of Jesus. Dedé becomes infatuated with Virgilio Morales, a young Communist intellectual, but Virgilio and Minerva end up dating instead. Dedé settles for marrying her cousin Jaimito, and Virgilio is driven by the Trujillo regime into exile. One day Minerva discovers that Papá has a mistress and three illegitimate daughters. Papá gets invited to a party thrown by Trujillo, and there Trujillo tries to seduce Minerva, while she tries manipulate him into letting her go to law school. She slaps him, and the Mirabals leave. The next day Papá is arrested and taken in for questioning. Minerva is asked to have a "private conference" with Trujillo, but she refuses. Papá is eventually released, and Minerva meets Trujillo again for another battle of wills. Four years later Papá dies, and Minerva goes to law school. There she meets Manolo (another revolutionary) and gets married. She graduates, but at the last minute is denied her license by the government—this is Trujillo's revenge on her. Minerva and Manolo move in together, and María Teresa (who goes by "Mate") stays with them. Mate becomes infatuated with a young man who delivers weapons to Minerva, whom he calls by her name in the anti-Trujillo movement: "Mariposa" (Butterfly). Mate joins Minerva and Manolo's secret resistance movement and marries the young man, whose name is Leandro. Patria remains uninvolved until her son Nelson wants to join Minerva's revolutionaries. The church is neutral regarding Trujillo, but while on a religious retreat in the mountains Patria sees Trujillo's soldiers massacring some young revolutionaries. She is traumatized by this, and she and her priest join Minerva's underground group, together forming the "Fourteenth of June Movement." Minerva, María Teresa, and Patria are now known as the "Butterflies." The group uses Patria's house to stockpile weapons. The sisters ask Dedé to join their movement, but her courage fails her and she submits to Jaimito's demands that she refuse. Then the SIM (Trujillo's secret police force) arrest Pedrito, Nelson, Manolo, and Leandro, and then Minerva and Mate as well. Patria stays at Mamá's house, and watches as the church finally speaks out against Trujillo. She eventually gets Trujillo to pardon Nelson. He offers Minerva and Mate a pardon, but they refuse. Mate keeps a diary from prison, where Minerva remains brave and strong but Mate starts to break down. The SIM torture Mate to get Leandro to talk. The Organization of American States comes to investigate the regime, and the sisters are released into house arrest. By now the "butterflies" are national symbols of the resistance. A friendly driver named Rufino takes them to visit their husbands in prison. On their fourth trip, the sisters are ambushed as they drive down a lonely mountain road. Minerva's account ends, but Dedé explains what happened – the sisters and Rufino are each killed and then put back into their car, so it looks like an accident. Everyone knows that Trujillo killed them, however, and they become martyrs. In 1994, Dedé remembers Trujillo's overthrow a year or so after the murder of the Mirabals, and the bloody revolutions that followed. She now lives with her niece Minou, Minerva's daughter, and has become a kind of "oracle" for the sisters, telling their story to the world.

- Genre: Short Story - Title: Indian Camp - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: Native American Camp in Michigan - Character: Nick Adams. Description: Nick is the young protagonist of the story, brought along by his father and Uncle George on a trip to a nearby Native American encampment to care for an "Indian lady" who has been in labor for two days because her child is being born in breech position (meaning bottom instead of head first). The narrator doesn't make clear how old Nick is, but his childlike questions throughout make it seem that he is years from reaching puberty. Nick a curious boy who idolizes his father as a paragon of strength and wisdom. The trip begins as an occasion for Nick to learn about some of life's realities, but things quickly go awry as it becomes clear that the Indian woman will need to be given an emergency cesarean. At some point during the procedure her husband takes his own life, leaving behind a bloody scene which Nick glimpses despite his father's attempts to shield him from the sight. Nick leaves the "Indian camp" shaken. On the trip home, he retreats into his father's arms, believing that he will never die. - Character: Nick's Father. Description: Nick's father is a doctor who travels to an "Indian camp" to help deliver a baby. He brings his son Nick along on the trip, hoping to teach him lessons about life and work. He's a decisively masculine figure, and reacts to his world with self-assurance, stoicism, and grit—and not a small amount of male chauvinism. Regarding the pained screams of the woman in childbirth, Nick's father says that he doesn't hear them "because they are not important." Ultimately, Nick's father's emotionally distant behavior both supports and undermines his goals; it helps him successfully perform a complex operation in an intense situation, but prevents him from empathizing other people, leading him to treat the Indian woman and her husband without care and to put Nick through a traumatic situation, exposing him at a young age not only to the gruesome realities of a complicated birth, but to the even more gruesome realities of death and suicide. - Character: The Indian Woman. Description: The Indian woman is the reason for Nick's father's trip to the "Indian camp." She has been in labor for two days and requires medical attention because her child is being born in breech position (meaning bottom instead of head first). She is subjected to great pain throughout the story, both in enduring a complicated childbirth and a surgery without anesthetic. Her screams echo through the camp. In the face of great pain, she demonstrates strength, and is ultimately able to survive the operation, successfully delivering a baby boy with the help of Nick's father. Her husband, however, commits suicide at some point during the operation. - Character: The Indian Woman's Husband. Description: The husband of the Indian woman who, when Nick and his father arrive in the shanty, lies prostrate in the bunk above her, nursing a serious axe wound on his foot and smoking a pipe. The story presents the husband as a hapless bystander. He's deeply pained by his wife's screams, but is unable to offer her the help she needs. All he can do is stay nearby and witness Nick's father's callous yet effective treatment of her. This condition wears on him and, near the end of the story, he slits his own throat with a razor for reasons that remain unknown to the reader, though Nick's father hypothesizes glibly that it was because he "couldn't stand things." - Character: Uncle George. Description: Uncle George largely spends "Indian Camp" assisting Nick's father in his operation. He's an affable man who gets along with the Native American men and, like Nick, greatly admires Nick's father, flattering him with compliments and calling him a "great man" after he successfully performs the operation. Uncle George lets his prejudice show during the operation when he calls the Indian woman a "squaw bitch" after she bites him. - Theme: Birth and Death. Description: In "Indian Camp," a young boy named Nick watches his father, a doctor, surgically deliver a baby without anesthetic. The baby's mother, an "Indian lady," is clearly in excruciating pain, but she and the baby live. Meanwhile, in the course of her labor, the Indian woman's husband dies quietly, slitting his own throat as he lies above his wife in the top bunk. The bloody and painful birth occurs simultaneously with the violent suicide—and both are accomplished with knives—thereby explicitly associating these two experiences and making Nick understand that birth and death are somehow interlinked. However, while Nick has a difficult time watching the birth (a situation his father handles with performative nonchalance), he seems unfazed by the death, and comes away from the experience feeling that he will never die. Through Nick and his father's opposite reactions to birth and death, Hemingway suggests that these two fundamental aspects of human life cannot be fully understood—and that to acknowledge their gravity requires a sense of awe, and even the impulse to look away. The story establishes the similarity between birth and death by depicting both as painful, bloody, and violent. The woman's birth is complicated because her baby is born in breech position (i.e., bottom-first instead of head-first), and for days she has been in terrible pain. While her screams are excruciating, Nick's father suggests that this pain is a natural part of the birthing process: "All her muscles are trying to get the baby born," he tells Nick. "That is what is happening when she screams." Furthermore, since she can't deliver the baby naturally, Nick's father operates on her with his buck knife, and without anesthetic. This leaves her in such pain that three men must hold her down, and she bites Uncle George. By the time the woman is stitched up, she is "pale" and "quiet"—it seems that her pain was so extreme that it left her unconscious, not even aware that her baby has finally been born. Similarly, when the birth is over and Nick's father checks on the woman's husband in the top bunk, he finds a grisly scene: "His throat had been cut from ear to ear. The blood had flowed down into a pool where his body sagged the bunk." Although the reasons for the man's suicide will never be known, it seems plausible that the pain he felt watching his wife give birth overwhelmed him and led him to suicide, explicitly linking the violence and pain of birth to the violence and pain of death. While Hemingway depicts birth and death as similar experiences, Nick and his father react to them differently. Nick's father treats the birth with nonchalance; he encourages Nick to watch each step and he dismisses the woman's screams as "not important." However, the woman's painful birth clearly scares Nick. He asks his father to "give her something" to stop her screaming, and even as he helps his father prepare for surgery, he can barely look at what he's doing. Of the actual surgery, Hemingway writes, "Nick did not watch. His curiosity had been gone for a long time." While Nick's father clearly thinks it's appropriate—and even important—for Nick to watch this difficult birth, he tells Uncle George to take Nick outside when he finds the dead man in the top bunk. However, Nick has already seen it—he had a "good view" of the top bunk when his father "tipped the Indian's head back." These details (compared to the lack of detail in Hemingway's description of the surgery) suggest that Nick looked unflinchingly at death, while he shied away from watching birth. Perhaps Nick's father treats birth with nonchalance and Nick treats death with nonchalance because neither fully understands the gravity of each situation. When Nick's father tells Nick that the woman is having a baby and Nick says that he knows, his father corrects him: "You don't know," he says. But his follow-up explanation is clinical, as though what Nick doesn't understand is simply the mechanics of labor. It seems that his father has missed the point that this woman is bringing a human life into the world. Meanwhile, Nick seems to understand the gravity of the situation. Unlike his father, he understands that the woman is in great pain and he seems to share her fear of such a gruesome and dangerous surgery. As a child, Nick has no way of properly understanding the gravity of birth, but he knows enough to look away from it—perhaps because he realizes, to some extent, that he cannot understand. Conversely, Nick's father seems far more aware of the gravity of death than Nick. In the scene after they find the dead man in the top bunk, Nick seems unfazed—and even emboldened—by what he has just seen. He asks questions about birth and death (particularly about death), whereas during the birth the narrator notes that his "curiosity had been gone for a long time." That Nick doesn't understand death, despite his ability to look at it and inquire about it, is clear at the story's end when he notes that he felt "quite sure that he would never die." Of course, Nick will die, so his experience with death has not led him to understand it. Instead, he is left with a false confidence and a superficial understanding of death, similar to his father's superficial and clinical explanation of birth. In this way, Hemingway suggests that birth and death share a fundamental similarity: both are difficult and painful experiences, and both are not easily understood. To Hemingway, it seems, the appropriate response to such painful and incomprehensible situations is to look away. - Theme: Growing Up. Description: When Nick's father brings Nick along on a trip to deliver a baby, he intends to initiate his son into adult life by teaching him explicit lessons about life and the value of work. However, the trip takes an unexpectedly traumatic turn when the baby's mother requires an emergency surgery and her husband kills himself. In their debriefing afterwards, Nick's father tries to tell his son how to interpret what he saw, but his simplistic answers to Nick's complex questions undermine the lessons that Nick's father initially intended to impart. In this way, Hemingway suggests the complexity of growing up. The experiences that propel Nick towards maturity seem to overwhelm and even traumatize him. Meanwhile, the comforting words of his father, instead of making him more capable of facing the world, leave him less prepared for the difficult realities of life. Initially, Nick's father teaches Nick as though he were a student, carefully explaining the decisions he makes and the ways in which an adult goes about his work. For instance, Nick's father starts his procedure by telling Nick that the mother is going to have a baby. When Nick replies that he knows, his father insists that he doesn't know, and goes on to give a more specific definition of the birthing process, explaining that "all of her muscles are trying to get to baby born." He seems to be attempting to re-educate Nick, imposing his personal and highly clinical vision of what birth is. When Nick's father observes that the mother is going to need surgery, however, his teaching becomes more implicit, as he no longer has time for verbal explanations. As Nick's father sterilizes his equipment and his hands, for instance, he leads by example, with Nick watching and taking note of his father's care and thoroughness. In doing so, Nick's father communicates implicitly that calm attention to detail can help adults take on tough situations. As the birth becomes increasingly complicated, Nick's father's plan to initiate his son into maturity and teach him adult values goes awry. Although Nick's father encouraged his son to watch the surgery, the experience overwhelms Nick and he quickly stops watching, losing all his curiosity about what is happening. This severely limits what he can learn from the situation. Furthermore, after the operation, Nick's father seems to acknowledge that the experience may have traumatized his son rather than educated him, as he apologizes for the "awful mess" that came of the situation. Nonetheless, Nick's uncle George remarks that Nick's father is a "great man" for successfully performing the operation, which shows Nick that other adults ascribe value and respect to the way his father conducts himself, signaling to Nick that he should take his father's advice seriously. However, when Nick does take his father's words seriously in the final scene, it backfires. As Nick and his father prepare to leave the camp, Nick begins to ask questions about what happened in the shanty, but his father undermines any complex adult lessons Nick might have learned by giving his son simplistic answers. When Nick asks his father about why the man killed himself, for example, Nick's father replies that, "He couldn't stand things, I guess." This response betrays a lack of empathy for the father's plight, and it also implies that suicide is a result of weakness. Nick also asks his father if dying is hard, to which Nick's father responds, "No, I think it's pretty easy, Nick. It all depends." Again, this observation seems to contrast with the bloody, self-inflicted death that Nick witnessed, and it's a simplistic response to a particularly complex human phenomenon. At the end of the story, the narrator remarks, "with his father rowing, [Nick] felt quite sure that he would never die." It seems, then, that Nick's father's dismissive and simplistic attitude towards death has led Nick to a false understanding of death. Perhaps this confidence comes from his increased trust and admiration for his father ("with his father rowing," Nick feels immune from death), or perhaps it's because Nick's father has unintentionally implied that death comes as a result of weakness, and Nick does not, in this moment, feel weak. Regardless, instead of helping Nick become a mature adult (as the trip was meant to do), Nick's father's pat answers about dying make Nick seem naïve and unprepared to face reality. In this way, Hemingway suggests that such shocking experiences don't necessarily help young people like Nick mature—especially when the understanding that results from such experiences is so shallow. - Theme: Masculinity. Description: In "Indian Camp," Nick's father tries to demonstrate to Nick the characteristics of adult men. Above all, his words and actions communicate his belief that men ought to face adversity with stoic grit, responding to life's difficulties with stoicism and emotional distance. While this disposition allows Nick's father to handle intense emotional experiences (such as performing a difficult surgery), the story also shows that the pressure to live up to masculine ideals can limit a man's perspective, leading him to callousness and moral weakness. Hemingway portrays Nick's father as a masculine archetype, embodying many of the defining qualities of a traditional man: the ability to impose his will on the world and command respect in others. When the Adamses enter the shanty, for instance, the narrator describes its unhygienic conditions, but Nick's father immediately imposes order, asking for water to be boiled to sterilize his equipment and wash his hands, and refusing to touch a blanket once his hands have been cleaned. Beyond cleanliness, he combats the shanty's chaos by commanding others to carry out an identifiable procedure. He recruits a handful of the villagers as his aides and asserts himself as the person in charge, which results in a successful surgery and birth. From these actions, he earns the respect of others; Uncle George remarks that Nick's father is a "great man." Nick's father's unemotional responses are just as important to his masculinity as his commanding behavior, suggesting that men should be reserved and stoic. For example, Nick's father describes the birthing in a conspicuously clinical manner. While many people ascribe great emotional significance to the phenomenon of birth, he portrays it flatly as a physiological event, explaining that the birth is merely the process of the Indian woman's muscles "trying to get the baby born." Nick's father's responses to Nick's questions at the end of the story also suggest that he reacts unemotionally to some of the world's harsher realities. For example, he tells Nick that dying must be "pretty easy," and he suggests that the woman's husband killed himself because he "couldn't stand things." This cryptic comment implicitly places blame on the man's weakness for his suicide. While what specifically he couldn't stand is never specified, it was presumably witnessing the mother of his child in excruciating pain. Therefore, Nick's father associates the baby's father's extreme empathy and emotion with weakness and a lack of masculinity. Perhaps unintentionally, Hemingway's depiction of what masculinity should be also reveals some drawbacks of this perspective. For instance, Nick's father's masculine perspective blinds him to the pain the mother is enduring during childbirth. When Nick asks his father to give the woman something to ease her pain, he refuses, saying that he doesn't even hear her screams, since they are "not important." While Nick's father clearly believes that his stoic calm is admirable and important, his dismissal of the woman's pain comes off as callous and cruel. Furthermore, after performing a surgery on an unanaesthetized woman, Nick's father still makes the observation that fathers are "usually the worst sufferers in these little affairs." In this case, Nick's father's recognition of the husband's suffering makes his failure to recognize the woman's suffering naïve to the point of absurdity, since the obvious reality of the situation is that the woman enduring the surgery must be the worst sufferer, and her grotesque, complicated birth could hardly be called a "little affair." In fact, the contrast between the men's behavior and the women's undermines the traditional association of masculinity with strength and femininity with weakness, since the men seem unable to acknowledge the woman's pain, while she herself is perhaps the story's strongest character. For example, when Nick and his father arrive in the camp, they find many Indian men smoking out of earshot of the mother's screams, presumably because merely hearing her cries of pain is too much for them to bear. Meanwhile, many of the women from the camp are in the shanty, helping the mother birth her child. Furthermore, when the mother bites Uncle George during the operation, he immediately lashes out, unable to handle this comparatively minor pain, while the mother is wordlessly withstanding an incredibly painful surgery. Finally, just being near the mother's operation is such an intense experience for the baby's father that he's led to kill himself, while the mother survives an emergency caesarian delivery, performed with a jackknife. Regardless of whether Hemingway meant for his depiction of masculinity to expose the absurdity and naivety of such rigid conceptions of masculinity, the story makes it clear that these conceptions can be limiting: masculinity leads Nick's father into cruel dismissal of female pain, and it blinds him to the fact that the story's women are ultimately its strongest, most stoic characters. - Theme: Cross-Cultural Encounters. Description: In "Indian Camp," the Adams family (who are certainly white, though this is never specified) come to an Indian village to assist a difficult childbirth. The complex dynamic between these characters of different cultural backgrounds shows that such encounters often have mixed results. When people share their unique knowledge with people from a different culture, the results can be positive, as when Nick's father's medical expertise saves the lives of the Native woman and her baby. On the other hand, when outsiders enter a different cultural space without grace or care, they can humiliate and hurt other people as well as themselves. Nick's father and uncle, for example, are cruel and dismissive to their hosts because they seem to believe that Native people are less deserving of respect. The story, then, is something of a parable for European settlers' treatment of native peoples in American history, in which white settlers believed they were bringing civilization to a "New World," but their callousness only brought destruction and suffering for the people who lived there first. To highlight the cultural differences between white American and Native American culture, Hemingway contrasts Nick's father's medical practices with the traditional birthing practices already underway when he arrives at the shanty. These descriptions paint Western culture as ordered, clean, and effective, while Native culture is portrayed as uncivilized, chaotic, and dirty. For example, Hemingway's narrator takes note of the inadequate sanitary conditions of the shanty when the Adamses arrive, which Nick's father's training in Western medicine leads him to immediately remedy. The first thing he does is fastidiously clean his hands and his tools, and he doesn't begin operating until he has ensured a higher standard of cleanliness. Nick's father also imposes order via a structured hierarchy; he enlists Native Americans as his surgical team, and, with them reporting to him, they are able to perform a successful operation. This depiction suggests that Nick's father has been able to create life-saving order out of hopeless disorganization, clearly indicating a view not only that the birth would have been doomed if not for the arrival of this white doctor, but that the cultural and medical practices in this Native American village are inferior to those of white American culture. While Nick's father does appear to save the woman's life by bringing his expertise to her childbirth, his treatment of his Native patient provokes the reader to consider how his prejudice affects his ability to do his job. Certainly, she would have had a better experience if her doctor had treated her like a human being. For example, it's clear that the mother's screams are extreme enough that they cause deep distress to her husband and to other villagers in the shantytown (who try to stay out of earshot). Nevertheless, the screams don't faze Nick's father. As he prepares to operate on her without anesthetic, he even says that he doesn't "hear [her screams] because they are not important." Furthermore, when Uncle George holds the mother down for Nick's father to operate on her, she bites him, likely due to the pain of undergoing a surgery without anesthetic. Rather than bearing this (relatively minor) pain and empathizing with her distress, Uncle George's first reaction is to call her a "squaw bitch." This reaction discloses a lack of empathy for her situation and is inflected by racial prejudice. Ultimately, the mixed outcome of Nick's father's intervention (the child is successfully born, but the mother is left sickly and pale and her husband kills himself) illustrates the mixed results of imposing one's culture on another. The story leaves open the possibility that, despite the surgery's "success," Nick's father and uncle's disrespect and cruelty have demoralized and traumatized the mother, while driving the baby's father to suicide. Readers thus must ask themselves what "progress" means and whether it is even desirable if it causes such distress, but this is a question Hemingway doesn't attempt to answer. - Climax: A baby is born through C-section - Summary: Nick Adams, the young protagonist of "Indian Camp," arrives at a lakeshore with his father and his uncle where they meet several Native Americans. The Native Americans row them across the lake and lead them through the woods until they come to a small shantytown—a Native American encampment—and enter the first building, where a woman is very sick. Inside the lamp-lit shanty, the mother lies on a bed screaming. She has been in labor for two days. Many of the older women in the village are helping her, while many of the men stay out of earshot of her screams. The father lies on the bunk above her, smoking a pipe and nursing a wound on his foot. The room smells very bad. Nick's father is a doctor, and he doesn't have any anesthetic to ease the woman's pain. He instructs the older women to boil water and uses the water to sanitize his hands and his equipment. He describes the problem with the birth (the baby is being born in breech, which means bottom-first instead of head-first) and suggests that he might have to operate. Some time later, Nick's Father begins the procedure. Uncle George and three male villagers hold the mother down while Nick's father performs the surgery. The mother bites Uncle George, causing him to call her a "squaw bitch." Eventually, Nick's father successfully delivers a baby boy. Throughout the procedure, he enlists Nick's help and tries to demonstrate his process, but Nick is unable to watch. After the delivery, Uncle George congratulates Nick's Father for performing the surgery with a jack knife and remarks that Nick's Father is a great man. Nick's father announces that he will return in the morning with a nurse. With the surgery complete, Nick's Father goes to check on the husband in the top bunk. He finds that the husband has slit his own throat with a razor, the bed pooling with blood. Immediately, Nick's Father orders Uncle George to take Nick out of the shanty, but it's too late: he's already seen the dead man. Now outside the shanty, with day breaking, Nick's Father apologizes to his son for bringing him along on this trip. Nick then asks his father a series of questions about what happened in the shanty. Nick's Father responds to each question with short, deflating answers: normally deliveries are easier; the husband must have killed himself because "he couldn't stand things;" most people don't kill themselves; and dying must be "pretty easy." As Nick sits back in the boat, his father rowing him away from the camp, the narrator makes observations about the beautiful morning scene at the lake. When the story comes to an end, the narrator notes that Nick, with his father steering, "felt quite sure that he would never die."

- Genre: Bildungsroman (coming-of-age novel) - Title: Indian Horse - Point of view: First person (Saul) - Setting: Canada, 1960s-70s - Character: Saul Indian Horse. Description: Saul Indian Horse is the protagonist and narrator of the novel. In many ways, his life is modeled on that of Richard Wagamese, the author. Saul is a member of the Fish Clan, an Indigenous Canadian tribe that lives near the Winnipeg River. At a young age, Saul's family is torn apart by white Canadians who steal away his brother, Benjamin, and his sister, Rachel, and force them into a Canadian school system for Indigenous children. Later, Saul himself is kidnapped and sent to such a school. There, Saul endures brutal physical abuse, sexual abuse (a fact which he represses for many years), and a prolonged attempt to break his spirit. At school, however, he becomes a talented hockey player, and is adopted by an Indigenous Canadian man who sees potential in Saul. For a time it appears that hockey will provide Saul with a path to a better, happier life. But as Saul grows older, the trauma from his past and the racism he faces everyday bear down on him. He becomes violent, sullen, and an alcoholic. It's not until many years later, when he is a grown man, that he begins to acknowledge the roots of his unhappiness. As the book comes to its cautiously optimistic ending, Saul is busy trying to address and repair the pain that lingers from his childhood. - Character: Naomi. Description: The grandmother of Saul Indian Horse, Naomi is, in many ways, the key maternal figure in Saul's life. A strong and sensitive woman, Naomi takes care of Saul by telling him stories, keeping him warm, and reassuring him that everything is going to be all right, even when it seems otherwise. Naomi is a matriarchal figure in her family, commanding respect from everyone around her and maintaining the family's heritage and traditions. Tragically, her life comes to an end while she's carrying Saul through the snow, trying to lead him to warmth. Her death coincides with Saul being taken to St. Jerome's, one of the milestones of his life. - Character: Father Gaston Leboutilier. Description: A teacher and priest at St. Jerome's, Father Gaston Leboutilier initially seems to be the only ally Saul Indian Horse has at the school. Leboutilier teaches Saul how to play hockey, and gives him endless encouragement and love. Without Leboutilier, Saul leads readers to believe, Saul would never have developed his skills as a hockey player, and would have continued living at St. Jerome's in utter misery. However, as the book comes to an end, it becomes clear that Father Leboutilier, quite contrary to being Saul's friend, was actually a rapist who abused Saul under the guise of nurturing him. - Character: Virgil. Description: The youngest son of Fred Kelly and Martha Kelly, Virgil is Saul Indian Horse's closest friend in the novel. A confident, friendly, matter-of-fact teenager when Saul meets him, he encourages the much younger Saul to play on the hockey team (of which he, Virgil, is the captain), and eventually becomes Saul's main confidant. Years later, when Virgil is reunited with Saul, he's angry that Saul left town so suddenly, but he also understands some of what Saul has gone through. He is, in short, a true friend: someone who continues to love and respect Saul, "warts and all." - Character: Fred Kelly. Description: Fred Kelly is one of the gentlest and most likeable characters in the novel. He adopts Saul Indian Horse, freeing Saul from St. Jerome's, and encourages him to play hockey for his local team. He continues to provide Saul with love, food, and encouragement, even after Saul has been away for years and returns to wrestle with his tumultuous past. Fred is an important character in Saul's life, in part because, like Saul, Fred was a victim of sexual abuse at St. Jerome's, and therefore has some idea of what Saul is going through. - Character: Sister Ignacia. Description: A nun and teacher at St. Jerome's school, described by Saul Indian Horse as being a cruel, narrow-minded woman. Ignacia is perhaps the most vocal proponent of the cultural genocide that Saul and other Indigenous Canadians experience during the book: she openly claims that Native Americans should be prevented from speaking their own language or celebrating their own culture. As such, she's the embodiment of an evil and destructive ideology. - Character: Slanting Sky. Description: Saul Indian Horse's great-grandfather, and an important figure in the Fish Clan. Slanting Sky appears before Saul at several points in the novel, always as part of a dream or vision. He is portrayed as a wise leader and a calming presence, who inspires Saul to be strong and proud. - Theme: Family and Tradition. Description: Richard Wagamese's Indian Horse takes its title from the protagonist Saul Indian Horse's family name, so it's no surprise that family (and the traditions that families preserve) is one of the book's central themes. Saul Indian Horse is a member of the Fish Clan, an Indigenous Canadian tribe that lives near the Winnipeg River. Saul's family has always been influential in the Fish Clan. Saul's great-grandfather, Slanting Sky, was a shaman—an important healer and religious figure in his community. The novel takes place during the 1960s and '70s, at a time when Indigenous Canadian traditions were under attack in Canada. Laws—for example, the Indian Act of 1876 (and its amendment in 1884)—required Indigenous Canadian children to attend Christian, English-speaking schools, where they were separated from their families and forced to un-learn their tribe's traditions. Wagamese shows Saul Indian Horse struggling to maintain ties to his family and his culture, even after he's taken away from his family and sent to school. In some ways, Saul embraces his longstanding family traditions, but in other ways he embraces new customs and even new family. While Wagamese doesn't go into a tremendous amount of detail about Fish Clan culture, he does suggest that the Fish Clan has strong beliefs about the importance and structure of family, as well as strong traditions that sometimes conflict with those of the white Canadian population. One of the first things Saul writes about his culture is that it places a lot of emphasis on respect for elders, especially women. Indeed, the de facto leader of Saul's family isn't his father (as is often the case in societies of European heritage), but rather his grandmother, Naomi. In the first part of the book, Naomi leads her family in search of food and safety, and also is a spiritual leader of the family, often overruling the younger, less experienced people in her family. Saul's family and culture also place a lot of emphasis on respecting and living in harmony with the natural world. The family believes that there are forests and lakes in Canada that offer spiritual enlightenment that no manmade community can match. But furthermore, these sites only offer enlightenment to certain families and certain people—they're not for everyone. Perhaps the most important aspect of Fish Clan tradition in Indian Horse (and the biggest difference between Fish Clan culture and white Canadian culture as Wagamese depicts it) is the way tradition itself is conceptualized. To Saul and his family, tradition isn't a vague, wishy-washy concept—it's a real, tangible thing that can be experienced through visions and dreams. Over the course of the book, Saul has visions in which he sees his distant ancestors and receives advice from them, based on their own wisdom and experiences. In this way, Wagamese seems to see tradition and family as two sides of the same coin: families are the bearers and inheritors of traditions, and many of the most important traditions concern the structure of the family. Family and tradition play an important role in Saul's coming-of-age. They give him a sense of higher purpose and remind him that he's not alone in the world—that, on the contrary, he's connected to his family members, both living and dead. During the long middle section of the book, when Saul is feeling depressed and lonely, he seems to lose touch with his family and traditions. As he explains in the first chapter, he loses the ability to have mystical visions, which causes him great sadness. By the same token, Saul seems to regain his confidence and sense of purpose following a vision he has at the end of the book. During this vision, his great-grandfather, Slanting Sky, tells him to keep Gods Lake (a place where, according to tradition, only Saul's family may live) within himself. As Wagamese sees it, Saul attains enlightenment when he accepts that he is a member of the Fish Clan tribe, the descendant of countless ancestors, and the bearer of proud traditions. At the same time, Wagamese makes it clear that Saul is not just the bearer of the traditions of the past. As a young man growing up in a tumultuous time, Saul discovers new customs and cultures and incorporates them into his identity. He plays hockey, speaks and reads English, and embraces many other aspects of white Canadian culture, balancing Fish Clan tradition with the culture of a changing world. Balancing Indigenous tradition with white culture—in other words, living one's life in the present without losing touch with the past—is the crux of Wagamese's point about family and tradition. Doing so gives Saul the resilience and sense of community that he needs to live a happy life. - Theme: Cultural Genocide. Description: In 1994, the United Nations defined cultural genocide as "Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving [an ethnic group] of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities." By this definition, 20th century Canadian laws and government policies qualify as one of the most flagrant and destructive cultural genocides of modern times. For more than a century, the Canadian government officially required all Indigenous Canadian children to attend Christian, English-speaking schools, so that the children could assimilate to European Canadian culture. Law enforcers had freedom to take Indigenous Canadian children from their families and send them to schools hundreds of miles away (in effect, kidnapping them). In addition to being underfunded and conducive to high rates of sexual abuse, these schools were institutionalizations of a cultural genocide campaign: they were explicitly designed to weaken Indigenous Canadian languages and traditions. In Indian Horse, Saul Indian Horse attends an indigenous school called St. Jerome's, where he experiences firsthand the viciousness of the cultural genocide that took place in Canada. By portraying the Indigenous Canadian cultural genocide from the perspective of a small child, Wagamese emphasizes the terror and chaos that it caused. Saul's siblings, Benjamin and Rachel, are abducted from their communities at an early age with no explanation given, other than that they're required by law to go to school. Benjamin and Rachel's kidnappings cause Saul's parents tremendous grief, which leads to their becoming alcoholics. Wagamese portrays Saul's abduction, which occurs a few years later, as a confusing, disorienting event. Two men drag Saul away from his dying grandmother, Naomi, and send him to St. Jerome's. The men make no effort to take care of Naomi, and they seem to have no hesitation about taking a child away from his dying grandparent. This suggests that the men are not motivated by a desire to help nor tempered by any sympathy for the family. Rather, it seems, at best, that they're following orders, and, at worst, actively trying to destroy the Fish Clan's family structure. At the time, the Canadian government offered many justifications for its education policies, usually suggesting that the policies were designed for Indigenous Canadians' own good. By depicting the effects of these policies from a child's point of view, Wagamese cuts through the government's claims and shows the policy for what it really was: a mass kidnapping scheme, which had the effect of destroying Indigenous Canadian families, and inevitably weakening Indigenous Canadian culture. Saul and his Indigenous Canadian peers are sent to St. Jerome's for one reason: to un-learn the culture they grew up with. He and his classmates are told that they're going to learn the English language and the Christian religion. The teachers are constantly talking about the importance of English and Christianity, but Saul never says what, if anything, he learned about these subjects. Indeed, few of the teachers at the school seem to take Christianity seriously at all. Instead of practicing love and mercy, the teachers brutally beat their children, and in some cases sexually abuse them. Eventually, it becomes obvious that the only real "lesson" the teachers teach is the inferiority of Indigenous Canadians and Indigenous Canadian culture. The students are tortured and abused until they agree to reject their old languages and customs and become meek and subservient to their white instructors. In effect, St. Jerome's wipes out Indigenous Canadian culture and teaches Indigenous Canadian students to fear and obey white Canadians. The laws that brought about cultural genocide in Canada are especially frightening because they were framed as being unambiguously good for Indigenous Canadians: they promised to bring religion, language, and "civilization" to the native inhabitants of the land. The cultural critic Walter Benjamin said it best: "There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism." - Theme: Abuse and Trauma. Description: Toward the end of Indian Horse, Saul Indian Horse remembers some information that he's been repressing for many years. As a child, his beloved mentor at St. Jerome's, Father Gaston Leboutilier, sexually abused him. Saul's shocking realization cements trauma as one of the key themes of the book. Wagamese shows how trauma, particularly when it's caused by abuse, as it is in Saul's case, can be a crippling burden for its victims. It's crucial to understand why Wagamese presents Saul's abuse years after the fact, instead of portraying it in the present tense. To begin with, his decision to do so emphasizes the psychological realism of the novel. In many cases, victims of sexual abuse, particularly if the abuse began when the victims were small children, repress or forget about it for many years as a defense mechanism. Such a response is especially common when the abuser is a person the victim had a close relationship with. Father Leboutilier's apparent kindness toward Saul seems to have caused Saul a great deal of confusion and doubt, leading him to bury the memories of abuse altogether. But Wagamese focuses on Saul's recollection of traumatic abuse for another reason: in doing so, he wants to emphasize the point that the aftermath of abuse can be as painful (and in some ways more painful) than the experience of abuse itself. Over the years, Saul seems to repress all memory of Father Leboutilier's contemptible behavior. And yet, like many abuse victims, he becomes depressed and frustrated. He cuts himself off from other people—in part because of the racism he experiences among white Canadians, but also in part, it's implied, because he believes that other people wouldn't understand what he's been through. Again, Saul's behavior is consistent with that of victims of sexual abuse in many cases. Because of the horrific crime that Father Leboutilier committed, Saul goes through years of loneliness, isolation, and self-loathing. Indian Horse comes to a cautiously optimistic conclusion about trauma and abuse. It's possible for abuse survivors to lessen their burden by finding the courage to talk about their experiences. Years after his time at St. Jerome's, Saul comes to stay with his two adopted parents, Fred Kelly and Martha Kelly, both of whom went to St. Jerome's as children. Saul finds the courage to tell Fred and Martha about his abuse, and Fred and Martha admit to him that they experienced similar abuses at school. It's unfair that Saul should have been put in a position where he has to summon the strength just to talk about his feelings. Nevertheless, the experience of doing so undeniably proves helpful to him—since, instead of burying his pain as he's done for years, he communicates it to other people, thereby lessening his burden. Wagamese is not saying that talking cures Saul of his trauma. Rather, Wagamese suggests that healing from trauma is an ongoing process, with no definite endpoint. Saul will continue struggling with Father Leboutilier's abuse, but the support of his friends and loved ones means that he stands a better chance of living a happy life. - Theme: Racism and Prejudice. Description: In Indian Horse, Saul Indian Horse experiences many different forms and degrees of racial prejudice. There's the racism implicit in his being kidnapped, sent to St. Jerome's, and forbidden from speaking his own native tongue—i.e., the suggestion that his entire society is inferior to white Canadian society. Then there's the condescending racism of sports journalists who call him a "crazy redskin" and other belittling terms, even when they're praising his prowess. Saul experiences a huge amount of direct, verbal racism from white peers and sports opponents, who never miss an opportunity to call him names. And finally, he experiences his share of direct violence from racist whites who try to beat him into submission. All these behaviors stem from the fact that Saul is an Indigenous Canadian living in a country run by white people, many of whom believe that Saul is inherently inferior because of his race. This racism seems to spring from an irrational need on the part of white Canadians to prove that Indigenous Canadians are inferior to them. During Saul's time at St. Jerome's Christian school, he's beaten and abused by the racist white teachers. These teachers regularly tell Saul and his classmates that their indigenous culture is inferior to white Canadian culture. Of course, the indigenous students are not, in fact, inferior to whites, and so the teachers use violence to force them into submission. In a similar sense, most of the white Canadians who hit and bully Saul are motivated by their own failures. Saul is a talented hockey player who regularly defeats his bigger, more privileged white opponents. After particularly humiliating defeats, white hockey players or racist townspeople take out their anger on Saul and his Indigenous Canadian teammates. In other words, Saul is evidently better than they are at hockey, which is an important sport in Canada, and a traditionally European sport, which makes Saul's success even more humiliating for them. As a result, Saul's white opponents try to compensate by asserting their power in other ways. The cumulative effect of years of racism and prejudice on Saul is almost incalculable. But it's clear that racism ruins some of his potential in life by leaving him angry and frustrated. For a time, Saul is able to ignore the racism of his teachers and hockey opponents. But eventually, their cruelty proves too overwhelming for him, and he gives in to the (very understandable) temptation to fight back. The result is that Saul grows into an aggressive and embittered man—so much so that he's kicked out of the NHL in spite of his enormous talent as a hockey player. The central tragedy of the book is that racism, in all its forms and degrees, crushes Saul's spirit and turns what could have been a brilliant athletic career into years of fighting, soul-searching, and drinking. - Theme: Transcendence. Description: In Indian Horse, Saul Indian Horse experiences countless tragedies and setbacks. But there are also many scenes—usually intense, lyrically written, and very brief—during which he seems to escape tragedy momentarily. One might use the word transcendence to describe the experience of escaping tragic or traumatic circumstances, especially when the experience takes on a mystical or religious form. It's impossible to understand Saul fully without understanding the role transcendence plays in his life. For Saul, transcendence takes two principle forms. First, Saul experiences a series of mystical visions. During these visions, he interacts with his family members and ancestors, living and dead, and learns important lessons about the relationship between his family and the natural world, as well as between himself and his family. Second, Saul experiences a feeling of transcendence when he plays hockey. During his time at St. Jerome's, and later when he lives with Fred Kelly, Saul enjoys the sense of exhilaration that comes with skating on the hockey rink. He feels as if he's limitless, no longer encumbered by sadness or shame. It's no coincidence that Wagamese uses some of the same language to describe Saul's visions as he uses to describe his hockey games: words like "escape," "flying," "soaring," and "free" appear again and again, suggesting that the two categories of experience serve the same transcendental purpose. For brief moments, Saul is able to transcend the tragedies of abandonment, abuse, and racism, and feel nothing but excitement and freedom. If not for these brief moments, it's implied, Saul would never be able to summon the optimism necessary for surviving St. Jerome's and, like so many of his classmates, he'd give up on life altogether. But as the book goes on, transcendence becomes more and more difficult for Saul to achieve. His hockey games don't provide him with an escape from his ordinary troubles. On the contrary, they are his ordinary troubles. He encounters more intense teasing and racist bullying during hockey games than he does at almost any other time. As Saul grows older, he begins to associate the sport of hockey itself with racism. Hockey is further tarnished in his eyes when he realizes that his teacher and first hockey coach, Father Gaston Leboutilier, abused him as a child. In a similar way, Saul's later visions of his family don't provide him with an escape from the "real world." Instead, they force him to confront the real world in an especially intense and painful way. Toward the end of the novel, Saul has a vision in which he sees his great-grandfather, Slanting Sky, looking very thin and weary. This vision makes Saul weep, and immediately leads him to visit St. Jerome's, where he realizes that Leboutilier abused him. In short, Saul's visions no longer "free" him, or help him "escape"—instead, they help him see the sources of his misery more clearly. Transcendence is important to Saul's coming-of-age—without it, he might not have had the strength to survive. And yet, by the end of the novel, Saul appears to have traded transcendence for something more mature and ultimately more valuable. He continues to play hockey and love it, but he's realistic about the racial prejudices in his society, both in and out of the rink. Similarly, Saul vows to carry Gods Lake (a place that has spiritual significance for his family) within himself, suggesting that he'll maintain strong spiritual ties to his past and his family's traditions. This further suggests that Saul's ancestors will guide him through life at all times, instead of revealing themselves to him in brief, transcendent visions. In short, Saul abandons transcendence as a form of coping with life at the same time that he becomes a mature, experienced man. Instead of escaping from his problems, he summons the courage to meet them head-on. - Climax: Saul gets kicked off the Marlboros - Summary: Saul Indian Horse is an Indigenous Canadian and a member of the Fish Clan, a tribe that lives near the Winnipeg River. He grows up in the early 1960s with his parents, John Indian Horse and Mary Mandamin, his two siblings, and his grandmother Naomi. At an early age, his brother, Benjamin, and his sister, Rachel, are kidnapped by white Canadians in the area and sent to Christian schools where the teachers' primary aim is to "remove the Indian from" them. At the time, all Indigenous Canadian children are required by law to attend such schools, which means that Canadian authorities have the legal right to tear families apart, often using kidnapping to do so. After they lose their children, Saul's parents begin drinking heavily, and migrate from town to town in search of work. Miraculously, they reunite with Benjamin, who has run away from his school. The family decides to journey to a place called Gods Lake, where Saul's ancestors lived generations ago. At Gods Lake, Saul has a mystical vision. He sees his ancestors, laughing and playing at the water's edge. Then, he sees them crushed under enormous rocks. Shortly after this vision, Benjamin begins coughing up blood, a symptom of a disease he contracted during his time in school. He dies one day while harvesting rice with the family. Saul's parents take Benjamin's body into the nearest town to seek a Christian burial for him, but they never return. Naomi decides that she and Saul will have to travel down the river so that they don't freeze to death. Naomi leads Saul through wilderness and fierce snowstorms. Eventually, the two of them make their ways to the outskirts of the town of Minaki. There, in the middle of a blizzard, Naomi freezes to death. Two white men take Saul away from his beloved grandmother's body, and bring him to St. Jerome's school for Indigenous children. St. Jerome's is a terrifying place. The teachers, priests, and nuns believe they have a mission to teach their Indigenous Canadian students about Christianity, the English language, and Western laws. They severely punish anyone who speaks their native language, and effectively torture little children for acting up in even the smallest ways. Some of Saul's classmates are beaten to death, or kill themselves out of despair. At night, priests rape and abuse many of the children. Saul has one protector at St. Jerome's: a young, kind priest named Father Gaston Leboutilier. Father Leboutilier is protective of Saul, and encourages him to learn to play hockey. Although Saul is too young to join the school hockey team, Leboutilier allows him to clean the ice every morning, which gives Saul an opportunity to practice in private. On his own time, Saul teaches himself how to skate and shoot the hockey puck. Even though he's much younger and smaller than the other hockey players, he becomes a brilliant athlete. Leboutilier, recognizing his talent, allows Saul to play in hockey scrimmages, and Saul does very well. In some games with opposing teams, however, Saul is ridiculed for being Indigenous Canadian. One day, an Indigenous Canadian man named Fred Kelly arrives at St. Jerome's and offers to adopt Saul. Kelly recognizes Saul's talents, and offers to give him a home and a family, in return for which Saul will play for Kelly's local team, the Moose. Saul accepts. He says an emotional goodbye to Father Leboutilier, who tells him that hockey will set him free. Saul begins living with Fred Kelly, his wife Martha Kelly, and their son, Virgil Kelly, who is a couple years older than Saul. Virgil is the captain of the hockey team, and he encourages Saul to do well. Saul is much younger than the other players, but he wins their respect with his phenomenal talent. The hockey team competes in tournaments with other Indigenous Canadian teams, and wins almost all its games, thanks in part to Saul, who quickly emerges as their star player. The team experiences a milestone when a talented team of white Canadian players challenges them to a game. Saul reluctantly agrees to play with his Moose teammates, even though he has strong reservations about playing against white Canadians because of the racism he has experienced before. In the game, the Moose get off to a rough start, but with Saul's brilliant playing, they come back to win, 6-5. Afterwards, the Moose begin traveling more frequently, playing the best teams in Canada and often winning. After one particularly impressive victory against a white team, however, the Moose teammates are attacked and savagely beaten by white townspeople. Following this horrific incident, Saul begins to notice small instances of racism and prejudice more regularly in his daily life. One day, a talent scout comes to watch the Moose practice. The scout tells Saul that he has the talent to play professionally, and offers him a chance to train in Toronto and eventually go professional. Saul is reluctant to leave his friends and adopted family, but with Virgil's encouragement, he agrees. In Toronto, Saul plays brilliantly for his rookie team, and the future seems bright. But as the season goes on, he notices that opposing teams, and even his own teammates, mock him for being Indigenous. Journalists call him a "savage" and a "crazy redskin," even when they praise his performance. Saul becomes more aggressive during games, and eventually begins regularly fighting with members of the opposing team. Before long, Saul has been kicked off the team, and heads back to the Kelly family. Saul begins working for a living, and quickly leaves town to find a better job. Saul spends the next couple years working in various low-paying outdoor jobs. He makes little money, and spends whatever he saves on alcohol. Sometimes, his white coworkers give him a hard time for being Indigenous, and he usually fights back. By 1978, Saul has become a full-blown alcoholic. He begins living with a kindly farmer named Ervin Sift, who seems to think of him as a surrogate son. With Ervin's help, Saul tries to cut down on drinking. But eventually he relapses, begins drinking more and more heavily, and is so ashamed of himself for this that he leaves Ervin without any explanation. Saul drives around the country, going on drinking binges and eventually trying to quit drinking altogether. However, he begins having seizures as a symptom of withdrawal and ends up in the hospital. After this, he checks into a rehabilitation facility called the New Dawn Center, where he works with a counselor named Moses to recover from his alcoholism. Moses urges Saul to write down his experiences—which Saul does, in the form of this book. Saul leaves the New Dawn Center and drives out to St. Jerome's, which is now in ruins. There, he has vivid flashbacks to his time as a student, and realizes the truth: that Father Leboutilier had raped and abused him as a child. For years, Saul has repressed his memories of the abuse. Furious and confused, Saul journeys out to Gods Lake. There, he has a vision of his great-grandfather, Slanting Sky, who tells Saul that he must learn how to carry Gods Lake within himself. Saul returns to the visit the Kelly family. He tells Martha and Fred what he has realized about his past at St. Jerome's, and they tell him they understand: they went through similar experiences themselves. They encourage Saul to stay and rebuild his life with their support. Saul rejoins the local hockey team, and rekindles his friendship with Virgil, who coaches one of the local teams. Moving forward, Saul knows that he will continue to struggle with the pain of his past, but he's grateful to have loyal friends and a loving adopted family.

- Genre: Novel, Satire - Title: Interior Chinatown - Point of view: - Setting: Chinatown in Los Angeles, California - Character: Willis Wu. Description: Willis is an American actor and the son of Taiwanese immigrants, Sifu and Dorothy. Willis's relationship with his family is fraught, as he doesn't know how to connect with them or live up to their expectations for them. At the novel's beginning, Willis is barely scraping by playing bit parts on Black and White, a police procedural TV show. Interior Chinatown's narrative alternates between scripted scenes from TV shows that Willis acts on (and unscripted scenes where actors interact with one another out of character) and Willis's internal musings about western stereotypes of Asian people and the crisis of identity that such stereotypes often cause. As an Asian male actor, Willis is frustrated that the only roles available to him are one-dimensional parts that stereotype and dehumanize Asian people. He longs to leave forgettable parts like Generic Asian Man Number One behind, rise the ranks, and snag the coveted role of Kung Fu Guy. But doing so requires him to operate within—and therefore strengthen—the very system that has limited his opportunities and dehumanized him in the first place. He also must accept how fighting this self-defeating battle hurts his relationship with his family. Though Willis ultimately does become Kung Fu Guy, it costs him his marriage to fellow actor Karen and temporarily estranges him from his daughter, Phoebe. - Character: Sifu/Ming-Chen Wu/Old Asian Man. Description: Sifu is Willis's father and Dorothy's husband. In his old age, he's fallen into poverty, and his health is declining; though he was once Kung Fu Guy, now he's mostly invisible and plays the part of Old Asian Man on Black and White. Sifu's declining health strains his relationship with Willis. Sifu is originally from Taiwan and grew up there when it was under militia control. When he was young, he watched Chinese Nationalists shoot and kill his father, a traumatic event that motivated him to immigrate to the U.S. to make a better life for himself and support his family back in Taiwan. But Sifu's life in the U.S. doesn't live up to his expectations—though he excels in graduate school, people call him racial slurs. After college, nobody in his field will hire him because he's Asian, and the only work he can find is playing the part of Young Asian Man at a restaurant in Chinatown. He works hard and eventually earns the role of Kung Fu Guy, the closest to a movie star any Asian actor can get. Still, Sifu's unceasing ambition, his high expectations, and his quest for upward mobility consume him, isolating him from his family—a fate that Willis will later experience in his own life. - Character: Dorothy/Old Asian Woman. Description: Dorothy is Willis's mother and Sifu's wife. She immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan when she was a young woman and now lives in a room above the Golden Palace Chinese Restaurant. In her old age, she's stuck playing the one-dimensional role of Old Asian Woman on Black and White. Like her husband, Sifu, Dorothy's life in the U.S. contrasts sharply with the dreams she once had for her future there. Though she once dreamed of becoming famous and getting rich off real estate, she could only find work playing one-dimensional, stereotypical roles like "Pretty Oriental Flower" and "Girl with the Almond Eyes." When Willis was young, Dorothy saw how fiercely he longed to become Kung Fu Guy and urged him to "Be more." - Character: Older Brother. Description: Older Brother isn't Willis's "actual older brother"—he's "Everyone's Older Brother," a stereotypical golden child and role model to all. He was briefly Kung Fu Guy, a role he was born to play, though he never really related to that identity. Even so, young Willis wanted to be Older Brother when he grew up. Older Brother disappears under mysterious circumstances sometime before the novel begins, apparently having buckled under the pressure of being a model minority and having to live up to the high expectations of his parents and his community. Older Brother reappears toward the end of the novel to represent Willis in court, and it's at this point that Willis learns that Older Brother left Chinatown to attend law school. Older Brother defends Willis in court against charges of having "disappeared" (a seeming metaphor for Willis's sudden departure from the show Black and White). When Willis is found guilty, Older Brother claims that the system is rigged against them, and he and Willis resort to "Plan B," which involves using kung fu to "kick [their] way out of" the courtroom. - Character: Karen Lee. Description: Karen Lee is Willis's wife (and later his ex-wife). She and Willis have a daughter together, Phoebe. Willis meets Karen on the set of Black and White, where she plays an undercover detective. She's a quarter Taiwanese. Willis thinks that being a woman gives Karen an advantage, at least within mainstream (white) society, which considers women of Asian descent beautiful (even if it simultaneously objectifies and stereotypes them). Karen is initially supportive of Willis's career, but eventually his all-consuming goal of becoming Kung Fu Guy drives them apart. Karen eventually gets her own show on which she plays a young mother, a role that necessitates her leaving Chinatown to relocate to the suburbs. There's a part for Willis on the show too, but he turns it down to be Kung Fu Guy, and eventually he and Karen divorce. Toward the end of the novel, Willis is tried and found guilty of his own disappearance. Afterward, he delivers an emotional monologue to the courtroom audience. Willis's speech moves Karen, and she hints that she may be willing to give their marriage another try. - Character: Phoebe. Description: Phoebe is Willis and Karen's daughter. She lives with Karen in the suburbs and is the star of a children's TV show that follows a little Chinese girl named Mei Mei (little sister) on her adventures in America. Willis and Phoebe divorced not long after Phoebe was born, and Willis doesn't get to know her until he leaves Chinatown and his role on Black and White to stay with Phoebe and Karen in Phoebe Land, where Phoebe's show is set. In Phoebe Land, an idealized, imaginary world of Phoebe's making, Phoebe can move freely between Asian and American cultures, something Willis could never fully do. He admires her ability to be herself without falling into the stereotypical roles that society has carved out for her. Phoebe forgives Willis for not being the best dad, claiming that he tried his best. Ultimately, Willis learns that the most important role he's played in life isn't Kung Fu Guy—it's Phoebe's Dad. - Character: Miles Turner. Description: Miles Turner is a Black detective and a star of Black and White. Before starring on the show, he graduated from Yale University and then worked on Wall Street. He joined the police force after his father, a veteran with the NYPD, was killed on the job. Turner is handsome and has obvious on-screen (and possibly off-screen) chemistry with his costar, Sarah Green. His character makes racist remarks against the show's Asian characters and clashes with Willis during their on- and off-script interactions. Turner claims that Willis can't complain about "the system" stereotyping and discriminating against him, since climbing up the system (as Willis has done to secure increasingly better roles on Black and White) only strengthens that very system. In short, Turner claims that Willis is complicit in his own discrimination, a point to which he testifies during Willis's trial. - Character: Sarah Green. Description: Sarah Green is a white detective and a star of Black and White. She's a confident and skillful detective, though her physical attractiveness often overshadows these qualities in the eyes of her colleagues and viewers of Black and White. She's more culturally sensitive than Turner in their on-screen interactions with Asian characters on Black and White and condemns some of Turner's racist remarks, though she, too, struggles to see through the racial stereotypes that mainstream society has forced on these characters. Green acts as a mediator when Turner butts heads with Willis. During Willis's trial, Green takes the stand to testify that Willis, in his claims of being "invisible" to society, ignores the many ways that society discriminates against women of all backgrounds. - Character: Fatty Choy. Description: Fatty Choy lives in the SRO in Chinatown. He's normally a huge gossip and a jokester, but he cries for hours after he discovers Old Fong's dead body in Old Fong's apartment in the SRO. Like Willis, Fatty Choy plays a range of generic roles on Black and White. He plays the role of Lowlife Oriental, a henchman stationed outside the Chinatown gambling den, on Willis's first episode as Special Guest Star. - Character: Allen. Description: Allen is Ming-Chen Wu's housemate during graduate school. Like Wu, Allen is originally from Taiwan. After the Attack on Pearl Harbor, some local people violently beat Allen in retaliation, ignorantly believing that Allen is of Japanese descent (and also ignorantly believing that all people of Japanese people are to blame for the attack). Though Allen goes on to have a family and becomes quite successful, he suffers headaches for the rest of his life because of the attack, and he eventually dies by suicide. - Character: Young Fong/Mini Boss. Description: Young Fong is Old Fong's son. Old Fong dies when he slips while running the shower to answer a phone call from Young Fong, and Young Fong feels guilty for the inadvertent role he played in his father's death. Young Fong also plays the role of "Mini Boss" in Black and White. - Theme: Immigration. Description: Though set in modern times, Interior Chinatown features extended flashbacks to Willis's immigrant parents' pasts, portraying their respective journeys to the U.S.—and their experiences after they arrived—in an unromanticized light, highlighting the hardships that many Asian immigrants have endured to make a life for themselves in the United States. Willis's mother, Dorothy, grew up in Taipei, one of ten children. When she was a child, she attended a screening of an American film; as she watched the stars illuminated on the cinema screen, she imagined the new life that she'd have in the United States—one "full of romance, glamour." But her reality as an immigrant couldn't have been more different. Instead of investing in real estate and getting rich in the supposed land of opportunity, she worked as a nurse, caring for old white people who would alternatively grope and dehumanize her with racial epithets. Meanwhile, Willis's father, Ming-Chen Wu, grew up in Taiwan under militia rule. After witnessing Chinese Nationalist soldiers shoot his father through the back, Wu vowed to travel to America to honor his father's memory. But like Dorothy, Wu's dreams of a better future are a far cry from what his future actually holds. Wu eventually moves to Mississippi to attend graduate school. Though he receives a generous stipend that makes him feel rich for the first time in his life, locals call him and his fellow Asian housemates racial slurs. A group of men beat one of Wu's housemates—a Taiwanese man named Allen—so brutally that he suffers headaches for the rest of his life. Though Allen achieves wealth and success in his field, he later dies by suicide. And though Wu himself earns top grades and is accepted in a prestigious doctoral program, he ultimately discovers that nobody wants to hire him because of his accent. As a result, he's forced to accept the roles society offers him, washing dishes and busing tables to make ends meet. After Dorothy and Wu meet and get married, they still dream of one day saving up enough money to leave Chinatown and make a better life for themselves elsewhere, but it never happens. In turn, Interior Chinatown juxtaposes its immigrant characters' lofty dreams of opportunity and upward mobility—their belief in the mythic American Dream—with the bleak reality of their existence in America, which is largely characterized by poverty, discrimination, and hardship. - Theme: Performance and Identity. Description: Interior Chinatown alternates between Willis's inner musings about what it means to be Asian in America and scripted scenes for Black and White, a perpetually in-production police procedural show in which Willis plays an array of generic, unimportant roles. Drawing on his experience acting on Black and White, Willis considers the overlap between the bit parts he plays on TV and the identity he performs in his life outside acting. What he finds is that, after playing demeaning roles for so long, it's difficult for him to differentiate between the stereotypes he has been forced to embody and his genuine self—suggesting, in turn, that performing a certain identity can actually overtake a person's sense of self. The characters Willis plays on Black and White either have very few spoken lines (if any), exist solely to aid the show's lead actors, and usually end up dead and immediately forgotten. In time, Willis begins to internalize the passivity of the characters he plays—he feels unable to become more than what mainstream society has told he can be: Generic Asian Man, and maybe, if he's lucky, Kung Fu Guy. Because Willis has grown up believing that "Kung Fu Guy" is the most success he could ever possibly achieve, it's what he shoots for—even as his mother (Dorothy) pleads with him, "Be more." Interior Chinatown thus shows how the roles Willis and his family perform extend beyond the screen, bleeding into their personal lives, shaping their self-perceptions, and instilling in them a sense of hopelessness. - Theme: Stereotypes. Description: Interior Chinatown is predominantly written in the form of a TV script. Accordingly, it casts its Asian characters in stereotypical Asian roles commonly seen in movies and TV shows. In his work on the police procedural show Black and White, Willis plays characters like "Background Oriental Male," "Dead Asian Man," and even "Generic Asian Man Number One," which is only a bit part in the grander scheme of mainstream (white) Hollywood but, according to the novel, is actually a major accomplishment for Asian male actors. Hollywood, the book suggests, only grants true stardom to white actors. This, in turn, means that the best role male Asian actors can hope for is the role of Kung Fu Guy, a sort of Bruce Lee archetype; though highly coveted, the role's prestige is still secondary to the stardom that white actors achieve in Hollywood. After all, Kung Fu guy is little more than "the default guy who gets trotted out whenever there's kung fu to be done." In effect, then, Kung Fu Guy is an idea and a plot device, not a robust character with a complex and meaningful inner life. Throughout his internal musings, Willis expands on this point, suggesting that Hollywood's pattern of casting Asian actors in stereotypical roles reflects—and exacerbates—mainstream society's imposition of racial stereotypes on Asian people. Indeed, in a section that presents the (real) backstory of Willis's Father, Ming-Chen Wu, the novel reveals that even supposedly well-meaning peers called him "Chinaman" when Wu attended graduate school in Mississippi. In doing so, they not only used a racial slur but also gave him a generic title that robbed him of his individuality, defining him merely by his gender and his ethnicity. This outlook failed to account for the many things that made Wu unique, including the trauma and loss he endured growing up in Taiwan under martial law. With this in mind, Interior Chinatown draws parallels between the one-dimensional, racist roles that Hollywood assigns Asian actors and the stereotypes that mainstream society attaches to Asian people in general. The novel also juxtaposes these characters' one-dimensional stories with the complex and often tragic details of their real lives. In this way, the narrative highlights the dehumanizing effects of racial stereotyping. Racial stereotypes, Interior Chinatown suggests, dehumanize people, stifling their individuality and invalidating their complex inner lives. - Theme: Family and Ambition. Description: Interior Chinatown examines the relationship between family and ambition. As an actor, Willis is mostly cast in bit parts and is lucky if he gets a speaking role. In his 20s at the novel's present, Willis feels that he hasn't lived up to his full potential and is running out of time to redeem himself in his parents' eyes. Sifu is now poor and increasingly senile, and though Willis dutifully visits him to bring him food, medicine, and other essentials, Sifu can no longer quite remember who Willis is—for the most part, he regards him not as his son but as "an overbearing but helpful stranger." When Willis and his wife Karen have a child, Phoebe, Willis continues to preoccupy himself with becoming the person he thinks will make his family proud. In his new role as a father, his efforts shift away from making his parents proud and toward providing for his wife and child, just as Sifu tried to do when Willis was young. In the early days of being Karen's husband and Phoebe's father, Willis remains preoccupied with ambition. But Willis's single-minded quest to become Kung Fu Guy ultimately drives a wedge between himself and his new family, just as it did for Sifu before him. Eventually, Karen and Phoebe move out of the Chinatown SRO, leaving Willis behind to chase his dreams. They eventually divorce, and Willis becomes disconnected from his family. Though Willis eventually achieves his dream of becoming Kung Fu Guy, he's left feeling disillusioned and regretful, realizing that gaining the supposed role of a lifetime has cost him his family. When he later abandons his acting job to reunite with Karen and Phoebe, Willis is surprised to see how much pride and joy it brings him to watch happy, well-adjusted Phoebe navigate the world on her own terms. Unlike Willis, Phoebe doesn't want to make anyone proud or fill any particular role—she just wants to be Phoebe. The more time Willis spends with Phoebe, the more he realizes that his life has given him a new role, one that's far more important and rewarding than Kung Fu Guy: Phoebe's Dad. Interior Chinatown thus examines how ambition can strain a person's relationship with their family and distract them from what family is really about: simply being there to provide support and comfort while jointly experiencing life's ups and downs. - Theme: The System. Description: In Interior Chinatown, Willis's experiences highlight the difficulty of breaking out of oppressive systems. Willis longs to rise above his present circumstances and achieve wealth and success: he wants his career to take off so he can stop playing the dull, unimportant role of Generic Asian Man, and he wants to make enough money to move out of his decrepit room above the Golden Palace Chinese Restaurant. But the problem is, the only way to attain even the possibility of success is to work toward bigger and more impressive acting roles—and the only acting roles that Hollywood gives people like him are Asian stereotypes that force him to live and reaffirm, day after day, the one-dimensional, insulting existence that he longs to leave behind. When Willis deviates from the script one day during filming to call out a line he finds insulting and dehumanizing, Turner, one of the show's stars, claims that Willis has no right to complain. Willis, by this point, has risen through the ranks to fill the role of Special Guest Star—a real feat for an Asian Actor. "Look what you made yourself into," Turner advises Willis. "Working your way up the system doesn't mean you beat the system. It strengthens it. It's what the system depends on." Willis, Turner suggests, has brought his dehumanization upon himself. By playing a series of dehumanizing (albeit gradually more substantial and lucrative) roles on Black and White, Willis has legitimized the very racial stereotypes he wishes to break free from. Of course, Turner's logic isn't airtight—namely, it ignores the reality that "the system" is the only world that exists. As a result, the only way that Willis can improve his circumstances and alleviate the worst of the racism and mistreatment he experiences as an Asian American is by legitimizing the very stereotypes that sustain and exacerbate that mistreatment. Willis's professional predicament sheds light on the impossible situation in which systemic oppression places Asian American people and marginalized people in general: in order to attain a better standard of living, they must operate within—and therefore strengthen—the very system they long to transcend. - Climax: In the courtroom scene, Willis delivers an emotional monologue about identity, performance, and assimilation. As he gives his speech, Willis comes to terms with the ways he has internalized racist stereotypes about Asian people, allowing those stereotypes to define how he sees himself—and how he sees others. - Summary: Interior Chinatown takes the form of a screenplay to follow the story of Willis Wu, an Asian American actor of Taiwanese descent. He laments the one-dimensional, stereotypical roles he's stuck playing on Black and White, a police procedural show. The narrative intersperses scripted scenes with Willis's inner musings about identity, performance, and his experience as an Asian man living in a predominantly white society. Willis has longed to play the role of Kung Fu Guy—the closest an Asian actor can get to being a movie star—his whole life. But instead, he's stuck playing bit parts like Background Oriental Male and Dead Asian Man. He lives in the SRO apartments above the Golden Palace restaurant in Chinatown, just barely scraping by. His parents, Taiwanese immigrants, have rooms in the SRO too. Willis's dad used to play the coveted role of Sifu, the Mysterious Kung Fu Master, but he's in his eighties now and is mostly cast as Old Asian Man. Willis's mom, Dorothy, was cast in roles like Asiatic Seductress and Girl with the Almond Eyes when she was younger, but now she's just Old Asian Woman. Willis admired Older Brother growing up—Older Brother earned top marks in school, had top-notch kung fu skills, and played Kung Fu Guy for a short time. But the role didn't appeal to Older Brother, so he quit and then left Chinatown altogether, disappearing under mysterious circumstances. Black and White, the show that Willis acts in, stars Black detective Miles Turner and white detective Karen Green. They head the Impossible Crimes Unit, which takes on the departments most difficult cases. The show picks up in Chinatown, where Turner and Green are investigating the mysterious disappearance of Older Brother. Willis watches as they shoot a scene in which Old Asian Man is nearly killed. Afterward, Willis returns to his room in the SRO apartments above the Golden Palace, meditating on the building's many residents, including his parents. He remembers being a child growing up in the building, dreaming of one day becoming Kung Fu Guy, and his mother urging him to "Be more." Willis continues to act in Black and White, and he earns a steady paycheck. He plays a range of one-dimensional parts, eventually working his way up to the role of Special Guest Star. As Special Guest Star, Willis shoots a scene in which he helps Turner and Green investigate Older Brother's disappearance. Special Guest Star tells the detectives that money might be involved in the disappearance, and so he leads them to the Chinatown Gambling Den. In the Gambling Den scene, Willis meets Karen Lee, an actress portraying an undercover detective. There's real chemistry between them. But before anything can happen, Willis realizes that his side is covered in blood—meaning his character has died, and his tenure as Special Guest Star has come to a close. After a character on a show dies, the actor can't work for 45 days—the minimum amount of time required for viewers to forget that character existed. Some people think dying is a good thing, since playing the same part for too long can sometimes make a person forget who they really. Growing up, Willis loved when his mother "died," since it meant she'd have more time to spend at home with Willis. At this point, the narrative shifts its focus from Black and White to the backstories of Willis's parents, Ming-Chen Wu and Dorothy. Ming-Chen Wu grows up in Taiwan under militia rule and watches Chinese Nationalist soldiers shoot and kill his father. He comes to the U.S. to make a better life for himself and support his family, but his experience in the U.S. is characterized not by success and upward mobility but by racism, discrimination, and economic hardship. After graduating, he can only get a job playing the role of dishwasher at a restaurant in Chinatown. Dorothy, meanwhile, comes to the U.S. with dreams of becoming a movie star, but she's instead cast in the role of Pretty Asian Hostess up front at the restaurant while Ming-Chen Wu plays Young Asian Man in back. Ming-Chen Wu and Dorothy meet, fall in love, marry, and dream of one day leaving their SRO apartment. They have Willis and try their best to be a typical American family, dressing the part, shedding their accents, and ordering Willis to speak English at home and at work. Ming-Chen Wu works hard and gets the coveted role of Sifu, Kung Fu Master. But he loses himself in his work and distances himself from his family. Back in the present, Willis is still waiting for his 45-day death to end so he can return to work. He's outside smoking a cigarette, staring up at a billboard advertising Black and White when he runs into Karen Lee. They talk and get to know a bit about each other, and the narrative shifts into a "romantic montage" of scenes from their developing relationship. The romantic montage comes to a close when Willis's death period ends. Willis returns to work and continues to see Karen. Karen's career flourishes, as there are more roles available to her as an attractive woman. Willis, meanwhile, restarts the process of working his way through bit parts. Eventually the director tells Willis he'll be Kung Fu Guy any day now. Willis returns home to Karen, with whom he's now living, to tell her the news. But Karen has even bigger news to share with Willis: they're going to have a baby. Willis's concern about his career and ability to provide for his family momentarily overshadows his happiness about the pregnancy. Eventually Karen gives birth to her and Willis's daughter, Phoebe. Willis continues to work hard, but he still hasn't become Kung Fu Guy. One day Karen shares more big news with Willis: she's been given her own show, which means the family can finally move out of the SRO. Karen tells Willis there's a role for him on the show, too. But Willis, believing he'll be Kung Fu Guy any day now, pleads with Karen to let him stay behind, at least until he gets the part. Karen is skeptical but agrees to Willis's proposal. After a year, Willis finally becomes Kung Fu Guy, but by this point his and Karen's marriage is over, and Willis feels disillusioned with success. Realizing he's made a huge mistake, he steals Green and Turner's police car and flees Chinatown. Willis arrives in Phoebe Land, where Phoebe is starring in a children's show about a young Chinese girl, Mei Mei. Here, Willis plays the role of Kung Fu Dad. In Phoebe Land, an idealized, imaginary world of Phoebe's making, Phoebe moves easily between Asian and American cultures. Phoebe is overjoyed to see Willis and forgives him for not being there all the time. She tells him he "tried," and that this is good enough for her. With Karen's permission, Willis stays in Phoebe Land and gets to know his daughter. As Willis watches Phoebe, he admires her ability to be her authentic self instead of playing a part. Eventually, the police arrive to arrest Willis for stealing Turner and Green's police car. Willis returns to Chinatown to appear in court. Older Brother finally reappears, revealing to Willis that he quit acting years back to attend law school. Turner testifies against Willis, arguing that Willis has an "internalized sense of inferiority." Older Brother retorts that this is because it's impossible for Asian people to fully assimilate into American culture due to the long history of discrimination against Asian immigrants in the U.S. Ultimately, the jury finds Willis guilty of his "own disappearance." After the jury delivers its verdict, Willis gives an emotional monologue about performance and identity. He finally realizes that he's "guilty" of becoming the generic stereotypes that the world has forced on him and of letting those stereotypes define him. In turn, he admits, he's also guilty of projecting harmful stereotypes onto others. He realizes that Kung Fu Guy is itself just a variation on Generic Asian Man. As Willis delivers his monologue, tension in the courtroom builds, and Older Brother and Willis decide to resort to "Plan B," using their kung fu skills to kick their way out of the courtroom. All the other Asian audience members join in, and the courtroom erupts in chaos. Eventually a gun goes off, and Willis dies. The action picks up inside Golden Palace. Turner and Green stand over Willis's body and lament Kung Fu Guy's death. Willis opens his eyes and tells them he can't do it anymore. They tell him they hope they can all work together again someday. The next thing Willis knows, Karen is leaning over him. Phoebe is there too. When she asks Willis if she's still Kung Fu Guy, he says no. Instead, he resolves to stop playing characters and dedicate himself to his family. The novel closes with an epilogue in which Willis watches his father and Phoebe laughing together in the kitchen. Willis laments how he and his father have played roles all their lives, and he hopes that Phoebe can teach him to "move freely between worlds."

- Genre: Literary Fiction, Short Story - Title: Interpreter of Maladies - Point of view: Third Person Limited - Setting: India - Character: Mr. Kapasi. Description: A forty-six-year-old tour guide working in India, who accompanies the Das family on a sightseeing trip to the Sun Temple. Although written in the third person, "The Interpreter of Maladies" is largely filtered through his consciousness and point of view. Polite, responsible, and observant, Mr. Kapasi is intrigued by the foreignness of Mr. Das, Mrs. Das, and their three children. As a young man he had dreamed of working as an interpreter for diplomats and dignitaries, but life has not lived up to Mr. Kapasi's expectations. Instead, in middle-age, he finds himself chaperoning tourists and working a second job as an interpreter of maladies in a doctor's office to support his family. He is stuck in an unhappy marriage with a wife from whom he has grown estranged following the death of their son. Perhaps because of these dissatisfactions and disappointments, Mr. Kapasi is particularly drawn to the young and attractive Mrs. Das, and begins to fantasize about a romantic relationship with her. During the course of his outing with the family, he begins to believe that his attraction to her is reciprocated. By the end of the story, however, his hopes are once again dashed, as he realizes that Mrs. Das does not seek his love, but merely his professional help. - Character: Mrs. Das. Description: The object of Mr. Kapasi's romantic interest, Mrs. Das is on holiday in India with her husband, Mr. Das, and their three children, Ronny, Bobby, and Tina. Like her husband and children, Mrs. Das is of Indian origin but was born and raised in America. At twenty-eight, Mrs. Das is young and attractive, stylishly dressed in western fashion. On her family outing to the Sun Temple, which Mr. Kapasi chaperones in his role as a tour guide, she behaves in an unpleasant way towards her children and her husband, often bickering with the latter. Having married and had children at a young age, she has led a lonely, isolated life weighed down by family responsibilities, and is a very unhappy woman. Towards the ends of the story she reveals to Mr. Kapasi that cheated on her husband with a friend of his years earlier, in a secret affair that led to the birth of her son Bobby. Despite professing to feel terrible around her family because of this, she proves unwilling to take responsibility for her actions. She instead turns to Mr. Kapasi for some relief which, of course, he is unable to offer her; when Mr. Kapasi suggests she is not suffering from any malady other than guilt, she storms away from him. - Character: Mr. Das. Description: Mr. Das is the husband of Mrs. Das and the father of Bobby, Ronny, and Tina. A middle school science teacher in New Jersey, where he lives with his family, he is on holiday with his wife and children in India. Like the rest of the Das family, Mr. Das has roots in India but was born and raised in America. Throughout the family's outing to the Sun Temple, Mr. Das is busy reading from an "India" guidebook and snapping pictures with his camera. He seems to be out of touch with his wife and children, who often ignore or challenge his directions and wishes. Such interactions reveal that he lacks authority and respect as a father and a husband. Indeed, Mr. Das himself is unaware of how completely out of touch he is: he does not even know that his second son, Bobby, is in fact not his biological child, but a product of an affair that his wife had with a friend of his. - Character: Bobby. Description: The second son of Mr. Das and Mrs. Das, Bobby, eight years old, is different in appearance from his younger sister Tina and his older brother Ronny. This is because he is in fact not Mr. Das's biological son, but rather was conceived as a result of an affair that his mother had with a friend of her husband's. Neither Bobby nor his father know the truth about his paternity. Born and raised in the United States, Bobby is dressed like an American and speaks English with an American accent. The sights and sounds of India—where his family is vacationing—are new to him. He's also a brave and adventurous boy. When the family encounters Hanuman monkeys, Bobby takes a stick and passes it back and forth with one of the animals. At one point, however, he is threatened by danger when he wanders away from the family and is surrounded by a group of monkeys who begin to attack him. Mr. Kapasi comes to the boy's rescue. - Character: Ronny. Description: Eldest son to Mr. Das and Mrs. Das, and brother to Bobby and Tina, Ronny, like his brother and sister, is excited by the sounds and sights of India. Born and raised in America, Ronny is Americanized in his speech, dress, and mannerisms. He and his siblings are especially excited by the Hanuman monkeys that the family encounters on a tourist outing to the Sun Temple. Ronny doesn't seem to have much respect for his father's authority, ignoring Mr. Das when the latter warns him not to touch a goat. He's also mean to his younger brother Bobby, calling the boy a "dummy" when Bobby asks an innocent question about why the driver's seat is on the "wrong side" of cars in India. - Character: Tina. Description: The youngest child of Mr. Das and Mrs. Das, Tina often seeks her mother's attention, wanting to participate in activities such as painting their nails together, but is ignored by Mrs. Das. Being the youngest, Tina requires the most looking after. Both Mr. and Mrs. Das are reluctant to take full responsibility for her, however, as is suggested at the beginning of the story when they argue over who should take Tina to the bathroom. Like her brothers Ronny and Bobby, Tina is excited by the sight of the Hanuman monkeys that the family encounters on an outing to the Sun Temple. Born and raised in America like her siblings and parents, she is Americanized in her ways, dress, and speech, and the sights and sounds of India are new to her. - Character: Mr. Kapasi's wife. Description: Mrs. Kapasi, wife of the tour guide Mr. Kapasi, never makes a direct appearance in "The Interpreter of Maladies." However, Mr. Kapasi reflects on his unhappy relationship with her throughout. Mr. Kapasi works two jobs in order to provide for her and his children, partly as a result of the guilt he feels over the death of a son. Mr. Kapasi has felt disconnected from his wife ever since the passing of their child. - Character: The doctor. Description: The doctor has a practice where Mr. Kapasi has a second job working as an interpreter, translating maladies of patients who do not speak the physician's language. This is the same doctor that Mr. Kapasi had taken his ill son to before he died. Mr. Kapasi took the job at the doctor's office in order to pay for his son's care before his death. - Character: Mr. Kapasi's Son. Description: Mr. Kapasi had a son who suffered from an illness which eventually led to his death. The boy's illness marked the beginning of the family's troubles. Mr. Kapasi accepted a second job as an interpreter at the doctor's office where he took his son for treatment in order to pay for medical bills. The son's death also led to a deterioration in the relationship between Mr. Kapasi and his wife, who grew estranged from one another as a result of the death. - Theme: Knowledge and Fantasy. Description: On the surface, Jumpha Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies" is a simple story about a family on vacation in India. As the lonely tour guide Mr. Kapasi drives Mr. Das and Mrs. Das and their three children to visit a temple, however, Lahiri's tale becomes one of poignant estrangement. By telling the story largely from the perspective of Mr. Kapasi, a stranger to the Das family, Lahiri is able to highlight the ways in which, in the absence of genuine knowledge, people project their own beliefs and desires onto others. Beyond suggesting the inability to ever truly know another person, the story also closely links knowledge with a sense of loss: the closer characters become—the more they know each other—the more alone they feel. "Interpreter of Maladies" is told in the third person, sticking very closely to the point of view of Mr. Kapasi. The reader gets no insight into any member of the Das family's interior thoughts, and as such has only Mr. Kapasi's observations to color their perspective. Mr. Kapasi watches the Dases closely, noting behaviors and qualities that seem odd to him—such as the fact that Mr. Das refers to his wife by her first name, Mina, when speaking to his daughter Tina. Mr. Kapasi uses these observations to interpret the family members' relationships to one another—for example, by assuming they are more like siblings than parents and children. These observations, however, are largely a projection of Mr. Kapasi's own beliefs and desires. Because Mr. Kapasi has been born and raised in India and the Das family is from the United States, the latter comes across as strange and foreign. Mr. Kapasi's most obvious projection, of course, is in his fantasizing about a romantic connection with Mrs. Das. He grasps onto trivial moments to support this fantasy, such as the fact that Mrs. Das uses the word "romantic" to describe his occupation as a sign of her interest in him. He even directly conflates his own experience of marriage with hers, wondering "if Mr. and Mrs. Das were a bad match, just as he and his wife were." He begins to imagine their future together, constructing an image of Mrs. Das to align with his fantasy. While Mr. Kapasi is correct in his assumption that Mrs. Das is unhappy in her marriage, however, by the end of the story it becomes clear that the rest of his fantasy is not reciprocated. In fact, Mrs. Das sees Mr. Kapasi more as a parent than a potential lover. Not only is Mrs. Das interested in his professional, rather than romantic, assistance, but the revelation of her past affair quickly causes Mr. Kapasi's crush to evaporate. The woman he imagined never existed, and, ironically, the closer Mr. Kapasi comes to knowing Mrs. Das, the more estranged from her he feels. Through Mr. Kapasi, then, Lahiri suggests the difficulty of truly knowing another person. What's more, projecting desires on to another seems only a recipe for alienation and disappointment. The simultaneous difficulty and danger of knowledge is further reflected within the Das family itself. Mrs. Das reveals that she has known her husband since childhood, and that in the early days of their relationship they "couldn't stand the thought of being separated." Yet with time—and the familiarity such time entails—they drifted irreparably apart. Now, Mr. Das is not aware that his wife has cheated on him, nor that their son Bobby is not actually his biological child. Such awareness would, in all likelihood, lead to a shattering of the Das family, again underscoring the appealing yet precarious nature of fantasy and delusion in place of genuine knowledge. The connection between knowledge and pain or loss is made most explicit by Mr. Kapasi's second job as an "interpreter of maladies," from which the story gets its title. It is his job to understand—to know—what is wrong with ill patients and relay this information to a doctor. But, the story suggests, people don't always want to know what is wrong with them. Just as people project their own beliefs and desires onto others, they are prone to constructing fantasies of themselves. This is why Mr. Kapasi is "disturbed" upon learning that Mrs. Das thinks of him as a parent, for instance; he views himself as seeming younger than he actually appears. This is also why Mr. Kapasi's interpretation of Mrs. Das's pain leads to her anger; deprived of the fantasy that something beyond her own actions is causing her discomfort, she is forced to confront the reality of her guilt over her affair. Not only can people never truly know one another, the story ultimately suggests, but they may never even know—or want to know—themselves. The absence of knowledge allows for the projection of one's own fantasy and desires onto another, for an escape from the mundanity and pain of familiarity. Knowledge, on the other hand, robs people of the imaginative joy of possibility—both for those around them, and for themselves. - Theme: Culture and Identity. Description: "The Interpreter of Maladies" is set in India, and the story's main characters are all of Indian origin. While both the Das family and Mr. Kapasi share a certain cultural heritage, however, their experiences of the world are very different. The members of the Das family have all been born and raised in America, whereas Mr. Kapasi has lived and worked his entire life in India. Lahiri emphasizes the subsequent gulf between the affluent, very American Das family and their Indian-born tour guide to suggest a specific cultural tension between Indians and Indian-Americas, as well as the notion that identity in general goes beyond heritage. While one's understanding of and response to the world is certainly, in part, the product of their cultural history, the story suggests that identity is above all shaped by one's environment and social status. Mr. Kapasi repeatedly notes the cultural differences that separate him from the Dases. He is particularly struck by the family's appearance, noting, for example, that while they "looked Indian," they "dressed as foreigners did." He observes that they sound like characters on American television, and that the children have English names ("Tina," "Bobby," and "Ronny"). Sometimes Mr. Kapasi is unsure of the Americanized expressions that the characters use, such as when Mrs. Das uses the word "neat" to mean that something is interesting. The members of the Das family embody a different cultural identity not only in the way they dress and speak, but also in the way they behave. Mr. Kapasi is surprised, for example, that in speaking to his daughter, Mr. Das refers to his wife using her first name. By using Mr. Kapasi's perspective to register all the ways that the Das family comes across as foreign, Lahiri suggests that having shared roots does not necessarily mean that people will share an automatic sense of connection or understanding.  The Das family's attitude and reactions during the excursion with Mr. Kapasi suggests that they, too, approach their country of origin as strangers. Mr. Das carries a travel guide entitled "INDIA," which he uses to learn about the different sights that the family visits on the trip. He also takes pictures of things with his camera that, in the context of India, are normal. For instance, he snaps a picture of a barefoot man wearing a turban. In this way, Mr. Das is positioned as a tourist despite his ethnic background. The family is often depicted as surprised by or wary of the environment surrounding them, further underscoring their sense of foreignness in their ancestral land. Mr. Das tries to dissuade his son Ronny from touching a goat, for example, even as Mr. Kapasi reassures him that the goat is harmless. The children are also excited upon encountering Hanuman monkeys on the way to the temple—a common sight in the area, but a new experience for the American children. They are even surprised that the driver's seat that Mr. Kapasi occupies is on the "wrong side" of the car (in India, the driver's seat is on the right, rather the left, side). Such details suggest that, whatever their roots, the Das family aligns far more closely with their familiar American home than an Indian past they never knew.  Importantly, the divide separating Mr. Kapasi from the Das family is not just cultural, but also one of affluence and wealth. Mr. and Mrs. Das are clearly of a higher economic status than Mr. Kapasi. For one thing, they can afford to go on a family vacation in India. Their clothes and the expensive accessories they carry (such as the camera with a "telephoto lens" that Mr. Das continually snaps pictures with), all signal their relative material comfort. The story sets up a hierarchy based on this material privilege. Mr. and Mrs. Das pay Mr. Kapasi to accompany them as a tour guide, and in this regard are in a position of power; Mr. Kapasi literally serves the Das family in exchange for money. Mr. Kapasi's different economic status is further underscored by the fact that he has to work two jobs—one as a tour guide and one as an interpreter in a doctor's office—in order to support his family. Although, like Mr. Das, Mr. Kapasi had once worked as a teacher in a school, he was unable to afford his sick son's medical bills. It was for this reason that he took on working as a translator at the doctor's office. In setting up a parallel between Mr. Das and Mr. Kapasi through their shared occupations as teachers, and then revealing that only Mr. Kapasi could not provide for his family in this role, Lahiri highlights the ways in which financial status shapes and separates people's experience of the world. The gulf that exists between Mr. Kapasi and the family he chaperones further suggests the gulf that exists between the scarcity prevalent in India and the affluence of America.   In presenting the reader with characters who share cultural roots but who are nonetheless deeply foreign to one another, Lahiri questions the degree to which heritage shapes identity. The Das family do not appear to feel innately connected to Mr. Kapasi nor to India, and instead seem distinctly a part of the world in which they were raised—that is, America. Ultimately, the story associates this assimilation with a sense of loss, as the family enjoys the comforts of an American life yet are distinctly cut off from their history. The image at the end of the tale, of Mr. Kapasi watching the paper with his address written on it flutter from Mrs. Das's purse, suggests that the rift between their cultures may be too large to ever cross. - Theme: Language and Communication. Description: The importance of language in "The Interpreter of Maladies" is alluded to in the story's title itself. Language is central to Mr. Kapasi's second job as an interpreter of patient ailments in a doctor's office, where he must rely on his linguistic prowess to communicate effectively between people who do not understand one another. The power—and limits—of language is further present in the interactions between Mr. Kapasi and the Das family, as well as within the Das family itself. As all of the characters struggle to express themselves meaningfully, Lahiri's story suggests the depth of the gap that often exists between language and communication. In addition to his work as an interpreter, Mr. Kapasi reveals that he had a passion for languages in his youth and became proficient through self-study in several. As a young man, Mr. Kapasi's interest in languages was motivated by his belief in the nobility of translation as an occupation. He once dreamt of serving as an interpreter to "diplomats and dignitaries," and thereby hoped to help resolve "conflicts between people and nations." Mr. Kapasi's youthful passion points to his idealistic belief in the power of language as an instrument of communication and reconciliation. However, his work as an interpreter at a doctor's office is a far cry from his dream of serving as a translator for dignitaries. Though he himself views the job as a "sign of his failings," the dignity of his current work is affirmed by Mrs. Das, who is impressed by the responsibility that he carries in interpreting the illnesses of patients. By highlighting Mr. Kapasi's interests and background , Lahiri evokes the power of language as a tool for understanding. Yet, even as the story emphasizes the positive potential of language, it also highlights the ways in which language often fails people. This is reflected in the interactions between members of the Das family, who are unable to engage with each other meaningfully and effectively during their excursion with Mr. Kapasi. Though members of the Das family speak to one another often, they are not really communicating. Mr. Das warns his son Ronny against touching a goat at the beginning of the story, for example, and yet the boy ignores his father. Mr. Das commands his second son, Bobby, to follow Ronny, but Bobby refuses. Mr. Das's linguistic commands are repeatedly rebuffed, stripping his voice of any power when it comes to controlling his children. The Das family also often interacts through bickering rather than meaningful discussion of the sights around them. Mrs. Das complains to her husband about ordering a car which is not air-conditioned to take them on their excursion, for instance. When Tina asks her mother to polish her nails for her, Mrs. Das, untouched by her daughter's pleading, simply tells the girl to leave her alone. Though Mr. Kapasi once believed in the healing potential of language, the tensions that characterize the communication between the Dases suggest the ways in which language can heighten, rather than resolve, conflict and disagreement. Despite Mr. Kapasi's talent for languages, it's clear that he has trouble interpreting and understanding his relationship to Mrs. Das, even though they both speak English. Mr. Kapasi fixates on Mrs. Das's description of his work as an interpreter as "romantic." He takes her use of this word to indicate the fact that she has more than a friendly interest in him. By the end of the story, however, it becomes clear that Mrs. Das has no romantic interest in Mr. Kapasi at all. Instead, she views him as someone who might help her deal with the guilt that she carries as a result of having an affair. The words that Mrs. Das speaks to Mr. Kapasi, therefore, communicate something other than what he thinks they do. Her flattery is likely an attempt to get what she wants out of him, again suggesting a distinction between language and genuine meaning.  "The Interpreter of Maladies" works to challenge readers' understanding of the relationship between language and communication. While the story acknowledges the potential of language as an invaluable means for understanding, it also points to all of the ways in which language falls short in allowing people to communicate effectively. In the end, language is presented as a tool that can both reveal and obscure meaning. - Theme: Guilt and Responsibility. Description: Both Mr. Das and Mrs. Das neglect their duties as parents and partners. Most obviously, Mrs. Das has a secret affair—the guilt over which is eating away at her, and the revelation of which would threaten to tear her family apart. Mr. Das also displays a distinct aversion toward his role as a husband and father, failing to discipline or keep an eye on his children. The fact that Mr. Kapasi thinks Mr. and Mrs. Das behave more like siblings than parents to their three children further underscores their immaturity. Through Mr. and Mrs. Das, Lahiri argues that refusing to take responsibilities for one's actions results in a sort of toxic stasis that leaves families vulnerable. Genuine growth and healing, the story ultimately suggests, requires a genuine acknowledgment of obligations to loved ones—something of which neither Mrs. Das nor Mr. Das seem capable. Mrs. Das most clearly reflects the danger of failing to take responsibility for one's actions. Her betrayal of her husband has trapped her in a painful state of guilt, made clear in her confession to Mr. Kapasi about the affair that she had many years earlier and which led to the birth of her second child, Bobby. She tells Mr. Kapasi that, ever since, she has felt "terrible" looking at her husband and children. Given that Mr. Kapasi has a second job working as an interpreter of maladies in a doctor's office, she hopes that he can help her find some "relief." Mr. Kapasi correctly diagnoses Mrs. Das's state as one that is provoked by guilt over her affair rather than any bodily malady, but Mrs. Das is hardly relieved to hear this. On the contrary, she becomes so angry that she storms away from Mr. Kapasi. This encounter suggests that Mrs. Das is, in fact, plagued by shame, yet refuses to confront her guilt in order to move beyond her pain. Mrs. Das's betrayal of her husband is just one of many ways in which responsibilities and obligations are neglected in the Das family. By choosing not to tell her husband about the affair, Mrs. Das compounds her initial betrayal by continuing to allow her husband to believe that she has been faithful. However, Lahiri suggests that Mr. Das is also culpable for the breakdown of their marriage. Mrs. Das tells Mr. Kapasi how lonely and tired she had felt after the birth of her first child, Ronny, which implies that Mr. Das failed to pay attention to his wife's needs after she became a mother. Instead, he was content with returning from work to watch television and bounce "Ronny on his knee." The story that Mrs. Das tells Mr. Kapasi about her marriage suggests that the responsibility for parenting and running the household had fallen squarely on her shoulders, and this is part of the reason that she had come to feel estranged from her husband. As such, both Mr. and Mrs. Das have failed, in different ways, in their responsibilities towards one another as husband and wife. Mr. and Mrs. Das's relationship to their three children further reveals that they are failing in their duties as parents. Mrs. Das allows Bobby to grow up believing that Mr. Das is his father, effectively lying to her son. More immediately, throughout the car trip Mr. and Mrs. Das often ignore, or fail to respond adequately, to their children's needs. For instance, the story begins with Mr. and Mrs. Das bickering over who should take Tina to the bathroom, with neither parent wanting to accept the responsibility. When Tina later asks her mother to polish her nails, Mrs. Das coldly tells her to leave her alone, again underscoring her resentment of and aversion to her maternal obligations. Mrs. Das's negligence results in direct danger for Bobby—not incidentally, the physical reminder of her affair and guilt. It is the trail of puffed rice that she leaves behind as she storms away from Mr. Kapasi that leads the Hanuman monkeys to surround Bobby and attack him at the end of the story. For his part, Mr. Das shows little concern about his directives being repeatedly ignored by his children and has failed to properly keep an eye on Bobby in this moment. Mr. and Mrs. Das's negligence is further reflected in the fact that it is Mr. Kapasi, rather than the boy's parents, who comes to his rescue. The Dases in Lahiri's story represent a family riven by guilt and failure. Mr. and Mrs. Das's refusal to accept their obligations towards one another or their children leads only to family dysfunction and pain. The danger that Bobby is put in at the end of the story ultimately suggests that this repeated denial of responsibility on the part of the parents hurts everyone in their orbit. - Climax: Mrs. Das confesses to Mr. Kapasi that her son Bobby is the product of an affair. - Summary: The Das family is on their way to the Sun Temple. In the driver's seat is the family's hired tour guide, Mr. Kapasi, who has to stop shortly after setting off because the family's youngest daughter, Tina, wants to go to the bathroom. Mr. Kapasi watches as Mr. Das and Mrs. Das bicker over who will accompany Tina to the restroom. Mrs. Das finally goes with her daughter, leaving Mr. Kapasi in the car with Mr. Das and his two sons. As they sit waiting for mother and daughter to return, Mr. Kapasi learns from Mr. Das that all members of the Das family were born in America, where they still live. However, the family is of Indian origin. Mr. and Mrs. Das's parents have retired to India, and the family visits them every couple of years. Tina and her mother return to the car. As he watches her walking over, Mr. Kapasi is struck by Mrs. Das's appearance. Like her husband, she seems very young, and is very good-looking. Mr. Kapasi is intrigued by the entire Das family, which is completely Americanized in its speech and mannerisms despite its Indian roots. The group continues on its way, and the children become excited when they notice Hanuman monkeys perching on branches along the road. One of the monkeys suddenly jumps in front of the car, forcing Mr. Kapasi to brake, and another lands on top of the hood. Mr. Das takes pictures of the monkeys with his camera. While he does so, Mrs. Das paints her nails in the backseat, and refuses to allow Tina, who sits beside her, to participate in the activity. Once Mr. Das has finished taking pictures, Mr. Kapasi starts the car and continues driving towards the temple. He makes chit-chat with Mr. Das and his son Bobby, who sit beside him in the front seat, about differences between cars in India and America. Mr. Kapasi is struck by the Das parents' relationship to their children, to whom they seem more like siblings. Again, Mrs. Das bickers with her husband. Finding it too hot, she complains about him hiring a car without air-conditioning simply to save a few pennies. Mr. Das asks Mr. Kapasi whether he enjoys his job as a tour guide. Mr. Kapasi responds that he does, and then tells him that he has a second job working as an interpreter in a doctor's office. There, he translates for patients who cannot speak directly to the doctor. Mrs. Das is intrigued by this and asks the guide to share typical situations he encounters in his work as a translator. Although he himself does not think much of his job at the doctor's office, Mr. Kapasi is flattered by Mrs. Das's interest. For him, the job signifies his failed ambitions; he had hoped, as a young man, to work as an interpreter for people of importance, such as diplomats and dignitaries, but ended up working in the doctor's office to support his sick son (who has since passed away) and the rest of his family, including a wife from whom he has grown estranged. Mr. Kapasi wonders to himself whether Mrs. Das is as unhappy in her marriage as he is in his. He continues to glance at her surreptitiously in the rearview mirror as he drives, beginning to believe that his attraction to her is reciprocated. When the group stops for lunch, Mr. Das takes a photograph of his wife sitting beside Mr. Kapasi. Mrs. Das asks Mr. Kapasi for his address, so that they can send him a copy of the photo. Mr. Kapasi carefully writes out his address on the scrap of paper that Mrs. Das gives him. He begins to fantasize that he and Mrs. Das will exchange letters, and that through these letters their romance will blossom. Finally, the group reaches the Sun Temple at Konarak. They walk around the huge sandstone structure, as Mr. Kapasi informs the family about the temple and Mr. Das reads from his "India" guidebook about it. At one point, Mrs. Das approaches Mr. Kapasi to ask him to explain a statue to her. Mr. Kapasi does so, again taking their interaction to signify a latent attraction growing between them. He thinks about the letters they will write to each other and is suddenly crushed by the thought that Mrs. Das will soon be away in America. On the way back from the temple, Mr. Kapasi suggests taking a detour to visit monastic dwellings located on hills at Udayagiri and Khadagir. The family agrees, and Mr. Kapasi is relieved that he will get more time with Mrs. Das. When they arrive at the monastic dwellings, Mrs. Das says she is too tired to walk, and asks Mr. Kapasi to remain in the car with her. They watch Mr. Das and the children from the car. Bobby passes a stick back and forth with one of the Hanuman monkeys, who have again appeared. Mr. Kapasi comments that he is a brave boy. Mrs. Das tells Mr. Kapasi that Bobby is brave because he is not Mr. Das's son, but the product of an affair that she had had with a friend of her husband's years ago. Mr. Kapasi is the first person to whom she is confessing this secret—neither Mr. Das, Bobby, nor the boy's actual father know the truth. For years, Mrs. Das has felt terrible around her family, and she hopes that Mr. Kapasi can say something, in his role as an interpreter of maladies, to help alleviate her pain. Mr. Kapasi is shocked by all this but tries not to show it. He listens to Mrs. Das as she tells him about the unhappiness and loneliness she has suffered as a mother and wife. Mr. Kapasi realizes that Mrs. Das thinks of him differently than he had imagined; she is not interested in him romantically, and instead sees him as a father-figure who can help her deal with her predicament. Mr. Kapasi asks Mrs. Das whether it is really pain she feels, or simply guilt. This outrages Mrs. Das, who storms out of the car to find her family. Monkeys begin to follow her as she drops crumbs of a snack she is eating along the path. Mr. Kapasi leaves the car and follows her to scare away the monkeys. The two reach Mr. Das and the children. Mr. Das is preparing to take a family photograph, but suddenly they realize that Bobby is missing. They look for him and eventually find him alone, crying, surrounded by monkeys that are beginning to attack him. Mr. Kapasi shoos away the monkeys and picks up the terrified boy. As he carries Bobby back to his family, Mr. Kapasi is tempted to whisper the secret of the boy's paternity into his ear, but resists. Mr. Kapasi delivers Bobby to Mr. and Mrs. Das, who fuss over him. Mrs. Das takes out a comb from her handbag to brush Bobby's hair. As she does so, the piece of paper on which Mr. Kapasi had scribbled his address slips out of her bag. Mr. Kapasi watches as the paper is swept up and away by the wind.

- Genre: Travel Novel; Philosophical Novel - Title: Invisible Cities - Point of view: The conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan are in the third person and in the form of a dramatic script; Polo's recollections are in first person. - Setting: Ostensibly Kublai Khan's court in the Mongol Empire - Character: Marco Polo. Description: Marco Polo was a 13th-century Venetian merchant and explorer who, in real life, did spend many years in China and developed a good relationship with Kublai Khan. The Marco Polo of the novel is an expert communicator; when he first arrives at Kublai's court, he's able to paint verbal pictures of cities using vocal sounds, movement, and various odd objects that he supposedly acquired in the cities he describes. As time goes on, he learns Kublai's language and is able to communicate in it fluently, though the two also communicate with a sort of sign language at times. Through his descriptions of cities, Marco Polo shows that he's interested in questions of perspective and interpretation, as well as how language and communication function. At the midpoint of the novel, Marco Polo admits that he's actually speaking about his home of Venice when he describes the imaginary cities, but he's unwilling to describe Venice by name since he believes he'll inevitably forget it by speaking of it. Following this midpoint, he paints a picture of humanity that becomes increasingly bleak and corrupt. His stories of cities also become gradually more modern—while early stories mention skyscrapers, in the latter half, Marco Polo describes being trapped in the suburbs and in airports, while other cities grapple with overcrowding and the consequences of their belief in their own righteousness. As far as Kublai Khan is concerned, the purpose of Marco Polo's stories is to help him understand his empire so that he may more fully possess it, but as the cities disintegrate into corruption and horror, Marco Polo implies that powerful individuals like Kublai Khan aren't at all prepared to save the world or humanity from itself. Instead, acting as a symbol of sorts for travelers, Marco Polo suggests that it's necessary for everyone to look for the beautiful aspects of the world, focus on them, and support them whenever possible—the alternative is becoming numb to both the horrors and the delights of the world. - Character: Kublai Khan. Description: The real-life Kublai Khan was the 13th-century emperor of the Mongol Empire who also crowned himself the first emperor of the Chinese Yuan dynasty. The novel introduces Kublai Khan as a powerful leader, intent on learning about every city in his empire so that he may more fully control the empire. He does this by seeking stories of his cities from travelers and merchants, especially the Venetian Marco Polo. As Marco Polo tells Kublai Khan of cities that seem increasingly more fantastical and less likely to be real, Kublai Khan becomes more and more interested in coming up with ways to plan cities, figuring out which cities are real, and ascertaining if certain cities he describes might actually exist in the real world. Marco Polo shuts down all of these attempts, causing Kublai Khan to feel increasingly out of control and morose about the fate of his empire, which he comes to see as bloated, ill, and complacent. He also becomes more interested in Marco Polo as a person at about this same time, and so he asks to hear about Marco Polo's hometown of Venice—though he's confused when Marco Polo insists that whenever he speaks about a city, he's speaking about Venice. Kublai Khan later decides to figure out the true nature of the cities by inviting Marco Polo to describe cities using chess pieces, as he sees a chessboard and the game as structures that will give the cities more meaning. But instead of gaining clarity, Kublai Khan comes to question what the point of the chess game is at all, since winning seems to mean little and Marco Polo is still able to draw stories out of the board itself. Through this attempt, and through Kublai Khan's attempts to plot cities and routes in his atlas, he comes to the conclusion that it's pointless to even try anymore—humanity, he laments, is headed for "the infernal city," or eventual doom and extinction of some sort, and it's impossible to try to save it. - Theme: Memory, Perception, and Experience. Description: Invisible Cities is structured as a fictional conversation between the real-life historical figures Marco Polo, a Venetian tradesman, and Kublai Khan, the emperor of the Mongol Empire. Over the course of the novel, Marco leaves to travel the empire and returns to tell Kublai about different cities in the empire, all of which are named after different women. However, Kublai begins to suspect that Marco is making his cities up and indeed, Marco reveals midway through that he's speaking always and only of his home of Venice—the cities he describes to Kublai are, as the novel's title suggests, entirely imaginary. As a travel novel of sorts, even if that travel takes place only in the characters' imaginations, Invisible Cities pays close attention to the ways in which travel and experiencing new things influence how a person sees the world, ultimately suggesting that a person's perception of their surroundings is subjective and individualized, informed entirely by their memories, perspective, and experiences—in Marco's case, his memories of Venice. The novel is clear about the fact that, as far as Marco Polo is concerned, everything from cities to objects exists because of memories. Several cities, like Zirma and Procopia, change depending on how a person remembers them. Zirma, Marco suggests, exists because people repeat their memories of it over and over again in their minds. In Procopia, he talks about being in a hotel room with 26 versions of himself—presumably, every version of himself that's ever been there before. Procopia's quirk of making real a person's past selves suggests that whenever a person travels somewhere they've already been before, they invoke and must contend with who they were when they were there before. In other words, a person's experience of a place is, without exception, filtered through what they remember of it (and of themselves) from the last time. The novel also implies that a person's memories are subject to change as they engage with other people. In Euphemia, travelers share personal stories with each other—but upon leaving the city, they find that their personal memories of past events or experiences have shifted thanks to the stories they heard from their fellow travelers on the same subject. This indicates that memory as a whole is extremely subjective and very susceptible to change—in other words, memory is wildly unreliable, as almost any experience can change what a person remembers. At the same time, Invisible Cities suggests that, in addition to memories influencing a person's experience of a place, the choices they make while there can have just as much of an impact. This happens in the frame story—the third-person conversations between Marco and Kublai that bookend each chapter—as well as in the cities that Marco describes to Kublai in the first person. As the novel progresses, the conversations between Marco and Kublai become more and more focused on how they're interacting with each other, or even if they're interacting with each other—it's possible that, like the cities, the dialogue between Marco and Kublai is entirely imagined, even within the world of the already fantastical novel. In cities such as Moriana and Irene, Marco's interpretation of the location depends on how he does or doesn't choose to interact with it. In Zemrude, the city looks different depending on whether a person chooses to look up to the sky or down to the dirty streets, while Marco refuses outright to go to Irene—he knows it from afar, and he suggests that if he were to enter it, it would become a different city entirely and may even deserve a new name. Especially in the case of Irene, wherein Marco has the choice to simply avoid the place altogether, the novel suggests that people have some degree of control over how they experience the world. In other places, though people may technically have control over whether or not they go there, what they find when they arrive is guaranteed and outside of the individual's control. Marco suggests that ultimately, everyone in Zemrude ends up looking down, indicating that enough time somewhere will inevitably lead to disillusionment and pessimism. Importantly, the fact that Marco admits that all the cities he speaks of are all imaginary and, in fact, are iterations of Venice doesn't diminish his assertion that memory and experience influence how he sees them. Indeed, it's possible to read Venice (and in that sense, every city in the novel) as a stand-in for any city, in which it's possible to find everything from love and wonders to horror and shattered dreams. Marco Polo himself functions as any traveler, discovering the world and how he fits into it as he explores the globe. No matter where a person goes, the novel suggests, they will always be accompanied by past experiences and influenced by the choices they have made before. - Theme: Storytelling, Interpretation, and Control. Description: Kublai Khan wants to hear Marco Polo's stories—and those of his other merchants—primarily because he believes that if he can learn about every city in his empire, he'll be able to control the empire. As Marco returns from his journeys and regales Kublai with tales of yet more cities that seem increasingly unreal, Kublai doubles down on his attempts to make definite sense of what he's hearing. In this way, Calvino seems to suggest that while it may be a natural human inclination to want to pick out patterns and know things for sure, it's not always a fulfilling endeavor—and stories, like this one, are capable of both teaching people how to interpret things while making the case that doing so isn't always entirely useful. The entirety of the novel is arranged to follow a pattern, which allows the reader to join Kublai's attempts to make sense of Marco's stories. While the first and ninth chapters describe 10 cities each, the inner eight each describe five—and the 55 cities all fall into 11 different categories (cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and signs, thin cities, trading cities, cities and eyes, cities and names, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, continuous cities, and hidden cities). Dividing the cities up into these different categories creates what seems initially to be a natural way to draw similarities between cities of the same category and comparisons between cities of different categories. However, this system of categorization isn't as clear-cut as it seems. For instance, while some of the trading cities like Euphemia, Eutropia, and Ersilia are thematically similar in that they're all explorations of how humans form relationships with each other, the other two trading cities, Chloe and Esmeralda, don't as obviously share this focus on relationships and indeed, they share more imagery or thematic links with cities of other categories. In fact, Esmeralda in particular—the final city of the trading cities—is the first to introduce the imagery of rats and swallows, which appears later in cities from cities and names and several hidden cities. The fact that this pattern of exploring similar themes in cities of the same category doesn't entirely hold true begins to break down the initial assumption that it's possible to neatly categorize the cities at all. In this way, the reader, like Kublai Khan, must constantly work to piece together how—or even if—things fit together. In guiding the reader through this attempt, Calvino seems to suggest that the endeavor itself is entirely natural and not a bad thing—but is also, in some sense, somewhat futile. At the same time as parts of the novel seem to deny the reader and Kublai the ability to make sense of what's going on, Marco also describes cities, such as Tamara (of cities and signs), that function as lessons in communication. The way that Marco describes Tamara offers the reader a lesson in semiotics (the study of signs and symbols, and how people know what they mean), while other cities, like Fedora and Zirma, draw out other ways of making meaning and understanding something, as through repetition or assumptions. In particular, Tamara's lesson on semiotics proves extremely important later in the novel, as it paves the way for the reader to understand how symbols function in later chapters. Marco is upfront about the fact that the vendors' wares in Tamara aren't themselves valuable, but that those items refer to the value of other things, as in "the embroidered headband stands for elegance; [...] the ankle bracelet, voluptuousness." This makes way for, later in the novel, the reader to recognize symbols as they arise naturally, as with Esmeralda's rats and swallows, which symbolize a struggle for freedom. In the frame story of Marco and Kublai's conversations, Kublai's chessboard begins to symbolize the futility of trying too hard to understand something by making it fit into a certain system. Kublai, annoyed by Marco's unwillingness to—in Kublai's mind—tell the truth about the cities or describe them in a way that's useful for him, asks Marco to use chess pieces and the chessboard to tell him about the cities. As the two play—and as Marco is able to successfully describe cities using the chess pieces—Kublai asks himself a question that disturbs him: what's the point of winning at their chess game, especially in light of the fact that Marco is able to draw out such delightful stories by "reading" the grains of ebony and ivory that make up the board? More broadly, this question asks why it's necessary to constantly develop new ways to figure out how the world works, or make existing evidence fit into systems that, possibly, are somewhat ineffective at making that evidence make sense. At the same time, the novel also suggests that this endeavor is still entertaining and therefore, like Marco Polo's stories, is no less worthwhile. - Theme: Cycles and Civilization. Description: As Marco Polo describes cities, he pays close attention to cities that contain elements of both wonder and absolute horror. Not every place, he suggests, is entirely good—within every beautiful city, an element of darkness lurks, waiting to manifest itself. Especially in the latter half of the novel, when his cities seem to more closely mimic real ones, Calvino seems to suggest that the course of human history, as well as an individual's experience of their comparatively short life, are cyclical. This cyclical nature, he suggests, is a natural part of not just the world that humans have physically built, but is also an intrinsic part of what it means to be human. Invisible Cities draws out several cycles that repeat again and again in various cities. One of the cycles is, in a sense, the cycle of civilization itself: Marco Polo explains that in Eutropia, the city isn't just one city—it's a collection of multiple cities and, as its inhabitants become bored and staid, they collectively pack up and move to the next version of Eutropia, where they can find happiness and purpose for a while longer in a "new" locale, with new jobs and new spouses. This type of cycle repeats itself in other cities, offering insight into human nature in the process. People's patterns of behavior in Eutropia suggest that it's part of being human to desire something new and different, while the people in the city of Melania show that this desire is impossible to satisfy. In Melania, travelers return to find that conversations repeat again and again among different versions of the same people (there's always a braggart soldier and an amorous daughter, for example, but the person acting as the soldier or the daughter changes over time). Considering these and other cities in which things repeat and cycle without end, Invisible Cities seems to propose that life is an endless cycle—even when people try to find something new, as in Eutropia, they're still inevitably condemned to repeat the cycle for all time. Especially in its cities connected to death and to the sky, Invisible Cities dives into the intertwined ideas of how people deal with their inevitable demise, and how they fit into the universe while they're still alive. Again, however, Marco doesn't indicate that any of those cities or their inhabitants come to positive, meaningful understandings—but through these two types of cities, the novel begins to question whether it's possible to break the cycles. In both cases, the possibility of breaking any of the cycles is so horrific as to be almost inconceivable to the cities' residents. In Laudomia, inhabitants have access to a version of the city that houses the dead, as well as a version that houses the unborn. Anxious residents turn to the dead or the unborn to try to make sense of their own lives instead of where their city may end up in the future, because, Marco suggests, contemplating humanity on a larger scale requires considering whether people will be around forever—and whether anything they're doing is, if humans may not exist forever, actually meaningful. Meanwhile in Thekla, the city is constantly under construction—and when Marco or other travelers ask the builders when the city will be done, the builders anxiously imply that if they keep building, they'll never be able to peak and then begin to decline. Through these two cities, the novel begins to suggest that, even if the cycles of humanity are constant, it's possible that they will eventually cease to exist. The thought of human extinction is something universally disturbing for people who will, the novel shows, do nearly anything to ignore their own lack of importance. As Marco's descriptions of cities grow grimmer and grimier, Kublai Khan begins to share some of the qualities of those in Laudomia and Thekla. He laments that his empire is falling apart and becoming ill, and in his final conversation with Marco, he declares that "It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us." Essentially, Kublai accepts at this point that he, his empire, and all of humanity are failing. However, Marco offers a remedy to Kublai's existential crisis. He suggests first that "the inferno of the living" won't ever actually come to pass—and if it does, people are already inhabiting it, unbeknownst to them. Instead of dwelling on humanity or civilization's eventual decline, he proposes that people must either accept the inferno until it becomes background, or else dedicate themselves to looking for the beauty in the world, humanity, and its cycles. Though the cycles may be inevitable, Marco seems to suggest that it's possible to make them bearable by focusing on and promoting the good and beautiful aspects of human life while it lasts. - Theme: Modernity. Description: Despite the beautiful passages within Invisible Cities—and despite the only two characters being from the 13th century—the world that Invisible Cities presents is neither entirely beautiful nor a historically accurate reflection of the world as it was hundreds of years ago. Instead, the novel depicts an attempt by the powerful (as represented by the emperor Kublai Khan) to understand how the modern world came to a state that, the novel suggests, is horrific, out of control, and in many cases, meaningless. Especially given Calvino's philosophical and political leanings—he was an avowed atheist and a lifelong communist, though not always associated with a particular party—Invisible Cities reads as much as a scathing condemnation of capitalism, greed, and the ills of the modern, urbanized world as it does a meditation on imagination and storytelling. At first, the vignettes of cities that Marco Polo creates seem purely magical. Cities float above water, have gates and buildings built of precious metals and gemstones, and are centers of trade and connection between people from different places. However, in the city Anastasia, Marco gives his first clue that he's not just spinning beautiful tales—Anastasia is a place of desires, but a place where people can never actually partake in their desires while somehow, mysteriously, feeling content. This, Marco explains, makes Anastasia's residents slaves to the city. Following Anastasia, which Marco describes in the first chapter, the cities get increasingly darker and more disturbing. In the city Zobeide, men who dream of a woman escaping them arrive to construct the scene of the chase in the city, hoping to one day capture the woman in their dreams. In Octavia, a city suspended above the ground, residents are resigned to the fact that their ropes won't hold forever—one day, the city will crash to the ground. By creating increasingly darker landscapes after showcasing vignettes that are beautiful and seemingly perfect, Calvino draws upon a novel he mentions by name in Marco and Kublai's final conversation: Thomas More's Utopia. Utopia parodies and critiques exploration and expansion in pursuit of building a utopia, something that both Utopia and Invisible Cities suggest can never actually exist. It's telling, then, that even in Calvino's admittedly imaginary cities, there are none that read explicitly as utopias—even the human mind, he seems to suggest, is incapable of coming up with something that's wholly perfect. Following the novel's midpoint, at which point Marco Polo admits that he's talking about his home city of Venice, Invisible Cities begins to feel increasingly modern and less obviously fantastical. At this point in the novel, Calvino begins to take issue with the trappings of the modern world, from overcrowding and the suburbs to what he suggests is the constant fight to throw off oppressive systems—presumably, capitalism, greed, and corruption. Building off of the optimism and beauty expressed in the first chapter, Marco introduces the city of Perinthia. The city was founded by people who calculated everything perfectly in order to mimic the stars and the gods—but, within a few generations, the city is populated by monsters, and the founders are left to question whether they were wrong (and the monsters are a product of human error) or whether they were right (and humanity is naturally monstrous). Other cities find themselves trapped in a cycle of freeing themselves from nasty rats, and only some succeed—only to fall back, at some point, to being overrun by rats. Perinthia is suggestive of both urban overcrowding (in it, Marco mentions that the particularly monstrous are kept in overfull closets) and the idea that overcrowding and its consequences come from the belief that humans are right to build and multiply with abandon, something that Calvino suggests may not be correct. In Trude, Marco gets off the plane and remarks that he wouldn't know he was in a place different from where he came from if there hadn't been a sign—everything, from the people to the buildings, look exactly the same. Meanwhile, in Penthesilea, Marco finds that the suburbs are so extensive that he can never reach the actual city, nor can he ever leave. With these two cities in particular, Calvino seems to lament that places are losing their individuality and, in time, every place in the world will look exactly the same—something that he implies is a product of the modern, capitalist world. In all of these horrific cities, as well as in Kublai Khan's empire that he so desperately wants to properly control, civilization seems bloated and unwieldy—and figures like Kublai seem less and less suited to the task of saving humanity from itself. Despite the bleak outlook of many of the cities and of Kublai himself, Marco Polo's narration nonetheless suggests that there are several things people can do to reckon with the ills of the modern world. In addition to telling Kublai to always look for the beauty in people and in places, Marco's positive tone and his focus on the cities that are trying to break free and better themselves—even if he knows they'll eventually be subjugated again—suggests that it's always good to fight for a better world, no matter how bleak the current world may seem. - Climax: Marco Polo admits that he's talking about Venice - Summary: Kublai Khan listens attentively as Marco Polo tells him about fantastical cities, even though he doesn't entirely believe everything Marco says. Kublai's empire is huge and he knows that he'll never be able to truly understand his conquered territories, which makes him feel melancholy and as though his empire is an unfixable, corrupt ruin. Through Marco's stories, Kublai begins to see that there's a pattern to his empire. Marco describes Diomira, a city with towers. It makes people feel envious of others who believe they've experienced similar evenings and think that they were happy. In Isidora, a person can find every delight—but men who arrive there arrive in old age, not in their youth. It's possible to describe Dorothea by listing its exports, but it's also possible to say, as a camel driver once told Marco, that Dorothea opens up horizons. Marco then tells Kublai about Zaira, where the measurements of certain things correspond to events from Zaira's past. In this sense, Zaira's past is written in those things while making people feel as though they can enjoy the city. Marco details his experience in Tamara, a city in which people don't see things. Instead, people see pictures or sculptures of things that refer to other things. Because of this, he insists that people can never discover the city. Zora is a city that is unforgettable, but only because it never changed. This caused it to disappear. Marco tells Kublai about Despina, which looks different depending on where a traveler comes from. Zirma repeats itself so that people can remember it, but different visitors remember different things. Isaura was built over an underground lake, and there's debate as to whether the city's gods live in the wells or in its lake. When Marco begins describing things to Kublai, he doesn't speak Kublai's language so he uses objects and gestures. Kublai memorizes the meanings of the objects. Eventually, Marco learns the language and Kublai begins to ask if he'll possess his empire once he learns the meaning of every object. Marco insists that at that point, Kublai will become an emblem, just like the objects. As time goes on, Kublai gets annoyed that Marco doesn't tell him anything useful. Both men fall into silence and conduct a conversation in their heads. They imagine Marco saying that when people get lost they better understand where they came from and how they fit into the world. Marco describes Maurilia, a magnificent metropolis where visitors must look at postcards of Maurilia when it was still provincial. Nobody back then thought provincial Maurilia was charming, but they idealize it now. Marco suggests that the Maurilia of today and the Maurilia of the past are different cities. In Fedora, the city has a museum filled with model Fedoras. Each model Fedora is someone's ideal version of the city. In describing Zoe, Marco suggests that people expect to be able to figure out a city quickly, but Zoe doesn't allow this: a person can do anything anywhere. Zenobia, meanwhile, is a city on stilts where people generally think that their ideal city looks like Zenobia. 80 miles away is Euphemia, a trading city where merchants gather to exchange stories. However, when merchants leave, they find that they can't remember their own stories—others' stories corrupt their own. Marco describes things with objects and gestures. Kublai finds that this leaves lots of room for him to use his own imagination. As they learn to communicate in the same language, communicating becomes less fun until the two men spend most of their time sitting silently. Kublai declares that he's going to describe cities and Marco will tell him if they're real. He describes one and Marco says it's real, but it doesn't have a name or location—it's an imagined city with no connecting thread. He insists that cities are built with desires and fears and most think that they were built rationally, but that doesn't keep them standing. Zobeide is a white city. Men dreamed of chasing a naked woman who got away, and so they convened in Zobeide to build the scene of the chase. They now understand that Zobeide is a trap. In Hypatia, Marco can't find things in expected places. Armilla is a city composed entirely of plumbing. Naked women bathe, and Marco wonders if humans built it to atone for abusing the earth's water. In Chloe, people don't talk and instead, imagine encounters. Valdrada, meanwhile, is built so that every action reflects in its water—and those reflections are more important than the actions. Kublai describes a dream city. Marco says the city is real, but he'll never be able to tell Kublai about it. As time goes on, Kublai feels alternately like his empire is rotting and like it's in a fantastic state. Marco describes Olivia, which can be described as a beautiful city or a nasty one. The city Sophronia is made up of two halves. One is a carnival and the other seems permanent, but the permanent half picks up and leaves for half the year. Eutropia consists of many cities, and its residents move from Eutropia to Eutropia. If a person looks up in Zemrude, they'll see beauty, while if they look down, the view is grim. Most people end up looking down, and few look up again. In Aglaura, people are too caught up in stories of an ancient Aglaura to accurately describe the Aglaura they live in. Kublai and Marco discuss whether they can come up with a model city to figure out all other cities. Kublai watches his empire grow. At first the edges seem ill but after a while, the empire seems bloated and heavy. Marco tells him about Octavia, a city suspended over a void. Residents know their city won't last forever. In Ersilia, people stretch strings to denote relationships, but they move constantly and try to rebuild the city and do it better. Baucis is a city on tall stilts. Travelers seldom see the residents, but some believe that they spend their time studying the earth and contemplating their absence. In Leandra, there are two types of gods, the Penates and the Lares. The gods argue about which of them is the soul of the city. In Melania, people are born into roles and conduct the same conversations over and over again over the years. Marco describes a bridge for Kublai, but Kublai wants to know which stone in the bridge is the most important. Marco insists that the bridge is the important part. One day, Kublai and Marco stay up all night. At dawn, Kublai points out that Marco never speaks of Venice, but Marco insists that he talks about Venice whenever he describes a city. He describes Esmeralda, a city that, if Kublai wants to map it, must include the routes that the rats take as well as those of the swallows. In Phyllis, Marco insists that travelers who have to stay in a new city become numb to their surroundings. He then explains how he used to think Pyrrha looked one way, but after being there, he can't fathom how he ever thought it looked like that. He details a harrowing experience in Adelma, where everyone looked like a deceased friend. In Eudoxia, Marco says that there's a carpet that the residents believe is a divine map of the city and of the universe, but it's also possible that Eudoxia itself is the map of the universe. Kublai declares that Marco is traveling through memory, but it's possible that both men imagine this. Marco and Kublai begin to wonder if they aren't in Kublai's garden—their conversation may be taking place in their minds. Marco tells Kublai about Moriana, which has a beautiful side and a dark side. Nearby Clarice has a long history of decay and renewal, but the survivors rebuild Clarice until the city is unrecognizable. Eusapia has a city for the dead below it, but it's possible that the dead Eusapia built the living version—and it's impossible to tell who's alive and who's dead. Beersheba strives to be good, but in reality, it's greedy and corrupt. In Leonia, people throw out their belongings daily and one day, there will be a landslide of garbage. Marco and Kublai wonder if they exist. Kublai reasons that if he can turn learning about each city into a game of chess, he can come up with rules that will let him understand his empire. He asks Marco to describe cities using chess pieces, which Marco does. Kublai begins to question the point of playing chess, since people win and lose but the board remains. Marco describes Irene, a city he's never visited—if he were to visit, it would warrant a new name. Argia is made of earth and travelers must trust that it exists. In Thekla, builders build their city to mimic the stars, believing that if they build forever, Thekla can never decline. Marco details arriving in Trude and learning that Trude covers the whole world. In Olinda, it's possible to find the heart of the city, which grows in concentric circles. Kublai continues to think about the point of chess as Marco "reads" the wood of the chessboard. Kublai pulls out his atlas. He and Marco discuss that the listener dictates the course of a story, and Kublai admits that he feels like a prisoner of human society. Marco is able to identify cities on the map and plot routes to some, and he can see that in the future, San Francisco will be part of an empire bigger than Kublai's. Marco describes Laudomia, which includes a city for the living, one for the dead, and one for the unborn. The living constantly ask the dead and the unborn for insight into their own lives. Nobody wants to contemplate that humanity might go forever, or that it might end. Astronomers established Perinthia to reflect the gods, but after a few generations, monsters populate the city. Astronomers have to decide if their calculations were incorrect or if the gods are monstrous. Marco stops every year in Procopia and last time he was there, he was in a hotel room with 26 versions of himself. Raissa is a sad city, but it doesn't know that there's a happy one within it. In Andria, life follows the stars and people look for a change in the sky when they change things. People there are prudent and self-confident. Cecelia was once a single city but now, according to a lost goatherd, Cecelia is everywhere. Marozia, meanwhile, is composed of a city of rats and of swallows, and the two cities are locked in a constant struggle of the swallows to free themselves from the rats. Marco then describes Penthesilea, which is impossible to enter—the outskirts go on forever. In Theodora, humans spent years eradicating animals but now, the animals are beginning to take over again. Berenice has two cities within it, one just and one unjust. The just one constantly tries to free itself from the unjust, but within the movement of the just lies a desire to live as corruptly as the unjust do. Kublai flips through his atlas and looks at cities like New Harmony and Utopia. He asks Marco to chart routes there, but Marco insists that they can't predict which ones will come to pass. Kublai finds nightmare cities like Enoch and Brave New World. He declares that it's inevitable that they'll end up in the infernal city. Marco points out that if the infernal city is real, they're already in it. To keep from being overwhelmed, people can either let the inferno become background or they can look for things that aren't part of the inferno and try to preserve those parts.

- Genre: Modernist novel - Title: Invisible Man - Point of view: First person - Setting: First, an unnamed black university in the south. Later, New York City, especially the area of Harlem. - Character: The Narrator. Description: The entire story of Invisible Man is told through the eyes of the narrator, who is by far the novel's most central character, despite the fact that his name is never revealed. The narrator begins and ends the novel as a type of disembodied voice, "invisible" to all those who are unable to see him for what he is, a thinking individual instead of merely a black complexion. The narrator is portrayed as a forceful speaker, and the narrator's private meditations are amply expressed throughout the novel as well. The arc of the novel follows the narrator's lost illusions, beginning as an ambitious and hopeful young man from the South and ending as a disillusioned rebel, hiding underground from his white, and even black, oppressors. Throughout the novel, the narrator deeply wishes to believe in a cause, hoping that his belief will help him understand his identity. Ultimately, he discovers that causes like Dr. Bledsoe's college or the Brotherhood are false narratives, and that he has to discover for himself what to think about himself. - Character: Dr. Bledsoe. Description: Dr. Bledsoe is the president of the all-black college that the narrator attends in his youth. The narrator is extremely impressed with Dr. Bledsoe for reaching the top of the black community, and Bledsoe is known far and wide as a statesman and educator. Outwardly subservient to whites, Bledsoe prides himself on being the black man who can tell white men what to think. Ultimately, Bledsoe is more concerned with holding onto his small enclave of power than anything else. - Character: Mr. Norton. Description: Mr. Norton is a white trustee of the college from Boston. Norton believes that though his donations he understands the black community, but in reality he is clueless, a fact that is exposed by his experience with Trueblood and at the Golden Day. He is obsessed with his "destiny," believing that he is responsible for the fate of young black men like the narrator. Mr. Norton also has a strange obsession with his daughter, a facet of his personality that is revealed when listens to Trueblood's story with a little too much excitement. - Character: Brother Jack. Description: Brother Jack is an experienced politician and the leader of the Brotherhood. When the narrator first meets Brother Jack he is cool and collected, able to marshal reams of history and theory with ease. However, it quickly becomes apparent that Brother Jack is more interested in his own power than in any scientific theory of history. Brother Jack uses the Brotherhood's theory to justify his own commands, and ultimately admits to the narrator that he intends to tell the people what to think. His single eye becomes a metaphor for his partial blindness. - Character: Ras the Exhorter. Description: Ras the Exhorter is a West Indian man whose background is never explained. A black nationalist, Ras believes that the black race should band together to form their own nation, separate from the interests of other races. He opposes cooperation between whites and blacks on principle, and opposes the Brotherhood due to its multiracial membership. As the novel progresses, Ras' exhortations rise in pitch and intensity, and Ras eventually declares himself "Ras the Destroyer" by the time of the Harlem riots, donning African gear and jousting the police force. - Character: Tod Clifton. Description: Tod Clifton is a dedicated member of the Brotherhood chapter of Harlem and the leader of the chapter's youth division. Early on, Clifton is the Brotherhood's most tireless defender against the repeated attacks of Ras the Exhorter. However, when the Brotherhood's policies shift, Clifton grows disillusioned and drops out of the Brotherhood. The narrator discovers him later selling Sambo dolls on the street, a cynical mocking of the Brotherhood's high ideals. - Character: Rinehart. Description: When the narrator puts on dark-lensed glasses, he immediately is mistaken for a man named Rinehart. Not so much a character as an idea, Rinehart represents the fluidity, hopefulness, and charlatanism of the black community. Rinehart is a gambler, a numbers man, a pimp, and a preacher, and shifts between all of his roles with ease. Rinehart is a reminder of the open possibilities outside strictly prescribed visions of the world. - Character: Mary Rambo. Description: Mary is a motherly figure for the narrator, a caring woman who provides food and shelter in the narrator's time of need. The narrator feels indebted to Mary, despite finding her bothersome from time to time. Mary also has high ideals, telling the narrator that whatever he does, he should be a "credit to the race." - Theme: Race and Racism. Description: In Invisible Man, race is a constant subject of inquiry. As a young black man in the middle of 20th century America, the narrator most often confronts the idea of race through experiencing the racism of others – from the degradation he experiences in the battle royal to his realization of his token role in the Brotherhood. However, the novel also explores the question of whether race might be an authentic marker of individual identity, outside the context of racism and other narratives imposed by others. The narrator quickly realizes that his blackness is highly significant, but cannot easily decipher what it should mean to him.At the novel's beginning, a younger narrator's take on race is relatively simple. In his graduation speech, he is happy to repeat Booker T. Washington's words, explaining that blacks should cheerfully cooperate with the whites that are in power. As the narrator travels through the world of the novel, he meets an array of characters shaped by the complex history of race, and his views grow more complex. The most important of these figures are black, though also included are overtly or unintentionally racist whites, like the pompous Mr. Norton. Characters like Dr. Bledsoe and Lucius Brockway are characters that control their small domains within the white system but are either cynical or unaware of their compromised positions.Many of the experiences of the novel revolve around the narrator's acceptance of one notion of race, only to discover that there exceptions and difficulties in the ideas he encounters. For example, Ras the Exhorter offers the inflammatory message of rejecting whites wholesale. This has a seductive appeal for the narrator, despite being irrational and dangerous. Near the novel's end, the narrator attempts to enact his grandfather's strategy of "yessing them to death," but his plan backfires during his fling with Sybil, the wife of a powerful Brotherhood member. Ellison offers no solution to the complicated legacies of race. Although the narrator withdraws into his hole at the novel's end, he still boldly states, "I couldn't be still even in hibernation. Because, damn it, there's the mind…It wouldn't let me rest." Ellison hints that the only way to find an authentic relationship with race is to puzzle it out for oneself, and only an active, individual mind can locate his own relationship with history. - Theme: Identity and Invisibility. Description: Invisible Man is the story of a young man searching for his identity, unsure about where to turn to define himself. As the narrator states at the novel's beginning, "All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned somebody tried to tell me what it was." It is undoubtedly clear that the narrator's blackness comprises a large part of his identity, although this isn't something he has necessarily chosen. For others in the novel, it is simply convenient to define the narrator through his blackness.Ellison's narrator explains that the outcome of this is a phenomenon he calls "invisibility"—the idea that he is simply "not seen" by his oppressors. Ellison implies that if racists really saw their victims, they would not act the way they do. The narrator recognizes his invisibility slowly—in moments like the hospital machine, when he realizes he is being asked to respond to the question of who he is in terms of his blackness. Ultimately, the narrator is forced to retreat to his hole, siphoning off the light from the white-owned power company, itself a symbol of an underground resistance that may go unacknowledged for a long time.However, invisibility doesn't come from racism alone. Just as poisonous for the narrator are other generalized ways of thinking about identity—ideas that envision him as a cog in a machine instead of a unique individual. This is true for the narrator both at the unnamed black university and at Liberty Paints. However, it is the Brotherhood, a thinly veiled take on the Communist Party, that proves to be most disillusioning for the narrator. The Brotherhood provides a systematic way of thinking about the world that claims to be the solution to racism and inequality.When the narrator first meets Brother Jack, Jack says, "You mustn't waste your emotions on individuals, they don't count." At first, the narrator embraces this ideology of the Brotherhood and structures his identity around it. However, he comes to discover that the Brotherhood is perfectly willing to sacrifice him for its own potentially flawed ends. Thus the novel can be read not only as a story about a black man's struggle against racism, but a black man's struggle to grow up and learn to be himself, against the backdrop of intense social pressures, racism among others. - Theme: Power and Self-Interest. Description: Throughout the novel, the narrator encounters powerful institutions and individuals, all of which are bent on maintaining influence over events. At the novel's beginning the narrator is exposed to the white power elite of his town, who act one way in the public eye but have no shame about their racist and sexist actions within a private club. The very moment they sense a threat from the narrator (when he mentions the word "equality"), they prepare to destroy him. These men arm themselves with the story that they are upstanding businessmen and community leaders, but this narrative is in contradiction with their naked desire to maintain power.The Brotherhood is one of the best examples of another group that uses a powerful narrative that seems to perfectly explain the world. By suggesting that all events are part of a science of history that can be perfectly understood, they seek to impose their subjective vision on others who buy into their philosophy. However, this ideology is flawed: although the Brotherhood is originally interested in combating oppression, it is clear that characters like Brother Jack come to relish their power above any other altruistic motive.The black community is no freer from the self-interested drive to consolidate and maintain power at all costs – only they are limited by white oppression. Dr. Bledsoe is an example of a figure the narrator looks up to, only to find out that he is more interested in holding onto the enclave of power he has carved out than in the ideals of humility and cooperation he espouses in public. Later, the figure of Rinehart comes to represent a similar impulse within the black community: a cynical attempt to profit in the short term by exploiting the ignorance of others.He is a pimp, gambler, racketeer, lover and preacher all in one, but only because he can rely on the weakness and desperation of other members of the black community. At the novel's end, the narrator remarks, "I've never been more loved or appreciated than when…I've tried to give my friends the incorrect, absurd answers they wished to hear." By retreating into the underground, the narrator hopes to distance himself these stories that destroy individual integrity while shoring up power structures. - Theme: Dreams and the Unconscious. Description: Dreams and other unconscious influences play an important role in Invisible Man. Much of the novel depicts a society that is hostile to individual expressions that resist preconceived notions of how people should speak or act. Sometimes, however, repressed feelings come through, and some of the novel's most powerful moments are expressed in dream sequences that weave together the complicated strains of race, history, and memory. In the Prologue, the narrator has a dreamlike vision of listening to Louis Armstrong, an episode that takes him down progressive levels into the history of slavery. The narrator attempts to convey the generations, pains, struggles, and actions that led to Louis Armstrong to sing the way that he does. A dream can do more than most exposition to unlock emotions or connections that society doesn't want to see.The narrator's dream of his grandfather's last words is one of the novel's most consistent reference points. This underscores the idea that his grandfather's words are themselves like a dream –enigmatic, suspended in a complex fabric of ideas and associations the narrator cannot completely unravel. Similarly, Jim Trueblood's dream is another complex narrative that illustrated the tangled race relationships, suggesting that images and emotions persist long after any intellectual attempt to change situations, a fact that stuns the ignorant Mr. Norton when he hears Trueblood's story.Many of the novel's scenes are described in a dreamlike, almost improvisatory fashion that seems to fade in and out of realistic description. For instance, the "battle royal" at the beginning of the book is more like a nightmare or extended dream sequence than a realistic description of an event that might have occurred in the time period of the novel. These unreal "real" scenes give Ellison room to expose the hidden emotional aspects of a situation that a "normal" depiction of society would hide. - Theme: Ambition and Disillusionment. Description: Invisible Man can in many ways be thought of as a coming of age novel, in which an ambitious young man attempts to rise up through a broken system that ultimately rejects him. The novel is structured into a series of hopes and dashed expectations, beginning with the promise of the unnamed university, where the narrator assumes he will model himself after the Founder. Later, in the working world and in the world of the Brotherhood, the narrator similarly invests hope in the goodwill of others, only to find his expectations and ambitious thwarted.His experience mirrors the whole generation of young black individuals who expected that they could rise up in an increasingly equal society. The ex-doctor from the mental hospital is a reflection of these dashed ambitions. After receiving recognition in France, the ex-doctor learns that he will never be truly respected due to his race. Denied his dignity, the surgeon gives up hope of recognition and ultimately ends up as another nameless member of the asylum. His advice for the narrator is to "Play the game, but don't believe in it."In the Brotherhood, the narrator finally feels as though he is beginning to achieve recognition. However, he quickly begins to discover that the actions of the Brotherhood are designed to keep him in place. Ultimately, the Brotherhood's betrayal culminates in the race riot at the end of the novel. The narrator realizes that he has been kept out of affairs in order to help incite the riot without his interference. The narrator's retreat into the hole represents the final stage of the narrator's disillusionment, though on an ambiguous note.Completely dissatisfied with all existing institutions and accepted ways of behaving in the world, the narrator says he is in "hibernation," waiting for the time to come when he can begin to achieve his aims. By secluding himself in his hole, the narrator precludes himself from either ambition or disappointment. However, the narrator acknowledges that this is only a temporary state, one that allows him to narrate his story from a distance, but that he will soon emerge from his hiding. - Climax: The massive race riot that nearly destroys Harlem. - Summary: An unnamed narrator speaks, telling his reader that he is an "invisible man." The narrator explains that he is invisible simply because others refuse to see him. He goes on to say that he lives underground, siphoning electricity away from Monopolated Light & Power Company by lining his apartment with light bulbs. The narrator listens to jazz, and recounts a vision he had while he listened to Louis Armstrong, traveling back into the history of slavery.The narrator flashes back to his own youth, remembering his naïveté. The narrator is a talented young man, and is invited to give his high school graduation speech in front of a group of prominent white local leaders. At the meeting, the narrator is asked to join a humiliating boxing match, a battle royal, with some other black students. Next, the boys are forced to grab for their payment on an electrified carpet. Afterward, the narrator gives his speech while swallowing blood. The local leaders reward the narrator with a brief case and a scholarship to the state's black college.Later, the narrator is a student at the unnamed black college. The narrator has been given the honor of chauffeuring for one of the school's trustees, a northern white man named Mr. Norton. While driving, the narrator takes Mr. Norton into an unfamiliar area near the campus. Mr. Norton demands that the narrator stop the car, and Mr. Norton gets out to talk to a local sharecropper named Jim Trueblood. Trueblood has brought disgrace upon himself by impregnating his daughter, and he recounts the incident to Mr. Norton in a long, dreamlike story. Mr. Norton is both horrified and titillated, and tells the narrator that he needs a "stimulant" to recover himself. The narrator, worried that Mr. Norton will fall ill, takes him to the Golden Day, a black bar and whorehouse. When they arrive, the Golden Day is occupied by a group of mental patients. The narrator tries to carry out a drink but is eventually forced to bring Mr. Norton into the bar, where pandemonium breaks loose. The narrator meets a patient who is an ex-doctor. The ex-doctor helps Mr. Norton recover from his fainting spell, but insults Mr. Norton with his boldness.Shaken, Mr. Norton returns to campus and speaks with Dr. Bledsoe, the president of the black college. Dr. Bledsoe is furious with the narrator. In chapel, the narrator listens to a sermon preached by the Reverend Barbee, who praises the Founder of the black college. The speech makes the narrator feel even guiltier for his mistake. Afterward, Dr. Bledsoe reprimands the narrator, deciding to exile him to New York City. In New York, the narrator will work through the summer to earn his next year's tuition. Dr. Bledsoe tells the narrator that he will prepare him letters of recommendation. The narrator leaves for New York the next day.On the bus to New York, the narrator runs into the ex-doctor again, who gives the narrator some life advice that the narrator does not understand. The narrator arrives in New York, excited to live in Harlem's black community. However, his job hunt proves unsuccessful, as Dr. Bledsoe's letters do little good. Eventually, the narrator meets young Emerson, the son of the Mr. Emerson to which he supposed to be introduced. Young Emerson lets the narrator read Dr. Bledsoe's letter, which he discovers were not meant to help him at all, but instead to give him a sense of false hope. The narrator leaves dejected, but young Emerson tells him of a potential job at the factory of Liberty Paints.The narrator reports to Liberty Paints and is given a job assisting Lucius Brockway, an old black man who controls the factory's boiler room and basement. Lucius is suspicious of his protégé, and when the narrator accidentally stumbles into a union meeting, Brockway believes that he is collaborating with the union and attacks him. The narrator bests the old Brockway in a fight, but Brockway gets the last laugh by causing an explosion in the basement, severely wounding the narrator. The narrator is taken to the factory's hospital, where he is strapped into a glass and metal box. The factor's doctors treat the narrator with severe electric shocks, and the narrator soon forgets his own name. The narrator's sense of identity is only rekindled through his anger at the doctors' racist behavior. Without explanation, the narrator is discharged from the hospital and fired from his job at the factory.When the narrator returns to Harlem, he nearly collapses from weakness. A kind woman named Mary Rambo takes the narrator in, and soon the narrator begins renting a room in her house. The narrator begins practicing his speechmaking abilities. One day, the narrator stumbles across an elderly black couple that is being evicted from their apartment. The narrator uses his rhetorical skill to rouse the crowd watching the dispossession and causes a public disturbance. A man named Brother Jack follows the narrator after he escapes from the police. Brother Jack tells the narrator that he wishes to offer him a job making speeches for his organization, the Brotherhood. The narrator is initially skeptical and turns him down, but later accepts the offer.The narrator is taken to the Brotherhood's headquarters, where he is given a new name and is told that he must move away from Mary. The narrator agrees to the conditions. Soon after, the narrator gives a rousing speech to a crowded arena. He is embraced as a hero, although some of the Brotherhood leaders disagree with the speech. The narrator is sent to a man named Brother Hambro to be "indoctrinated" into the theory of the Brotherhood. Four months later, the narrator meets Brother Jack, who tells the narrator he will be appointed chief spokesperson of the Brotherhood's Harlem District.In Harlem, the narrator is tasked with increasing support for the Brotherhood. He meets Tod Clifton, an intelligent and skillful member of the Brotherhood. Clifton and the narrator soon find themselves fighting against Ras the Exhorter, a black nationalist who believes that blacks should not cooperate with whites. The narrator soon starts to become famous as a speaker. However, complications set in. The narrator receives an anonymous note telling him that he is rising too quickly. Even worse, another Brotherhood member named Wrestrum accuses the narrator of using the Brotherhood for his own personal gain. The Brotherhood's committee suspends the narrator until the charges are cleared, and reassigns him to lecture downtown on the "Woman Question." Downtown, the narrator meets a woman who convinces him to come back to her apartment. They sleep together, and the narrator becomes afraid that the tryst will be discovered.The narrator is summoned to an emergency meeting, in which the committee informs him that Tod Clifton has gone missing. The narrator is reassigned to Harlem. When he returns, he discovers that things have changed, and that the Brotherhood has lost much of its previous popularity. The narrator soon after discovers Clifton on the street, selling Sambo dolls. Before the narrator can understand Clifton's betrayal, Clifton is shot dead by a police officer for resisting arrest. Unable to get in touch with the party leaders, the narrator organizes a public funeral for Clifton. The funeral is a success, and the people of Harlem are energized by the narrator's speech. However, the narrator is called again to face the party committee, where he is chastised for not following their orders. The narrator confronts Brother Jack, whose glass eye pops out of its socket.Leaving the committee, the narrator is nearly beat up by Ras the Exhorter's men. Sensing his new unpopularity in Harlem, the narrator buys a pair of dark-lensed glasses. As soon as he puts on the glasses, several people mistake the narrator for a man named Rinehart, who is apparently a gambler, pimp, and preacher. The narrator goes to see Brother Hambro for an explanation of the Brotherhood's dictates. Hambro tells the narrator that Harlem must be "sacrificed" for the best interests of the entire Brotherhood, an answer the narrator finds deeply unsatisfying.The narrator, disillusioned by Hambro's words, remembers his grandfather's advice to undermine white power through cooperation. The narrator plans to sabotage the Brotherhood by telling the committee whatever it wants to hear, regardless of the reality. He also plans to infiltrate the party's hierarchy by sleeping with the wife of a high-ranking member of the Brotherhood. The narrator meets Sybil, a woman who fits the bill, at a Brotherhood party. However, Sybil knows nothing, preferring to use the narrator to play out her fantasy of being raped by a black man. While Sybil is in his apartment, the narrator gets a call that a riot is going on in Harlem.The narrator rushes uptown to find that Harlem is in chaos. The narrator falls in with a group of looters. The looters soon escalate their violence, burning down their own tenement building to protest the poor living conditions. The narrator runs into Ras the Exhorter again, now dressed as an Abyssinian chieftain. Ras sends his men to try to hang the narrator. The narrator barely escapes from Ras' men, only to meet three white men who ask him what he has in his briefcase. When the narrator turns to run, he falls into a manhole. The white men seal the narrator underground, where the narrator is forced to burn his past possessions to see in the dark.The narrator returns to the present, remarking that he has remained underground since that time. The narrator reflects on history and the words of his grandfather, and says that his mind won't let him rest. Last, the narrator says that he feels ready to end his hibernation and emerge above ground.

- Genre: - Title: Ishmael - Point of view: - Setting: - Character: Ishmael. Description: The titular character, an old, experienced, and intelligent gorilla who teaches the narrator about civilization, the environment, and history. Ishmael is a mysterious presence in the novel, whose motive for spending time with human beings is never made explicitly clear. Kidnapped from his home in Africa as a baby, Ishmael grew up in captivity, and eventually learned how to read, think, and communicate with the help of his owner, Mr. Sokolow. Ishmael is deeply saddened by the devastation that the Takers—the dominant branch of the human race—have wrought on the Earth, and he is often pessimistic about the possibility of change. At times, his sadness is so immense that he takes out his feelings on the narrator. Nevertheless, he is a talented teacher who uses the Socratic method with his pupils, encouraging them to ask questions and teasing out their thoughts slowly and carefully. At the time when the novel begins, Ishmael has never has a successful pupil, since his lessons are so challenging. Quinn leaves it up to the reader to decide whether Ishmael has finally found a successful pupil in the narrator. - Character: Narrator. Description: The narrator of Ishmael is a middle-aged, deeply cynical man. Though he came of age during the 1960s, a time when millions of people fought to change the world, he's largely given up on the possibility than any genuine change is possible—and as a result, he goes through life with a vague yet profound sense of dissatisfaction and loneliness. Nevertheless, the narrator still feels a desire to change the world, and this motivates his decision to find Ishmael and participate in his lessons on humanity and the environment. At times, Quinn shows the narrator to be stubborn and selfish, but it's implied that these qualities are the result of his uneasiness with Taker society—an uneasiness that sometimes inspires him to drink heavily. In all, the narrator is a stand-in for the reader: an intelligent, open-minded person who wants to change the world and yet feels deeply cynical about the possibility of any real change. Just as it's unclear whether the narrator has truly absorbed Ishmael's lessons about change or not, it's left up to us to decide whether or not to embrace Ishmael the novel. - Character: Walter Sokolow. Description: A Jewish man who travels to the United States in the 1930s, loses his entire family to the Holocaust, and purchases Ishmael to serve as a strange, surrogate family. Mr. Sokolow is the first to give Ishmael his name, setting in motion Ishmael's discovery of language and communication. Sokolow teaches Ishmael to speak, and, when Ishmael's intellect begins to outstrip his own, becomes his research assistant. Mr. Sokolow is Rachel's father and Grace Sokolow's husband. - Character: Grace Sokolow. Description: The wife of Mr. Sokolow, at least twenty years his junior, Grace Sokolow is a jealous, narrow-minded woman who's never told that Ishmael and Mr. Sokolow are good friends, and capable of communicating with each other. As a result, she comes to resent Ishmael, especially after he begins spending time with Rachel, her daughter. After Mr. Sokolow's death, Mrs. Sokolow tries to reduce the amount of money left to Ishmael in Mr. Sokolow's will. After she succeeds in doing so, Ishmael is forcibly moved to a carnival, setting in motion the events of the second half of the novel. - Theme: Education, Teaching, and Prophets. Description: In the first paragraph of Ishmael, the narrator sees a newspaper ad asking for a student, immediately establishing the novel's focus on education and the teacher-student relationship. And yet what also quickly becomes clear is that the novel is not just focusing on the importance of education, but rather critiquing how education is practiced in the modern world. After all, Ishmael is not a typical teacher. For one thing, he's a super-intelligent ape. For another, he explicitly disagrees with the very notion of teaching—at least as we usually think of it.Ishmael argues that society, which he calls the society of Takers (those who take the world's resources and claim ownership over the planet) has become what it is in part because it too completely relies on prophets and sages: people who claim to have "master knowledge" of how to live, and spend their lives passing on this knowledge to their disciples. In contrast, Ishmael never passes on information to the narrator without also asking the narrator to weigh it carefully. Indeed, Ishmael rarely "passes on" information at all: instead he uses the "Socratic method" to conduct an open-ended conversation with the narrator. Under the terms of this conversation, the narrator is free to make up his own mind about Ishmael's ideas.In another sense, Ishmael's teaching differs from that of a prophet's insofar as he encourages the narrator to rely on his—the narrator's—own wisdom, instinct, and knowledge. At many points in Ishmael, Ishmael asks the narrator a complicated question and the narrator realizes with amazement that he knows the answer already, but had been so trained to ignore his instincts that he at first assumes that he doesn't know the answer. Ishmael's goal, then, isn't to pass on new wisdom to his disciples, but instead to remind his students of basic, common-sense knowledge of the way the world works—knowledge that, as he puts it, even a child knows. Ishmael's goal, then, isn't to educate the narrator at all. Rather, he's trying to get the narrator to "unlearn" the myths and stories with which his society has filled his head. At the end of the novel, it seems that the narrator has finally rejected Taker dogma, and is ready to live as a Leaver. Significantly, Ishmael isn't present to guide the narrator in this quest: the narrator is on his own, free to pursue any course of action he pleases. In the end, Ishmael suggests, the best teachers aim to "push" their students to the point where the students don't need – or can't have – a teacher at all, and are ready to face the world for themselves. Echoing that philosophy, it is left up to us to decide whether the narrator—or we, the readers—have reached this point by the end of the novel. - Theme: Interconnectedness. Description: At the beginning of the novel, the narrator is a self-described misanthrope. He seems to have no close friends, and the only family member he mentions (very briefly) is an uncle, for whom he seems to have no affection whatsoever. He lives his life "cut off" from other people. The narrator's education under Ishmael changes his outlook. At the same time that the narrator learns about man, the gods, and nature from Ishmael, he comes also to learn the importance of interconnectedness—the reliance on, loyalty to, and love for human beings and other forms of life. The narrator's gradual acceptance of the interconnectedness of all life constitutes a crucial part of his intellectual and spiritual education.From the beginning it's made clear to us that Ishmael lives based on the principle that the best and most meaningful life is a life based on interconnectedness. From the time that he was a young ape in the jungle, Ishmael's life has been structured around other beings—mostly human beings. Humans are his friends, his teachers, and his providers of shelter and food. Ishmael spends his entire adult life looking for pupils—in the simplest terms, looking for people with whom to connect. When Rachel, his first pupil, moves him to a building "outside human society," Ishmael becomes discontent almost immediately—his passion for interconnectedness—conversation, education, and respect for others—is so great that he demands to be moved back to a human city. Ironically, this results in Ishmael agreeing to be held in a glass cage, with the understanding that students will visit him and talk to him. Ishmael would rather be in prison and have one student to talk to than be "free" and have no one to talk to.As Ishmael goes on, it becomes clear that interconnectedness is more than just the rule by which Ishmael lives his life: it is the fundamental law of all life. All beings, Ishmael and the narrator agree, depend on one another. Humans—or, more properly speaking, the Takers (which is the vast majority of all "civilized" humans)—are the only creatures who deny nature's laws of interconnectedness. Takers recklessly purge their planet of all beings with whom they compete for resources, destroying entire ecosystems in the process. Taker communities grow bigger and bigger, confident that they'll have enough food and shelter to survive, when in actuality (Ishmael argues), Taker communities will inevitably grow so large that there won't be enough food to go around, and the entire human race will starve to death. As he learns about the value of interconnectedness from Ishmael, the narrator gradually begins to live his own life according to this principle. After Ishmael is moved to a traveling carnival, the narrator spends days trying to track him down. Later, when he notices that Ishmael is cold, the narrator brings him blankets. Despite the fact that Ishmael is an ape, the narrator has begun to respect Ishmael and consider him a friend: he's living his life according to the laws of interconnectedness.At the end of the novel, Ishmael dies, very suddenly, of pneumonia. The narrator, ashamed, realizes that he has been so focused on achieving enlightenment with Ishmael's help that he didn't notice that his friend was cold and wet. By showing us the narrator's obliviousness and Ishmael's subsequent death, Ishmael reminds us that it isn't enough to recognize the laws of interconnectedness: one must incorporate these laws into one's everyday life through love and concern for others.Ishmael ends by suggesting that the narrator will reject his old misanthropic ways and throw himself into the task of connecting with other people, whether as a teacher or as a friend. Indeed, Ishmael itself—the book we've been reading, supposedly written by the narrator—is a testament to the narrator's embrace of interconnectedness as the fundamental rule of life. In a sense, the narrator has become Ishmael, devoting his life to interconnectedness by passing on his wisdom to as many people as possible. - Theme: Fiction, Storytelling, and Truth. Description: Ishmael uses a fictional plot and characters to put forth philosophical ideas more commonly found in a work of nonfiction. This brings up an important question: why does the author of the novel, Daniel Quinn, use fiction to communicate his message? (Why didn't he write a philosophy book instead?) What's the relationship between fiction, storytelling, and truth?In an early chapter of Ishmael, Ishmael argues that human beings feel an irrepressible need to tell stories that explain and justify their place in the universe. A story, as Ishmael defines it, is a relationship between the gods, the world, and mankind. Ishmael believes that there is a story at the "center" of every culture. This story is repeated so often that the members of that culture lose sight of it. In Taker culture, for instance, Takers are no more conscious of the "story" of their society—according to which, the world was made for mankind to dominate—than a fish is conscious of water. Put another way: the Takers' story of humanity's power is so pervasive that they don't even realize how they are influenced by it. And yet no one story is completely "true" or "false"—even the story that Ishmael tells, about the Takers and the Leavers, isn't, literally speaking, the truth. Like Ishmael itself, it's a necessary fiction, a deliberate simplification of human history that helps the narrator wrap his head around Ishmael's complicated lessons.It's worth asking why Ishmael doesn't simply tell the narrator the truth about Taker society on the first day—if Ishmael knows what's wrong with the Takers' story, why couldn't he spell this out for the narrator and save them both a lot of time? The answer is that it's not enough to explain why a story is wrong. The stories of Taker society are so powerful that one can't simply "disprove them"— it's impossible to replace a story with the truth. Rather, one can only replace a story with a different story. Thus, as the novel draws to a close, Ishmael leaves the narrator with a difficult assignment: tell a new story about the Leavers to replace the flawed, harmful story that's told by the Takers. What this story will be—or whether it gets told at all—is largely left up to the reader to decide. - Theme: Cynicism, Misanthropy, and the Failure of the 1960s. Description: On the first page of Ishmael, a newspaper ad asks the narrator to come to a mysterious building in order to "save the world." When the narrator arrives at this building, he is amazed to find that no one else is there. Throughout Ishmael, it's suggested that people have already tried to save the world, failed, and given up altogether. The narrator argues that the last great attempt to save the world occurred in the 1960s, and ever since, people have lived in the cynical certainty that the world is beyond saving. One might say that the "ghost" of the 1960s hangs over every page of Ishmael—so it's important to understand what Quinn is talking about when he refers to the radicalism of the 1960s, why he thinks these radicals failed, and what errors of theirs he hopes to fix in Ishmael.During the 1960s, millions of people throughout the world organized populist movements that fought for freedom, equality, and human rights. Notable examples of 60s radicalism, to which Quinn implicitly alludes, include the American Civil Rights Movement, feminist movements, and anti-war movements, including the radical protests of 1968, when people across the world demonstrated against their governments in support of peace and equality. (See Background Information.)Quinn's principle criticism of the radicalism and political movements of the 1960s, expressed largely through the narrator, is that they didn't go far enough in their aims. While the Civil Rights Movement and the feminist movement could identify specific problems with American society, they couldn't address the root causes of injustice and unhappiness—in Quinn's view, the fallacies and contradictions of the Taker story of the world. For example, Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for equal rights for black Americans, but he was unable to change the fundamental spirit of acquisitiveness, domination, and aggression that characterizes Taker society. As Ishmael puts it, 60s radicals lived in a vast Taker prison—they tried to make their lives in the prison better, but they didn't know how to get rid of the prison itself.The failures of 60s radicalism are enormously relevant to Ishmael—indeed, the atmosphere of cynicism and misanthropy that pervades the early chapters of the novel represents the narrator's direct reaction to what Quinn perceives as the failures of the 1960s. Quinn wants the same things that earlier civil rights and feminist leaders wanted: peace, love, and equality. However, he believes that the only way to truly achieve these things is to dig to the root cause of war, hate, and inequality, and he attempts to do exactly this throughout Ishmael. - Theme: Imprisonment. Description: From the moment that the narrator sees Ishmael in his room, he becomes aware that Ishmael is in prison. It's only later that he realizes that this prison is self-imposed. Ishmael is sitting behind a glass window because he chooses to do so—his friend and former pupil, Rachel, is paying for the building where he's being "kept." Even later, when Ishmael is moved to a more literal prison—a cage at a carnival—the narrator recognizes that Ishmael could break from this cage at any time, but chooses not to. It's also clear from early on in Ishmael that Ishmael is by no means the only character who's imprisoned—indeed, every character in the novel is in a kind of prison. The narrator, as a member of Taker society, is caught up in an endless web of obligations to his family and his employers, and often can depend only on alcohol and other substances for escape and happiness.As the novel goes on, Quinn makes it clear that Taker life itself is a prison. By living in a society that breaks the fundamental laws of life, Takers are caught in an unresolvable contradiction, according to which they must continuously expand and increase their productivity. Some Takers are wealthier and more powerful than other Takers, but they're equally enslaved to the doctrines of wealth, conquest, and domination. As Ishmael puts it, the guards of the Taker prison are no freer than the prisoners.One of the reasons that the Taker prison is so dangerous is that it's invisible. A wealthy industrialist, for example, might think that he's "free" because he has material wealth, but he only believes this because he can't see how thoroughly he bases his life around conquest, or how heavily he depends on drugs or material pleasures. Ishmael thus confines himself to literal prisons in order to remind himself of the less obvious, more metaphorical prison in which he—and the narrator—is trapped. And because he never loses sight of the contradictions and fallacies of Taker society, Ishmael manages to gain some measure of freedom from them—for instance, he seems utterly indifferent to money, drugs, or ambition. This implies a more general point: while the most dangerous "prisons" are psychological and abstract in nature, these prisons are also usually self-imposed—so it's possible to escape them simply by changing one's thinking. In this sense, Quinn tries to "free" his readers from Taker dogma through the book Ishmael itself. - Theme: Humans, the Environment, and Extinction. Description: Following World War II, the world population exploded. Across the planet, especially in the Third World, populations were larger than they'd ever been—and were growing at a faster rate than they'd ever grown before. At the time when Ishmael was published, in 1981, many sociologists worried that the rise in world population would eventually cause a global food crisis, and perhaps even the extinction of the human race. It's worth looking at this notion more closely, since the possibility of such a global extinction lurks underneath every one of Ishmael and the narrator's conversations. (Interestingly, in the years following Ishmael's publication, the emphasis of population studies has largely shifted to population shortages, since in many developed nations the labor force is too small, not too large.)As the narrator acknowledges, the theory that population growth will inevitably lead to food shortages dates back to the 17th-century English thinker Thomas Malthus. Malthus observed that human populations grow exponentially—in other words, the population grows by a given factor over a given time (in the United States, for example, the population doubles approximately every forty years). By contrast, food supplies, and most resources in general—tend to grow arithmetically—increasing by a given amount over a given time (for example: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25—in other words, at a much slower rate). The result is that the amount of food (and other resources) available per person is always shrinking, and eventually it will approach zero.It's remarkable, Ishmael notes, that Malthus's argument has been well known for hundreds of years, and yet no one seems to pay attention to it. One reason that this is the case is that most humans think that they can "work around" the laws of exponential growth by using science and technology. For instance, during the 1960s and 70s, there was a worldwide "Green Revolution" that allowed crops to be farmed much more efficiently, thereby allowing a far greater number of people to be well-nourished than would ever have been thought possible. Nevertheless, Ishmael argues, no amount of human technology will ever be able to entirely counteract Malthus's laws, so long as the population continues to grow exponentially.In effect, Ishmael is an attempt to answer the question, "Why don't humans recognize that they're headed for extinction, when the truth is right in front of their faces?" Ishmael believes that humans don't realize this because one group of humans, the Takers, have constructed an all-pervasive "story" about how the Earth is their property—and they can do whatever they like with their property. Because Takers—who, at this point in history, constitute the vast majority of the human race's population—have had this story drummed into their heads since childhood, no amount of logic or research can make them change their behavior—behavior which will lead to human extinction.It's important to understand Malthus's arguments about population while reading Ishmael, since food shortages and human extinction are the "stakes" of the novel. In order to prevent extinction, Ishmael tries to draw the narrator's attention to the artificiality and irrationality of the Taker story. In this way, he hopes that the narrator will convince Takers to change their ways, relinquish their "ownership" of their environment, curb their population growth, and ensure the survival of their species. - Climax: - Summary: An unnamed narrator, a writer, notices an ad in his newspaper: "Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world." Although the narrator is initially dismissive of this ad, he goes to the office building mentioned in the ad, and is surprised to find that he is the only person who's bothered to come. Inside, the narrator finds a fully-grown gorilla, sitting behind a glass window. In the room he also notices a poster, which says, "WITH MAN GONE, WILL THERE BE HOPE FOR GORILLA?" To the narrator's surprise, he can communicate with the gorilla simply by making eye contact with him. The gorilla says that he was born in Africa in the 1930s, kidnapped by humans, and taken to a circus. At the circus, a man named Mr. Sokolow purchased him. Sokolow gave him his name, Ishmael, taught him how to communicate telepathically, and gave him books to study. Eventually, Ishmael's intelligence and knowledge far outstripped Sokolow's. When this became obvious, Sokolow asked Ishmael to tutor his daughter, Rachel. Although Ishmael did so for many years, he reports that she never learned his most important lessons—lessons which he'll try to pass on to the narrator now. Ishmael concludes his life story by explaining that after Mr. Sokolow died, his widow, Mrs. Sokolow, fought to keep Ishmael away from her home. As a result, Ishmael has ended up living in this building, supported with money from Rachel. Ishmael asks the narrator if he feels like a prisoner, and the narrator answers that he does, but that he can't put into words where this feeling comes from. Ishmael explains that the narrator is part of a culture, and as a result, he has been taught certain "stories"—explanations of the relationship between man, the world, and the gods—which are so pervasive that they're invisible to him. Ishmael says that he will try to help the narrator understand these stories, and recognize why they're false and misleading. As a basic lesson plan, Ishmael says that his project will be to show the narrator that human history is the history of two groups, the Takers and the Leavers, who enact two radically different stories about man, the world, and the gods. Takers, according to Ishmael, are the humans who developed agriculture and civilization—the humans who dominate the Earth to this day. Leavers (the Navajo, Bushmen, etc.), by contrast, are those who never adopt agricultural practices and ignore the supposed benefits of civilization. During his first lesson, Ishmael asks the narrator to explain the one defining story of his culture. The narrator is unable to do so, and becomes impatient with Ishmael for forcing him to try. Eventually, using a tape recorder, he records himself talking about the history of the universe, the dawn of man, and the Agricultural Revolution. Ishmael shows the narrator that this version of the history of the world is a fiction: it favors the human race in an absurdly unrealistic way. The narrator realizes that Ishmael is right, but can't get excited over this fact. Ishmael is disappointed with the narrator's lack of enthusiasm. In the second lesson, Ishmael and the narrator discuss the "middle" and "end" of the story of the Takers, as the Takers themselves see it. Takers believe that their inventions—agriculture, technology, etc.—have brought them great happiness and contentment, but they also believe that they must continue exploring new worlds in order to find new food and resources. At the same time, Takers believe that their technology and exploration inevitably cause death and destruction—furthermore, they believe that this is the case because human beings themselves are fundamentally flawed. This is a misinterpretation of the facts, Ishmael argues: while Taker culture and the enactment of Taker stories does lead to death and depression, human beings themselves are not inherently evil or sinful. In subsequent lessons, Ishmael asks the narrator to explain the other stories that Taker culture believes. With much prompting, the narrator realizes that his culture—understood as Western culture, or industrialized culture—believes in its right to dominate the entire world. Humans, he argues, think of their exploration as a conquest—they're literally waging war against the Earth. This, Ishmael argues, violates the one law of life: species should never wage war on one another. The inevitable result of humans' violations of the laws of life, Ishmael concludes, is that the human species will go extinct. Though humans have tried to delay this from happening by producing more food, these measures are never fully successful: more productivity results in a larger population, canceling out any progress. When he arrives for his next lesson, the narrator is surprised to find Ishmael sitting in the room, no longer behind the glass window. Ishmael talks to the narrator about the Hebrew Bible, arguing that it is actually a coded history of the human race, told from the perspective of the Leavers. When Adam eats from the tree of knowledge, Ishmael theorizes, he gains the knowledge of how to manipulate his environment and use agriculture to wage war on the Earth. The fact that this process is described as a "Fall" proves that the story was originally told by Leavers, long before it entered the Hebrew Bible. Ishmael goes on to also interpret the story of Cain and Abel as being about Takers and Leavers. The narrator gets a visit from his uncle, falls behind on his deadlines, and gets a tooth removed. As a result, he abandons Ishmael for a week. When he returns, he's surprised to find that Ishmael has left his building. The narrator does some research and learns that Mrs. Sokolow, whose name is Grace, has died, meaning that Ishmael no longer has a source of income to protect him from captivity. The narrator tracks Ishmael down to his new home: a traveling carnival. There, he finds Ishmael lying in a cage, from which he could easily escape if he wanted to. Ishmael ignores the narrator and eventually tells him to go away. The next day, the narrator returns, and Ishmael reluctantly continues his lessons. A strange quality of Taker society, he explains, is that Takers both embrace history and reject history. Because they don't have much "evidence" for how to behave, they're always turning to prophets for advice—Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, etc. Leavers, on the other hand, conduct themselves just as their ancestors three million years ago did, and so they have learned how to act based on trial and error. By ignoring the Leavers, Takers foolishly ignore the best evidence humanity has accumulated for how to act. During the next lesson, the narrator bribes a carnival worker—the bribee—to speak with Ishmael after dark. Ishmael asks the narrator why he's so interested in the ways of the Leavers, and the narrator answers that he thinks that the radical movements of the 1960s failed because although people know that Taker culture was wrong, they couldn't see what "story" to replace it with. Satisfied with this answer, Ishmael conducts a complicated exercise with the narrator, in which he plays a Leaver, and the narrator plays a Taker. After this exercise, the narrator makes a breakthrough and realizes why Takers want to be Takers: they want to take control over their own destinies, rather than being at the mercy of the gods and the elements. There is no practical reason for being a Taker—only an abstract desire to be in control and to be different from the other animals of the Earth. After this lesson, the narrator finds the man who runs the carnival, whose name is Art Owens. The narrator discusses buying Ishmael and agrees with Owens on a price, but then says that he'll think about it. In the next lesson, the narrator asks Ishmael for advice about how to be a Leaver. Ishmael gives the narrator some goals: convince as many people as possible to abandon the ways of the Takers, and reject the idea that man's role is to dominate the planet. Ishmael also makes the important point that the Leavers need not abandon agriculture altogether. Agriculture itself is a harmless enterprise—it's only when agriculture becomes the way of the world, and when it's used to wage war on the planet, that it breaks the laws of life. In general, Ishmael says, Leavers like the narrator must experiment with new methods for survival, "inventing" where they see fit. The narrator leaves Ishmael to repair his car. While doing so, he decides to buy Ishmael and drive away, though he's unsure where he'd go. When he returns to the carnival, he finds that Ishmael has died of pneumonia—the narrator hadn't noticed that Ishmael had been getting sick. The bribee gives the narrator Ishmael's possessions, including the poster the narrator saw when he first visited Ishmael. The narrator drives back to his home and studies the poster. He's surprised to find that there's another message on the back: "WITH GORILLA GONE, WILL THERE BE HOPE FOR MAN?"

- Genre: Romance - Title: It Ends with Us - Point of view: First Person - Setting: Boston, Massachusetts - Character: Lily Bloom. Description: Lily is the novel's protagonist. Lily's character is deeply defined by her childhood experience with domestic violence—Lily's father repeatedly abused Lily's mother. As an adult, Lily still harbors hatred toward her abusive father even after he passes away. She's also angry at her mother for never seeking help. Lily vows to live differently than her mother, never compromising her desires or safety for any man. When she meets Ryle, she feels that she has found her match in passion and drive, but his lack of interest in a serious relationship initially holds her back. Ryle re-enters Lily's life after she unwittingly hires his sister, Allysa, to work in her new flower shop. Ryle's desire for Lily eventually eclipses his usual distaste for committed relationships, and they begin a relationship. The romance seems perfect at first: Ryle celebrates Lily's ambition and supports her business, he has a family she's proud to be a part of, and she and Ryle are always honest with each other. However, two main issues undermine Lily's joy: the reappearance of her first love, Atlas, and Ryle's domestic violence. Lily processes her relationship with Atlas as she reads through her old journals, remembering how Atlas appeared in her life as her father's abuse of her mother worsened, giving her the true friendship and love needed. Lily's journals also influence her initial acceptance of Ryle's domestic abuse; she gives the chance to turn his behavior around because she sees he is different from her father. She initially chooses not to tell anyone about Ryle's violent episodes, believing they are over. This works for a while, and Lily tries her best to fully embrace her future with Ryle as they marry and consider starting a family together. When Ryle's abuse continues, Lily's decision to leave Ryle is initially complicated by the unexpected news of her pregnancy. As Lily prepares for the birth of her child, she reckons with her feelings about her past, present, and future. When her daughter, Emmy, is born, Lily ultimately decides to leave Ryle for good, therefore ending the cycle of abuse and giving Emmy a chance at a better future. Ultimately, Lily reconnects with Atlas, and the novel implies that they will resume their romance. - Character: Ryle Kincaid. Description: Ryle is the brother of Allysa and later, the husband of Lily and father of Emmy. Ryle is a talented neurosurgeon finishing his residency in Boston when he meets Lily, who is blown away by his passion, attractiveness, wealth, and forthrightness. However, they resist dating because Ryle insists he can't be distracted by a relationship, and Lily isn't interested in casual sex. Ryle and Lily reconnect when Lily hires and grows close to Allysa. Ryle's passionate nature and desire for Lily overpower his misgivings about relationships, and they attempt to date. As they fall more deeply in love, Ryle is surprised at his capacity to stay sharp in his career while also maintaining a relationship. The perfect veneer Ryle maintains shatters one day when he pushes Lily during a drunken argument. Ryle's deep remorse initially convinces Lily to give him another chance, but his violent outbursts continue, nonetheless. Eventually, Lily learns that much of Ryle's character stems unresolved trauma related to the tragic death of his brother, Emerson, whom Ryle accidentally shot and killed. Ryle's devotion to healing people, his hesitancy to develop emotionally intimate relationships, and his inability to control his emotions are direct results of that trauma. After telling Lily about Emerson, they reconcile, Ryle's violent outbursts initially cease. They marry. But Ryle's abuse of Lily resumes after he discovers Lily's childhood journals about Atlas. Lily leaves him, but the two are forced to find a way to interact when she learns she is pregnant with his child. The pregnancy forces Ryle to reckon with his shortcomings and what they have cost him. The selfless love he feels for his daughter, and his need to protect her helps him understand why Lily cannot take him back. After their divorce, Ryle helps Lily co-parent their daughter. - Character: Atlas Corrigan. Description: Atlas is protagonist Lily's first love. Throughout the novel, Lily processes her memories of their time together by reading her old journal entries, which is essential to helping her make sense of her current relationship with Ryle. As teenagers, Lily and Atlas mutually support each another through their respective hardships. Lily's friendship and her insistence on providing him food, clothes, water, and shelter helps Atlas through a period of homelessness he experiences as a teenager. Initially, Atlas's shame about his life circumstances obscures his true nature; he is humble, quiet, and differential. As he grows closer to Lily, however, his thoughtfulness, intelligence, creativity, and passion for cooking shine through. Atlas also becomes protective of Lily the more he witnesses her father's abusive behavior. Lily eventually regards Atlas as the only person who truly sees and loves her for who she is. However, the couple parts ways when Atlas moves to Boston to live with his uncle and later joins the military. Even so, Atlas promises Lily that he will find her when he thinks his life is good enough to include her in it. Atlas and Lily reconnect in adulthood when they run into each other at Bib's, the restaurant in Boston that Atlas has just opened. Atlas demonstrates his unwavering care for and protectiveness of Lily when he supports her through Ryle's abuse. Though he is violently angry at what Ryle has done, Atlas honors Lily's wishes to give her space to work things out on her own. Unlike Ryle, Atlas shows his love for Lily by trusting her and giving her space to make her own choices. Atlas and Lily reconnect at the end of the novel, after Lily has left Ryle, and it's implied that they will rekindle their romance. - Character: Lily's Mother. Description: Mrs. Bloom is Lily's mother. Growing up, Lily saw the effect her father's abusive behavior had on her mother, which deeply shaped the woman Lily grew to become. Lily worked to avoid manipulative men and stay strong and independent, hoping to avoid her mother's shortcomings. As an adult, Lily finds relief in the fact that her father is dead and can no longer hurt her mother, but she harbors lingering resentment toward her mother for never leaving her father or reporting his abuse. Lily's journals, which she later rereads as an adult, further reflect her childhood belief that her mother's pride, fear, and shame made her too weak to stand up to Lily's father. However, Lily's own adult experiences with domestic violence at Ryle's hand give her newfound empathy for the complexity of her parents' marriage. This empathy helps mend Lily's relationship with her mother, and she ends up seeking advice from her mother on how to handle her own abusive relationship. Her mom explains how her own abusive marriage taught her that compromising once will inevitably snowball into compromising everything. She advises Lily that the only real solution is to walk away—and that Ryle would insist that Lily leave him if he really loved Lily the way he claims. Lily's mother's support empowers Lily to make the best decision for her and her daughter, Emmy, and Lily ultimately leaves Ryle, breaking the cycle of abuse. - Character: Allysa. Description: Allysa is Marshall's wife, the younger sister of Ryle, sister-in-law of Lily, and later, the mother of Rylee. Allysa meets Lily when she responds to a help-wanted sign in the window of the building Lily's new flower shop. Allysa admits she is looking for work not for money—her husband has become very wealthy thanks to his software designs—but instead as a distraction from their struggles with infertility. Lily hires Allysa on the spot, and Allysa soon becomes Lily's most indispensable worker and best friend. Lily soon realizes that Ryle, whom she met months before on his rooftop deck, is Allysa's brother. This mutual connection to Allysa ends up drawing Ryle and Lily closer together, and they begin a relationship despite Lily's initial reservations. When Lily and Ryle choose to stay together and get married, Allysa is their biggest champion. Lily's friendship with Allysa makes her even more excited to be a part of Ryle's family, a sentiment that deepens with the arrival of Allysa and Marshall's daughter, Rylee. Later, when Lily tells Allysa about Ryle's abuse, Allysa supports Lily. Lily also learns from Allysa that Allysa and Ryle have an older brother, Emerson, who died in childhood. Allysa pushes Ryle to tell Lily the truth about Emerson's death (Ryle accidentally shot and killed Emerson) to help Lily understand the root cause of Ryle's issues, but when Ryle's behavior continues, Allysa still supports Lily's decision to leave Ryle. - Character: Lily's father. Description: Mr. Bloom is Lily's father. The novel begins on the day of his funeral, at which Lily gave a eulogy effectively claiming that there was nothing good to remember about him—he abused Lily's mother (and to a lesser degree, Lily) for years, and Lily still feels angry at him because of it. Throughout high school, college, and now, her post-graduate life in Boston, Lily has remained vigilant against men like her father, refusing to continue the cycle of abuse. Initially, Lily doesn't see any resemblances between her father in Ryle, a neurosurgeon she meets after the funeral. Before they begin dating, Lily confides in Ryle about her father's abuse, and Ryle's sympathetic response reassures Lily that he is nothing like her father. As the novel unfolds and Lily re-reads many of her high school diaries, she relives the trauma her father inflicted on her and her mother, and she eventually understands that her father's insecurity, jealousy, and selfishness fueled his abusive behavior. As Lily revisits these memories, Lily's relationship with Ryle proves to have more in common with her parent's relationship than she initially thought. Lily's personal experiences with domestic violence give her a new perspective on her parents' relationship, which she ultimately realizes was far more complicated than she believed it to be. - Character: Ellen DeGeneres. Description: Ellen DeGeneres is a real-life comedian and television personality. As a teenager, Lily watched her talk show, Ellen, every day after school. Lily and Atlas bond over watching the show together. Lily addressed her childhood journal entries to DeGeneres because she saw the comedian as a safe person and friend, though she never actually sent her any letters. Journaling helped young Lily process both the violent environment of her home and her childhood romance with Atlas. In adulthood, re-reading these entries allows Lily to revisit these difficult memories, which informs her decisions about her own abusive relationship with Ryle and her rekindled friendship with Atlas. One of DeGeneres's quotes from Finding Nemo is "just keep swimming." The quote is particularly significant to Atlas and Lily, as they repeat it to each other in difficult moments. - Character: Marshall. Description: Marshall is the husband of Allysa, father of Rylee, and brother-in-law to Lily and Ryle. Marshall started as Ryle's friend in high school, but he eventually won over Allysa's affection with his carefree, goofy, and positive persona. As an adult, Marshall became unexpectedly wealthy after selling a phone app to a technology company. Marshall's easygoing personality continues to complement Allysa's emphatic, particular nature, especially when the couple struggles with fertility issues. Lily appreciates these same characteristics after joining the family. When Marshall finds out about Ryle's abusive behavior, he protects Lily as she and Ryle work through the process of separating and ending their marriage. - Character: Emmy Kincaid. Description: Emmy Kincaid is the daughter of Ryle and Lily. Lily finds out she is pregnant with Emmy when she is in ER being treated for injuries Ryle inflicted on her. Lily's pregnancy forces her to decide if she will stay or leave her abusive husband for the good of her daughter. When Emmy is born, Lily and Ryle agree to co-parent and live separately. They name her after Ryle's deceased brother, Emerson. - Character: Rylee. Description: Rylee is Allysa and Marshall's daughter, named in honor of her uncle, Ryle. The couple, Lily, and Ryle's shared joy over Allysa's pregnancy brings them even closer together, leaving Lily ecstatic to belong to such a full, happy family. Rylee's birth inspires Lily and Ryle to start trying for their own baby. - Character: Emerson Kincaid. Description: Emerson Kincaid is the deceased older brother of Ryle and Allysa. After Ryle attacks Lily, Allysa urges Ryle to tell her about what happened to Emerson. Lily learns that Ryle accidentally shot and killed Emerson when they were young children. Emerson's death deeply affected Ryle; in adulthood, he suffers blackouts and episodes of violent rage. This trauma also makes Ryle hesitant to build deep relationships. Later, Ryle and Lily name their daughter Emmy in honor of Emerson. - Character: Cassie. Description: Cassie is the name of the girlfriend Atlas tells Lily about when they reconnect after many years apart. Though Lily is glad Atlas is happy, she is jealous when he tells her about Cassie, and this shows her that she still has feelings for Atlas. When Lily flees Ryle's abusive behavior and takes refuge at Atlas's house, she learns from Atlas's friends that Cassie never existed—Atlas lied about having a girlfriend so Lily wouldn't pity Atlas for being alone. - Character: Lucy. Description: Lucy is Lily's roommate at the beginning of the novel. Though the two women get along okay, Lucy's constant singing annoys Lily. Lily is relieved when Lucy moves out after getting engaged to her boyfriend, Alex. Later in the novel, Lily hires Lucy to help her in the flower shop. - Theme: Cycles of Abuse. Description: It Ends with Us portrays abuse as cyclical, both individually and generationally. In its examination of the dating life and marriage of protagonist Lily and her partner, Ryle, the novel shows how a pattern of violence and forgiveness can repeat throughout a single relationship. For Lily and Ryle, this cycle begins with passionate feelings of love, belonging, and calm. However, Ryle often loses his temper, causing him to lash out violently and hurt Lily. Afterward, Ryle's intense remorse and Lily's longing for the version of him she loves pushes them toward reconciliation. They are happy for a time, but something inevitably sets Ryle off again, and the cycle of violence, remorse, and reconciliation continues. Lily's parents' relationship significantly shapes her responses these abusive episodes, showing how domestic violence can reoccur generationally. Lily's father abused her mother repeatedly, at times hurting Lily, too. From this experience, Lily identifies two main flaws in her parents' relationship that she believes are responsible for their problems: that her mother married someone who didn't truly love her, and that her mother chose to maintain the family's status and lifestyle instead of seeking help to maintain her and her daughter's safety. Lily hates her father for his abusive actions, but the main missteps Lily identifies and vows not to repeat in her own life place responsibility and judgement on the victim—her mother—rather than on the person perpetrating violence—her father.  Lily is shocked when she  marries Ryle and finds herself in in an abusive marriage like her mother before her. Like her mom, Lily's first instinct is to preserve the reputation and career of the man she loves by lying about the source of her injuries, though doing so fills her with shame for repeating her mother's pattern. Lily eventually flees her home when Ryle's violent outbursts escalate, but the unexpected news that she is pregnant with his baby leaves her confused about how to proceed. Lily longs to forgive Ryle, hoping he might get better and raise their child with her. On the other hand, she worries that staying will prove that she is weak, lead to further abuse, and cause others to judge her. In this way, Lily's experience with her own abusive marriage shows her what she was unable to recognize as a child: how complicated and isolating domestic violence can be. Lily's new empathy for her mother allows her to have more compassion for herself, too. She fights back against her shame by confiding in the people she loves and trusts: her mother; her sister-in-law, Allysa; and her childhood love, Atlas. Lily is shocked and grateful when her community responds to her admission with support rather than judgment. The strength Lily gains through opening up to her support system allows her to overcome the shame she used to associate with victims of domestic violence. The novel thus shows how confiding in others plays a vital role in helping survivors of abuse work through their trauma and internalized shame and place blame where it really belongs—on abusers—thus breaking cycles of abuse. - Theme: Naked Truths. Description: Ryle and Lily's intimacy, connection, and passion in It Ends with Us is built upon an exchange of radical, uncensored truth. Honesty becomes a core value of Lily's in adulthood because her early life was full of secrets and unacknowledged truths. Her mother chose to hide her father's abusive behavior behind closed doors, implicating Lily in protecting him. As a teenager, Lily's father's actions and her mother's inactions made her feel stuck in an abusive environment—until she befriends a teenage boy—Atlas—whom she finds living in the abandoned house behind her childhood home. The two bond over their individual traumas and their love of Ellen DeGeneres, to whom Lily secretly addresses all her journal entries. Atlas and "Ellen" became the only people with whom Lily feels she can fully be herself. Life circumstances separate Lily and Atlas, though, and Lily's diary-based correspondence with Ellen ends. When Lily meets Ryle after college, Ryle's ability to talk openly and honestly about difficult subjects and share brutal truths about himself draws her to him. As Lily and Ryle's relationship deepens, the tension between truth and secrets becomes the crux of all conflict between them. When Ryle discovers that the "Better in Boston" magnet that Lily keeps on her fridge and the tattoo of an open heart on her shoulder are connected to her history with Atlas, he believes she has been keeping secrets from him maliciously. Ryle sees Lily's secrecy as an intentional betrayal of their agreement to be truthful and uses it to justify the most intense of his abusive episodes. Ryle, of course, is not innocent of keeping things hidden. His inability to manage his emotions in a healthy way is linked to something he never wanted to share with Lily: he accidentally shot and killed his older brother, Emerson, when they were children. By the time these secrets come to light, they have already done irreversible damage to Lily and Ryle's relationship. Ultimately, it's Lily's ability to exchange naked truths with herself that leads to resolution in the novel. She accepts that she's both stuck in an abusive situation and deeply in love with Ryle. Her ability to acknowledge these truths allows her to honor her love for Ryle while also moving on for her daughter's sake, and this new balance is solidified by her decision to name their daughter Emmy after Emerson. Lily's journey throughout the novel shows that truth is not the sharing of every thought and past experience with others. Instead, truth is the essential practice of being honest with your loved ones and yourself about your limitations and motivations. - Theme: Good and Evil. Description: It Ends with Us is the story of Lily's journey to understand how to navigate a world in which no one is fully good or evil. When Lily and Ryle first meet on the roof, they begin exchanging "naked truths," offering each other radically honest answers to challenging questions. Lily explains that her late father, whose funeral she just attended, abused her mother throughout Lily's childhood. Her father always followed his violent episodes with periods of affection toward his wife and daughter, and Lily admits that she feels like a bad person for having longed for those moments of reconciliation as a child. But Ryle tells Lily that no one is all good or all bad. While he says this to encourage Lily, his words foreshadow the complications that will arise between Ryle and Lily when they later begin a romantic relationship. In childhood, Lily learned to process the trauma of her father's abusive behavior by simplifying her perception of him: he hurt her mother, so he was evil. When Ryle is repeatedly violent to Lily, however, she finds that this same tactic doesn't work. Though she can't excuse his behavior, she also loves him too much to cut him out entirely. When she unexpectedly becomes pregnant with Ryle's baby, it is Lily's drive to give her daughter the best life possible that eventually persuades Lily to leave Ryle—but also to let him co-parent their daughter. In so doing, Lily can give Emmy a chance to see the good side of Ryle while shielding her from the bad. Lily learns that ignoring the bad and taking only the good in someone can perpetuate violent and abusive behavior. At the same time, though, ignoring everything good about a person because they are imperfect also limits the possibility for growth and redemption. - Theme: Chosen Family. Description: In It Ends with Us, the trauma of growing up in an abusive household deeply affects Lily's perception of her worth and her sense of belonging. For this reason, she is overjoyed when Ryle's family embraces her with open arms. In Ryle, Lily finds more than a husband: she finds a best friend in Allysa, Ryle's supportive younger sister; a brother in Marshall, Allysa's carefree husband; and loving parents in Ryle's mom and dad, Mrs. and Dr. Kincaid. When Ryle's violence against Lily begins to escalate, this sense of belonging only ensnares her more in her relationship with him and the life they are building together.  For much of the novel, Lily vacillates between staying and leaving, not only because she truly loves Ryle, but also because she feels that leaving for her own well-being may also mean leaving the love she has found in his family. However, Lily is surprised to find that Allysa and Marshall support her decision to leave Ryle—and that their support is integral to her ability to set boundaries and rebuild her life as she navigates leaving her abusive marriage. And at the end of the novel, the birth of Lily and Ryle's daughter, Emmy, nullifies Lily's concern that divorcing Ryle may separate her from her new family. In fact, it is love of that family—and most importantly, its newest member, Emmy—that gives Lily the strength to leave. Lily learns that love, in truest form, does not trap you, but keep you afloat in hard times and propel you toward a brighter future—and that a person's chosen family should consist of people who offer you that kind of love. - Climax: After the birth of Lily and Ryle's child, Lily decides to leave Ryle to end the cycle of abuse. - Summary: Lily has recently moved to Boston after finishing her master's degree in business. At this point in her life, Lily is caught somewhere between the past and the future. The opening scene finds her on a rooftop deck contemplating the eulogy she delivered earlier that day for her father's funeral. It bothers her that she still feels overwhelming rage at her father, who was beloved by his community but abused Lily's mother behind closed doors. Lily is also still angry at herself and her mother for keeping the domestic violence a secret. In the midst of wrestling with these complexities, Lily meets Ryle Kincaid, a neurosurgery resident who has also come to the rooftop to work through his anger. They are immediately at ease with each other, exchanging "naked truths" about themselves and sharing their deepest thoughts. Ryle explains that he wants to be the best surgeon in his field, and Lily tells Ryle that she longs to quit her job in marketing and open her own floral shop. Ryle tells Lily he wants to have sex with her. Though Lily finds Ryle very attractive, she explains that she doesn't have one-night stands with strangers. Ryle gets a call from the hospital and has to leave abruptly. Six months later, Lily brings her mother to the storefront space she purchased with her inheritance money to open her shop. Later that day, Lily hires Allysa, whose enthusiasm, determination, and vision for the space win Lily over. They become fast friends. When Lily accidentally sprains her ankle in the process setting up shop, Allysa calls her brother and her husband, Marshall, who've been watching football at a nearby bar, for help. When the men arrive, Lily realizes that Allysa's brother is Ryle, the man she met on the roof. After reconnecting at the floral shop, Lily and Ryle continue to run into each other, though they attempt to ignore their attraction to each other because of their conflicting long-term goals. With every meeting, however, their sexual tension grows. Lily tries to distract herself by reading entries from her childhood diaries, which she addressed to her hero, Ellen DeGeneres. In so doing, Lily relives parts of her childhood she hasn't thought of in many years, like specific episodes of her father's abuse. Reading her diaries also reminds Lily of her classmate, Atlas Corrigan, whom she befriended after noticing him living in the abandoned house across the ally from Lily's childhood home. In the present, Lily and Ryle decide to give dating a chance despite their reservations. Ryle is amazed by Lily's supportiveness of his career, finding that a loving relationship adds to rather than detracts from his goals. In return, Lily finds Ryle's devotion a blissful complement to the escalating success of her business. They become enmeshed in each other's lives. Ryle wants to meet Lily's mother, so the three of them have lunch at a new restaurant in Boston, Bib's. While Ryle and Lily's mom hit it off, Lily is distracted when she recognizes their waiter as Atlas, her childhood friend. Lily lingers after her mother and Ryle leave the restaurant, and she and Atlas catch up for the first time in nine years. Lily tells him about her business and relationship with Ryle, and Atlas tells her about his time in the military and his girlfriend, Cassie. Though Lily feels a pang of jealousy when Atlas mentions his girlfriend, she leaves the conversation feeling like she finally has some clarity on their relationship and is eager to move forward. Still, Lily continues to reread her old journals. The entries recount how her feelings for Atlas continued to grow. Together, they endured their traumas and made plans for a happy future together in Boston. One evening, Atlas gave Lily an open heart he'd carved from the tree between their homes as a symbol of their connection and his feelings for her. Their blossoming love was derailed, however, when Atlas's uncle in Boston offered him a home—something Atlas couldn't turn down, though it meant he had to leave Lily behind in Maine. Back in present-day Boston, Ryle and Lily's relationship continues to flourish—until it doesn't. They're sharing a bottle of wine one evening when Ryle accidentally burns his hand while grabbing dinner out of the oven. Lily's shocked laughter angers Ryle, and he pushes her into a cabinet. When he apologizes, all Lily can hear is the echo of all her father's apologies after hurting her mother. The episode forces Lily to re-evaluate her relationship with Ryle, and while she is horrified by his behavior, she believes he is different from her father and decides not to punish him for her father's sins. Lily forgives Ryle, but she warns him that she will leave if he hurts her again. The next day, Lily and Ryle meet Allysa and Marshall at Bib's. They run into Atlas, as Lily feared they would, and when he sees Lily's injury and the bandage on Ryle's hand, he automatically assumes—correctly—that Ryle hurt her. Atlas follows Lily to the bathroom to check on her, and a fight nearly breaks out when Ryle finds them leaving the restroom together. After they leave Bib's, Lily explains her history with Atlas. Ryle worries that she is cheating on him, but she reassures him Atlas is only a concerned friend. The next day, Atlas visits Lily at her work and gives her his phone number, which he hides behind her phone's battery. He tells her to call him if she ever needs him one day. Later, Lily returns home to read the last entry in her journal, which recounts the night Atlas came back from Boston to visit Lily for her birthday. He explained to her on that night how she had saved his life. Atlas promised to come find her once he improved his life enough to deserve having her in it; he gave her a Boston magnet as a symbol of that promise. Ryle and Lily decide to fly to Las Vegas and get married. The beginning of their marriage is happy and carefree, much like their dating life, until one evening when Ryle finds Atlas's phone number in Lily's phone. Lily wakes from another violent incident with several cuts on her face and a concussion. Unlike the last time Ryle hurt her, Lily does not cover for him after this incident. When Allysa finds out about the abuse, she supports Lily's decision to leave Ryle, but she begs Ryle to tell Lily about their brother. Lily learns that Ryle accidentally shot and killed his brother, Emerson, as a kid. This trauma has been a key driver of his passion for medicine, his fear of love, and his manic, rage-filled episodes. In light of this new information and Ryle's promise to do better, the couple reconciles. Another stretch of undisturbed happiness follows. Ryle buys Lily an apartment in the same building as Allysa, who is pregnant, and they all excitedly await the arrival of Allysa and Marshall's baby to arrive. On the day Allysa goes into labor, Ryle wins a two-month fellowship in Europe, and the local paper lists Lily's flower shop as one of the best new businesses in Boston. Lily and Ryle are in awe of their new niece and decide to start trying for their own baby. But one night, Lily arrives home to find Ryle drunk and angry. Ryle explains that he read the newspaper story about Boston's best new businesses more closely and found that Atlas's restaurant is featured in it. In Atlas's interview, he explains that the name stands for "Better in Boston"—just like Lily's magnet. Ryle then decides to go through Lily's things and finds the carved heart, which is identical to the tattoo on Lily's shoulder. Reading Lily's journals further convince Ryle that Lily is harboring secret feelings for Atlas. Ryle's most violent episodes follows. When Lily struggles, he headbutts her, rendering her unconscious. In an effort to deescalate the situation, Lily agrees to forgive a remorseful Ryle. Once he falls asleep, she escapes. Lily calls Atlas, who takes her to the hospital. There, she finds out she is pregnant with Ryle's baby. While Lily decides what to do, Atlas lets her sleep in his guest room. The next day, Ryle tells her that he is going to Europe for his fellowship, giving her space for the next two months. He doesn't know about the pregnancy. Lily finds sanctuary with Atlas at first, though she is worried about what his girlfriend will think. Then, when his friends come over for a poker game, Lily discovers that Atlas made up Cassie. When Lily confronts Atlas about the lie, he tells her that he didn't want her to feel bad for him ending up alone or guilty for never coming back to him. Lily then asks Atlas why he didn't keep his promise of finding her. He admits he did come for her in college, but he saw that she was dating someone else. They agree that their feelings for each other and Lily's current situation with Ryle make things too complicated, so Lily goes back to her empty apartment. Before she leaves, Atlas tells her that if she is ever willing to fall in love again, he will be waiting. Back home, Lily finally tells Allysa what Ryle did to her, and she also shares the news of her pregnancy. Shortly after, Ryle comes home early to try to work things out with Lily. Marshall agrees to serve as a moderator and protector while they talk. Lily is visibly pregnant when Ryle sees her. Ryle begs her to let him come home so they can raise the baby together. She tells him to leave and admits she wishes the baby wasn't his. Lily then fills her mother in about the abuse and the baby; she also admits that she still loves Ryle. Lily's mom expresses how proud she is of Lily for leaving. She tells Lily that if Ryle really loved her like he says he does, he wouldn't let Lily take him back. As Lily's pregnancy progresses, she and Ryle form a tentative truce. Lily lets him help her out in small ways at first, and eventually she is comfortable enough to let him stay in the apartment in case of emergencies. When their daughter is born, Ryle is by her side. Lily suggests that they name her Emerson—Emmy—in honor of Ryle's late brother. Ryle is overcome with love. When he asks Lily for an answer about the future of their marriage, Lily asks him what he would do if Emmy told him that her boyfriend hit her. Ryle, understanding the point of Lily's question, is devastated but supportive when Lily asks for a divorce. Lily hopes that this decision has broken the cycle of abuse she and her mother endured, ensuring Emmy will never suffer the way they did. Nearly a year later, the epilogue finds Lily rushing down the street with Emmy to drop her off with Ryle. On her way, she runs into Atlas. Lily introduces him to her daughter, then they part ways. After Lily meets up with Ryle and says goodbye to Emmy, she runs back the way she came and catches up with Atlas. She tells him she's ready to be with him. They kiss, and Lily feels as if her struggle to survive is over.

- Genre: Realism, political fiction - Title: Ivy Day in the Committee Room - Point of view: third-person omniscient - Setting: The Nationalist party headquarters, Dublin. October 6, probably 1902. - Character: Old Jack. Description: Old Jack is the elderly caretaker of the political Committee Room where the story takes place. An Irish Nationalist, he is a patriot with seemingly strong political convictions, but he struggles to act on those convictions. As such, he represents the older generation of Irish Nationalists who have failed to act on the commitments and values of their party, leaving the movement mired in corruption and petty disagreement. Symbolically, Joyce represents this state of affairs by making Jack the guardian of the Committee Room's weak fire, which (although Jack unsuccessfully stokes and fans it throughout the story) never properly lights or heats the room. As the fire represents the spirit of Irish Nationalism, Jack's ineffectual stoking suggests that the older generation has betrayed the movement, letting its light nearly go out. Jack also embodies the factionalism and distrust that characterizes the party (he is skeptical of Joe Hynes's party allegiance, for instance), and he demonstrates the party's hypocrisy. For example, although Jack is bitterly disappointed in his 19-year-old son who has a drinking problem, he follows the other men's orders and—against his principles—allows a teenaged delivery boy to drink a bottle of stout. This shows Jack's inability to act on his convictions, and it also casts blame on his generation for corrupting the young, showing that it is partially their fault that Irish Nationalism is in decline. - Character: Mat O'Connor. Description: Mat O'Connor—a young, lazy man with prematurely grey hair—represents the sorry state of the Nationalist Party's youngest generation. The story opens on him loafing in an armchair in the Committee Room on an evening when he should be out canvassing for his boss, the Nationalist candidate Richard Tierney. While other party men are out working the streets, O'Connor is hiding out from the bad weather by rolling cigarettes in front of the fire and complaining that his paycheck is late. At the beginning of the story, he dips one of Tierney's campaign flyers—which he was supposed to be distributing to voters—into the fire to light his cigarette. As the fire symbolizes Ireland's dying Nationalist spirit, lighting his cigarette with the fire while skipping out on work shows how the party men are indifferent to the actual values of Nationalism and are instead using politics for selfish ends. Predictably, then, while O'Connor wears Charles Stewart Parnell's commemorative ivy leaf, he is an unconvincing and morally uncommitted Nationalist: he doesn't work for the party's goals, and he changes his opinions about politics and his coworkers easily, showing his spinelessness. Alongside the uselessness of Ireland's elders (represented by Jack), the young but lazy O'Connor completes the image of an Ireland that is past its political prime and lacking in promise for the future. Even his physical description emphasizes this: as a young man, O'Connor has grey hair and a blotchy face, suggesting early decline. - Character: John Henchy. Description: John Henchy, a Nationalist canvasser, is an energetic and manipulative salesman. He is the smoothest talker among the story's characters, but he has no genuine moral values, no firmly-held opinions, and no allegiance to truth. Like the other canvassers, he cares more about getting wages and stout than about Richard Tierney, the candidate they've been hired to serve. Throughout the story, Joyce shows Henchy making convincing political arguments; he changes Mat O'Connor's opinions on several points, for instance, and boasts of his success canvassing voters. But none of this is in service of any coherent political goal or moral platform—Henchy, it seems, treats it all like a game. For instance, he makes a detailed case defending Tierney's alleged friendliness with King Edward VII—a position that is despicable to most Nationalists (since their party is, at heart, built on opposing the British monarchy). Furthermore, he boasts of earning votes by telling voters that Tierney doesn't belong to a political party, which is a flat-out lie. In this way, Joyce suggests that Henchy doesn't use his rhetorical skills constructively, since he has no principles to constrain him. What's more, Henchy likes to sow the seeds of discord among the group (he suggests that Joe Hynes is a spy for the opposing candidate, for instance). His negativity and skepticism towards others show how mistrustful and toxic the atmosphere of the Nationalist Party has become. - Character: Joe Hynes. Description: Joe Hynes, a fellow Nationalist canvasser and a convincing speaker on politics, delivers a pious and overdramatic elegy to the late Nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell in the story's finale. Unlike his colleagues, it's clear that Hynes has some political principles; after all, he is not afraid to accuse their candidate Richard Tierney of corruption and royalism, calling Tierney "Tricky Dicky," speaking of his origins in illegal liquor, and chiding him for considering a welcome to King Edward VII (a gesture that would offend any true Nationalist seeking independence from England). Hynes even goes so far as to defend Tierney's opponent Colgan, a blue-collar working man who sticks up for the lower classes. In this way, Hynes draws attention to the serious corruption at the upper levels of the Nationalist party (while also drawing accusations from Henchy that he is a spy). Hynes is not perfect; he is revealed to be a blind follower of the late Parnell. He uses Parnell's commemorative ivy leaf as a prop in debate and invokes "this man" rather than speaking Parnell's name, two cursory gestures that suggest Hynes's inability to think for himself or to engage with Parnell's complex moral legacy. So, while he draws attention to the moral failings of current politics, Hynes also draws readers' attention to the ways in which political followers can become overly obsessed with their leaders' personas. In his concluding elegy to Parnell (recited at the end of the story), the shallowness of Hynes's investment in Parnell is made clear by his overdramatic language and his formulaic, uninspired use of Christian imagery and moral tropes like "hypocrisy." The poem teaches nothing insightful about why the late leader is worth lamenting. The other men's warm reception of the poem helps illustrate the dangers of blind political worship and helps make clear Joyce's argument that, ever since the Catholic church ousted Parnell on moral grounds, his followers have been scared out of engaging with deep, real-life moral questions. Instead, they have reverted to cardboard idolatry. - Character: Father Keon. Description: Father Keon, a defrocked priest who still wears his uniform and cozies up to politicians, pokes his head into the Committee Room midway through the story looking for Fanning, a political operator. Everything about Keon is suspicious. Though the men call him "Father," the men's gossip reveals that he has been stripped of his clerical order for some unnamed moral offence. In the poor light, Joyce says "it was impossible to say whether he wore a clergyman's collar or a layman's." By describing him this way and calling him "an actor," Joyce very clearly suggests that Keon, the only character with direct ties to the Church, is morally untrustworthy. Along with Old Jack's useless reliance on Catholic school to improve his drunkard son, Keon's sketchiness adds to the feeling that Catholicism is a fallible judge of moral character. Ultimately, it's Keon's shadiness that clinches Joyce's bitter argument that the Church was wrong to oust the late Nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell for an extramarital affair, a personal infraction that had no bearing on Parnell's sparkling political abilities. Several details surrounding Keon also help reinforce Joyce's view that the Church has no place in politics. First, Keon is the only entrant among the men to knock on the door, suggesting an unwelcome, outsider presence. Second, Joyce is clear that Keon's coat contains only buttons, whereas the other men's lapels show Parnell's commemorative ivy leaf (the absence of the leaf marks Keon as uninterested in the true principles of the party). Third, when Henchy leaps up to light Keon's way out with a candlestick, Keon "retreat[s]" from the flame—and since the candle's fire came from the room's fireplace, Joyce's symbol for the spirit of Nationalism, Keon's retreat symbolizes the Church's natural antipathy to politics. Readers learn, however, that Keon is unnaturally close with Fanning and the Nationalist candidate Richard Tierney. For Joyce, this unholy marriage of Church and state contributed to Parnell's unjust expulsion as well as Ireland's enduring political malaise. - Character: Mr. Crofton. Description: Crofton, a Conservative who begrudgingly joined the Nationalists after his candidate dropped out, has exactly one line in the story, but he is crucial to illustrating the discord that consumes the men's relations. A "very fat," mustachioed man with piercing eyes, Crofton is a sulky and silent misfit. Like the others, Crofton works as a canvasser for the Nationalist candidate Richard Tierney, but he dislikes his colleagues and he is reluctant to help them. Joyce goes out of his way to tell readers that Crofton's heart is not in it; he does not favor Independence from Ireland, and thus does not worship the late leader Charles Stewart Parnell. He works with the Nationalists only because his candidate has dropped out, and the two parties share some—but by no means all—concerns. Joyce depicts Crofton as sullen and ineffective, first when John Henchy complains about him behind his back for being "not worth a damn as a canvasser," and then when Crofton appears in the Committee Room toward the end of the story and remains silent to his companions, ignoring their greetings and questions. Joyce reminds readers of Crofton's silence in several places, a constant indication that, though they share an employer, respect and agreement among these colleagues do not exist as one would expect. When Joe Hynes recites his melodramatic elegy for Parnell, Joyce shows the room of gossipy men feeling awkward and not quite conciliatory, despite their mutual patriotism. Afterwards, when Crofton is forced to admit "that [the poem] was a very fine piece of writing," Joyce paraphrases Crofton's response, rather than quoting it. This condenses the entire story's feeling of disingenuousness into one line. - Character: Bantam Lyons. Description: A young, prudish canvasser with a "frail" frame and "thin" face, Bantam Lyons challenges his colleagues on the moral legacy of the late Nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell, whose affair cost him his party leadership. Lyons has a fussy "double collar" and a slight build, unlike many of the other men. Throughout the story, Lyons does not fit in with his colleagues. His moral objection to Parnell's scandalous reputation ignites an an upset among the other men, especially John Henchy. The men's short spat highlights their inability to engage with the deep moral questions that have haunted the party since their leader's death. Though his stance on the divisive issue is perfectly valid ("Do you think now after what he did Parnell was a fit man to lead us?"), Lyons is the odd man out in a debate with ardent Parnellites. (Even the bitter, anti-Parnellian Crofton admits that Parnell was a "gentleman.") As such, Lyons is a central force in the story's overall discord. - Character: Richard Tierney. Description: Richard Tierney, a corrupt and moneyed career politician, is the Nationalist candidate in an upcoming municipal election. He employs the canvassers in Joyce's story. As a Poor Law Guardian, Tierney is in charge of distributing welfare to the poor, but he seems far from qualified for this duty. John Henchy calls him a two-faced "little shoeboy," and Joe Hynes calls him "Tricky Dicky." As these insults suggest, Tierney's main function in the story is to illustrate a high level of corruption and moral degradation in the current Nationalist party. Readers never see Tierney, who hides out in his pub (his absence from the campaign's front-lines shows how little he cares about politics), but Joyce gives a sense of Tierney's arrogance and immorality through his employees' complaints about him. The major gripe, which nearly everyone shares, is that Tierney never pays on time. It's a complaint that damns both the insulted and the insulter: while Tierney's lateness proves that he doesn't care about others (a quality that no politician should have), Mat O'Connor's constant complaints about his lateness prove that O'Connor himself is only in the campaign for a paycheck. Furthermore, Tierney is considering giving a warm welcome to Edward VII's upcoming visit. This friendly gesture toward an English monarch would be unthinkable to most Irish Nationalists, which shows Tierney's lack of principle. That lack of principle trickles down to all of the party's underlings, who show themselves to be just as spineless and hypocritical as their boss. This demonstrates the rot that pervades the party from the top down. - Character: Charles Stewart Parnell. Description: Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-1891) was the leader of Irish Nationalism until the Catholic Church ousted him for having an extramarital affair, a disgrace that led to his untimely death. A famously strong leader, Parnell rallied much of Ireland in the fight for independence from England. The scandal of his affair rocked the country and bitterly divided those who condemned him for the affair and those who remained loyal to his vision. "Ivy Day in the Committee Room" (set on Ivy Day, the anniversary of Parnell's death), focuses on a group of his devotees. Though long dead, Parnell is clearly the story's central character in spirit, as the men sport his commemorative ivy leaf, argue over his legacy, and urge Joe Hynes to recite a histrionic elegy to the late leader. As the story unfolds, however, Joyce reveals the men's worship to be shallow. As attested by their unproductive arguments, their strange avoidance of Parnell's name, and Hynes's vague, rather formulaic poem, the men go to great lengths to celebrate the abstract ideals that Parnell stood for while avoiding any meaningful discussion of his complex moral baggage. The men's sidestepping of the elephant in the room is one way in which Joyce makes an important historical argument about Parnell's ouster. The Church, Joyce suggests, should never have expelled an effective leader on grounds of personal morality; doing so not only sapped Ireland of its political spirit but also ensured that people would avoid engaging with moral issues altogether. - Character: Edward VII. Description: Son of Victoria, Edward VII ruled the United Kingdom from 1901-1910, including the year in which Joyce's "Ivy Day" likely takes place, 1902. The Nationalist canvassers in Joyce's story see Edward as a representative of English oppression over Ireland. Wherever "Edward Rex" or "King Eddie" appears, readers can expect a heavy dose of sarcasm and disdain. Edward is at the center of a small scandal within the Nationalist party: when Joe Hynes reveals that their employer, the Nationalist candidate Richard Tierney, plans to welcome Edward on his upcoming visit to Dublin, his colleagues are aghast. Joyce uses Edward's visit (which actually occurred in history) not only as a means of anchoring his story to a specific time and place but primarily as a means of illustrating Tierney's selfish mishandling of hot party issues. Joyce also uses the Edward controversy to bring out telling attitudes in each of his characters: the jingoistic Hynes objects to Edward's visit simply because his hero Charles Stewart Parnell would have, the prudish Bantam Lyons objects because Edward has a bad moral reputation, and the sleazy John Henchy finds a way to brush off the issue in order to win voters. - Character: Stout delivery boy. Description: The 17-year-old delivery boy arrives with a case of stout (a type of beer) for the men in the Committee Room. The boy symbolically represents Ireland's youth, so when Old Jack (who has just railed against the dangers of youth alcoholism) hands the boy a drink, it's an example of Ireland's older generation willfully corrupting the young. Richard Tierney, the conspicuously absent Nationalist candidate, has sent drinks with the boy in lieu of the wages he owes to his workers. Ironically, in his brief appearance the boy stands in as Tierney's ambassador to his workers. That Tierney has sent a 17-year-old instead of showing up himself illustrates how mismanaged the Nationalist party has become. Furthermore, that the boy asks for the men's empty bottles before they have even been drunk shows how stingy Tierney is, a quality that does not bode well for a Poor Law Guardian. - Character: Fanning. Description: Mentioned twice briefly, Fanning is the sub-sheriff of Dublin. The party men discuss the Nationalist candidate Richard Tierney's suspicious closeness with Fanning and suggest that Tierney buddies up to city officers to win higher office. Fanning also reveals an ugly reality about the Church's involvement in politics. Father Keon, the story's shady Church representative, enters the Committee Room briefly, asking for Fanning; this suggests that Fanning is in cahoots with the Nationalists and that Keon (a stand-in for the Church) has an undue closeness to the two men's scheming. - Character: Colgan. Description: Colgan is the opponent of the Nationalist candidate Richard Tierney. Colgan never appears in the story, but Joe Hynes mentions him as an upright, blue-collar candidate who is possibly superior to Tierney. Though Hynes's defense of Colgan is reasonable, the other characters refuse to listen: Old Jack denigrates Colgan simply because he's poor, and John Henchy is too fixated on the idea that Hynes is a spy to take him seriously. In this way, Joyce suggests that a purer alternative might exist to the corrupt Tierney but that the Nationalists are too bitter and conspiratorial to discover it. - Theme: Youth and Political Paralysis. Description: In "Ivy Day in the Committee Room," seven men are supposed to be out drumming up votes for the Irish Nationalist Party (the group seeking independence from British rule). Instead, they are do-nothing gossips, sitting around the fire in the Party's meeting room. Their laziness is especially obvious in the context of Ivy Day, an annual commemoration of the late Nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell, whom Joyce (and many of his generation) idolized. Without Parnell, many (including Joyce) believed that the fight for independence stagnated. In "Ivy Day," Joyce vents his anger at his native Dublin's political paralysis by depicting intergenerational corruption and stagnation: the old have become selfish hypocrites and they have corrupted the young into the same attitudes. The uselessness of the young and old of "Ivy Day" illustrates Joyce's fear that political paralysis—especially of Ireland's Nationalist party after Parnell's death—is a self-perpetuating social illness that will doom the nation. Old Jack—a well-meaning but useless character—embodies the weak spirit of Ireland's older generation. Jack's function is to keep the fire going in the hearth of the party's Committee Room (a historic place where Parnell's Nationalist team once rallied). But Jack only barely keeps the fire alive: he stokes the coals "judiciously," but "mechanically," "slowly," and "thinly." Symbolically, the fire stands for the political passion of the Nationalist party; in Parnell's day, the fire presumably roared, but now it is insufficient to even warm or light the room. Characters complain of the cold, rubbing their hands dramatically as if "to produce a spark from them." "Is that you?" they ask, squinting through the darkness. Symbolically, then, readers can see in the waning fire an embodiment of the great Parnell's dying legacy, and Jack's halfhearted, ineffective fire stoking suggests the inability of the older generation to inspire political passion in each other or in the youth. In addition to failing to inspire the youth, Jack (and his whole generation) model poor behavior. This first becomes clear when Jack laments that, despite trying to raise his 19-year-old son right, the boy is a wayward drunk. Throughout this conversation, Jack reveals that he has been violent with his son: if he weren't an old man, Jack claims, he'd "take the stick to [his son's] back and beat him while I could stand over him—as I done many a time before." This violence, Joyce implies, has a harmful (rather than a disciplinary) effect on Jack's son, suggesting that his dissolute behavior may be Jack's fault. Due to this, Jack's son can be read as a metaphor for Ireland's self-replicating cycle of misplaced discipline and self-defeat, and for the improbability of the younger generation being better than their parents. Joyce doubles down on this point later in the story when a 17-year-old delivery boy arrives with stout from the men's boss and John Henchy offers the boy a bottle. Against his principles (after all, he's just been on a tirade about his drunkard son), Jack opens the boy's bottle and hands it to him, hinting at the older generation's damaging, willfully-negligent attitude towards Ireland's young. "That's the way it begins," Old Jack says of the cycle of moral decline to which he has just contributed. Clearly, Joyce finds the older generation to be harmful degenerates who are passing their behavior on to the young. Joyce's final damning depiction of Ireland's decline is to depict the youngest generation with any political responsibility—represented by Mat O'Connor—as lazy. The story opens on O'Connor, a "grey-haired young man […] disfigured by many blotches and pimples." Joyce makes this character physically both young and old, which suggests early decline. O'Connor's premature age comes not just in his grey hair but also in his lethargy. Rather than canvassing for Nationalist votes, as he is being paid to do, he has been hiding out in the committee room because it's cold and rainy outside. Instead of working for a political cause, he warms himself by Jack's weak fire and smokes cigarettes. Twice in the story, O'Connor lights his cigarettes with campaign flyers promoting his boss, the Nationalist candidate (flyers that O'Connor was supposed to be distributing). This is the ultimate symbolic rejection of his political responsibility to fight for Ireland's independence. With Old Jack representing the fall of the Irish Nationalist party, and the lazy Mat O'Connor and Old Jack's drunk son representing Ireland's bleak political future, the elderly and the young find common ground in their wavering principles and weak execution. This produces an all-encompassing image of doom for Ireland's political future. - Theme: Isolation and Discord. Description: The men in "Ivy Day in the Committee Room"—all employed by the Irish Nationalist Party—should seemingly be united by their political values. However, the story shows a disturbing disharmony among the seven colleagues, which reflects Ireland's political discord following the untimely death of the Nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell. The word "silence" dominates the story, and—when the men do talk—their conversation is mostly two-faced gossip, which suggests mistrust and disrespect among them. This portrait of social isolation and petty feuding evokes the discord Joyce saw in Ireland's political landscape. In this sense, Joyce suggests that the strength of a political movement depends on collective unity, a quality lacking from the Ireland he set out to depict. Despite working for the same political party, the men in the story have differing political allegiances. This is clearest in the politics of Joe Hynes and Crofton, whose sympathies do not lie with the candidate they nominally support. The smooth-talking Hynes arrives in the Committee Room and immediately denigrates their candidate, Richard Tierney, as corrupt and hypocritically pro-England, which shows that he disagrees with the men who genuinely support Tierney, even though they're technically on the same side. Furthermore, Crofton is revealed not even to be a member of the Nationalist Party—he's a Conservative, a party that favors Ireland's union with Britain (which is the opposite of the Nationalist independence platform that Tierney supports). Crofton is now among the Nationalists instead of the Conservatives because, when his candidate left the race, he begrudgingly chose the Nationalists, "the lesser of two evils." Underscoring Crofton's alienation from the candidate he's there to support, his coworkers gossip behind his back, with John Henchy saying "he's not worth a damn as a canvasser. He hasn't a word to throw to a dog." When he enters the group, Crofton is resoundingly silent; "he considered his [Nationalist] companions beneath him," which leads him to answer others' questions with wordless nods. Crofton's lack of dialogue in the story ("he had nothing to say"), and Joyce's repetition of the word "silence" in describing him, reinforces the lack of communication between men who allegedly support the same cause. While some characters divide over party lines, others show almost no political principles at all. Although Henchy defends Parnell in conversation, he does not show much regard for political truth. He is portrayed as a salesman, pitching Tierney to voters however he can. Henchy recalls telling a Conservative that Tierney "doesn't belong to any party, good, bad or indifferent," laughing to his fireside company that "[t]hat's the way to talk to 'em." The truth would in fact have been to declare Tierney on "the Nationalist ticket," as O'Connor has already done for readers. Although Henchy is dishonest with voters, he has at least been out canvassing. O'Connor, on the other hand, has been by the fire in an easy chair all evening; he found the weather too cold. The only thing he does with "meditative" care is to roll his cigarettes. Tellingly, O'Connor lights his cigarettes with Tierney's campaign flyers, which he's being paid to distribute. He agrees with Hynes—"I think you're right"—when pressed to support Tierney's opponent, then reneges with a silent nod when Henchy urges him the other way. Later, when he offers a limp defense of Hynes's character, he does so "dubiously." If Henchy is actively slick and careless with truth, O'Connor is spineless and devoid of real opinion. As these men lack conviction and loyalty, it's no wonder they're all mistrustful and divided. In the final scene, a melodramatic elegy for the dead Parnell, the men finally find common ground—but Joyce suggests that their agreement is weak at best. After Hynes recites his verse elegy for Parnell, the room erupts in applause. The men, it seems, have laid aside their differences and apathy, celebrating the spirit of a great man. However, Joyce subverts this reconciliation instantly. Before the applause, the room lay in "silence," which suggests, perhaps, that the men were calculating their response (and that, therefore, the applause may not be genuine). Afterward, "silence" returns, suggesting that the swell of feeling is gone. Earlier, Bantam Lyons voiced distaste for Parnell, and the fact that even he claps for the poem about Parnell suggests that not all the applause was genuine. If Lyons means to project agreement with the applauding Parnellians, then the reader knows he's not being heartfelt—but if he is merely praising their poetry, then his gesture is all the emptier. In the final line, when the anti-Parnellian Crofton is pressed to commend the poem, Joyce relates that he "said that it was a very fine piece of writing." As with Lyons, this sounds like an agreement. But Joyce uses a sly narrative tactic to suggest otherwise: he doesn't quote Crofton directly (as he almost always does throughout the story), but instead summarizes Crofton's statement. This suggests that, while the room got the impression that Crofton liked the poem, it might not even be what he said. As the story's finale, this note of insincerity and uncertainty rings loudly—it's an anticlimax, reflecting the fractured and disingenuous environment of the Committee Room. - Theme: Morality vs. Politics. Description: Charles Stewart Parnell was once the star of the Irish Nationalist Party, fighting for independence from England until being ousted for an extramarital affair. "Ivy Day in the Committee Room" shows Parnell's once-ferocious Nationalist movement a decade after his untimely death: it's now an antagonistic group of lazy, immoral political canvassers who are working for a paycheck rather than for political principles. As this depiction suggests, Joyce believed that Parnell's political legacy was ruined by the scandal surrounding his personal behavior—and by the Catholic Church's insistence that Parnell's private life mattered more than his political goals. By showing how this scandal ruined the spirit of Irish Nationalism (and led to rife immorality among Parnell's uninspired, leaderless descendants), Joyce suggests that it's sometimes important to separate politics from personal morality. While personal morality is important to politics, throwing Parnell out for a personal transgression was destructive to both the political future of Ireland and to the moral character of its people. From the beginning of the story, Joyce undermines the Church's moral authority to judge Parnell by painting the institution as hypocritical and immoral. Early in the story, for example, Old Jack laments how poorly his son turned out, despite having sent him to a Catholic school. Jack's blind equating of Catholicism with a good moral upbringing did not pay off; his son is a wayward drunk now, which hints at the Church's inability to instill good morality (echoing, perhaps, how ousting Parnell also failed to improve Ireland). Furthermore, Father Keon—the story's only character directly associated with the Church—is a shady political operator who is revealed to be a defrocked priest, presumably having lost his position for a moral transgression. It seems that, despite having lost his status, he still wears his clerical uniform (in the dim light of the Committee Room, "it was impossible to say whether he wore a clergyman's collar or a layman's"). This suggests that members of the Church are falsely posing as moral authorities for their own personal gain. With this being the case, Joyce undermines the Catholic Church's credibility in ousting Parnell for his affair. In addition to suggesting that the Church is hypocritical, Joyce also shows that their ouster of Parnell backfired; rather than making Irish politics more attuned to personal morality, Parnell's expulsion sapped his party of any morality at all. The story begins with Mat O'Connor's eagerness for a paycheck that he doesn't deserve and Jack's ruthless beating of his son. This sets a tone for the men's destructiveness and lack of integrity. On top of this, the canvassers are dishonest: John Henchy lies to voters on their doorsteps, bragging that the Nationalist candidate Richard Tierney "doesn't belong to any party, good, bad, or indifferent." The men are also mean, eager to spread rumors about each other. Henchy and Jack, for instance, growl that Joe Hynes is a spy, while O'Connor gossips about Father Keon's excommunication. The men's behavior gives readers the feeling that, although Parnell was kicked out of office for an immoral act, no one has improved as a result of that disciplinary action. Furthermore, the men's refusal to discuss Parnell's moral transgression shows that, instead of increasing attention to personal morality, the Church ousting Parnell has chilled any discussion of morality at all. When Bantam Lyons questions Parnell's character ("Do you think now after what he did Parnell was a fit man to lead us?"), his companions are outraged. But O'Connor nervously smooths things over with an obvious falsehood: "We all respect him now that he's dead and gone." O'Connor knows they don't all respect Parnell—he's simply avoiding making a constructive argument about how to learn from Parnell's scandal. In fact, although the men clearly worship the idea of Parnell, they hardly use his name in the story at all; O'Connor calls him "the Chief," while Hynes, silently pointing to his commemorative ivy leaf, calls him "this man." This gives the impression that the men are afraid of even mentioning a touchy moral subject. The poem that Hynes recites at the story's finale—an elegy celebrating Parnell—encapsulates how the Church ousting Parnell has made Irish morality worse, not better. In Hynes' elegy, Parnell's name appears only in its final word, while the body of the poem calls him "Lord" and "Our Uncrowned King." These euphemisms show an obsession with Parnell's political mythology—a boilerplate rise-and-fall story—but not a constructive desire to learn from his real-life, complex character. The poem also combines these evasions with moral references that the reader knows to be insincere. For instance, the metaphor of Parnell as Christ—"with a kiss / Betrayed" (an allusion to Judas)—rings hollow after the whole story has painted the Catholic Church as immoral. Furthermore, Hynes's insults ("modern hypocrites," "coward hounds," "fawning priests") to those who ousted Parnell sound also like descriptions of Hynes and his colleagues, which shows that—while they easily judge others—they do not reflect on their own hypocrisy or try to do better. This self-implicating poem, then, shows two things: that after Parnell's scandal, the party men cannot deal with life's moral complexities (preferring instead simplistic narratives of heroes and villains); and, what's worse, that this avoidance has made them oblivious to their own failings. This, Joyce suggests, is the devastating result of Irish society demanding moral perfection of a political leader. While men in Parnell's time weren't saints, at least—the story suggests—they had real values and principles to guide them, rather than falling into empty hero worship, hypocrisy, and laziness. - Climax: Hynes reads an elegy to the late Charles Stewart Parnell - Summary: Mat O'Connor, a political canvasser for the Nationalist candidate in an upcoming municipal election, has skipped out on work and is rolling cigarettes in the party's Committee Room headquarters, chatting with the room's caretaker, Old Jack, who stokes the dying fire. As Jack complains about his drunkard teenage son, describing the physical violence he uses against him and decrying the state of Ireland's young, O'Connor lights a cigarette with the business card of his boss, Richard Tierney. In comes a fellow canvasser, Joe Hynes, who declares that their wages have still not been paid. He begins to rail against the corruption and shady reputation of Tierney, praising the opposing candidate, the blue-collar Colgan. In disbelief, he claims that Tierney is considering a welcome speech to Edward VII upon the monarch's visit to Dublin. John Henchy bursts in, decrying again that they haven't been paid and joining in the group's denigration of Tierney. When Hynes takes his leave, O'Connor and Henchy turn their gossip to him, suggesting that he is a spy for the opposition. Father Keon knocks and is admitted to the room. Skittish and looking for a political official, he immediately exits, prompting further gossip among the men about Keon's recent disbarment from the clergy for an unnamed infraction and his shady affiliation with Tierney's campaign. Henchy, O'Connor, and Jack return to the subject of Tierney's laziness, calling him a "shoeboy" and complaining that they need a drink. They joke about nepotism and dream of distinguished roles in politics. Finally some sign arrives from their absent boss: the pub delivery boy brings a case of stout from Tierney. Henchy takes back his complaints about the man and offers the boy a drink. Old Jack begrudgingly uncorks a bottle for him, and they make small talk before the boy leaves. As they begin to drink and discuss their canvassing gains, Bantam Lyons and Crofton, yet more canvassers, enter the room. Crofton greets the men's questions with silence while Lyons makes small talk. Without the corkscrew, Henchy places bottles for the men in the fireplace, expecting the heat to expel their corks. Crofton is a Conservative and feels sulky about working in the presence of Nationalists—hence his silence. Henchy continues bragging about his canvassing prowess when Lyons starts to poke at the reputation of Charles Stewart Parnell, the late Nationalist leader who died in disgrace after the public learned of his extramarital affair. O'Connor and Henchy grow heated, refusing to let Parnell be denigrated on the anniversary of his death. During this tussle, Hynes reenters and O'Connor urges him to recite his elegy for Parnell. Hynes first refuses, then agrees, unleashing an eleven-stanza ballad in praise of Parnell, full of bitterness for the "hypocrite" Nationalists who turned against him. The men clap then fall silent. The room returns to its prior state of quiet small talk; O'Connor rolls another cigarette.

- Genre: - Title: Jane Eyre - Point of view: First person. Jane recounts her story ten years after its ending. - Setting: Northern England in the early 1800s. - Character: Jane Eyre. Description: The protagonist and narrator, Jane is an orphaned girl caught between class boundaries, financial situations, and her own conflicted feelings. In her youth and again as a governess, Jane must depend on others for support. Jane feels isolated, and strives for her personal freedom and meaningful connections with others—to find the loving family she never had. Jane is intelligent, imaginative, and principled. She defies many restrictive social conventions, especially those affecting women. As the novel progresses, Jane learns to temper her passions with self-control—she controls her feelings with judgment based on self-respect and Christian humility. She must reconcile her contradictory desires to be both independent and to serve a strong-willed man. Religion helps Jane to gain a mature understanding of herself as a self-respecting individual who credits her feelings, but also defers to God. - Character: Edward Fairfax Rochester. Description: The wealthy master of Thornfield Hall and Jane's employer and, later, her husband. Over the course of his life, he grows from a naive young man, to a bitter playboy in Europe, to a humble yet still strong man worthy of Jane. Both share similar virtues and seek their personal redemption. Yet Rochester errs in giving more rein to his feelings than his judgment and in expecting the world to submit to his will, as when he tries to marry Jane while still concealing Bertha and his secrets. In his distress after losing his eyesight, Rochester comes to accept his need of guidance and respect for God. His final strength comes from his newfound humility. - Character: St. John Rivers. Description: A parson with two sisters at Moor House, and Jane's cousin. Much like Jane, St. John is a restless character, searching for a place and purpose in life. Like Mr. Rochester, St. John has a commanding personality, but the two men contrast in their range of feelings. St. John relinquishes worldly happiness for a commitment to his religious principles. His stern religious faith makes him self-denying and cold. - Character: Bertha Mason. Description: Rochester's insane Creole wife from Jamaica who is locked away on the third floor of Thornfield. Bertha is portrayed less as a human being than as a Gothic monster or a vampire. Because of her Creole or mixed race parentage, Bertha reveals Victorian prejudices about other ethnicities. She represents Rochester's monstrous secrets. - Theme: Love, Family, and Independence. Description: As an orphan at Gateshead, Jane is oppressed and dependent. For Jane to discover herself, she must break out of these restrictive conditions and find love and independence. Jane must have the freedom to think and feel, and she seeks out other independent-minded people as the loving family she craves. Jane, Helen Burns, and Ms. Temple enjoy a deep mutual respect, and form emotional bonds that anticipate the actual family Jane finds in Mary and Diana Rivers. Yet Jane also has a natural instinct toward submission. When she leaves Lowood to find new experiences, she describes herself as seeking a "new servitude." In her relationship with men, she has the inclination toward making first Rochester and then St. John her "master." Over the course of the novel, Jane strives to find a balance between service and mastery. Jane blends her freedom with her commitments to love, virtue, and self-respect. At the end, Jane is both guide and servant to Rochester. She finds and creates her own family, and their love grows out of the mutual respect of free minds. - Theme: Social Class and Social Rules. Description: Life in 19th-century Britain was governed by social class, and people typically stayed in the class into which they were born. Both as an orphan at Gateshead and as a governess at Thornfield, Jane holds a position that is between classes, and interacts with people of every level, from working-class servants to aristocrats. Jane's social mobility lets Brontë create a vast social landscape in her novel in which she examines the sources and consequences of class boundaries. For instance, class differences cause many problems in the love between Jane and Rochester. Jane must break through class prejudices about her standing, and make people recognize and respect her personal qualities. Brontë tries to illustrate how personal virtues are better indicators of character than class. Yet the novel doesn't entirely endorse breaking every social rule. Jane refuses, for instance, to become Rochester's mistress despite the fact that he was tricked into a loveless marriage. Jane recognizes that how she sees herself arises at least partly out of how society sees her, and is unwilling to make herself a powerless outcast for love. - Theme: Gender Roles. Description: In 19th-century England, gender roles strongly influenced people's behavior and identities, and women endured condescending attitudes about a woman's place, intelligence, and voice. Jane has an uphill battle to become independent and recognized for her personal qualities. She faces off with a series of men who do not respect women as their equals. Mr. Brocklehurst, Rochester, and St. John all attempt to command or master women. Brontë uses marriage in the novel to portray the struggle for power between the sexes. Even though Bertha Mason is insane, she is a provocative symbol of how married women can be repressed and controlled. Jane fends off marriage proposals that would squash her identity, and strives for equality in her relationships. For its depiction of Jane's struggle for gender equality, Jane Eyre was considered a radical book in its day. - Theme: Religion. Description: Religion and spirituality are key factors in how characters develop in the novel. Jane matures partly because she learns to follow Christian lessons and resist temptation. Helen Burns introduces Jane to the New Testament, which becomes a moral guidepost for Jane throughout her life. As Jane develops her relationship with God, Mr. Rochester must also reform his pride, learn to pray, and become humble. Brontë depicts different forms of religion: Helen trusts in salvation; Eliza Reed becomes a French Catholic nun; and St. John preaches a gloomy Calvinist faith. The novel attempts to steer a middle course. In Jane, Brontë sketches a virtuous faith that does not consume her individual personality. Jane is self-respecting and religious, but also exercises her freedom to love and feel. - Theme: Feeling vs. Judgment. Description: Just as Jane Eyre can be described as Jane's quest to balance her contradictory natural instincts toward independence and submission, it can also be described as her quest to find a balance between passionate feeling on the one had and judgment, or repression of those feelings, on the other. Through the examples of other characters in the novel, such as Eliza and Georgiana, Rochester and St. John—or Bertha, who has no control over her emotions at all—Jane Eyre shows that it's best to avoid either extreme. Passion makes a person silly, frivolous or even dangerous, while repression makes a person cold. Over the course of the novel, Jane learns how to create a balance between her feelings and her judgment, and to create a life of love that is also a life of serious purpose. - Theme: The Spiritual and the Supernatural. Description: Brontë uses many themes of Gothic novels to add drama and suspense to Jane Eyre. But the novel isn't just a ghost story because Brontë also reveals the reasons behind supernatural events. For instance, Mr. Reed's ghost in the red-room is a figment of Jane's stressed-out mind, while Bertha is the "demon" in Thornfield. In Jane Eyre, the effects of the supernatural matter more than the causes. The supernatural allows Brontë to explore her characters' psyches, especially Jane's inner fears. The climactic supernatural moment in the novel occurs when Jane and Rochester have a telepathic connection. In the text, Jane makes it clear that the connection was not supernatural to her. Instead, she considers that moment a mysterious spiritual connection. Brontë makes their telepathy part of her conceptions of love and religion. - Climax: Jane telepathically hears Rochester's voice calling out to her. - Summary: Jane Eyre is an orphaned girl living with her aunt Mrs. Reed at Gateshead Hall. Mrs. Reed and her children treat Jane cruelly, and look down on her as a dependent. Punishing her for a fight with her cousin that she didn't start, Mrs. Reed locks her in a red room where Jane's uncle, Mr. Reed, had died years before. His ghostly presence terrifies Jane. Soon after, Mrs. Reed sends Jane to the Lowood Institution, a charity school run by the hypocritical Mr. Brocklehurst. Lowood has terrible conditions and a harsh work ethic, though the compassionate supervisor, Maria Temple, intervenes sometimes to give the girls a break. At Lowood, Jane makes friends with another student, Helen Burns, who helps Jane learn to endure personal injustice and believe in a benevolent God. Helen, however, is sick with consumption and dies. When a typhus epidemic decimates the school's student population, new management takes over and improves Lowood's conditions. Jane flourishes under her newly considerate teachers, and after six years, becomes a teacher herself. Ms. Temple marries and leaves Lowood, and the eighteen-year-old Jane advertises for a job as a private tutor. She is hired to become the governess of the young Adèle Varens. Adèle is the ward of Mr. Rochester—the older, swarthy, and commanding master of Thornfield Hall. While in residence at Thornfield, Jane frequently hears strange laughter, and one night rescues Mr. Rochester from a fire in his bedroom. On another occasion, Jane helps Mr. Rochester secretly bandage and send away a man named Mr. Mason who was slashed and bitten on the third floor of the Mansion. Rochester blames a quirky servant, Grace Poole, but Jane is skeptical. Mr. Rochester brings a party of English aristocrats to Thornfield, including the beautiful but calculating Blanche Ingram. She aims to marry him, but Mr. Rochester turns Blanche away, as he is increasingly drawn to the plain, but clever and direct Jane. Mr. Rochester soon asks Jane to marry him. Jane, who has gradually fallen in love with Rochester, accepts. Rochester hastily prepares the wedding. But during the small ceremony, a London lawyer intervenes and declares that Mr. Rochester already has a wife—Bertha Mason from the West Indies. Her brother, Mr. Mason, appears to confirm this. Mr. Rochester reluctantly admits to it, and takes everyone to the third floor, where Bertha is revealed as a raving lunatic, looked after by Grace Poole. Rochester was tricked into the marriage and he appeals to Jane to come away with him anyway, but Jane refuses to be his mistress. After a dream that warns her to flee temptation, Jane sneaks away from Thornfield at dawn. Penniless in a region of England she does not know, Jane experiences three bitter days of begging, sleeping outside, and nearly starving. Eventually she comes upon and is taken in at Moor House—the home of Mary, Diana, and St. John Rivers, a stern local clergyman. St. John gives Jane a position teaching in a rural school. Jane discovers that an uncle she's never met has died and left her 20,000 pounds. That uncle turns out to be related to the Rivers siblings, so Jane suddenly has cousins. In her joy at finding family, she divides her fortune equally between them. St. John has plans to go to India as a missionary, and he proposes marriage to Jane so she'll accompany and work for him. Jane feels familial affection but no love for St. John. She says she would go as St. John's sister, but he will accept no conditions. St. John's forceful personality almost convinces Jane to sacrifice herself and marry him. But in her confused emotional state, Jane experiences a telepathic flash: she hears Rochester's voice calling to her. She immediately leaves to seek out Rochester. Jane finds Thornfield Hall destroyed from a fire that Bertha had set in Jane's old bedroom. During the blaze, Bertha had jumped from the roof and died. Rochester saved his servants, but suffered injuries that left him blind and missing a hand. Jane meets the humbled Rochester at Ferndean, his woodland retreat, and promises always to take care of him. They marry, bring back Adèle from boarding school, and have a son. Rochester eventually regains sight in one eye.

- Genre: - Title: Jasper Jones - Point of view: - Setting: - Character: Charlie Bucktin. Description: The protagonist of the novel. Charlie is thirteen, almost fourteen years old, and lives in the small town of Corrigan, Australia. For much of the book, he struggles with various fears and insecurities: fear of insects, of bullies, of failure, etc. Charlie is an avid reader of American authors (including Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac, and Truman Capote) and a budding writer who dreams of living in New York as an adult. Over the course of the novel, Charlie matures considerably. He learns to master his anger, behaving diplomatically around his parents and his friends. He also realizes that he will never be entirely free of his fears, but that he can train himself to face them. Charlie struggles to understand other people's motives for committing crimes, though as the novel concludes, we are left to guess what conclusions on this subject Charlie has reached. - Character: Jasper Jones. Description: Jasper Jones is a half-white, half-Aboriginal fourteen-year-old who enlists Charlie's help in hiding Laura Wishart's dead body, thereby setting off the events that make up the novel's plot. Because he is "mixed caste," and is raised by a neglectful father, Jasper is a scapegoat for every crime and wrongdoing in the town of Corrigan. Like Charlie, he frequently contemplates leaving Corrigan. Charlie is fascinated with Jasper's courage and calmness throughout the novel, though in the end, he comes to realize that Jasper is no more mature or brave than Charlie himself. Charlie also comes to see that Jasper is capable of great love, loyalty, and sympathy for others. - Character: Mad Jack Lionel. Description: A legendary resident of Corrigan who supposedly killed a woman years ago, Mad Jack Lionel is greatly feared by the adolescents and children of the town. Indeed, it's a common test of courage to steal peach pits from the tree on his property. Toward the end of the novel, Charlie and Jasper discover that Jack is Jasper's paternal grandfather. Jasper's father, David, resented Jack for refusing to accept Rosie, his wife, for being Aboriginal. Later, Jack accidentally caused Rosie's death by driving her to a hospital and getting into a bad car crash. As a result, David never tells Jasper that Jack is his grandfather. Charlie comes to see Jack as a sad, lonely man, worthy of his sympathy and compassion. - Character: Wesley Bucktin. Description: Charlie's father and Ruth's husband, Wesley Bucktin is an immensely calm, patient, and intelligent man who loves Charlie enormously. Ruth's family resents Wesley for eloping with Ruth, and at the time when the book begins, Ruth has begun to hate Wesley for moving to a small, dull town. Though Wesley is usually honest and frank with Charlie, Charlie notices that he keeps secrets from him as well: for instance, he is secretly working on a novel. Though he respects his father enormously, Charlie dislikes that he hides his true beliefs and convictions, usually at Ruth's urgings. - Character: Ruth Bucktin. Description: Charlie's mother and Wesley's wife. Ruth is an angry, cold woman who hates her life in Corrigan, and often wishes she were living with her wealthy family, far from Charlie and Wesley. Ruth is more concerned with the appearance of normality than with either Wesley or Charlie as people, and she puts enormous effort into seeming as decent and well-to-do as possible to the other townspeople. Charlie resents Ruth for her strict behavior, though Wesley teaches him to act diplomatically around her. By the end of the novel, Charlie has learned that Ruth is unfaithful to Wesley—and when he learns this, he tells her that he'll never listen to her again. - Character: Eliza Wishart. Description: A beautiful girl in Charlie's grade, and the sister of Laura Wishart. Eliza Wishart is the object of Charlie's desire throughout the novel. She is intelligent, poised, and witty. Charlie often struggles to say witty things around her. He is elated when he discovers that Eliza is attracted to him. For most of the novel, Charlie senses that Eliza is carrying a secret about Laura's disappearance, though it's not until the end that he learns what this secret is. Ultimately, Eliza represents a puzzle for Charlie. Despite her appearance of calmness and composure, she is capable of acts of enormous destruction, which lie outside Charlie's full comprehension. - Character: Jeffrey Lu. Description: Charlie's close friend, Jeffrey Lu is a twelve-year-old Vietnamese boy who is in the same grade as Charlie and Eliza, having been skipped forward one year. Jeffrey has an absurd, frequently vulgar sense of humor, and for long stretches of the novel he peppers Charlie with strange questions and insults, which Charlie returns. Jeffrey is an enormously optimistic person and a superb cricket player. Ultimately, his determination and optimism win him the grudging respect of the Corrigan townspeople. At the same time, Jeffrey deals with racism and discrimination from the townspeople, because his family is Vietnamese (the novel takes place at the height of the Vietnam War.) - Character: Laura Wishart. Description: Eliza's sister, Laura Wishart is a thoughtful, intelligent girl, but her death by hanging is the event that begins the novel. Prior to her mysterious death, Laura had been in a relationship with Jasper Jones, and they had talked about leaving Corrigan and living together one day. Jasper describes Laura as wise and peaceful, two qualities that Charlie also notices in Laura's sister, Eliza. Over the course of the book, Charlie discovers that Laura's father, Pete Wishart, raped and abused her. - Character: Warwick Trent. Description: A school bully who beats up Charlie for his intelligence and bookishness, Warwick Trent is a member of the Corrigan cricket team, and thus the cause of much grief for Jeffrey Lu. After Charlie and Jeffrey prove their courage and athleticism, Warwick is forced to give them his grudging respect. - Character: Pete Wishart. Description: Laura and Eliza's father. Pete Wishart is an alcoholic, abusive man who nonetheless serves as the president of the shire (county) that contains the town of Corrigan. Wishart is skilled at hiding his cruelty and abusiveness from others, even after he rapes and impregnates his own daughter. By the end of the novel, Pete's crimes remain unknown to the public, though Eliza has taken her own revenge on him. - Character: David Jones. Description: Jasper Jones's father and Jack Lionel's son, David Jones was a champion football player as a young man. He fell in love with Rosie, a beautiful Aborigine woman, but though he married Rosie and had a child with her, his father refused to acknowledge her for racial reasons. David and his father then had a falling out. When, later, Jack eventually befriended Rosie, and then accidentally caused her death, David stopped speaking to Jack, and never told Jasper that Jack was his grandfather. In the second half of his life, David fell into alcoholism and grief, and took poor care of Jasper. - Character: Rosie Jones. Description: A beautiful Aborigine woman who marries David Jones and gives birth to Jasper Jones. Rosie later befriends David's father, Jack Lionel, despite the fact that he'd originally refused to acknowledge her after her marriage to her son. Rosie dies in a car crash, and Jack, who was driving the car, blames himself for her death. - Theme: Fear. Description: Charlie Bucktin, the protagonist of Jasper Jones, spends most of the novel in a state of fear. He's afraid that Eliza Wishart, his crush, will think he's awkward, he's terrified of insects, and he's frightened by bullies like Warwick Trent. The event that begins the novel—Charlie's discovery of Laura Wishart's dead body hanging from a tree—is so frightening and bizarre that it traumatizes Charlie for the remainder of the book, to the point that he can barely move. This behavior contrasts markedly—or at least seems to—with the calm, effortless heroism of Jasper Jones, the homeless half-Aboriginal boy who befriends Charlie.Charlie wishes that he could overcome his fears, but he finds it enormously difficult to do so. He also sees adults in his community being paralyzed by their own fears. When racists, angry about news from the Vietnam War, bully the Vietnamese Lu family, for instance, no one steps forward to help them. In part, this is because many of the townspeople are racist as well, but their lack of response also suggests that no one is brave enough to defend the Lus out of fear of being bullied and shunned themselves. Charlie also learns that even those who seem fearless are not usually as brave as they seem—Jasper Jones is no more comfortable dealing with Laura's death than Charlie is.Over the course of the book, however, Charlie learns strategies for dealing with his fears. Arguably his most important insight is that one can never escape one's fears entirely, but must simply live with them. Charlie explains this with an amusing analogy: Batman is the best superhero because he has no superpowers. In other words, he is a mortal, capable of being injured and even killed. Because of this, Batman has to learn to accept his fears and weaknesses, overcoming them to protect other people. In much the same way, Charlie accepts that he'll always be afraid of the things that frighten him—insects, Laura's body, etc.—but he also realizes that his fear allows him to be brave. It gives him the opportunity for feats of bravery.Charlie sees other members of his community overcoming their own fears as well. His father, Wesley Bucktin, defends An Lu from a group of racist bullies even though no one else will. Charlie also discovers that fear can be fought with knowledge and understanding. His lifelong fear of Mad Jack Lionel, for instance, evaporates when he visits Jack, speaks to him, and learns that he's a lonely, harmless old man. In all, Charlie realizes that while it's impossible to get rid of one's fears altogether, there are ways of minimizing and overcoming fear. By recognizing that all people feel fear, and that ordinary people are capable of heroism, Charlie trains himself be courageous—to act quickly and intelligently instead of being paralyzed with insecurity. - Theme: Racism and Scapegoating. Description: Jasper Jones is set in 1960s Australia, where non-white people are often the targets of bullying and cruelty. Because he is half-Aboriginal, Jasper Jones is routinely blamed for other people's crimes and indiscretions. The townspeople of Corrigan also bully and even attack the Lu family. The novel takes place during the Vietnam War, when Australia sent many troops to fight against the Vietcong. As a result, racism against the Vietnamese was very high, and the Lus are victims of it. The author, Craig Silvey, makes it clear that there are many whites (like Wesley) who are willing to fight racism, but overall, Corrigan is a profoundly racist community in which all kinds of discrimination and race-based harassment are tolerated.While minorities obviously should not have to "prove" their worth to white communities, Silvey does show that whites can overcome their own racism by respecting and admiring others for their actions. Jasper earns a grudging respect from his community by playing football, and Jeffrey Lu, Charlie's Vietnamese best friend, wins over his cricket team, which had previously called him "Cong," with a superb performance in a cricket match. This kind of respect is a fragile thing, however, and rarely a real mitigation of racism—if someone is considered valuable only when they do something outstanding, then they are not really considered inherently valuable as a human being. Thus, Jasper Jones never stops being the town scapegoat, and Jeffrey's father, An Lu, is beaten only a few hours after Jeffrey's cricket performance.Ultimately, Silvey suggests that racism arises from ignorance, and people must make an effort to be understanding and empathetic in order to overcome their own prejudices. For example, Jeffrey's likability, his intelligence, and his athleticism are drowned out by Corrigan's assumptions about Vietnam and the Vietnamese, while someone like Charlie, who lacks such assumptions, can see those qualities and consider Jeffrey a valuable person and friend. In the end, it is this process of friendship and understanding—like Charlie's friendships with Jeffrey and Jasper—that is the most successful way of combating racism. - Theme: Understanding, Innocence, and Sympathy. Description: As Charlie is exposed to murder, racism, and other crimes, he struggles to understand the wrongdoers' motives, with mixed success. Traumatized and deeply confused by the sight Laura's dead body, Charlie goes to the library to research the other crimes that have taken place in his town. There, he discovers a string of grisly murders. In one case, the murderer was a lonely man named Cooke who had been bullied for most of his life. In another, the murderer killed a teenaged girl, and enlisted the help of other children to do so. Charlie's research suggests many complicated and disturbing questions: How can it be that seemingly normal people are capable of heinous crimes? Should murderers be treated with more sympathy because they've experienced cruelty and bullying of their own? Can people ever truly apologize for their crimes?At the core of Charlie's conflict is his desire to understand and sympathize with people unlike himself. While he is not always willing to sympathize with criminals, his instinct is always to learn more, in an effort to understand others' motives. One sees this same instinct in the way Charlie thinks about Jasper Jones. He tries to see the world from Jasper's point of view—as Atticus Finch, the hero of Charlie's favorite book, To Kill a Mockingbird, would put it, he tries "climb into his skin and walk around in it."Sometimes, Charlie's efforts to understand others are successful. When he and Jasper go to confront "Mad" Jack Lionel, they learn that Jack accidentally killed Rosie Jones, a woman Jack loved dearly, and that Jack is now just a lonely and harmless old man. Here Charlie's desire to learn more results in his sympathy for a person he'd previously regarded as a dangerous criminal. At other times, however, it's unclear how deeply Charlie understands others' motives for wrongdoing. At the end of the novel, for instance, Charlie is unable to relate to Eliza's crime, however justified it might be—tormented by her guilt and hatred for her abusive father, she sets fire to her own house, with her father still inside it.Ultimately, Charlie acknowledges that there are some actions he'll never understand. Cooke's murders, like Eliza's arson, are foreign to him, because he simply can't "walk around" in Cooke's skin and see things from his point of view. This helps to explain why Silvey's book is named after Jasper Jones, rather than Charlie Bucktin or Eliza Wishart (characters who are just as important to the plot of the novel). Jasper is a friend to Charlie, but he's also a mystery—the racism and neglect that Jasper experiences every day are utterly foreign to Charlie. Charlie must learn how to empathize with other people—Jasper included—while also admitting that there are certain aspects of people's lives and personalities that he'll never understand.As the novel ends, it seems that this realization helps Charlie reach some kind of conclusion about how to relate to wrongdoers like Cooke and Eliza. Charlie bends toward Eliza's ear and whispers "the perfect words." Silvey never tells us what these words are. Perhaps this is his way of suggesting that there is no "correct" answer to the questions Charlie has posed in the novel. Each reader must decide for himself how to judge Eliza, Cooke, and those who commit crimes in general. - Theme: Appearances and Secrets. Description: Corrigan, the small town in which Jasper Jones is set, is obsessed with appearances. The white townspeople judge non-white people like Jasper Jones and Jeffrey Lu based entirely on their appearances, and their racist preconceptions about how Asian or "half-caste" people should behave. More generally, the townspeople talk constantly about people's appearances. Any hint of impropriety or oddness is immediately the subject of gossip.Because Corrigan places so much stock in gossip and appearances, all the townspeople "protect" themselves by keeping secrets in order to hide any evidence that might make them seem different or expose them to the ridicule or condemnation from the larger community. In the Bucktin family alone, Wesley Bucktin secretly writes a novel, while Charlie conceals his own literary projects from his father and others. Much more seriously, Charlie's mother Ruth Bucktin is also involved in a secret affair with another man.At the beginning of the novel, Charlie despises secrets and Corrigan's emphasis on appearances. Though he loves his father, he wishes his father would tell him about the novel he's writing. Working with his friend Jasper Jones, Charlie wants to find whoever killed Laura and bring them to justice. In this way, Charlie will expose the secret of Laura's disappearance, and exonerate Jasper of all guilt—for as Jasper has previously pointed out, unless they can find the real killer, everyone will blame Jasper for the crime, again judging him on his appearance of untrustworthiness. Charlie hates that he has to keep his knowledge of Laura's disappearance a secret. Dozens of times, he wishes he could tell Eliza or Wesley what he knows. Because he can't share his secret, he feels a tremendous sense of anxiety.When Jasper and Charlie learn more about Laura and her death, it becomes clearer and clearer that the truth will not automatically clear Jasper from all culpability. Because Laura hanged herself after looking for Jasper and failing to find him, the townspeople will blame Jasper for Laura's death. It is for this reason that Eliza, Charlie, and Jasper decide to keep the circumstances of Laura's death—including the rape and abuse she endured from her father—a secret.The ultimate tragedy of Jasper Jones is that the truth doesn't always triumph. Because the world is a complicated, imperfect place, secrets need to be kept and information needs to be withheld to give the appearance of normality. This "compromise" on truth can have dire results. Although Eliza agrees to keep her knowledge of her father to herself, she cannot stand to let him get away with raping his own daughter. Thus, she burns down her house with her father inside. - Theme: Escape, Guilt, and Writing. Description: One of the first pieces of information we learn about Charlie Bucktin is that he loves reading and writing. At many points throughout the novel, he uses literature as a form of fantasy, through which he can momentarily escape from his feelings of guilt and anxiety.After Charlie's discovery of Laura's body, he is profoundly traumatized, and it's only by fantasizing about the day when he can move to New York and be a great writer that Charlie copes with his trauma. Other characters in the novel have their own fantasies of escape, too: Jasper longs to leave Corrigan and go north; Ruth wants to return to her wealthy lifestyle in the city; and Eliza dreams of living like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's.Although Silvey acknowledges that fantasy and escapism are important tools by which humans cope with sadness, literal escape is never an ideal option for the characters in his book. Jasper "escapes" Corrigan at the end of the novel, but only because he's suspected of murder and arson, so there's nothing celebratory about the circumstances of his exit. The only character who leaves Corrigan willingly is Ruth Bucktin, who returns to her family after Charlie discovers that his mother is having an affair. Silvey portrays Ruth as childish and spoiled. Her escape to the city, then, is an admission of weakness and cowardice, proof that she can't deal with her problems in Corrigan in a mature manner.It is precisely because escape itself is always less than ideal that fantasies of escape are so important to the characters in the novel. The most important form that fantasy takes is fiction writing. For Charlie, fiction is a way to ease the pain and sorrow he experiences in his life. After he learns that Laura's father raped her, for instance, he uses writing as a form of therapy, explaining that he needs to "get it out" as quickly as possible. It's possible to read all of Jasper Jones as a way for Charlie to cope with the events he's experienced. Forced to keep Laura's death a secret, Charlie had to deal with anxiety, guilt, and fear. By writing about Laura's death (in other words, writing the book we're reading), he eases his burden, passing on some of his feelings to the reader. Other characters, like Jasper and Eliza, feel similar feelings of guilt and anxiety—indeed, they both blame themselves for Laura's death. Yet neither Jasper nor Eliza uses writing to overcome guilt. Instead, Jasper flees Corrigan, and Eliza resorts to arson and attempted murder of her father to enact justice for Laura's death.In general, then, the book Jasper Jones itself is a key part of Charlie's coming of age. Instead of running away like Jasper or Ruth, or turning to violence, like Eliza, he stays in Corrigan, dealing with his problems more maturely and intelligently by writing about them. For Silvey, writing is a part of growing up. Rather than avoiding one's problems by retreating into make-believe, or fleeing one's problem altogether, the writer can confront his problems head-on, interpreting them and dramatizing them. While this doesn't make one's problems disappear altogether, it does prevent them from "building up," as they do for Eliza. - Climax: - Summary: Jasper Jones takes place in a small town in Australia in the late 1960s. A boy named Charlie Bucktin is reading in his room late at night, when another boy, Jasper Jones, knocks at his window and tells him to come out. Jasper begs Charlie to come with him, and because of his respect for Jasper, Charlie obliges. As Jasper leads Charlie through the town where they live, Corrigan, Charlie thinks about what he knows about Jasper. Jasper is "half-caste," meaning that one of his parents is white, while the other is Aboriginal. Because of his mixed race, he is blamed for every misfortune or crime in Corrigan. His father is a lazy drunk, and Jasper has long been forced to take care of himself. Jasper leads Charlie past the river and into a clearing in the bushes. It is here that Jasper lives and sleeps. Jasper shows Charlie what he has discovered: the body of a young girl, hanging by a rope from a tree. Jasper explains that the girl is Laura Wishart, a girlfriend of his. Jasper claims that he found Laura hanging there earlier in the night, and went to Charlie for help because he believes that Charlie is wise, trustworthy, and loyal. Charlie, horrified by the sight of a dead body, tells Jasper that they need to alert the police, but Jasper insists that if they do so, Jasper will be arrested for the crime and sent to jail. Jasper convinces Charlie to hide Laura's body by throwing it in the nearby river. He and Charlie must try to find the real killer—only in this way can Jasper clear his own name. Jasper suggests that the real killer is Mad Jack Lionel, a mysterious, reclusive old man who supposedly killed a young woman years ago. It's a traditional feat of bravery in Corrigan to sneak onto Mad Jack's land and steal peaches from his tree. The next day, Charlie spends time with his parents, Wesley Bucktin and Ruth Bucktin. Charlie greatly admires his father, who shares his love for writing. Charlie believes that Wesley is secretly working on a novel in his library, and wishes that Wesley would talk to him about it. Charlie dislikes his mother, whom he finds controlling and petty. Years ago, she nearly died giving birth to Charlie's younger sister, who died shortly thereafter. Ruth, who comes from a wealthy family in a large city, hates her life in Corrigan, a fact that everyone but Wesley notices. Charlie's best friend is Jeffrey Lu, an intelligent, humorous Vietnamese boy. Because Corrigan has sent many soldiers to fight in the Vietnam War, Jeffrey must cope with the racism of the townspeople. In spite of his superior cricketing abilities, Jeffrey is forbidden from playing on the town cricket team by Warwick Trent, a bully who constantly threatens both Jeffrey and Charlie. We also see that Charlie is terrified of insects, and has a crush on Laura's beautiful, intelligent sister, Eliza Wishart. Whenever he sees Eliza, Charlie has a strong urge to tell her what he knows about Laura. Nevertheless, Charlie keeps quiet, remembering that he's promised Jasper his help and loyalty. Charlie researches other murders that have occurred near Corrigan, and uncovers some gruesome information about serial killers. He finds it difficult to understand why people kill and hurt others, though he considers the possibility that they do so because they were bullied and marginalized themselves. When he comes home from the library, Charlie is surprised to find that his parents, especially Ruth, are furious with him for leaving the house without telling them—there is a search party looking for Laura, and the neighborhood is keeping a close watch on all children. Ruth forces Charlie to dig a hole and then fill it in, a process that takes hours. Charlie despises his mother for punishing him in this way, but Wesley encourages him to deal with her diplomatically and politely. Jeffrey Lu and his family face harassment from the townspeople. A woman named Sue Findlay yells at Mrs. Lu and pours hot water on her body because she blames Mrs. Lu for her husband's death in Vietnam. Shortly thereafter, Charlie sneaks out of his house at night to reunite with Jasper Jones in the glade. He learns that Jasper has been arrested and beaten up by the local police. Jasper tells Charlie that he plans to sneak onto Jack Lionel's property to find evidence of his culpability in killing Laura. He also confesses to Charlie that he'd been out of the town in the days leading up to Laura's death—if he had been in Corrigan, then he could have met up with Laura in his glade and possibly have protected her. Charlie feels enormous sympathy for Jasper. He fantasizes about leaving Corrigan with Jasper, and driving through Australia like the protagonists of one of his favorite novels, Jack Kerouac's On the Road. Before they leave the glade, Charlie makes an important discovery—someone has written the word "Sorry" on the tree where Laura was hanged. When he returns to his house that night, Charlie learns that his parents have found him missing. He quickly makes up a story about going to visit Eliza, and to his great surprise, his parents, along with the police, accept Charlie's story as the truth. Afterwards, Charlie is grounded, and he spends the next two weeks reading and writing in his room. Charlie's misbehavior creates a distance between Ruth and Wesley—Ruth blames Wesley for turning Charlie against her. At the end of Charlie's two weeks indoors, he goes to see Jeffrey play for the Corrigan cricket team. By a fluke, Jeffrey has been allowed to sub out for another player. During the match, Eliza sees Charlie, and sits next to him. Although Charlie feels very awkward around Eliza, he charms her, and she tells him that she finds him very sweet. They kiss, and Charlie feels happier than he's felt in weeks. Meanwhile, Jeffrey plays brilliantly, winning the cricket match for Corrigan. As a result, he wins the grudging respect of his cricket team, even Warwick Trent. The night after the cricket match, a group of four men visits Jeffrey's house, where they destroy his father An Lu's prized garden. Charlie, who is the first to see the vandalism, screams for his father, who immediately runs outside and takes on all four of the men. Shortly thereafter he's joined by other neighbors, who beat up the vandals. Charlie is deeply inspired by his father's heroism. On New Year's Eve, Charlie is planning to spend time with Eliza at the town's traditional fireworks show. Eliza hints that she has something important to tell Charlie. Before he can meet up with her, Charlie sees Jasper outside his window, insisting that Charlie accompany him to Mad Jack Lionel's house. Jasper explains that he has searched Mad Jack's property, where he's seen an old car with the word "Sorry" scratched on it. He plans to go to Mad Jack's house, tell him what he knows, and force him to confess to killing Laura. Charlie reluctantly agrees to accompany Jasper, even though he's skeptical that Jasper's plan will work, or that Mad Jack killed Laura in the first place. At Mad Jack's house, Charlie is amazed to see that Jack is a polite, lonely old man who isn't the least bit hostile to either Jasper or Charlie. Jasper angrily tells Jack that he knows Jack killed "her." Jack begins to cry, and confesses that he did so. When Jasper provides more details about Laura's death, Jack looks confused. Over the course of the next hour, Jack reveals the truth: Jack is Jasper's own grandfather. Years ago, Jasper's father, David Jones, married a beautiful Aboriginal woman named Rosie Jones. Jack didn't approve of the marriage because Rosie wasn't white. As a result, David shunned his father and changed his surname. After Rosie gave birth to Jasper, Jack changed his mind about Rosie, and indeed, became a close friend to her. One day, while Jack was alone with Rosie, Rosie had an attack of appendicitis. Jack tried to drive her to the nearest hospital, but got into a horrible car crash that killed Rosie. As a result, David never spoke to his father again, and never told Jasper about him. Jack tells Jasper that he wishes he had died in the crash instead of Rosie. He adds that he has always believed that Jasper was avoiding him because David had told Jasper about Rosie's death. Now, Jack realizes the truth: Jasper avoided him because he had no idea who Jack was. Jasper and Charlie are stunned by Jack's explanation. They leave Jack's house in a daze, going their separate ways. As he's walking home, Charlie runs into Eliza, who tells him that she has crucial information. Eliza takes Charlie to Jasper's glade. Along the way, Charlie sees his mother with another man, and realizes that she's been having an affair. He angrily tells her that he'll never listen to her again. In Jasper's glade, Eliza tells Charlie that she is responsible for Laura's death. Eliza claims that she followed Laura to Jasper's glade on the night Laura died. She silently watched as Laura sat and waiting for "someone" to arrive. Eventually, Laura climbed up a tree, tied a rope around her neck, and hanged herself. Eliza produces a letter that she claims to have found underneath Laura's hanging body. Eliza reads Charlie the letter, which is addressed to Jasper Jones. In it, Laura explains that her father, Pete Wishart, had raped and abused her for years. The day she died, Laura discovered that her own father had impregnated her. She tried to tell her mother what he father had done, but amazingly, her mother didn't believe her. Afterwards, Laura's father went into her room and beat her savagely, warning her never to talk about his abusiveness again. Eliza heard screams from Laura's room, and then saw Laura running out of the house. She followed Laura to Jasper's glade, where she witnessed the suicide. A few nights later, haunted by her own guilt at having watched passively as her sister killed herself, Eliza returned to Jasper's glade and wrote "sorry" on the tree. Charlie is traumatized by what Eliza tells him. Eliza asks him what he knows about Laura, and Charlie admits that he moved Laura's body with Jasper's help. Eliza is pained by this information, but she forgives Charlie. As they sit together in the glade, Jasper arrives, and demands to know what Eliza is doing there. Eliza explains everything she's previously told Charlie. As she does so, Jasper moans and screams, and then dives into a nearby waterhole. Charlie jumps after him, pulling him to the surface and embracing him. He realizes that Jasper's image of charisma and bravery is just a mask, disguising his fear, sadness, and loneliness. Jasper tells Eliza that he is responsible for Laura's death—if he'd been in Corrigan at the time, then he could have consoled Laura and convinced her to live. Eliza doesn't disagree with anything Jasper says. She suggests that they tell the police about Pete's crimes. Jasper and Charlie reject this suggestion. If they go to the authorities, they argue, then Jasper will once again be blamed for Laura's death, just as he's blaming himself now. Charlie comes to the frustrating conclusion that the best option is to keep the true circumstances of Laura's death a secret. He also notices that Eliza seems to blame Jasper for Laura's death, and wants to punish him appropriately. As he thinks about Jasper, Charlie remembers a childish argument he's had with Jeffrey about the merits of Batman and Superman. Like Batman, he realizes, he has to embrace and accept his fears and limitations, rather than aspiring to be like Superman, who has neither fears nor limitations. The next day, Eliza, Jasper, and Charlie go their separate ways. Charlie senses that he'll never see Jasper again—he's going to leave Corrigan for good. When Charlie returns, he finds his mother packing to leave Corrigan, too. She's told Wesley about her affair. Ruth never returns to Corrigan—she lives with her wealthy relatives, not speaking to either Wesley or Charlie. Wesley takes care of Charlie on his own, and finishes the novel he's been working on. Charlie is the first to read it, and he finds it beautiful and brilliant. At the end of the novel, Charlie performs a feat of "bravery" that impresses the schoolchildren of Corrigan. He sneaks onto Mad Jack's property and steals peaches. To impress his peers even more, Charlie stages a "fight" with Jack, promising Jack that he'll make up the favor by making Jack dinner soon. Charlie walks off of Mad Jack's property, applauded and cheered by the schoolchildren. Even Warwick Trent acknowledges that Charlie has shown great bravery. Amused, Charlie thinks to himself that it took more bravery for him to pick up the peaches, which were crawling with bugs, than to sneak onto Jack's property. Suddenly, someone sees a plume of smoke in the distance. Charlie runs toward the smoke, and sees that Eliza's house is on fire. Her parents are alive, though her father is in an oxygen mask, with burns on his body. Charlie realizes that it was Eliza who burned the house, and realizes that he'll never fully understand her motives. He also recognizes that Jasper will be blamed for this act of arson, and forced to stay away from Corrigan for the rest of his life. This news saddens Charlie, but doesn't worry him—he knows that Jasper is too clever to be caught by the police. Charlie walks towards Eliza, who continues to look calmly at the fire, and whispers "the perfect words" in her ear.

- Genre: War Novel, Psychological Fiction - Title: Johnny Got His Gun - Point of view: Third Person Limited - Setting: A hospital in France - Character: Joe. Description: Joe Bonham is a young man originally from Shale City, Colorado. He gets drafted to fight in Europe during World War I and ends up gravely injured in an artillery shell explosion and hospitalized. The first part of the novel chronicles Joe's attempts to make sense of his situation as he drifts back and forth between memories of his childhood and his present life in the hospital. As Joe regains his grasp on reality, he realizes to his horror that he's missing his arms, his legs, and most of his face, and he can't hear or see. Joe feels that his fate is worse than death, and he has one particularly disturbing nightmare about a rat eating him alive. Although Joe wasn't very politically active before his injury, as he spends more time in the hospital, he becomes increasingly angry at the divide between the generals and politicians who start wars and the "little guys" like him who actually fight in them. The biggest turning point for Joe's character is when he learns how to keep track of time, using various events like the coming and going of nurses and the changes in temperature in order to build his own calendar. This helps Joe organize his thoughts. Later, he attempts to communicate with people in the hospital by using his head to tap out messages in Morse code. But while Joe eventually manages to communicate with one of the doctors, the doctor refuses to grant Joe his wish—to leave the hospital and be put on display so the public can see the horrors of war—claiming that this would be against "regulations." - Character: Father. Description: Joe's father dies before Joe goes to war. Nevertheless, he remains perhaps the most important figure in Joe's memories and hallucinations as Joe remembers his past while lying in the hospital. The book begins with Joe reliving the day he got the phone call that his father had died; phones remain a common thread throughout the novel, often signifying death. Joe's father wasn't an artist, but he took so much pride in small tasks like tending his garden that it was almost like an art. One of Joe's key formative moments (which he relives while recovering at the hospital) is when he loses his father's treasured fishing rod while on a trip with Bill Harper. Although Joe's father is understanding, the loss of the rod coincides with Joe reaching the age when he stops going on camping trips with his father and starts going with his friends, representing Joe's transition out of childhood. - Character: Mother. Description: Joe's mother, while not quite as central to Joe's story as his father, is nevertheless an important figure in Joe's life, and she seems to represent comfort for Joe. In Joe's memories and hallucinations, his mother sings the kitchen, makes lots of food for Joe's whole family, and recites "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" every year for the family. When Joe lies in his hospital bed, unable to see or hear, he imagines that he's back inside his mother's womb—his mind seems to be trying to escape his present horror by going back to his mother. But while Joe's mother embodies comfort, she is also something Joe can never go back to, once again highlighting the innocence Joe lost in the war. - Character: Kareen. Description: Kareen is Joe's girlfriend before he goes to fight in World War I. One of Joe's formative memories is spending the whole night in Kareen's arms before he ships off the next day. Long after the last time Joe sees Kareen, he continues to imagine her, sometimes picturing that she might even come to see him in the hospital (although he knows it's highly unlikely this would ever happen, given that the hospital staff don't know Joe's identity). The thought of seeing Kareen both excites Joe and horrifies him because he doesn't want her to see him in his current condition. Kareen represents one of the many things that Joe left behind and lost when going to war. - Character: Bill Harper. Description: Bill Harper is one of Joe's closest friends in Shale City, Colorado, although their relationship sometimes gets contentious. Bill Harper is there on the fateful camping trip where Joe loses Joe's father's treasured fishing rod. He also goes behind Joe's back to kiss Joe's ex-girlfriend Diane. Bill Harper represents the start of Joe's transition to adulthood as he forces Joe to deal with some tough new situations. Bill's eventual death in World War I provides yet another example of the destructive effects of war. - Character: Jose. Description: Jose is a mysterious Puerto Rican man who works at the same bakery as Joe in Los Angeles. Jose uses the services of a local charity called Midnight Mission, suggesting that he's poor. However, he tells his coworkers tall tales about a rich woman back in New York City who wants to marry him, and he even receives a letter that seems to be from her at one point. Jose leaves the bakery after he claims to have a new job in Hollywood. Although it isn't clear how truthful he is about the details of his life, Jose nevertheless remains a positive example of working-class decency. - Character: Howie. Description: Howie is Joe's friend who goes to work with him on a railroad in the desert. Most of the other workers on the crew are Mexican, and for both Joe and Howie, the event is a major coming-of-age moment. Howie and Joe can only endure the grueling work for a single day before heading back home. The experience teaches them that despite the problems they have, they remain privileged compared to other people in the world. - Character: The New Day Nurse. Description: Toward the end of the story, Joe gets a new day nurse, apparently a substitute the hospital brought in to cover for the old nurse over the holidays. Joe tries to communicate with her using Morse code, and she spells out "Merry Christmas" on his chest in response. This is a huge moment for Joe, as it's the first time anyone has tried to communicate with him since he arrived at the hospital. - Character: The Doctor. Description: After the new day nurse realizes that Joe is trying to communicate using Morse code, she sends for a doctor who knows Morse code. Joe is elated when the doctor comes to speak with him, but his hopes shatter when the doctor denies Joe's request to leave the hospital—and then gives Joe a morphine injection to silence him. - Character: Lazarus. Description: Lazarus is the nickname for an unknown German soldier whom Joe's regiment kills. Despite the regiment's efforts to bury him, Lazarus literally rises from the grave (like the biblical Lazarus rises from the dead) not once but twice after artillery shells send his corpse flying out of the ground. Lazarus's corpse's refusal to stay buried and out of sight provides a grim visual reminder of the horrors of war. - Character: Lincoln Beechy. Description: Lincoln Beechy was a real person (although his last name was spelled "Beachy") and one of the first aviators. His fictionalized version shows up in Shale City when Joe is still young, giving Joe a glimpse of the world outside his relatively small town. Beechy's stunts show the potential of new aviation technology, but his death soon afterward demonstrates the consequences of this technology. - Character: Diane. Description: Diane is a girl from Shale City, Colorado, who goes on a few dates with Joe before secretly going on a date with Glen Hogan. She is part of the reason that Joe and Howie leave Shale City to work on the railroad. Later, Joe feels betrayed when he spots his good friend Bill Harper kissing Diane in front of her house. - Theme: The Horrors of War. Description: Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun is about Joe, a soldier who goes to fight in a war that he barely understands and ends up facing a fate that at times seems worse than death: he loses his arms, his legs, and much of his face, including his sense of hearing, smell, and sight. The novel takes place during World War I, the largest global war in history up until that point, when new industrial technology made warfare more destructive than ever before, and Joe experiences this for himself when an artillery shell explodes. Confined to his hospital bed, Joe's imagination lingers on the tangible, disturbing details of modern warfare that he can recall. His own body, with its missing parts and oozing wounds, conveys all the things the war took from him. Joe describes his agonizing physical condition thoroughly, such as his (seeming) dream that a rat comes in the middle of the night and starts eating him alive. He also considers his mental health, describing his extreme feelings of loneliness and constant feeling of being trapped. While Joe represents an extreme example, his condition nevertheless also embodies the countless horrors that others faced during World War I and in other wars throughout history. At the end of the novel, the man communicating with Joe denies Joe's request to be removed from the hospital and displayed around the country. Joe realizes in that moment that the man think he is too horrific for the general public—because if people had to face the horrors of war directly, they might no longer be willing to support it. Similarly, Joe always has a mask on his face, which seems to be more for the benefit of the nurses (to prevent them from seeing his horrific face) than for Joe's own benefit. In Johnny Got His Gun, Trumbo argues that the horrors of war are so extreme that they outweigh any potential benefits, and yet the novel's grim conclusion predicts that wars will continue because society refuses to look these horrors in the face. - Theme: The Value of Life. Description: While Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun is a grim novel about the horrors of war, it also celebrates the value of life, particularly in Book II, which is called "The Living." While the protagonist Joe is despondent and perhaps even suicidal in the first part of the book, as the novel progresses, he takes tentative steps to try to make the most of his new life without arms, legs, or a face. During one of the most famous sections of the book, Joe recites a long internal monologue where he considers the reasons why people go to war. The politicians and generals who start wars (and who rarely face danger themselves), often appeal to abstract principles, suggesting that a person should be willing to sacrifice their life for the sake of a larger ideal like liberty, democracy, or honor. Joe dismantles these common arguments, ultimately concluding that no ideal is more important than life itself—at least not any ideal Joe has ever encountered. Once Joe comes to this conclusion about the value of life, he tries to make the most of his dire condition. When he finally manages to communicate with one of the day nurses by using Morse code, it's the happiest Joe has ever felt in his life—even including back when he still had all his senses. The fact that Joe can find joy, even in his severely injured condition, suggests that all life is valuable because people can find ways to adapt to even the most adverse conditions. While Joe adapts to his new reality in the hospital and at times even manages to find joy despite his severe injuries, the book ultimately suggests that the real death and destruction that war causes aren't worth the abstract principles like freedom or safety that it purports to defend. - Theme: Elites vs. Common People. Description: At the center of Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun is the conflict between politicians, generals, and other leaders who start wars and the common people like Joe who actually do the fighting. Protagonist Joe is an "average Joe" who goes to fight in World War I and becomes another battlefield casualty statistic, literally losing his identity when an artillery shell explosion blows off most of his face. It is only after Joe spends some time in isolation in the hospital—with no arms, legs, sight, or hearing—that he begins to understand the enormous power imbalance between him and the people who actually make the decisions in war. The more Joe reflects on the issue, the more he realizes that the interests of the "little guys" who actually fight in wars don't align with the interests of the leaders who start wars. At the end of the novel, Joe imagines what might happen if instead of pointing their weapons at their alleged wartime enemies, common people pointed their guns at their true oppressors: the leaders in charge of war. But Joe is powerless to spread his message because even after learning how to communicate with the hospital staff, they deny him his one wish to leave the hospital, instead keeping him locked up due to "regulations." Joe's status as a de facto prisoner in the hospital reflects the powerlessness of ordinary people to oppose authority figures. The book also examines how class can widen the power imbalance between the privileged and the underprivileged. Joe is shocked the first time he and Howie go out into the desert to work on building a railroad as part of a crew where most of the other workers are Mexican. The Mexican workers endure conditions so harsh that Joe and Howie can only endure one day before they decide to head back to Shale City, realizing that their own problems back home are insignificant compared to the problems that people with less privilege face, and how the railroad workers' exhausting conditions trap them in a cycle, leaving them with little time or energy to do anything else. Ultimately, Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun suggests that the most important conflict in society is not between different countries but between people with power and people without power—and that society maintains the status quo by preventing the powerless from rising up against the empowered. - Theme: Time and Memory. Description: When Joe loses his hearing and sight when an artillery shell explodes, he also loses all concept of time, and so he struggles to distinguish between past and present, often slipping back into memories from his old life in a series of memories and hallucinations. Although Joe's father is dead before the novel even begins, he nevertheless plays a major role in the story through Joe's memories of his childhood back in Shale City, Colorado. Joe remembers key formative moments from his childhood, like when he had to tell his father that he lost his father's treasured fishing rod, emphasizing how even after the dramatic things that happened to Joe in the war, these small memories from home continue to be important to him. Joe's father (as well as others, like Joe's mother, his friend Bill Harper, and his girlfriend Kareen) all helped shape who Joe is, and Joe's memories of growing up in Shale City and working at a bakery in Los Angeles are so vivid that he can return to them even after losing all his senses. Because of this strong relationship between past and present, it's a major turning point in the novel when Joe finally manages to find a way to keep track of time again. Just as early humans used the movement of the stars to measure time, Joe pays attention to the things outside his small world, like the coming and going of nurses and changes in temperature. Although Joe struggles at first, he finally learns to keep track of time, even keeping track of whole years in his head. Getting better track of time gives Joe better control over his thoughts, and as the novel progresses, he is less likely to unintentionally slip into the past, giving him more autonomy despite his incapacitated condition. In Johnny Got His Gun, Trumbo explores the human psyche, showing how memory shapes a person's identity and how a person's concept of time affects the structure of their life and gives them greater agency to shape it. - Climax: Joe uses Morse code to communicate with a man at the hospital. - Summary: Joe Bonham wakes up to the sound of a phone ringing at the bakery in Los Angeles where he works. He feels like he's waking up from a hangover. When he goes to answer the phone, he learns that his father has died. Joe goes home to see his mother and sees men are taking away his father's body. All of a sudden, he hears another telephone ring and remembers that his father is already dead. Joe realizes that he's really been hallucinating. In fact, he was gravely injured while fighting in World War I, and he's now stuck in a hospital. Joe continues struggles to tell the past apart from the present. While in the hospital, he dreams about his childhood in Shale City, Colorado, and later, his time working in the bakery in Los Angeles. For the most part, Joe had a happy childhood, but his mind still lingers on certain events, like the time he and his friend Bill Harper accidentally lost Joe's father's treasured fishing rod or the time that Joe and Howie went to work on a railroad crew in the desert, only to quit after one day of arduous work. One of Joe's most bittersweet memories is spending the night in the arms of his girlfriend Kareen on the day before he shipped off to war. Meanwhile, in the present in the hospital, Joe begins to learn the full extent of his injuries. Not only is he missing both his arms, but he's also missing his legs and most of his face, with a feeding tube going into a giant hole where his eyes, nose, and mouth used to be and a cloth mask covering the hole. His condition means he can't see or hear, either. Barely able to even move without exhausting himself, at one point Joe feels himself being eaten alive by a rat. He eventually wakes up, believing the rat was a dream, but in his current condition, it's hard to distinguish between dreams and reality. Eventually, Joe decides that the best way to take control of his situation is to find out a way to measure time. Although he initially fails, struggling to keep the right numbers in his head, eventually, he manages to work out a calendar based on the coming and going of nurses and the changes in temperature throughout the day. Keeping track of time helps Joe's mind stay more focused, and several years pass in this new system. One day, Joe gets the idea of trying to communicate to his nurses with Morse code. The first time he attempts this with a nurse, however, she doesn't understand what he wants. Eventually, to stop Joe's tapping, one of the doctors gives Joe painkillers, causing him to have wild hallucinations about meeting Jesus in person. One day, Joe finds that he has a new nurse. The nurse draws the letters "MERRY CHRISTMAS" on Joe's chest, and Joe realizes that he's finally found someone to communicate with. Not wanting to waste his chance (in case the nurse is just a substitute for the holidays), Joe immediately starts tapping out a message in Morse code. Eventually, a doctor who can understand Joe's messages comes in to talk with him. The doctor asks Joe what it is that he wants. The questions stumps Joe at first—he was so thrilled to finally be able to communicate with other humans again that he didn't even stop to think about what he might say. After considering the doctor's question, Joe says he'd like to go leave the hospital. He would like to go out in public—to schools and government officials—so that people can see him and understand what happens to soldiers during war. But the doctor says that it's against regulations for Joe to go outside the hospital. Then Joe feels the doctor prepare to inject Joe's arm with painkillers. As Joe waits for the painkillers, he thinks of how unfair it is that he's stuck in the hospital against his will. He hopes that people will be able to look at him one day and recognize the horrors of war—and that eventually, the common people on the ground who fight wars will stop pointing their weapons at each other and start pointing them at their real enemy: the people in power who start wars in the first place.

- Genre: Fiction; philosophy - Title: Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Point of view: Third-person - Setting: - Character: Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Description: The protagonist of the novel, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, often called Jon by his friends and students, is a bird who is different from all the other members of his Flock of gulls. Obsessed with flight, Jonathan does not see the point in flying slowly and gracelessly only in pursuit of food. As Jonathan studies flight on his own, his aerodynamics, speed, and abilities improve. However, his feats do not impress the other gulls in his Flock—rather, they render him Outcast, and he is banished to the Far Cliffs. Jonathan meets two shimmering gulls, and is transported up to another realm, where special gulls go to train and learn about their place in the world. With the help of Chiang, the Elder Gull, Jonathan begins to see past the limits of his body. As he realizes that his mind, spirit, and body exist across all of space and time, he masters instantaneous transportation. He brings the things he has learned back to earth and gathers a small group of pupils whom he instructs in flight. One day, feeling he has succeeded in his mission but wary of the rumors that he is divine, or even the Son of the mythical Great Gull, Jonathan begins to shimmer and ascends to heaven, leaving his legacy in the hands of his star pupil and friend Fletcher Lynd Seagull. In the years after Jonathan's passing, his methods—against all odds—become revered the world over, and the worshipful cult of personality that crops up around Jonathan feverishly overtakes the earth. Jonathan is humble but ambitious, and his curiosity, drive, and desire to help others above all else—combined with the misinterpretation of his messages and his simultaneous deification—make him an analog and an allegory for the biblical figure of Jesus Christ. - Character: Fletcher Lynd Seagull. Description: A young gull who, like Jonathan, is drawn to experiments with flight. When Fletcher is introduced in the narrative, he has just been Outcast from his own Flock, and as he makes his way out to the Far Cliffs, he meets Jonathan, who has just returned from the plane beyond earth to spread the wisdom he has garnered to the earthly Flocks. Fletcher becomes Jonathan's friend and pupil, and is "nearly a perfect flight-student" due to the combination of his strength and dexterity along with his "blazing drive" to learn. When Jonathan departs the earth after rumors of his being divine have started, he leaves his legacy in the hands of Fletcher, his closest confidante, and Fletcher soon bears the burden of having been the closest living gull to Jonathan. Fletcher must contend with his own specific kind of celebrity, then, and even in death, Fletcher is revered as a chosen, special friend of the "divine" Jonathan Livingston Seagull. - Character: Chiang. Description: The Elder Gull of Jonathan's new Flock in the plane beyond earth. He is an enormously skilled flyer, and has been empowered by his age rather than "enfeebled" by it like most Elder Gulls. It is Chiang who encourages Jonathan to stop seeing himself as "trapped inside a limited body," and begin to understand that his true nature is—as every gull's true nature is—"everywhere at once across space and time." Chiang's instruction is instrumental in Jonathan's evolution and progression, and with Chiang's help, Jonathan is able to traverse great distances in the blink of an eye. - Character: Anthony Seagull. Description: A doubtful bird who lives in the time two hundred years after Jonathan's departure from earth. Anthony wonders what the meaning of life is, and refuses to believe in the overzealous doctrine which canonizes Jonathan and has overtaken much of seagull life. As Anthony attempts suicide by dive-bombing into the ocean, he is stopped short by a bird who admires his flight skills. The bird introduces himself to Anthony as "Jon." - Theme: Individualism vs. Collectivism. Description: The titular character of Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull is an independent gull who would rather practice aerodynamic flight techniques than forage for food in the wake of the fishing boats that chug up and down the shoreline of the Flock's home. Jonathan's staunch individualism initially seems in direct opposition to the collectivism of the Flock. The members of the Flock do everything the exact same way, day after day, and never question the rote routines of boring, straightforward flight or the endless pursuit of nothing but food. However, when Jonathan finds himself a part of a mystical new group of seagulls whose self-exile from their home Flocks has rendered them "Outcast," Bach makes the complex and nuanced argument that individualism and collectivism do not have to exist in stark opposition. The individual cannot thrive without a solid, supportive community; likewise, a truly successful collective will be composed of individuals whose independence of thought and action inspires and nourishes those around them. At the start of the novel, Jonathan is already something of a loner within his Flock—but it is his own drive towards individualism that isolates him, rather than the external derision of his fellow gulls. Jonathan's love of flying outweighs his desire to make himself "popular with the other birds," for example, and even his parents' disappointment is not enough to deter his dreams of testing his limits through flight. He tells his parents that he "just want[s] to know" the extent of what he can do, and as his flight practice allows him to reach new speeds and—quite literally—new heights. Where other gulls are concerned with maintaining the status quo and merely living to eat, Jonathan finds himself thinking only of how he can achieve more and more, and break records the other gulls have never even dreamed of. When Jonathan is "centered for shame by the Elder Gull and the rest of the Council—the governing body of his Flock—he is affronted by the slight and made nervous by the prospect of being "cast out of gull society, banished to a solitary life on the Far Cliffs." Nevertheless, once Jonathan leaves his Flock, his "one sorrow" is not solitude; rather, it is that the collective Flock "refuse to believe the glory of flight." Jonathan's banishment frightens him despite the fact that he has always been a solitary gull. His inability to make his Flock see the "glory" of a different way of life, however, cements in his mind the idea that he is meant to be alone. This reflects his initial conception of a collective group as something restrictive and antithetical to individuality. Jonathan enjoys his solitude until the fateful day when he finds himself brought up to a new plane of existence, where he encounters a new Flock of mystical seagulls who embrace the ideals, goals, and questions Jonathan has had all his life. In this new realm, Jonathan sees how collectivism can, in fact, allow for the advancement and nurturing of every individual member of a group. The few gulls he finds there have similarly faced hardship and isolation from their Flocks as they moved through their lives. However, now that they have all arrived in this new world, they are free to practice flight and attempt to improve, learn, and grow until they come to an understanding of their own inherent perfection, and the notion that their consciousness exists everywhere at once across space and time. With this new understanding that collectivism can be a positive thing, Jonathan longs to implement the mutually respectful, inquisitive, and encouraging collectivism he has experienced in this higher realm back on earth. In the years following his departure from the Earth, Jonathan has become an icon renowned the world over, revered as the "Great Gull Jonathan Livingston Seagull." A messiah of sorts, Jonathan is seen as a divine being—but his lessons about the joys of flying have been long forgotten or misrepresented as entreaties for other gulls to strive for Oneness—a vague concept that seems to denote a bastardization of the state of collective consciousness Jonathan initially tried to bring back to earth from the higher plane. Flocks all over the world have recognized Jonathan's unique vision, but are focusing on the wrong things when it comes to his "doctrine"; gulls who follow Jonathan's teachings focus too much on remembering or reassembling the exact words he spoke, but they do not seem to care about the meanings behind the words. As a result, the world has been swept up in chaos as the gulls fervently try to reconstruct their idol, all the while ignoring the heart of his message: that flying "fast and free and glorious" in the sky is a way of transcending the physical realm. In this way, collectivism has swung from one kind of exclusionary cadre to another, as the earthly gulls continually aim for a homogenized society organized around a single idea. By neglecting the chance to develop a kind of community that supports one another while still honoring individualism and the virtues of unique beings, the gulls have failed to truly understand, interpret, and disseminate the teachings of the "Divine Gull" they purport to revere and worship. Bach condemns neither individualism nor collectivism in the pages of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Instead, he uses the world of the gulls as a metaphor for the human world's readiness to erase individuality and favor a homogenized collective. By using the parable of Jonathan Seagull and his journey to another plane and back again, Bach extolls the virtues of a society in which people—or, in this case, gulls—are allowed to come as they are and be appreciated as individual members of a variegated whole. In doing so, Bach highlights the inequities in our contemporary society and ultimately urges his readers to apply the knowledge Jonathan was unable to share with his Flock within their own lives, social circles, and societies. - Theme: Innovation vs. Tradition. Description: Jonathan Livingston Seagull is, at its core, a story of how innovation, progress, and self-discovery all require what can often be a painful or difficult break with tradition. Longing to free himself from his Flock's rigid, boring routines, and convinced that there is more to life than just hunting for food, Jonathan practices increasingly difficult and dangerous flight maneuvers, edging away from not only the Flock's comfort zone, but also from his own. As he studies and practices flying—a metaphor throughout the book for experimentation and liberation—he realizes that, although breaking with tradition draws the ire of the Flock and renders him an exiled Outcast, these sacrifices are necessary in order to change and grow. Through Jonathan, Bach allegorizes humanity's tendency to seek comfort in the familiar, or in easy answers, and argues that this impulse is directly at odds with the sacrifice and courage required for genuine innovation. Jonathan Seagull longs to break boundaries, change the status quo, go where no gull has gone before and do what no gull has ever done. Speed, for Jonathan, is the means to such innovation. What's more, it is a road to "power," "joy," "and pure beauty." To this end, Jonathan practices complicated, groundbreaking aerodynamics—high speeds, complicated rolls, and the manipulation of his own wings to achieve the form and velocity he desires. He is disappointed, however, when such moves are seen as offensive to his fellow gulls. In lieu of glory, recognition, and the ability to pass on his knowledge to his Flock, Jonathan is publicly shamed and then Outcast from the Flock altogether. Jonathan fears that he will never be able to share his innovations with others—until he is taken to another realm, a new plane of existence where he is able to practice his flight in peace. Jonathan surprises himself as he achieves even newer, more impressive goals, and grows determined to bring the advancements he has made back to the Flock he loved and left. In allowing Jonathan to achieve transcendence of seagull knowledge only when he travels to another plane (and gets as far away from his Flock as possible), Bach highlights the oppressive, stifling reality of excessive adherence to tradition, and argues that overcoming that oppression requires a courageous if frightening step into the unknown. Back on earth, though, Jonathan finds that it is still difficult to get through to the other gulls, and must focus instead on improving the lives and flying techniques of only a few devoted, disciple-like pupils. Some other members of the Flock watch as his pupils study and train, but Jonathan is met with questions and doubt just as often as he is met with interest and idolatry. Though Jonathan reaches only a small group of students during his lifetime, he has still managed to achieve his goal of bringing innovation to earth. With this accomplished, Jonathan disappears and ascends to an unknown place, leaving his star pupil Fletcher in charge of keeping his legacy alive. Jonathan has changed his Flock, albeit in a small way, proving that truly devoted innovators can influence even the most staunchly traditional community. By the end of the novel, however, the innovations Jonathan pioneered—the ideals and practices that were so odious and foreign to his original Flock—have become the status quo, and a tradition in and of themselves. The narrative flashes forward into the future, revealing the world of the gulls to have been completely transformed by Jonathan Seagull's influence. A kind of religion has even cropped up, dedicated to the "Great Gull Jonathan Livingston Seagull." As the years have gone by though, devotees of the "idol" Jonathan are less interested in practicing his innovative flight methods than they are in hearing bits of "trivia" about the figurehead himself. Even further into the future, a veritable cult has taken the place of the movement, which once simply inspired gulls to fly and experiment with aerodynamics. Eventually, "no flying [is] ever done by anybody," and all of the movement's teachings become obsessive glorifications of Jonathan's—or the "Divine One's"—every word and movement during his time on earth. In exploring how Jonathan's innovative nature brought change to his community, but then wound up as the genesis for yet another staunch tradition—perhaps even more obsessive and inflexible than the gulls' original way of life—Bach suggests that society longs to seek comfort in familiarity and simplicity, and will always fall back on answers and paths that are easy. Jonathan's story is a cautionary tale of sorts meant to demonstrate how the line between beneficial innovation and radical overhaul of society is a fine one, and that the stronger a society adheres to the concept of tradition, the more difficult it will be to gently and intuitively fold innovation into a staunchly-ordered, conservative ecosystem. Through Jonathan's allegorical tale, Bach argues that growth and innovation are a continuous process: one spark of innovation can create a wave of change, but the match that formed the spark in the first place must continually be relit, or society will fall back into its lazy, easy ways. - Theme: Self-Determination Through Mind, Body, and Spirit. Description: Jonathan Livingston Seagull is an ode to self-determination through transcendence of the body and discovery of the limitless nature of the mind and the spirit. Jonathan longs to be in control of his own life and govern himself independently of his hegemonic, small-minded Flock. His experiments in airborne acrobatics begin as a way to distinguish himself from the rest of the group and explore the possibilities of his small life. However, as Jonathan becomes a more serious flier and eventually ascends to a new plane of existence where mystical, gleaming gulls practice flight in peace all day long, he realizes that flight is a means of integrating his mind, body, and spirit as one singular entity. Through Jonathan's journey toward self-discovery and self-determination, Bach uses Jonathan Livingston Seagull to make the controversial argument that the self—the product of mind, body, and spirit in perfect harmony—is a limitless entity that reaches its fullest potential when they are united in harmony with one another. Though the specifics of how to achieve this integration are left vague and intentionally circular (Jonathan achieves transcendence of his physical limitations in the instant that he tells himself he is unlimited and truly believes it), Bach uses Jonathan's journey toward perfection as a means of illustrating the importance of striving to align one's mind, body, and spirit in synchronicity. At the start of the novel, it seems as if Jonathan's journey will be one simply of learning increasingly complicated aerodynamic tricks. As Jonathan becomes a more accomplished flier, though, he is recruited by a group of gulls on a higher plane of existence who see flight not simply as an athletic or physical pursuit, but a spiritual one as well. Under the tutelage of Chiang, the Elder Gull of the higher plane, Jonathan comes to understand that the fastest kind of flight—transportation from one place, or one time, to another in the blink of an eye—can only be accomplished by understanding that one's body, mind, and spirit are all connected. That "perfect speed," Chiang the Elder says, "is being there"—when "there" is understood as the borderline holy place where all aspects of the self are united. With Chiang's help, Jonathan begins to understand that he is not "trapped inside a limited body" but instead exists "everywhere at once across space and time." He then accomplishes feats of flying he'd never dreamed of. Forget mere loop-de-loops, nosedives, or barrel roles—Jonathan, with the newfound knowledge that his body, mind, and spirit are one unified entity, is able to travel between planets, planes, and spiritual realms with ease. Jonathan's spiritual transformation, and resulting godlike powers, have been seen by Bach's readers as an allegory for the powers of self-help, positive thinking, and even attempts at spiritual and philosophical transcendence through meditation. The book's controversial spiritual bent, and its associations with late 1960s and early 1970s "hippie" counterculture, has been seen as facile by many of Bach's critics, but nonetheless speaks to a very real belief many spiritual people hold—that the body, mind, and spirit are all united, and only through realizing this can one's larger goals of happiness, unity, and peace be achieved. As a novel, Jonathan Livingston Seagull is many things—self-help guidebook, religious parable, and tome advocating for the pursuit of spiritual unity. Bach, who himself had had near-death experiences in his youth and longed to spread a message of peace, gratitude, and the search for higher meaning, created a character whose spiritual self-actualization might serve as an inspiration to others, and as an emblem of the glory that self-determination through unification of the mind, the spirit, and the body might bring. - Theme: The Misinterpretation of Doctrine. Description: The fourth and final section of Jonathan Livingston Seagull flashes forward nearly two hundred years after Jonathan's disappearance from the face of the earth and supposed ascendance to heaven. In the centuries that have passed, Jonathan's teachings of introspection, self-determination, and the pursuit of one's individual truth have been misinterpreted, warped, and picked apart like so much chum. As the reader works their way through the final pages of the story, an obvious parable emerges: Richard Bach has composed a tale that mirrors the perceived failures of religions and belief systems the world over, and which indicts religious and spiritual movements for their creation of cults of personality and the self-centered search for validation through "holiness." In pointing out the ways in which religious doctrines are often misinterpreted and misused, Bach suggests that religious and spiritual movements must—or at least should—reexamine their roots and return to the simplistic messages of self-discovery, charity and community, pursuit of a greater collective good, and the sacredness not of one figurehead but of each member of the larger community. In the two hundred years since his departure from earth in a glimmering haze, "nearly every element of Jonathan's teaching [has been] taken out of daily practice by the simple pronouncement that it was Holy, and beyond the aspiration of common gulls." The central ethos of Jonathan's message to his fellow gulls—the use of flight as a way to unify mind, body, and spirit around the goal of self-determination—has been replaced by obsessive rites and rituals that exclude many would-be disciples of Jonathan's message. Jonathan has become an icon, depicted in rich plumage, wearing crowns of shells and other baubles. His likeness has been pecked into the sides of cliff faces from coast to coast, and adherents must place pebbles at his shrines in order to appear holy or in possession of "Oneness." Jonathan's image has been warped and morphed into something unrecognizable, used in pursuit of obscure and esoteric rituals that serve only to make gulls feel superficially pious without forcing them to actually work to expand their mind, test their bodies, or improve their spirits. As a result, the "thinking gulls" who long to shy away from the exclusionary and sacred rites and rituals of the movement eventually "close their minds at the sound of certain words," and will not even hear anything associated with the concepts of "flight" or the "Great Gull." They want nothing to do with Jonathan's legacy, as they see through the sham it has become, and feel depressed by the false devoutness and self-serving shows of piety all around them. This backlash against sacrosanct but obscure rite and ritual in the world of the gulls mirrors the backlash against strict, dogmatic religions that exclude all who do not fit within the bounds of "Holiness." As atheism and agnosticism grew out of frustration with the growing obscurity of practical applications of religious doctrine—such as seeing "love thy neighbor" being preached but never practiced—so too do the gulls develop a sense of apathy as regards the empty façades of faith which have sprung up all around them. The gulls who shirk the trappings of the cult of personality that has sprung up around Jonathan's image are nonetheless curious about his message, and begin experimenting with flight. Though they reject the traditions of the religion, they are still unwittingly practicing the message he originally intended to bring to the Flock—the pursuit of self-knowledge through pushing one's limits in flight and aerodynamics. This demonstrates how even when doctrine becomes perverted or bastardized, there are still ways for the message to ultimately transcend the figurehead, and live on. The irony of the gulls' accidental return to the truth of Jonathan's message shows how false zeal can never overshadow the seed of truth buried beneath it.  Anthony Seagull, the last gull to be introduced in the novel, is a casualty of the ways in which the "doctrine" of Jonathan Livingston Seagull has, in its vast dissemination throughout gull society, strayed from its roots and become something so unrecognizable that it actually engenders pain and confusion in both its followers and dissenters. Anthony Seagull is young, and as a curious youth, he questions the religion all around him. He knows that dropping "a million pebbles" at one of Jonathan's shrines won't make him any more holy. Anthony does not believe that Jonathan truly accomplished the great feats of flight he is said to have accomplished, and Anthony himself is disappointed that his own attempts to reach great speeds and heights have failed. Feeling that life is a bore and that the idol that everyone around him worships is a "fairy tale," Anthony attempts suicide—only to meet, in the middle of his death-driven dive bomb out of the sky, Jonathan himself, who introduces himself to Anthony simply as Jon. As the novel ends abruptly after Jon's reappearance, the reader must interpret whether he has appeared to Anthony to restore the faith of a lost adherent, whether he knows that Anthony is special because he has so deeply questioned what it means to be "holy," or because Jonathan longs, through Anthony, reset the entire movement which has flown so far off course. All of this can be read as a metaphor most directly for the ways in which modern Christianity has often been criticized for idolizing its figurehead, Jesus Christ, while shirking the very things he preached: love, understanding, and compassion for fellow human beings no matter their social standing, past sins, or present misfortunes. Jonathan's return to earth speaks to Bach's argument that if the figureheads of many world religions were able to see the state of their legacy, they would feel shame and discontent, and would long to return to earth to guide their followers in the direction of their original intentions.  "The forces of rulers and ritual slowly, slowly will kill our freedom to live as we choose," Richard Bach writes in an afterword to the new edition of Jonathan Livingston Seagull—the first edition to include the fourth and final part of the story. In this quotation, he communicates his book's overarching message to his readers: that doctrine, spiritual or religious, will—when misinterpreted—"kill" the very freedom it seeks to engender. - Climax: Jonathan Livingston Seagull departs earth and ascends to heaven, leaving his disciple Fletcher to spread his teachings regarding flight, truth, and individuality throughout the members of a reluctant Flock of gulls. - Summary: Jonathan Livingston Seagull is different from the other birds in his Flock. Most gulls only know the "simplest facts of flight," and use flight as a utilitarian mode of transportation and as a way to get food. Jonathan, however, loves practicing airborne acrobatics and testing the limits of his speed and form. He struggles with being different—he is sad to disappoint his parents, and he briefly considers trying hard to be just another member of the Flock. After he experiences a breakthrough in flight, though, and successfully executes a complicated dive from a height of five thousand feet, he is more determined than ever to devote his life to studying flight. That night, when Jonathan rejoins his Flock up on the beach, he is called into the center of a Council meeting and singled out for Shame by the Elder Gull before being Outcast and banished to the distant Far Cliffs. Jonathan had hoped to share his new flight methods with the Flock, and show them how different methods of flight would make it even easier to find fruitful food sources in the ocean, but resignedly accepts that he will be a loner for the rest of his life. After many years pass, Jonathan has lived a long but solitary life. He is flanked in flight one evening by two gleaming gulls who invite him to ascend with them to a higher plane of existence. Up in what he believes to be heaven, Jonathan finds that his body gleams in the moonlight, too—his new body flies more surely than his old body ever did, and with half the effort, though it still does have some limits. In this new world, there are a handful of gulls who believe the same things Jonathan does, and long to perfect their innovative methods of flight. Jonathan trains with an instructor named Sullivan, who admires Jonathan's skill, speed, and self-possession, and tells Jonathan he is the best pupil he's ever had. In his conversations with the Elder Gull of this new Flock, Chiang, Jonathan learns that there are ways to transcend even the physical limits of his body, if only he comes to realize that perfection comes from being present in the understanding that his true nature lives "everywhere at once across space and time." Eventually, Jonathan masters instantaneous teleportation, impressing even Chiang and becoming Chiang's special pupil. As Jonathan learns more and more, he cannot stop thinking about the world he left behind on earth—he longs to return and teach the gulls the truths he has learned in this new realm. Jonathan returns to earth and approaches a recently Outcast gull from his own Flock named Fletcher Lynd Seagull—admiring Fletcher's flight, Jonathan offers to take Fletcher on as a pupil on the condition that one day they will return to their Flock and spread the things they have learned together. Fletcher agrees, and the two begin lessons. After three months, Jonathan has amassed a small group of six special pupils, whom he trains in flight techniques and mental exercises to help them break the chains of their bodies. One day, Jonathan tells his students that the time has come to return to their Flock and share their knowledge. His students are doubtful, but agree nonetheless to follow him back to their old shore. The Flock shuns Jonathan and his pupils as they demonstrate their feats of flight over the water just beyond the shore, but slowly, some curious gulls from the Flock begin approaching Jonathan and his group and asking to learn to fly. Even the nervous Terrence Lowell Gull and the lame Kirk Maynard Gull exhibit bravery in joining Jonathan's group, and soon hundreds and hundreds of gulls gather every day to listen to Jonathan's musings on the glory of freedom and the rituals, superstitions, and limitations that stand in the way of true freedom. Jonathan is soon rumored to be a Divine bird—perhaps even the Son of the Great Gull himself, though Jonathan laments the fact that the others cannot simply see him as one of them. After Fletcher crashes into a cliff and has a near-death experience, which he returns to life from, the others begin to hail Fletcher, too, as a Divine gull. Jonathan tells Fletcher that it is time for him to ascend, and leave Fletcher behind to continue his legacy. Though Fletcher begs Jonathan to stay, Jonathan begins to shimmer, and then ascends into the sky. Fletcher, distraught but determined to carry on Jonathan's teachings, assumes his new role as instructor of Jonathan's old pupils. In the years following Jonathan's departure from earth, Fletcher and his new Flock of pupils travel up and down the coastline, spreading their messages to new Flocks, and as more and more gulls take up Jonathan's message, a golden age of flight and innovation commences. Fletcher becomes an icon in his own right, though Jonathan, in his absence, has become downright holy. As Jonathan's adherents grow in numbers, they begin ignoring his original teachings and focusing on the hagiography of Jonathan and his original pupils. As Jonathan's original students begin to die, their graves become shrines where devotees drop pebbles in order to seem more holy. Groups gather weekly to obsessively recount the miracles of Jonathan's making, but after two centuries, hardly any flying is done any more, and Jonathan's teachings are only discussed in the abstract. Many gulls begin to resist these rituals and sermons, and in trying something "new" by practicing flying, actually end up circling back to Jonathan's original desire for his Flock, and for all others—expanding the self through pushing one's physical limitations in flight. A young gull called Anthony Seagull feels he is surrounded by hypocrisy and empty ritual, and seeks to end his life by dive-bombing out of the sky. On the way down to the water, though, he is approached by a gleaming gull who compliments him on his style and form. When Anthony asks the gull his name, the gull introduces himself as "Jon."

- Genre: Parody, Satire, Picaresque - Title: Joseph Andrews - Point of view: First Person - Setting: London and a parish in rural England - Character: Joseph Andrews. Description: Joseph Andrews is a young man from a relatively humble background who has a famous sister named Pamela, whose life is the subject of a well-known biography that demonstrates the rewards of virtue. Later, Joseph learns that Pamela isn't his biological sister and that his real father is a gentleman named Wilson—who lost Joseph at a young age but remembers the strawberry mark on Joseph's chest. Joseph is handsome and capable, earning the attention of the noble Sir Thomas Booby, then later Thomas's wife, Lady Booby, who decides to make Joseph her footman. Joseph tends to be naïve, and after the death of Sir Thomas Booby, it takes him a while to realize that Lady Booby is trying to seduce him. When Joseph rejects her advances, Lady Booby uses rumors spread by her servant Mrs. Slipslop as an excuse to fire Joseph, causing Joseph to leave her house in London and go back to the country where the main Booby residence is located. There, Joseph hopes to reunite with his longtime love, Fanny, who is a poor former chambermaid but who is beautiful and virtuous. Along the way, Joseph meets up with his old friend parson Abraham Adams, who travels with Joseph for most of the book. Joseph's journey home is full of comical mistakes and misunderstandings, with the honest and loyal Joseph often getting taken advantage of by the more hypocritical characters around him. Nevertheless, Joseph doesn't give up, and ultimately his persistence pays off with him getting to marry Fanny and live together happily. - Character: Abraham Adams. Description: Adams is a parson who supports his wife, Mrs. Adams, and six children on a very small salary—it's later revealed that this is only possible because of the extensive "loans" that Adams receives from others. Adams runs into Joseph when Adams is on his way to London to sell some books of his sermons, but he has to turn back because his wife replaced his sermon books with shirts. Adams is bookish and carries around a copy of the works of the Greek playwright Aeschylus, although his knowledge also has important gaps. Fittingly for a man who intends to publish so many sermons, Adams likes to give lectures to the people around him, but in spite of being a generally kind man who cares for Joseph and Joseph's love, Fanny, Adams often fails to live up to the high ideals he preaches. Perhaps the most notable moment of Adams's hypocrisy is when he gives Joseph a long lecture on the necessity of accepting God's will with stoicism, only to be interrupted by the news that his youngest son, Dick, has drowned, causing him to go into a wild fit of grief. He learns just minutes later that Dick is fine and is equally excessive in his happiness. Adams overindulges and fails to live up to the high standards that he preaches. At the same time, however, Adams has positive qualities and ultimately helps bring Joseph and Fanny together. - Character: Fanny (Frances Goodwill). Description: Fanny is a former chambermaid of Sir Thomas Booby and Lady Booby who has known Joseph Andrews since childhood and is in love with him. In many ways, her story mirrors that of Joseph's sister Pamela, who was also a chambermaid who acted chastely and who earned the affection of the noble Squire Booby. (At the end of the book, it's revealed that Pamela is actually Fanny's biological sister, not Joseph's.) Joseph spends the beginning part of the story searching for Fanny, until his friend and traveling companion parson Abraham Adams happens to find her by accident. They continue to travel together until they reach their destination, where, after a series of setbacks and reversals, they ultimately get married and live happily ever after. Franny isn't thin or delicate, and she has blemishes that make it clear that she isn't from the upper class. Men on the road often try to attack her, although each time, Fanny is saved at the last minute. Fanny is also virtuous and frequently proves herself to be kinder and more loyal than characters in higher social classes. Although it's revealed at the end of the story that Fanny is not as poor as everyone thought she was (her birth parents being Gaffar and Gammar Andrews), Fanny nevertheless represents how goodness isn't connected to social class and how virtue can be even better than nobility. - Character: Lady Booby. Description: Lady Booby is Sir Thomas Booby's wealthy and slightly eccentric wife. She takes an early interest in a boy Thomas hires named Joseph Andrews, deciding to make him her personal footman. But when Thomas dies suddenly, leaving Lady Booby as a widow with a fortune, she wastes little time in pursuing Joseph romantically. Joseph rejects Lady Booby's advances, and so she finds a pretext to fire him. Even after firing Joseph, however, Lady Booby can't stop thinking about him. When she finds out that Joseph is planning to marry a woman named Fanny, Lady Booby does everything she can to intervene in the wedding, but despite some early success, she can't stop the marriage. Despite all of Lady Booby's manipulating, she gets a somewhat happy ending, finding a captain in London who makes her forget all about Joseph. Lady Booby represents the selfishness of the wealthy and how they don't account for the feelings of other people around them. - Character: The Pedlar. Description: The pedlar is a seemingly minor character who ends up playing a large role near the end of the novel. He first appears at an inn to lend Abraham Adams money to pay off his debt he owes at an inn, even though the pedlar himself is very poor. Later, he happens by chance to save Adams's son Dick from drowning. He then tells a story that helps everyone realize that Joseph Andrews is actually the son of Mr. Wilson, and that Fanny is actually the daughter of Gaffar and Gammar. This raises both Joseph's and Fanny's social statuses, paving the way for their marriage. The pedlar represents how the poorest people are often the most generous, while also perhaps providing a parody of contrived plot twists where characters suddenly receive a great fortune. - Character: Pamela Andrews. Description: Pamela is a character who first appeared in the novel Pamela by Samuel Richardson. She is famous everywhere for her virtue. Joseph Andrews believes that Pamela is his biological sister, and his own chaste, determined behavior makes him similar to Pamela in many ways (although Joseph's adventures tend to have more absurdity to them). Although the narrator mentions Pamela's virtue many times, the praise she receives is so excessive that it suggests her behavior may be an act, rather an example of model behavior. - Character: Wilson. Description: Wilson is a plain-looking man that Joseph Andrews, Abraham Adams, and Fanny meet after sheep-stealers scare them off the road and they all take refuge at Wilson's house. Wilson appears to be a minor character at first, giving an unusually long monologue about his past, which involved living a life of hedonism and womanizing in the London theater world before ultimately meeting his wife, Harriet, and settling down. After his marriage, Wilson's eldest son was mysteriously stolen away from him, although Wilson remembers his son's strawberry mark on his chest. As it turns out, Joseph is actually Wilson's son, although this isn't revealed until the very end of the story, right before Joseph's marriage to Fanny. After Joseph and Fanny's marriage, they go to live happily with Wilson and Harriet. Wilson provides a contrast with Lady Booby, providing an example of a higher-class character who is more honest about his flaws, and who shows that not all virtuous characters need to have made lifelong commitments to chastity. - Character: The Narrator. Description: Although the narrator may seem invisible for large portions of the story, their commentary plays an important role in setting the tone of the novel. The narrator is most prominent at the beginning of each book and near the very beginning and end of chapters, where they sometimes go on philosophical tangents related to the story's themes. The narrator almost always praises nobility and describes upper-class characters as virtuous, even though they often tell the story in a way that highlights the hypocrisy of this seeming virtue. The narrator often uses heightened language, for example, describing a battle between Joseph Andrews and some hunting dogs as if it were a scene in an epic poem. This mock-epic tone carries throughout the whole book and sometimes highlights the ridiculousness of the events while at other times giving mundane events an added dignity. - Character: Mrs. Slipslop. Description: Mrs. Slipslop is a woman in her 40s who serves Lady Booby, but who nevertheless maintains such a high opinion of herself that she looks down on other servants. Because she is past menopause, she is not afraid of getting pregnant if she has sex with men, and she's particularly aggressive towards Joseph Andrews. Although Mrs. Slipslop schemes to get closer to Joseph, her plots usually work against her, driving him even farther away. - Character: Squire Booby. Description: Squire Booby is Lady Booby's nephew and he later marries Pamela. He originally comes from Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela (although there he is referred to as Mr. B— or the Squire). Squire Booby becomes a key figure in Lady Booby's plot to break up Joseph Andrews's and Fanny's upcoming marriage, although ultimately, he supports the wedding. - Character: Gaffar and Gammar Andrews. Description: Gaffar and Gammar are the parents of Joseph Andrews and Pamela Andrews (although it is revealed at the end that Joseph and Fanny were switched at a young age, meaning Fanny is actually their biological child and Joseph isn't). Their social class, while not at the top, is important because the revelation that Fanny is actually their daughter helps convince other characters that she is a worthy match for Joseph (in part since their other daughter Pamela was a worthy match for Squire Booby). - Character: Beau Didapper. Description: Beau Didapper is a distant relation of Lady Booby who sees Fanny on the road and immediately decides to attempt to rape her. He is of noble blood but doesn't have an impressive appearance, standing only about four-and-a-half feet tall. He is yet another character who demonstrates the selfishness and lack of morals among the nobility. - Character: Leonora. Description: Leonora is the protagonist of a story-within-the-story that a woman tells in a coach. She is vain and dumps her lover Horatio when she has a chance to woo the seemingly even nobler lover Bellarmine. Bellarmine, however, isn't as rich as he appears, and he rejects Leonora after her father's marriage proposal is too stingy. Leonora shows the dangers of superficial thinking. - Character: Betty. Description: Betty is the maid at the inn where Joseph Andrews is taken after he is gravely injured during a robbery on the road. When her boss, Mr. Tow-wouse, refuses to help Joseph, Betty often takes it upon herself to do something, demonstrating how sometimes people without significant means are nevertheless more generous than richer people. - Character: Harriet. Description: Harriet is Wilson's wife and Joseph Andrews's mother (although this isn't revealed until near the end of the book). When Wilson gives a winning lottery ticket to one of Harriet's relatives, Harriet sends a small portion of the money back to him. Wilson decides to woo her to get the rest of the money, and it ultimately leads to a long-lasting marriage. - Character: Mr. Barnabas. Description: Mr. Barnabas is a clergyman who has supposedly come to Mr. Tow-wouse's inn in order to give last rites to the gravely injured Joseph Andrews, but he seems more interested in enjoying Mr. Tow-wouse and Mrs. Tow-wouse's hospitality, putting off his visit to Joseph as long as he can. Mr. Barnabas is just one of many religious characters in the story who seems to enjoy earthly pleasures more than his faith indicates he should. - Character: Mr. Tow-wouse. Description: Mr. Tow-wouse runs the inn where Joseph Andrews is taken to recover after he's robbed on the road and seriously injured. Mr. Tow-wouse is a selfish man whose main concern is how Joseph is so inconvenient for him and his inn. He also harasses his maid Betty behind his wife, Mrs. Tow-wouse's, back. - Character: The Squire. Description: Many characters harass Fanny on the road, but there is one squire who shows particular persistence in trying to kidnap her, sending many servants (including his captain) out to do the job. He owns some hunting dogs that attack Joseph Andrews and Abraham Adams, but he calls off the dogs and invites both men to dinner. Though he seems hospitable, it's mostly all a ruse to get closer to Fanny—though in the end, he gets caught and his efforts fail. - Theme: Hypocrisy. Description: Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews is full of characters who act one way on the surface—but who are often very different on the inside. The novel is a comedy, with most of the humor coming from satire, where the characters' flaws are exposed for humor and as a commentary on how people act in the real world. Perhaps the most important character for setting the satirical tone is the narrator, who maintains a sarcastic style throughout the story. The narrator rarely calls the characters hypocrites directly, but he often presents information in a way that highlights how a character's outward appearance differs from their true nature. The main character, Joseph Andrews, is not himself particularly hypocritical: his love for Fanny is simple and direct. By contrast, many of the characters that Joseph meets on his travels have hidden motivations, making for a humorous contrast with the naïve Joseph. Parson Abraham Adams, for example, is one of Joseph's companions, and he constantly fails to live up to his own ideals. While he fancies himself a man with a well-rounded education, he seems to have wide gaps in his knowledge, and so he keeps returning to familiar subjects like the Greek playwright Aeschylus to hide how many things he doesn't know. Another hypocrite is the landlord Mr. Tow-wouse, who pretends to be a good host—but who is so inconsiderate that his maid Betty has to do many parts of his job for him, all while Mr. Tow-wouse harasses her. Even the famously virtuous Pamela reveals a hypocritical side when she advises Joseph not to marry a former chambermaid (even though Pamela herself is a former chambermaid who married a gentleman). In Joseph Andrews, Fielding explores how people deceive themselves and others, making fun of this tendency and suggesting that perhaps these deceptions aren't so effective after all. - Theme: Lust vs. Chastity. Description: Henry Fielding's short novel Joseph Andrews is in part a parody of a longer novel called Pamela, published by Samuel Richardson just two years earlier in 1740. The novel's protagonist, Pamela, faces many hardships and threats to her chastity. Ultimately, however, as the title of the book makes plain, she is rewarded for her virtue, affirming the value of chastity and providing a clear lesson to the book's audience. Unlike Pamela, however, in which Pamela also appears, Joseph Andrews does not necessarily give the audience a straightforward moral lesson about chastity and lust. Still Joseph Andrews generally portrays chaste (and happily married) characters more positively than lustful ones.  The title character, Joseph Andrews, is just as chaste as his famous sister Pamela was before she got married, and his loyalty to his eventual wife Fanny is sincere. This makes Joseph one of the most honest characters in the story. On the other hand, lustful characters often have other prominent flaws that make them less positive characters. Lady Booby, for example, is so blind with lust for Joseph that she tries to sabotage his marriage to Fanny for purely selfish reasons. The equally lusty Mrs. Slipslop helps Lady Booby, trying to selfishly claim Joseph for herself. Nevertheless, the characters in the novel don't always fit into a black-and-white system of morality. For example, the virtuous Pamela and her husband, Squire Booby, are arguably too supportive of chastity, nearly stopping Joseph's well-suited marriage to Fanny. Furthermore, Lady Booby faces few consequences for her actions—at the end of the novel, she simply finds another man who helps her forget all about Joseph. Ultimately, Fielding's Joseph Andrews doesn't totally reject traditional moral teachings about lust and chastity, but it does complicate the issue, suggesting that it's possible to be too morally upright—and also that  not all villains get punished. - Theme: Social Class. Description: Social class is an important issue for all of the characters in Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews. As the lawyer Scout notes, the wealthy upper classes in England are above the law—but the law can be bent to do just about anything to the poor. Additionally, society expects people to marry within their own social classes, and characters are often willing to go to great lengths when given the rare opportunity to improve their own class. For example, in a story-within-the-story, the young lady Leonora abandons her faithful lover Horatio for a chance to match with a seemingly even higher-class man named Bellarmine.  This ends disastrously for her, with Bellarmine rejecting Leonora after her father's marriage offer is too stingy for him, highlighting the dangers of trying to challenge the rigid social order. Despite what the characters themselves might believe, however, the novel makes it clear that having a higher social status doesn't make a person more virtuous—in fact, it's usually the opposite. The ending of the novel revolves around Joseph Andrews's determination to marry Fanny, despite her lack of money and lower social class. Almost everyone agrees that Fanny is a beautiful and virtuous woman, but many characters can't accept that a person of her social status could ever be a worthwhile wife. Ultimately, the matter is resolved not by characters facing their prejudices but through a comically contrived series of events that reveals that Fanny is from a higher social class than she originally thought. Although nothing about her has changed, many like the upper-class Squire Booby now drop their objections to the marriage, showing how flimsy the foundations of the whole class system can be. In Joseph Andrews, Fielding simultaneously depicts how central social class was to life in 18th-century England while also ridiculing the system and showing its flaws and limitations. - Theme: Religion and Charity. Description: Aside from Joseph Andrews himself, the most prominent character in Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews is a parson by the name of Abraham Adams. Adams is a complicated character; on one hand, he can seem hypocritically selfish, pretending to act like a charitable man when he's actually living on the charity of others. Adams eats and drinks a lot but rarely has the money to pay his bills and so must rely on "loans" from acquaintances that he seems unlikely to pay back. The reader may interpret Adams's personal behavior could as a parody of how many churches preach charity while relying on donations from members (and sometimes abusing these donations). But while many aspects of Adams's character seem to critique the hypocrisy of organized religion, Adams also has positive qualities—in particular, his loyalty to looking out for the welfare of Joseph and Fanny. While Adams is the most prominent example of a character who hypocritically preaches charity, many other righteous characters in the story also preach the benefits of generosity while failing to practice them in daily life. The parson Trulliber, who eats constantly without showing appreciation for his wife's cooking, is another religious man who talks about charity but doesn't demonstrate it. Another gentleman that Adams meets on the road outdoes Adams at his own game, promising Adams extensive hospitality at his home—only to then come up with an excuse to back out of his promises at the last minute. Notably, the pedlar, who is poor and has no religious education to speak of, is the most generous character in the story, lending Adams some money, and later going out of his way to save the life of Adams's son, Dick. In Joseph Andrews, Fielding explores the difference between how religious people claim to be and the degree to which they actually embody Christian values, suggesting that virtues like charity are more often praised than practiced. - Climax: Joseph marries Fanny. - Summary: The narrator of the story introduces Joseph Andrews, who is the brother of a famously virtuous woman named Pamela. Joseph is a capable, handsome boy who ends up tending animals for Sir Thomas Booby. There, he attracts the attention of Lady Booby, who makes Joseph her footman. When he's a little older, he travels with Lady Booby to London, where, after Thomas Booby's death, she tries to seduce Joseph. Joseph, however, remains committed to chastity, just like his famous sister. This annoys Lady Booby, and when her scheming maid Lady Slipslop tells lies about Joseph being a scoundrel, she uses it as an excuse to fire Joseph. Joseph heads back from London to the country, hoping to see his longtime love Fanny. She used to be a chambermaid for the Booby family, but Joseph hasn't seen her for a year. On his way back, however, Joseph is mugged and robbed of everything, even his clothes. He suffers serious injuries and ends up at the inn of Mr. Tow-wouse, where everyone believes that Joseph will soon die. Only the kind chambermaid Betty gives Joseph any aid. Joseph does eventually recover, however, and at the inn he happens to run into his old friend Abraham Adams, a bookish parson who always carries around a copy of the works of Aeschylus. Abraham Adams hopes to sell some books of his sermons in London, but as he checks his bag, he realizes that his wife, Mrs. Adams, replaced several of his books in his bag with shirts. He decides to go back to fetch his sermons, which means that he and Joseph will be traveling in the same direction. They travel together, sometimes by coach, and in one coach they hear the long story of a young woman named Leonora whose lover rejected her. At one point, Adams gets distracted and goes off on a long walk on his own. He happens to hear the shouting of a woman being attacked, so he rushes to fend off her attacker. It turns out this woman is Fanny—the very woman that Joseph was looking for. Adams takes Fanny back to a local inn, where Joseph and Fanny are joyfully reunited. The next day, Adams struggles to pay their bill at the inn, but he finally manages to get a loan from a poor pedlar. After leaving the inn, Adams, Joseph, and Fanny are in a field one night when they hear voices that they believe are murderous ghosts (which actually turn out to be people trying to steal sheep). The three run off and find themselves staying with Wilson. Wilson is a gentleman who tells a long story about how he used to be a rake who wrote plays, womanized around London, and got thrown in jail for debts. Eventually, however, he married a woman named Harriet and has been happy ever since, except for the fact that he has a son with a strawberry mark on his chest who was stolen from him at a young age. After more traveling, Joseph, Adams, and Fanny finally make it back to their home parish. Lady Booby has also returned from London, having passed them along the way. Joseph is eager to finally marry Fanny, but Lady Booby still pines for Joseph, and so she concocts a plan to prevent them from marrying. She goes to Justice Frolick and arranges for Joseph and Fanny to be sent to prison over stealing a twig, but her nephew, Squire Booby, knows the justice and prevents this. This is because his new wife, Pamela, is Joseph's sister, so Joseph is part of his family. Lady Booby tries a new approach, asking Squire Booby and Pamela to convince Joseph that Fanny isn't of a high enough social class for him, but Joseph isn't convinced. Around the same time, the evil Beau Didapper tries to rape Fanny, increasing Joseph's eagerness to get married as soon as possible so he can protect Fanny. The poor pedlar from Joseph, Fanny, and Adams's journey home makes a surprising reappearance when he saves Adams's son Dick from drowning. He has even more shocking news to share with everyone: he knows that Fanny's real parents are Gaffar and Gammar Andrews, meaning that she is Joseph's sister, and the wedding must be called off. The pedlar's story causes confusion and temporarily stops the wedding. But as Gammar Andrews reveals after she arrives, Joseph is not actually her biological son. As it turns out, Joseph is actually Wilson's stolen son; he was swapped in the cradle with Fanny by a fortune-teller visiting Gammar. Wilson himself arrives to confirm this, and Joseph reveals that he has a strawberry mark on his chest, just like Wilson's lost child. The wedding is back on, with Adams conducting the ceremony. Joseph and Fanny live together happily with Joseph's parents, and Fanny is soon pregnant. Meanwhile, Lady Booby goes back to London and takes up with a young captain who makes her forget all about Joseph.

- Genre: Science Fiction - Title: Journey to the Center of the Earth - Point of view: First Person - Setting: 1863 in Germany, Iceland, and a series of subterranean tunnels - Character: Axel. Description: - Character: Professor Otto Lidenbrock. Description: - Character: Hans Bjelke. Description: - Character: Arne Saknussemm. Description: - Character: Gräuben. Description: - Character: Martha. Description: - Theme: Science and Discovery. Description: - Theme: Maturity and Independence. Description: - Theme: Intuition vs. Evidence. Description: - Theme: Nature vs. Civilization. Description: - Theme: Adventure. Description: - Climax: Axel, Lidenbrock, and Hans create an abyss with a violent explosion that sends their raft into a waterspout. - Summary: In May 1863, Axel lives in Hamburg, Germany with his uncle, Professor Otto Lidenbrock, who is an eccentric geologist. Lidenbrock shows Axel an old Icelandic book, and a piece of parchment falls out with a coded message written in runes. Lidenbrock becomes obsessed with deciphering the message until Axel stumbles upon the solution by chance. The message is from Arne Saknussemm, a 16th-century Icelandic alchemist, and describes how he traveled to the center of the earth. Lidenbrock is eager to follow Saknussemm's instructions to the center of the earth, but Axel has no desire to join his uncle on this dangerous adventure. Lidenbrock believes that the earth's core is not a burning core of fusion, as is commonly accepted, and he hopes that this journey will prove his theory. Axel, though, does believe in a burning core, and he sees the journey as almost certainly fatal. However, he agrees to accompany his uncle when his fiancée, Gräuben, suggests that the expedition might help Axel grow more independent from his uncle. Lidenbrock and Axel travel to Iceland, where Saknussemm's instructions begin. They hire Hans Bjelke, an Icelandic eider-duck hunter, to guide them on the expedition. The three men then travel to the Icelandic volcano Snäffel. They travel down a volcanic chimney and enter a series of subterranean tunnels. Both Axel and Lidenbrock find evidence for their respective theories regarding the earth's core. Two days into the journey, Lidenbrock leads the men down the wrong path and refuses to admit his error. They run out of water, and on the way back along the path, Axel faints from dehydration. He begs Lidenbrock to call off the expedition, but Lidenbrock refuses. They continue walking and hear a subterranean spring in the walls. Hans breaks through the wall with a pickaxe, allowing them access to a spring they name the Hansbach in his honor. They follow the Hansbach further down into the earth. Axel loses his way and becomes separated from Hans and Lidenbrock for several days. By the time he reunites with them, Hans and Lidenbrock have discovered a massive underground cavern that contains a forest, ocean, and clouds. It is lit by a "continuous aurora borealis." Hans builds the men a raft, and they embark across the ocean. As they sail, they witness a plesiosaurus and an ichthyosaurus (prehistoric marine reptiles) fighting each other amid the waves. A few days into the journey, a hurricane destroys the raft and sends the men back to the shore they set off from. Along the coast, Lidenbrock and Axel discover a collection of fossilized dinosaur bones from the tertiary period, and they discover human bones among them. They continue walking and see a giant man herding a flock of mastodons and mammoths. Lidenbrock and Axel leave without disturbing the giant and find a tunnel marked with Arne Saknussemm's initials. Axel is excited to find proof that they are on Saknussemm's path, and he suggests blowing up the rocks that obstruct the tunnel. When they do, the sea rushes into the tunnel to fill the space, pulling the men and their raft down into a seemingly endless abyss. As they fall, the men lose their provisions, leaving them without food. The raft falls into a waterspout that pushes it upwards. As the raft continues to rise, the men realize they are inside a volcanic chimney. The volcano expels them, and the men find themselves on Stromboli, a volcanic island off the coast of Sicily. After this adventure, Hans returns to Iceland, while Lidenbrock and Axel return to Germany. Lidenbrock achieves glory and esteem in the scientific community, while Axel happily marries Gräuben.

- Genre: Fiction, Māori Literature - Title: Journey - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: An unnamed city in New Zealand - Character: The Narrator. Description: The unnamed 71-year-old Māori narrator is the protagonist of "Journey." He is the oldest living member of his family, which consists of himself, his 11 nieces and nephews, and their families. On his trip into the city to meet with officials about his family's land, the narrator reflects on the ways development has changed so much about the area he has lived in since childhood: he does not like how Pakeha-led construction projects hurt the land and disrespect the ancestors, yet he also recognizes the necessity of houses. His thoughts reveal his intimate relationship with the land, as it has provided him with sustenance ever since he was a child helping out in the family's garden. The narrator's emotional arc throughout the story also demonstrates the pain of land loss and colonization. He displays self-confidence and pride on his way into the city, as he is confident his meeting will go well, and he resents his family for the way they fuss over his age. When he meets with the city planner, he keeps his pride, but loses his confidence, as he realizes the extent of the city's anti-Māori racism and its repercussions for his family's future on the land. The narrator's violence towards the city planner, when he kicks the man's desk, represents Māori resistance, as the narrator feels that he has kept his dignity intact as he leaves. But when he returns home to his family, it is clear that his inability to assure his family's collective survival on the land pains him greatly. He isolates himself in his room feeling powerless and ashamed: whereas his "old man" sustained the family by gardening on the land, now he can't even assure the safety of his own bones after his death. - Character: The City Planner. Description: The city planner is the story's main antagonist, representing the forces of colonization that the narrator faces. Going into the meeting, the city planner has the same agenda as many other New Zealand government officials before him: that is, he wants to gain control of Māori-owned land. The power difference between the narrator and the city planner is clear in the beginning of the story, as the narrator, despite being elderly, must take an entire day to travel all the way into the city in inclement weather to meet the official in his office. Additionally, the city planner speaks in a bureaucratic tone that is very different from the narrator's conversational tone and immediately begins condescending to the narrator. He becomes increasingly rude throughout the conversation, suggesting that because the narrator will be dead, what happens to his land should not matter to him, and ultimately telling the narrator that having a Māori family living on the land will decrease land value. This personal prejudice against the narrator's Māori identity is reinforced by institutionalized racism, as the city's racist zoning laws prevent the family from subdividing their land. Furthermore, it is clear that the narrator does not know the city planner's name, or does not feel comfortable enough with him to use it, as the reader learns that the city planner is called Paul only when the narrator kicks his desk and is forced to leave. The city planner therefore represents the forces of colonization threatening the Māori population of New Zealand. - Character: George. Description: George is a younger relative of the narrator, who would often run away from his home when he was a child and stay for weeks at the narrator's house without speaking. He now lives in the city, and although the family misses him deeply, they do not visit with him often. The family believes that he is unemployed and belongs to a gang. On the train, the narrator looks forward to running into George in the railway station in the city, as George is often there. But when he does see George, they sit together without talking. George functions in the story as an embodiment of the family's pain and trauma, his silence resonating with the narrator's own pained silence at the end of the story. Yet George also serves as a symbol of resistance and refusal. He resisted containment even as a child, and as an adult, he still refuses to conform to white society's standards. This combination of pain and refusal again resonates with the narrator's character, as the narrator resists the city planner's racism by kicking his desk, but hurts his own foot in the process. - Character: The Taxi Driver. Description: The taxi driver is a friend of the family who regularly drives the narrator and his family members around town. He has a wife and children. He expresses care for the narrator by making friendly conversation with him, turning on the heater to keep him warm, and driving the narrator to his door instead of dropping him off at the bottom of the driveway. In turn, the narrator also shows neighborly care to the taxi driver, offering to give him some vegetables from his garden. This caring relationship shows how the narrator's family is integrated into their community, further emphasizing their connection to a specific place. - Theme: Modernization and Colonial Violence. Description: "Journey" follows the thoughts of a 71-year-old Māori man as he reckons with the modern development projects that white New Zealanders are bringing to the area where his family has lived for generations. The story occurs over the course of one day, as the narrator travels into the city to meet with planners about the future of the land his family owns. At the beginning of the trip, the narrator's observations suggest that modern development has brought economic improvement to the area. However, the narrator's memories of the landscape soon reveal that modernization is actually a continuation of white New Zealanders' historic violence towards Māori land and communities. His meeting with the city planners confirms this conclusion, as the officials make thinly veiled racist remarks and threaten him with violence, and he ultimately leaves powerless to change the city's plans to turn his land into a parking lot. "Journey" therefore argues that "colonization," meaning the theft and occupation of Indigenous lands, did not end when New Zealand stopped being a British colony. Rather, colonization continues into the modern day. At the beginning of the narrator's trip into the city, the narrator's observations allude to the fact that modern development has brought economic improvement to the area. As the narrator is leaving in the taxi, he notes that the shops in his town are "doing all right these days, not like before." Here, the narrator remembers a time when the shops, and by extension the town's entire economy, were doing worse than they are in the present. The narrator speaks to just how much worse the economy was in the past when he enters the railroad station in the city and remembers that the station used to be crowded with starving people, who came there "to do their dying." In this memory, he is describing a time of economic depression so intense that many people in the area starved to death. The fact that people can now afford to support the butcher and fruit shops in his town indicates that the area's economy has improved drastically from those "hard times." Modern development seems to have had a large role in causing this economic improvement. Throughout his train ride into the city, the narrator observes a landscape that is undergoing rapid change, as the train passes many new houses and ongoing construction projects. Although he disapproves of these changes because they alter the landscape, he reasons that they are meeting many people's basic needs for shelter, food, and transportation. He admits that "people [have] to have houses, [have] to eat, [have] to get from here to there." However, other details of the story suggest that the narrator has good reason to distrust the modernizing changes that have occurred in his area. Namely, through modernization, white New Zealanders have continued the colonial violence they began when they first settled the island, destroying Māori land and attempting to erase Māori communities. When Europeans began colonizing New Zealand in the 1800s, they occupied Māori land, often using violence and coercion to build European settlements and extract resources. Although New Zealand is no longer a colony, the Māori narrator's experience of modernization demonstrates that this colonial violence is still ongoing in the modern day. For example, the train passes over a strip of land that used to be sea. Here, the narrator remembers harvesting pipis, a shellfish that is an important food source for the Māori people, before white New Zealanders filled this part of the harbor with land in order to make room for more cars. Long after the end of New Zealand's colonial period, white New Zealanders are continuing to expand their access to traditional Māori lands and waters, preventing Māori people from engaging in culturally important practices in that area. The violence of these modernizing projects is clear in the narrator's descriptions. As the train passes more construction projects, the narrator describes the construction machines "slicing the hills away." When it rains, "the cuts will bleed for miles and the valleys will drown in blood." With these violent verbs, the narrator implies that white New Zealanders continue to control the island through violence, just as they did historically.  The same colonial violence is on display during the narrator's meeting, when the city planners use anti-Māori racism and violent threats to prevent the narrator from defending his land against development. At the narrator's insistence that his family live on their land together, the city planner responds that "you people all living in the same area [...] immediately brings down the value of your land." Even though he is using the modern, respectful language of a bureaucrat, his racism towards Māori people is clear: he thinks of the Māori with the dehumanizing phrase, "you people." Furthermore, this position reveals the racism of the entire real estate system: the land's value will decrease because white New Zealanders do not want a visible Māori presence on the land. In this way, the city planner demonstrates that, despite white New Zealanders' attempts to appear respectful of the Māori, they are still attempting to erase Māori communities. Finally, after the narrator damages the official's desk out of frustration at this overt racism, all three of the officials in the office threaten him with violence, suggesting that he should be institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital. The narrator returns home in defeat, unable to prevent the city from taking his land. Just like their colonial forefathers, the city planners use the threat of violence to appropriate Māori land and break up Māori families. "Journey" complicates the idea of modernization in New Zealand. While modernization may have brought economic improvement compared to the recent past, it also perpetuates a longer history of colonization. By showing how white New Zealanders continue to steal land from the Māori through modernizing projects, Patricia Grace suggests that colonial violence did not end in the 1800s. Rather, colonial land theft is an ongoing process that continues to define New Zealand's society in the present day. - Theme: Land and Culture. Description: In "Journey," Patricia Grace depicts two very different cultural relationships to land. As the narrator travels into the city from the land where his family has lived for generations, he observes how white New Zealanders treat land: they see it as a resource to exploit for profit. By contrast, informed by his Māori traditions, the narrator sees land as a living entity that has the capacity to care and be cared for. These two cultural traditions clash when the narrator meets with city officials who plan to appropriate his land for a future development project. At the end of this meeting, it is clear that the narrator will not be able to prevent the city from taking the land away from his family. Even the government's proposal to compensate the narrator by giving him land of "equal value" speaks to this different ethos about land: to the government it is just a resource, while to the narrator there can be no land "equal" to his own land, because his family has built a relationship with that particular piece of land over generations. By depicting the narrator's deep anguish and alienation at the loss of his land, the story speaks to the psychological cost of land dispossession for the Māori people. As the narrator rides the train into the city, he observes how white New Zealanders exploit land as a resource for profit. As the train passes over an area of land that used to be sea, the narrator remembers that white New Zealanders constructed this land by "[pushing] a hill down over it and [shooting] the railway line across to make more room for cars." The violence of the words "pushing" and "shooting" suggests the white New Zealanders' disrespect for the land, as they treat it as an object they can manipulate according to their desires. When the train passes active construction projects, the narrator observes this exploitative relationship with land again. In order to expand development, and therefore bring profit to the area, the white New Zealanders "chop up everything [...] couldn't go round, only through. Couldn't give life, only death." In doing so, they hurt the land, causing it to erode and "bleed for miles." Again, the white New Zealanders treat the land as an object they can manipulate for profit, remaining oblivious to the "death" and "bleeding[]" their exploitation causes. By contrast, the narrator, informed by his Māori traditions, sees land as a living entity that has the capacity to care and be cared for. In criticizing the white New Zealanders' relationship with the land, the narrator reveals the Māori philosophy, remarking, "couldn't talk to a hill or tree these people, couldn't give the trees or the hills a name and make them special and leave them." This observation implies that Māori tradition personifies the landscape: far from being an exploited object, the land's individual hills and trees are unique beings that can be talked to and named. This caring relationship "[gives] life" to the landscape. In return, the landscape sustains the narrator, his family, and their wider community. During the "hard times" of the narrator's childhood, the family's garden kept them from starving, as the land was so fertile it supplied "turnips as big as pumpkins, cabbages you could hardly carry, big tomatoes, lettuces, potatoes, everything." In contrast to the white New Zealanders, who try to make money off the land, the family often took their excess vegetables into town and gave them away. In giving the landscape life by caring for it, the land, in return, keeps the narrator and his wider community alive. In this way, the narrator interacts with land through a relationship of mutual care. He continues to interact with the land in the present day. When the narrator returns home in the taxi, the taxi driver comments that the narrator's garden is "neat as a pin," showing that the narrator still puts a lot of work into caring for his land. As a result, the land gives the narrator the same sense of abundance and empowerment as it did when he was a child: he is able to offer vegetables to the taxi driver. In this way, the story shows that the narrator continues to cultivate his family's caring relationship with their particular parcel of land. When the narrator travels into the city to meet with the city planner about his land, these two very different cultural traditions clash, revealing the psychological cost of land dispossession for the Māori people. In their plan to turn the narrator's land into a parking lot and compensate the family with "equivalent land" or money, the city planners reveal that they see land only as a resource to be exploited for profit. Instead of recognizing the narrator's unique relationship with his land, they assume that that parcel of land can be easily exchanged for one of "equal value," or even simply substituted with money. In their view, land has no unique qualities—it is only a placeholder for wealth. The narrator sees his land in the exact opposite way, responding that "if it's your stamping ground and you have your ties there, then there's no land equal." To him, his family's relationship with their specific land can't be reproduced anywhere else or substituted with money, because it is a relationship of mutual care that has gone back generations. Ultimately, the narrator is unable to convince the city planners to let his family continue to live on the land. He returns home to tell his family not to bury him because "it is not safe in the ground," as he is afraid the city's proposed construction project will unearth his bones. Through this statement, the narrator expresses a deep sense of powerlessness, anguish, and loss: the land that has sustained him and his family for generations is no longer safe. In this way, the story reveals the psychological devastation that land loss can cause for the Māori people. - Theme: Heroism and Societal Inequality. Description: In "Journey," Patricia Grace plays with a common story-telling template: the hero's quest. In this narrative tradition, a protagonist, often male, leaves home on an adventure, acts decisively in a conflict, and returns home victorious and changed. In the beginning of the story, the narrator —an unnamed old man—seems to conform to the role of hero, going on an adventure into the city to have an important meeting with city officials. However, as the story progresses, important differences arise. Instead of following the protagonist's actions, "Journey" follows the narrator's inaction, describing the old man waiting in different spots along his route. Ultimately, when the narrator does act decisively in his climactic conflict with city officials, it results in his returning home in defeat, not victory, changed for the worse instead of the better. In this way, Grace pushes her readers to consider the hero myth in light of widespread societal inequality, asking which members of society have the power to become heroes, and which are denied such possibilities and are forced to wait on the sidelines of their own narratives. The narrator seems to conform to the "hero" archetype in the beginning of his story. Instead of giving the narrator a name, the story introduces him only as "an old man going on a journey." This introduction calls upon the hero's quest storytelling format: the narrator fits into the role of hero, leaving home alone on an adventure. Like many heroes, the narrator is going on a quest, venturing into the unknown to confront a foe. He remarks that he is traveling "further afield" than he normally does, in order to "see those people about his land." Although it is clear that the narrator has traveled into the city many times before, this language reveals that he still regards the city as a place distant from his home, one that holds many challenges. But also like many heroes, the narrator is optimistic. Although his family members have written letters to the city or gone there in person, he is confident he will be able to succeed where they failed, thus securing his family's future on the land. In this way, the narrator fits into the role of hero, going into battle alone, confident he will be victorious and protect his community from threat. However, the story soon starts deviating from the hero myth. Where a traditional myth would follow the hero's actions, the story mostly tracks the narrator's inaction. The narrator's journey consists mostly of waiting: waiting for the taxi at home; waiting for the taxi to arrive at the station; waiting for the train to come; waiting in the train to arrive in the city. The narrator does not control any of these forms of transportation and instead is only a passive participant. Additionally, the storytelling occurs almost exclusively in these moments of waiting, as the narrator observes the landscape on the journey into the city and reflects back on his meeting as he waits to return home. Far from tracking the hero's actions, this story represents the narrator as a passive participant. The narrator thinks to himself that "probably the whole of life was like that, sitting in the dark, watching and waiting." This sentiment reveals that despite the narrator's initial optimism, he often feels disempowered in life, forced to wait instead of act. Such feelings do not fit so neatly into the "hero" role, whose archetype is based on empowerment and action. When the narrator returns home unable to prevent the city from taking his land, it is clear that societal inequality is the source of this disempowerment, deviating further from the "hero's quest" template. The narrator and his family face discrimination because they are Māori. For years, his family have been waiting for the city to give them permission to subdivide the land they have lived on for generations, so that all 11 of the narrator's nieces and nephews can build houses on it. In his meeting with the city official, the narrator learns that the city has not given this permission in part because a Māori family "all living in the same area [...] immediately brings down the value of your land." This racial discrimination reveals that Māori people have less power in New Zealand's society than white people, and the narrator and his family are suffering as a result of that inequity. This discrimination is also clear in the city planner's condescension towards the narrator. In addition to calling the narrator "Sir" with a sarcastic tone, the city planner also questions the narrator's intelligence multiple times, telling the narrator that the situation with his land is "not so simple," and wondering if the narrator "fully comprehends" the steps involved in subdividing it. Through these subtle forms of racism, the city planner makes clear that the narrator does not hold power in this meeting. When the narrator does act decisively in a conflict, as a traditional hero would, it only underscores his lack of power compared to the city planners. As the argument escalates, the narrator "[kicks] the desk [...] Hard. The veneer [cracks] and [splinters]." At this, the city planners throw the narrator out of the office. Powerless to convince the city planners with words, the narrator resorts to violence as a form of resistance. But this resistance is ultimately ineffective: although he does some damage to the planner's desk, he harms himself more, hurting both his foot and his future chances of defending his land. In this way, the story's climactic conflict is one that reveals the narrator's powerlessness due to racial discrimination. Ultimately, the narrator returns home to his family defeated, in emotional and physical pain. The story therefore places the traditional "hero's quest" format in the context of racial discrimination, asking readers to consider which members of society truly have the power to control their own narratives. - Theme: The Individual vs. the Collective. Description: In the beginning of "Journey," the unnamed narrator emphasizes the power of the individual. Free from his nagging family members on his solo trip into the city, he believes he will succeed where others in his family have failed and will be able to convince the city planners to let his family subdivide the land they have lived on for generations. However, as the story unfolds, it becomes obvious that the narrator values the collective far more than the individual: since his childhood, his family's bonds have allowed them to survive hard times. In fact, this is the reason the narrator wants to subdivide his land in the first place, so that his 11 nieces and nephews can build their houses and live next to each other. Ultimately, the city planners deny his family this dream, and the narrator returns home to sit in his room alone and contemplate his death. With this ending, the story equates individualization with death and collectivity with survival. At first, the narrator places a lot of emphasis on the power of the individual. Resisting the way his family treats him as an old man, he thinks to himself as he boards the train that it was a "good idea coming on his own, he didn't want anyone fussing round looking after his ticket, seeing if he's warm and saying things twice." At this point, the narrator feels a sense of freedom in his independence from his nagging family members. Because of this independence, he believes he will be able to succeed in convincing the city planners to let the family subdivide their land. "If he'd gone on his own last time and left those fusspots at home he'd have got somewhere. Wouldn't need to be going in there today to tell them all what's what." As an individual, the narrator believes he has more power to change the family's situation than the family does as a collective. The story therefore begins by suggesting that the narrator values individuality more than collectivism. However, it soon becomes clear that the collective unit of the family holds much more meaning in the narrator's life than the individual.  When the narrator enters the railway station in the city, he remembers that it was where "people came [...] in the hard times to do their starving. They didn't want to drop dead while they were on their own most probably. Rather starve together." For the narrator, being together in a crisis, such as extreme food insecurity, is far better than the certain death of being alone. The family survived these "hard times" by working together on their garden. The narrator remembers helping out in the garden alongside his siblings, growing "great looking veges" and taking them into town to sell, trade, or give away. In this way, the family's collective work on the garden not only ensured their own survival, but also supplied food to their extended community. The fact that the narrator missed school a lot to help in the garden reinforces that for his family, the individual pursuit of education was secondary to this collective struggle for survival. Additionally, the main reason the narrator is traveling into the city in the first place is to try to ensure his family's collective survival on the land. He says to the city planner, "no sense in being scattered everywhere when what we want [...] is to stay put on what is left of what has been ours since before we were born. Have a small piece each, a small garden." In the narrator's plan, the family will survive, as they have for generations before, if they are able to stay on the land together and grow food. Being "scattered," disconnected from each other and unable to grow food on their land, makes the family's survival far more precarious in the narrator's eyes. For the narrator, being part of a collective means survival, while being alone means possible death. The story's ending again equates being alone with death, as the narrator, unable to prevent the city planners from taking his land away, returns home to sit in his room alone. After hearing that his family will not be able to stay on the land together, the narrator feels alienated from the people around him. He does not confide his thoughts to his nephew, George, to the taxi driver, or to the rest of the family. With the unemotional final lines of the story, he stops sharing his interior mind even with the reader, who is left to wonder what he is thinking about as he "[sits] for a long time looking at the palms of his hands." This shift suggests that the narrator is experiencing a deep sense of isolation. As compared to the beginning of the story, when being alone connoted a sense of power for the narrator, this new, deeper isolation from family members pairs with the narrator's newly apparent fear of death. Afraid that the proposed construction project will unearth his bones, he tells his family, "When I go, you're not to put me in the ground [...] burn me up I tell you, it's not safe in the ground." Stripped of the hope of his family's collective survival, the narrator resigns himself to dying alone, his body vulnerable even after death. In the narrator's worldview, true power comes not from acting alone but from acting as part of a collective. Therefore, in denying the narrator's family a collective future on the land, the city strips them of their power and decreases their chances of collective survival. Thus the story directs readers' attention to the ways that the powerful use division to maintain the status quo. - Theme: Aging. Description: Told from the point of view of a 71-year-old man, "Journey" explores the theme of aging. Throughout the story, the narrator must navigate a world that discriminates against him because of his age. At first, he resists this ageism, displaying fierce self-confidence as he travels into the city to attend a meeting about the future of his land. However, after the city appropriates his land, preventing the narrator from leaving a legacy for his family, his confidence is replaced with a sense of alienation and failure. By tracing this decline of the narrator's self-image, "Journey" demonstrates the tragedy of aging in a society that does not respect its elders.  Throughout the story, the narrator must navigate a world that deems him irrelevant because of his age. In the beginning, the narrator's family members condescend to him because of his age. As he is leaving home, they button his coat for him, warn him about the weather, and put money in his pocket. The narrator also feels that, especially in interactions with city officials over the family's land dispute, his family members "[do] his talking for him." These gestures clearly come from a place of care and even respect for the narrator, but they nevertheless relegate him to a position of inferiority because of his age. Additionally, on his train ride into the city, the narrator observes a society that prioritizes rapid change over the traditions of the past. From the fishermen ignoring the narrator's traditional Māori knowledges about weather to development projects that build everything new so that "you'd never know where the old roads had been," the world seems to deem old ways, and therefore elders themselves, irrelevant. Finally, the city planner clearly discriminates against the narrator because of his age. In addition to rudely suggesting that the narrator should not care what happens to his land because he will be dead soon, he calls the narrator "old man" in a derogatory way. Planning to turn his land into a parking lot, the city clearly sees the narrator as an irrelevance, an impediment to new change. However, in the beginning of his trip, the narrator takes this ageism in stride, displaying self-confidence. He is very optimistic about the meeting, expecting to be able to celebrate his success afterward. This optimism demonstrates that he believes he is capable of asserting himself. He also feels physically able, despite his family's assumptions that he is not. Walking to the meeting rather than riding the bus, he tells himself that "there's nothing wrong with his legs." Additionally, he takes pride in his many years of experience with the landscape, in both the rural and urban settings he travels through. When he gets to the city, he notes that "this bit of sea has been land for a long time now. And he's been in all the pubs and been drunk in all of them." In thinking this, he refuses to be labeled as an irrelevant old man: rather than making him less competent than younger people, the narrator implies, his age only makes him more knowledgeable. After the unsuccessful meeting with the city planner, in which the city refuses to let the family continue to live on their land, the narrator replaces this self-confidence with a sense of impotency, physical inability, and pessimism. Unlike the narrator's ancestors, who were able to ensure that the family survived together on the land, the narrator returns home unable to provide security for his nieces and nephews. This inability to leave a legacy fills him with shame, and "he [sits] on the edge of his bed for a long time looking at the palms of his hands." This line, which ends the story, symbolizes the narrator's sense of impotency: his hands, the very hands that helped his family survive starvation by gardening on the land, are now no longer able to ensure his family's survival. In the same vein, his foot pains him, because he injured it when he kicked the city planner's desk in frustration. This foot pain, and the limp it causes him to develop, represents a deterioration of his physical ability: whereas before the meeting, there was "nothing wrong with his legs," now he appears far less physically able. This physical disability is paired with a new pessimism about death. Unable to be sure his remains will not be unearthed by a future construction project, the narrator shouts at his family to cremate him instead of bury him. Whereas before the meeting, the narrator felt that he was "not so old," the narrator now suggests he may die soon; his shouting this demand demonstrates both a deep pain and a sense of urgency. In this way, the narrator now sees himself the way society seems to—as an incompetent, frail, and irrelevant old man. The narrator therefore internalizes the ageism he experiences, demonstrating the tragedy of aging in a society that does not respect its elders. - Climax: The narrator kicks the city planner's desk. - Summary: The story's narrator, an unnamed 71-year-old Māori man, leaves home to go into the city to meet with officials about the future of the land his family has owned for generations. As he waits for a taxi to pick him up, he feels annoyed by his family's nagging: he thinks they treat him like an old man. Still, he is in a good mood, happy to be out on his own and expecting to have success in the city. Traveling to the train station in the taxi, he watches the town pass by, noticing which parts of the landscape have changed and which have stayed the same. He enters the train station and boards the train, continuing to observe the view out the window. He notes how much development has occurred in the area since he was young: construction projects have radically changed the landscape, filling ocean with land in some areas, causing erosion, and turning farmland into housing developments. While he bitterly resents the ways that the Pakeha disrespect the land, he reminds himself that the development provides people with basic needs, such as housing, food, and transportation. When he gets off the train in the city, he remembers how, during an economic crisis in his youth, many starving people lived in the train station, but his family survived because they were able to garden on the family's land. Outside the station, he sees a spot where the city bulldozed a graveyard to build a highway, and the narrator reflects again on the disrespectful behavior of the Pakeha. He then walks confidently to his meeting. After the meeting, the narrator waits in the station for his train home, reflecting on the conversation with the city planner. In the meeting, the narrator explained that he wanted to subdivide his family's lot so that each of his nieces and nephews could live on it, but the city planner responded condescendingly, telling him that the land was slated to become a parking lot in a future housing development. The narrator urged the official to reconsider, explaining that the family's relationship to the land goes back generations, so they could not simply sell it to the city. The meeting escalated into an argument, in which the planner revealed the underlying racial discrimination of the city's decision: having a Māori family living together on the land would decrease the land's value. At this, the narrator became very angry and kicked the planner's desk, damaging it, and the planner forced him to leave the office. The narrator returns home to his family in defeat. Instead of telling them how the meeting went, he shouts at them, demanding that when he dies, they cremate him instead of burying him in the ground, as he is afraid the development project will unearth his remains. He then retires to his room alone and sits on the edge of his bed for a long time, looking at his hands.

- Genre: Realist Fiction, Tragedy - Title: Jude the Obscure - Point of view: Third person omniscient - Setting: Southwest England, the fictional county of Wessex - Character: Jude Fawley. Description: The novel's protagonist, a poor orphan who is raised by his great-aunt after his parents divorced and died. Jude dreams of attending the university at Christminister, but he fails to be accepted because of his working class background. He is a skilled stonemason and a kindly soul who cannot hurt any living thing. Jude's "fatal flaw" is his weakness regarding alcohol and women, and he allows his marriage to Arabella, even though it is unhappy, to distract himself from his dream. He shares a deep connection with his cousin Sue, but their relationship is doomed by their earlier marriages, society's disapproval, and bad luck. Jude starts out pious and religious, but by the end of his life he has grown agnostic and bitter. - Character: Sue Bridehead. Description: The novel's other protagonist and Jude's cousin. Sue's parents were divorced and she was raised in London and Christminster. She is an extremely intelligent woman who rejects Christianity and flirts with paganism, despite working as a religious artist and then teacher. Sue is often described as "ethereal" and "bodiless" and she generally lacks sexual passion, especially compared to Jude. Sue marries Phillotson as a kind of rebuke to Jude for his own marriage to Arabella, and is then repulsed by Phillotson as a husband. She is portrayed as inconsistent and emotional, often changing her mind abruptly, but she develops a strong relationship and love with Jude. Though she starts out nonreligious, the death of her children drives Sue to a harsh, legalistic version of Christianity as she believes she is being punished for her earlier rebellion against Christianity, and she returns to Phillotson even though she never ceases to love Jude. - Character: Arabella Donn. Description: Jude's first wife, a vain, sensual woman who is the daughter of a pig farmer. She decides to marry Jude and so tricks him into marrying her by pretending to be pregnant. Arabella sees marriage as a kind of entrapment and as a source of financial security, and she uses whatever means necessary to get what she wants. After Jude fails to provide for her, Arabella goes to Australia and takes a new husband there. She is often contrasted with the pure, intellectual Sue, as Arabella is associated with alcohol and sexual pleasure. When she wants Jude back she gets him drunk and forces him to marry her, and when he dies (or even just before) she immediately starts seeking a new husband. - Character: Richard Phillotson. Description: Jude's schoolmaster at Marygreen who moves to Christminster and fails to be accepted at the university there. Phillotson remains as a teacher, and he later hires Sue and falls in love with her. They marry, but Sue finds she cannot live with Phillotson as a husband. Though Phillotson is a conservative man, he finds that letting Sue leave him feels like the most moral decision, and he sticks by it even when he is punished by society for his disgrace and loses his job and respectability. Phillotson is a kindly, ethical man, but Sue's lack of love for him causes him great torment. - Character: Little Father Time. Description: Jude's son with Arabella, he was born in Australia and sent to England to live with Jude years later. The boy was never named or given love, and his nickname is "Little Father Time" because he seems old beyond his years. Jude and Sue christen him as "Jude," but his old nickname sticks. Little Father Time is a world-weary, depressed child who lacks any curiosity or joy. He is portrayed as a result of the divorce, lovelessness, and bad luck in his life, and in this he acts as a symbol as well as a character. Little Father Time ultimately takes Sue's depressed words to heart and kills himself and Sue's two children in order to try to free Sue and Jude from their burdens. - Theme: Marriage. Description: Much of Jude the Obscure consists of a critique of the institution of marriage, which Hardy saw as flawed and unjust. The novel's plot is designed to wring all the possible tragedy out of an unhappy marriage, as Jude is first guilted into marrying Arabella by her feigned pregnancy, and Sue marries Phillotson mostly to make Jude jealous. Both protagonists immediately regret their decisions, and realize how a single impulsive decision can affect their entire lives. When they meet each other and fall in love, Sue and Jude's pure connection is constantly obstructed by their earlier marriages, and Hardy even presents the tragedy of Little Father Time's murder-suicide as a natural result of broken marriages and unhappy relationships.In the narrator's asides Hardy also criticizes marriage, describing it as a binding contract that most young lovers are incapable of understanding. He doesn't believe that the institution is inherently evil, but that it isn't right for every situation and personality – "sensitive" souls like Jude and Sue should be able to live as husband and wife without a binding legal contract. Though he argues for this flexibility and seems to propose the couple's unmarried relationship as an ideal solution, Hardy then punishes his protagonists in his plot, ultimately driving Sue back to Phillotson and Jude back to Arabella.The novel is not a simple diatribe against marriage, but instead illustrates a complex, contradictory situation. Sue and Jude want their love to be true and spontaneous, but also totally monogamous and everlasting. The epigraph to the novel is "the letter killeth," which comes from a quote from Jesus in the Bible: "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth light." Hardy intended this quote to refer to marriage, where the contract of the institution kills joy and true love, but Hardy purposefully leaves off the optimism of "the spirit" – Jude and Sue's joy is fleeting even when they are only following "Nature's law," and in the end they find no good answer for how to properly love and live together. By the novel's tragic end Hardy still leaves the question of marriage unanswered, emphasizing only his dissatisfaction with the institution as it stands. - Theme: Fate. Description: Throughout the book Hardy subjects his characters to many hardships and unlucky coincidences which come to feel like fate, whether that fate is interpreted as a supernatural punishment for rebelling against religion or a fate determined by a society structured to thwart independent, sensitive souls like Jude and Sue. The novel's overarching story of fate is that Jude and Sue's family is "cursed" in marriage – both Jude's parents and Sue's parents were divorced, and they have an ancestor who was hanged for stealing his child's body from his estranged wife. This curse comes to affect the protagonists' actions, as they avoid marrying each other and possibly doubling the curse. Fate looms over the characters in other situations as well, like when Jude tries so hard to get into a college but is always fated to fail because of his poverty and class. Over the course of the book Jude, Sue, and their children are slowly crushed by their bad luck and an unfriendly society. They become depressed, and start to believe that it is better never to be born than to live in such a cruel world. The climax of the novel, Little Father Time's murder-suicide, is portrayed as an inevitable result of the situation in which he was raised: a product of divorce, depression, and bad luck. As with the marriage question, Hardy gives no easy answer regarding fate. He seems to imply that humans should struggle against their fate (if it's bad), but at the same time he shows just how futile this struggle usually is. - Theme: Social Criticism. Description: Much of the novel serves as a vessel for Hardy's criticism of English Victorian society. Most of this critique is aimed at the institution of marriage, but Hardy also targets education, class divides, and hypocrisy. The early part of the novel involves Jude's quest to be accepted into a college at Christminster, a university town based on Oxford. Jude works for years teaching himself classical languages, but he is never accepted simply because of his social class and poverty. In Jude's unjustified failures Hardy demonstrates the unfairness and classism of the educational system.Relating to the marriage theme, Hardy also emphasizes the oppressiveness of Victorian society in dealing with any unorthodox domestic situation. Jude and Sue cannot find a room or a steady job as long as their marital status is anything but traditional, and Phillotson loses his teaching jobs because he allowed Sue to leave him. Hardy was far ahead of his time in many of his views – implying that universities should accept members of the working class, couples could live together without being married, and even that the father of a woman's child should be the woman's business alone – but Hardy's society was not ready for such criticism. The backlash against Jude the Obscure was so harsh that Hardy gave up writing altogether. - Theme: Women in Society. Description: Sue Bridehead is a surprisingly modern and complex heroine for her time, and through her character Hardy brings up many gender-related issues. Sue is unique in Victorian society in that she lives with men without marrying (or even sleeping with) them, as with her undergraduate student friend. Sue is highly intelligent and very well-read, and she rejects the traditional Christianity of her society. She also works alongside both Phillotson and Jude, first marrying Phillotson partly to further her own teaching position (instead of acting as the traditional housewife).Despite her intelligence and independence, Sue fails at her endeavors throughout the book, and through her sufferings Hardy critiques the society that punishes his heroine. Sue, like other women, is expected to be the "property" of the man she marries, so Sue is bound to Phillotson for life even after their separation. Sue is never allowed to advance in her work (despite her intelligence) because of her marital status. As an unmarried, disgraced woman she has no power in society. While Hardy was ahead of his time in creating such a strong female character, he still clings to many gender stereotypes about women: Sue is emotionally fragile and often hysterical, changing her mind at the slightest whim and breaking down in the face of tragedy. As an opposite to Sue, Arabella is greedy, sensual, and vain – the stereotype of everything Victorian society found bad and sinful in women. Though Arabella is usually the antagonist, she is also the character who ends up the most fortunate in the plot, showing just how unprepared society was for a character like Sue. - Theme: Religion. Description: Along with marriage and society, Hardy spends much of Jude the Obscure critiquing religion and the institution of Christianity. He often portrays Christianity as life-denying and belonging to "the letter" that "killeth" (from the novel's epigraph). In contrast, Sue is introduced as a kind of pre-Christian entity, an ethereal, pagan spirit, and she first appears buying figures of the ancient Greek gods Venus and Apollo. Jude, meanwhile, hopes to join the clergy as part of his intellectual pursuits. At a model of Jerusalem, Sue wonders why Jerusalem should be honored above Athens or Rome, but Jude is mesmerized by this city which is so important to Christianity.As with most of his arguments, Hardy also undercuts himself and favors a nuanced approach to an issue. Even as he seems to reject Christianity, he also portrays almost all the main characters as Christ-figures at several points, even describing them with Biblical language. The "pagan joy" of Sue and Jude's unmarried, unreligious love is not actually that joyful either, and Hardy thoroughly punishes them with his plot, ultimately driving Sue to submit to a harsh, legalistic version of Christianity. By associating Sue's turn to religion with Jude's turn to alcohol (both used as relief from the tragedy of their children's death), Hardy again adds more nuance – Christianity may be the "right" way for his country and time, but it can still be used for less-than-pure purposes. As "Nature's law" fails Sue and Jude, so "Heaven's law" also fails them, and the "letter" of the law of Christianity can seem less moral than human nature. Hardy gives many examples of this, including Sue's return to Phillotson, which is a kind of adultery even though they are legally and religiously married. As usual, Hardy ends without any clear answer. He seems to reject a Christianity that is overly concerned with laws and traditions, but he doesn't portray paganism or atheism as a particularly fulfilling alternative either. - Climax: Little Father Time kills himself and Sue's children - Summary: Jude the Obscure takes place in Wessex, England in the Victorian era. Jude Fawley is a poor orphan raised by his great-aunt, but he dreams of studying at the university in Christminster, a nearby town. He is inspired in this dream by his old teacher, Richard Phillotson, who left with similar ambitions when Jude was a child. Jude starts teaching himself classical languages and learning stonemasonry work, but he is distracted from his studies by Arabella Donn, a vain, sensual young woman. Arabella pretends she is pregnant and tricks the honorable Jude into marrying her, but the marriage soon falls apart. Arabella moves to Australia and Jude finally makes his way to Christminster. At first he is enthralled by the place but he soon finds he cannot enter the university without wealth and social stature. While in Christminster Jude meets his intelligent, religiously agnostic cousin Sue Bridehead. He immediately falls in love with her, though he tries to resist his feelings. He gets Sue a job with Phillotson, who has also failed to be accepted at a university and is a schoolteacher again. Sue soon gets engaged to Phillotson, but her relationship with Jude also grows stronger and the two cousins become very close. Jude loves Sue passionately but Sue's own feelings are less clear. Sue is stung to learn about Jude's previous marriage, however, so she goes through with her marriage to Phillotson. Jude gets depressed and turns to alcohol, and he is reunited with Arabella (who has returned from Australia) for one night. Jude and Sue keep meeting and Sue reveals that she is unhappy in her marriage, as she is repulsed by Phillotson's physical presence. Soon afterward Sue admits her feelings for Jude to Phillotson, and asks him if they can live apart. Phillotson agrees to let Sue leave him for Jude, but he suffers for this decision, which seems morally right to him, by losing his job and his social respectability. Jude and Sue are united, but they live platonically for a while and they agree not to get married. Arabella reveals to Jude that she had a son by him while in Australia. Jude and Sue agree to take the unwanted boy in, and he arrives soon after. He has no name but is called "Little Father Time," and is a gloomy, world-weary child. Jude and Sue begin to lose work and respect because of their unmarried status, but they find they can't go through with the wedding ceremony. They become lovers and begin to lead a nomadic life, having two children of their own and caring for Little Father Time. Jude falls ill for a while, and when he recovers he decides he wants to move back to Christminster and pursue his old dream. The family has trouble finding a room because they are unmarried and have children, and Jude has to stay separately from Sue and the children. That night Sue and Little Father Time both grow depressed, and the boy decides that he and the other children are the cause of the family's troubles. The next morning Jude and Sue find that Little Father Time has hanged himself and the other two children. Sue breaks down at this tragedy and grows obsessively religious, believing that she is being punished for her disbelief and sexual liberties. She leaves Jude and returns to Phillotson, despite having no change in her feelings for either. Jude is soon tricked into marrying Arabella again, and both marriages are unhappy. Jude gets sick and visits Sue one last time in the rain. They kiss but then Sue sends Jude away for the last time. As "penance" for this kiss Sue begins a sexual relationship with Phillotson. Jude dies soon after, and Arabella immediately starts looking for a new husband.

- Genre: Children's Novel - Title: Julie of the Wolves - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: 1970s Alaska - Character: Miyax Kapugen/Julie Edwards. Description: Miyax Kapugen is a 13-year-old Inuk girl who has run away from her abusive husband, Daniel, and is trying to survive in the Alaskan tundra. Having lost her mother and her father, Kapugen, years ago, Miyax is lost and alone. Although the environment she finds herself in is harsh and dangerous, Miyax's resourcefulness and deep reverence for nature—qualities she admired in her father—shine through. She's able to befriend a pack of wolves (led by the alpha male Amaroq) and a bird named Tornait, and the wolves bond with her and help her survive. In fact, the animals offer her more acceptance and affection than the people in her life have. It's gradually revealed that before Miyax ran away, she was lonely and felt pressured to assimilate to her town's non-indigenous culture, taking on the name Julie Edwards and discarding her traditional i'noGo tied amulet to fit in. She also had a tumultuous relationship with Martha, the strict great-aunt she moved in with after Kapugen was supposedly killed on a seal-hunting trip. As Miyax navigates life in the wilderness, she initially daydreams about her pen pal Amy's strange, exciting life in San Francisco, hoping to board a ship to California and stay in Amy's pink bedroom. But when gussak (white) hunters kill Amaroq for sport, she becomes disillusioned with non-indigenous culture and resolves to live a traditional, solitary Inuit lifestyle instead. But at the end of the novel, when Miyax is reunited with Kapugen (who, it turns out, is alive after all), it's implied that she'll return to living a more modernized life in town. Miyax's decision implicitly acknowledges the futility of trying to preserve a traditional way of life amid the pressure to assimilate. - Character: Kapugen/Charlie Edwards. Description: Kapugen is Miyax's father. His English name is Charlie Edwards. He is a legendary hunter known for his wisdom, bravery, and respect for traditional Inuit culture. After Miyax's mother dies, Kapugen and Miyax move to an Inuit seal camp to reconnect with their heritage. Kapugen teaches Miyax valuable lessons about nature and traditional Inuit culture, and they see themselves as kindred spirits, both better suited to the old way of life than to modernized society. Miyax is heartbroken when she eventually must leave the seal camp to attend a Bureau of Indian Affairs school back in Mekoryuk. Shortly after this, she learns that Kapugen failed to return to from a seal hunt and is presumed dead. Years later, Miyax relies on Kapugen's teachings when she becomes lost in the Arctic tundra. In fact, it's Kapugen who teaches her that wolves are "brotherly" and affectionate rather than vicious, which allows her to befriend a wolf pack that helps her survive. Kapugen is a constant presence in Miyax's memories, but it eventually becomes clear that there are really two versions of Kapugen: the idolized legend who exists in Miyax's mind and the flawed Kapugen who fails to live up to Miyax's expectations. At the end of the book, Miyax learns that Kapugen is alive, after all, and living in a different village. But when Miyax reunites with him, she finds that he's married to a white woman named Ellen and has distanced himself from Inuit culture. Worst of all, Kapugen now uses an airplane to hunt, just like the gussak hunters who killed Miyax's wolf friend Amaroq. Kapugen's assimilation into non-indigenous society destroys the image of him that Miyax used to have, transforming him from a brave Inuk hunter into a hypocrite who is destroying their Inuit culture. - Character: Amaroq. Description: Amaroq is the leader of the wolf pack Miyax joins when she is lost in the Arctic tundra. He is large, black, and regal. In Amaroq, Miyax sees the traits she most admires in her father, Kapugen: bravery, wisdom, and an innate ability to lead and command the respect of others. Amaroq becomes something of a stand-in for Kapugen, and Miyax refers to the wolf as her "adopted father." Although Amaroq is initially suspicious of Miyax, he accepts her into his pack after she proves that she can communicate with them and follow the rules of their wolf society. Once Miyax is a member of Amaroq's wolf pack, he gives her the same protection he gives the others. As such, he defends Miyax against Jello, the antisocial lone wolf who repeatedly antagonizes her, eventually killing Jello in retaliation. Miyax sees Amaroq's violence not as abuse of his power, but as an action he must take to protect the integrity of his community. Kapugen once told Miyax that a wolf pack will turn on a lone wolf that steals food from the pack's pups, explaining that "there is no room in the wolf society for an animal who cannot contribute." Miyax thus interprets Amaroq's decision to turn on Jello as a decision to protect his community against Jello, who "cannot contribute" to it. Amaroq tragically dies after gussak (white) hunters shoot him from an airplane. His death is particularly horrific because the hunters fail to retrieve his body to collect a bounty, as is often their custom. Instead, the hunters leave Amaroq's body behind, effectively killing him for no reason at all. Since Miyax develops a deep bond with the wolves over the course of their journey together, Amaroq's death affects her deeply. In a song she sings before reluctantly returning to Kangik to live a modernized life with Kapugen, Miyax equates the death of Amaroq with the death of Inuit traditions, insinuating that gussak society has killed them both. - Character: Kapu. Description: Kapu is one of Amaroq and Silver's wolf pups. In addition to being the first wolf to approach Miyax, Kapu is also the wolf with whom Miyax shares the closest bond. Kapu's bravery prompts Miyax to name him after her father, Kapugen. In Kapu, Miyax also sees her father's innate ability to lead, and she predicts (correctly) that Kapu will one day be the leader of the pack. In Miyax's Inuit culture, people have "joking partners," or people with whom they have fun, and "serious partners," or people with whom they work. Miyax decides that she and Kapu are "joking-serious partners," fulfilling both roles for each other. Although Miyax and Kapu play together, they also look after each other. For instance, Kapu brings Miyax a leg of caribou when she needs food, and Miyax tends to Kapu's wounds after gussak hunters shoot and severely injure him. After hunters kill Amaroq, Kapu becomes the leader of his wolf pack. At the end of the novel, Miyax makes the painful decision to leave Kapu and the other wolves to go to "[her] own Amaroq," abandoning the love and acceptance she found among the wolves for an uncertain future with Kapugen in the village of Kangik. - Character: Jello. Description: Jello is the lone wolf of Amaroq's pack. Miyax describes him as "a lowly wolf—a poor spirit, with fears and without friends." He is standoffish and antisocial, and Amaroq doesn't respect him. Because of this, the other wolves often leave him out of their activities. For example, when the adult wolves go hunting, they force Jello to stay behind and watch the pups. Jello is the opposite of Amaroq: he doesn't care about protecting the collective wolf pack and acts out of self-interest alone. Miyax names him Jello after seeing him wiggle before Amaroq in a gesture of submission, but the name also reflects Jello's unstable moral backbone. Amaroq's decision to accept Miyax into the wolf pack threatens Jello, and he lashes out at her with increasing intensity, eventually destroying Miyax's campsite and stealing all her food. Jello's reign of terror comes to an end when Amaroq kills him as punishment for his selfishness. - Character: Amy Pollock. Description: Amy is a 12-year-old girl who lives in San Francisco, California. Her father, Mr. Pollock, works for the Reindeer Corporation on Nunivak Island and invites Miyax to become Amy's pen pal. The girls begin a written correspondence, and Amy's letters quickly become the only glimmer of happiness Miyax has in her unhappy life on Nunivak Island with Martha, and later, when she is trapped in an unhappy marriage with Daniel. Amy's descriptions of life in San Francisco enchant Miyax, who longs to see this strange, enticing world for herself. Amy ends each of her letters by begging Miyax to come to see her in San Francisco, promising Miyax that she can have a pink room in her house all to herself. For Miyax, the pink room symbolizes the appeal of non-indigenous culture, and the possibility that life in San Francisco could help her escape her miserable existence in Barrow. Miyax eventually flees Barrow to board a ship at Point Hope that will take her to San Francisco, but she gets lost in the Alaskan wilderness along the way. - Character: Pani NalaGan/Pearl Norton. Description: Pani NalaGan is a girl Miyax meets after she moves to Barrow to marry Daniel. Pani NalaGan is Inuit, but she, like Miyax, goes by her English name (Pearl Norton) in town and at the Bureau of Indian Affairs school. Pearl and Miyax quickly become friends. Pearl is sympathetic to Miyax's marriage situation and encourages her not to take it too seriously, promising that she can simply leave if she ends up not liking Daniel. Pearl's advice gives Miyax a glimmer of hope and contributes to her decision to run away after Daniel assaults her. Miyax and Pearl exchange a tearful goodbye before Miyax flees Barrow to board a ship for the mainland U.S., and Pearl supplies Miyax with food and supplies to aid in her journey. Other than the animals she encounters in the wild, Pearl is Miyax's only true friend. - Character: Tornait. Description: Tornait is a golden plover (a species of bird that breeds in the Arctic tundra) that Miyax meets at her campsite. She names him Tornait after a song Kapugen used to sing at the Feast of the Bird back on Nunivak Island. Tornait is Miyax's sole companion after she leaves her wolf pack to find her father, and the two of them develop a meaningful bond. When Miyax finally reunites with Kapugen, whom she has long believed to be dead, she offers him Tornait as a gift. After Miyax discovers the extent of Kapugen's assimilation into Western culture, she decides to leave town with Tornait to live a more culturally authentic life in the solitude of the Arctic tundra. However, Tornait's death prompts Miyax to change her plans and return to town. - Character: Daniel. Description: Daniel is Miyax's husband. Like Miyax, he is just a child when they marry. Miyax's father Kapugen and Daniel's father Naka arranged the marriage when the children were very young, and Miyax eventually agrees to the arrangement to escape her strict great-aunt Martha's tyrannical rule. When Miyax travels to Barrow to marry Daniel and realizes that he is developmentally disabled, she refuses to believe that Kapugen knew about Daniel's condition when he made the arrangement. To Miyax's relief, Daniel mostly ignores her after they are married. However, his condition provokes considerable teasing from kids at school. When Miyax is home alone one day, Daniel storms through the door, furious because the other schoolchildren ridiculed him for not being able to "mate" his wife. Daniel attacks and tries to rape Miyax, though Miyax observes that Daniel's face shows that he is just as "frightened" as she is. Still, when Daniel finally releases Miyax, he laughs to himself and promises to assault Miyax again tomorrow. This attack assault is what prompts Miyax to flee Barrow, which leads to her becoming lost in the Arctic tundra. - Character: Martha. Description: Martha is Kapugen's aunt. Miyax goes to live with her in Mekoryuk when a law requires her to attend a Bureau of Indian Affairs school. Martha is strict and critical of Miyax, and the two of them rarely get along. Although Martha believes that "the old ways are best," she criticizes Kapugen's decision to abandon is life in Mekoryuk to move to the Inuit seal camp. When Martha promises Miyax she doesn't have to marry Daniel if she doesn't want to, Miyax is too stubborn and sick of living with Martha to take advantage of Martha's genuine attempt to protect her from becoming trapped in an unhappy arranged marriage. - Character: Mrs. Franklin. Description: Mrs. Franklin is Miyax's teacher. At the beginning of the book, Miyax recalls Mrs. Franklin's explanation for the sudden absence of lemmings (a type of rodent) in Alaska. According to Mrs. Franklin, lemmings' bloodstreams contain a chemical similar to antifreeze that keeps them active in the winter. When there are too many lemmings, they become anxious, which causes the chemical to build up, and the lemmings to die. Mrs. Franklin's explanation for the lemmings' disappearance is quite different from Kapugen's, which simply offers that "the hour of the lemming is over for four years." These opposing explanations—one desperate to explain the lemmings' disappearance with science, and the other accepting of nature's natural rhythm—represent the opposing cultures of the gussaks (non-indigenous people) and the Inuit. - Character: Nusan. Description: Nusan is Naka's wife, Daniel's mother, and Miyax's mother-in-law. She has a job sewing clothing for tourists who arrive unprepared for the Arctic's harsh climate and enlists Miyax to help her, though Miyax doesn't mind the work. Nusan is trapped in an abusive marriage to Naka, who is a violent alcoholic. Although Nusan is kind to Miyax, she doesn't make any attempt to protect Miyax from Daniel's abuse. - Character: Naka. Description: Naka is Nusan's husband, Daniel's father, and Miyax's father-in-law. He's also Kapugen's "serious" partner, which in the Inuit tradition refers to a friend with whom a person can "work and think." Like Kapugen, Naka is an "old-fashioned" Inuk who takes great pride in his indigenous culture. Though Miyax has fond memories of Naka from her days at the seal camp, she later discovers that he is a violent alcoholic who regularly beats Nusan. - Character: Judith. Description: Judith is an Inuk girl who attends school with Miyax in Mekoryuk. According to Martha, Judith disrespects her parents. When Judith invites Miyax to come over after school one day, Miyax notices that Judith's house has a gas stove, a couch, and cotton curtains, which signify Judith's family's assimilation into non-indigenous society. Judith and Rose, another schoolgirl, mock Miyax for mistakenly referring to Judith's charm bracelet as an i'noGo tied, a type of Inuit totem. - Character: Mr. Pollock. Description: Mr. Pollock is Amy Pollock's father. He splits his time between his home in San Francisco and Nunivak Island, where he works for the Reindeer Corporation. Mr. Pollock puts Miyax in touch with Amy, initiating the girls' pen pal friendship. Mr. Pollock is a kind and helpful man. For instance, a young man named Russel tells Miyax that Mr. Pollock has been instrumental in helping him and many others recover from alcoholism. - Character: Atik/Roland. Description: Atik is a skillful Inuk hunter who lives in the village of Kangik. He and his family stumble upon Miyax's remote campsite on their way to hunt caribou in the mountains. Through Atik's wife, Uma, Miyax learns that Atik has a mentor in town named Kapugen (Miyax's father), whom people regard as the most legendary Inuk hunter of all time. This is how Miyax learns that her father, who had been presumed dead after failing to return from a seal hunt, is actually alive and well. - Character: Uma/Alice. Description: Uma is an Inuk woman who lives in the village of Kangik. She and her husband, Atik, and their son, Sorqaq, stumble upon Miyax's campground on their way to hunt caribou in the mountains. Uma tells Miyax about Atik's mentor, a man named Kapugen who people regard as the greatest Inuk hunter of all time. Uma's chatter reveals to Miyax that her father has been alive all along. - Character: Ellen. Description: Ellen is Kapugen's new wife. She is a white schoolteacher at the mission in Kangik, the village where Kapugen settles after becoming lost while seal-hunting. Kapugen's marriage to a gussak (a white person) disappoints Miyax, who views the union as an attack on their traditional Inuit culture and a sign that her father isn't the man she thought he was. - Theme: Humans vs. Nature. Description: Julie of the Wolves takes place in the barren and unforgiving Alaskan wilderness, where a 13-year-old Inuk girl named Miyax Kapugen is alone, starving, and lost. She's fled to the Arctic tundra after her husband, Daniel, tried to rape her. The novel follows Miyax as she struggles to survive treacherous conditions and find her way back to civilization, and as such, the book presents a broader conflict between humans and nature. The book specifically highlights how Miyax's struggle for survival is tied to her indigenous culture, as she draws on her Inuit background to guide her as she traverses the tundra. Many of her ideas about nature and survival come from her father, Kapugen, who taught her the importance of understanding and establishing a relationship with nature that is anchored in respect and equality. These are values that allow her to befriend and understand the pack of wolves that aids in her survival. They also make her wonder whether the natural world is, in fact, preferable to society. Although people often stereotype wolves as vicious and uncaring, the animals Miyax befriends in the tundra treat her with far more respect than her husband, who attacked and dehumanized her. For this reason, Miyax repeatedly expresses her desire to remain in the incredibly dangerous Arctic wilderness rather than return to her life in town. The novel also juxtaposes the Inuits' respect for nature with the disrespect for and exploitation of nature that Miyax associates with gussak (white) culture. For example, before Miyax feasts on a caribou that the wolves have killed and allowed her to share, she "pa[ys] tribute to the spirit of the caribou by lifting her arms to the sun," acknowledging and respecting the animal for providing her with necessary sustenance. In contrast, the gussak hunters in the novel show no respect for nature and simply kill animals for sport. To them, the natural world is theirs to use, control, and conquer as they please. Miyax's culture considers this attitude immoral, because "it encourage[s] killing for money, rather than need." Kapugen's criticism expands on this point, arguing that such hunting disrespects the natural order of the world: fewer wolves results in too many caribou grazing, which means the lemmings will starve and die out, and so on. In its portrayal of human brutality (Daniel's violence toward Miyax and the hunters' senseless killing), Julie of the Wolves shows that people can be just as harsh and unfeeling as nature. And through the Inuit wisdom espoused in the book and Miyax's deep communion with animals, the novel suggests that nature is worthy of respect and reverence. As such, any conflict between humans and the natural world should be solved by learning to coexist peacefully in nature rather than conquering it. - Theme: Memory and Disillusionment. Description: Even though Kapugen, Miyax's father, doesn't appear in person until the end of the novel, the reader learns a lot about his character through Miyax's many memories of him. Kapugen played a formative role in Miyax's life: after Miyax's mother died, she and Kapugen moved to a seal camp to live according to the old Inuit way of life. Miyax grows up believing that her father died while on a seal-hunting excursion (although this turns out not to be true). Even before her father's supposed death, Miyax and Kapugen were separated when she was taken away to attend school, in accordance with the Bureau of Indian Affairs's compulsory education mandate for indigenous children. In the present, Miyax—who is trying to survive in the Alaskan tundra after running away from her abusive husband, Daniel—regards the years she spent with Kapugen at the seal camp as the best time of her life. It was during this time that he instilled in her a deep respect for their Inuit traditions and beliefs. Miyax idolizes her father and sees Kapugen and herself as kindred spirits, both equally inclined toward the old way of life and happy to coexist "with the cold and the birds and the beasts." However, it eventually becomes clear that Miyax's memory of Kapugen is an idealized construction that she has created—intentionally or unintentionally—to replace the father she couldn't keep. When Miyax finally discovers that Kapugen is alive and reunites with him, her initial elation is replaced by bitter disappointment when she learns that Kapugen has eschewed his firmly held convictions about respecting nature and the old way of life. Miyax is horrified to find in Kapugen's house a crash helmet and goggles that are nearly identical to the ones worn by hunters who recently shot and killed Amaroq, a wolf Miyax befriended and considered her "adopted father." When Kapugen, a formerly revered Inuk hunter, admits to hunting from an airplane the way gussak (white) people do, it's as though he's admitted to killing Amaroq himself. Miyax reflects as she leaves Kapugen's house just moments after being reunited that "Kapugen, after all, was dead to her." This thought suggests that although her father is physically alive, Kapugen as he was "to her"—that is, the romanticized image of him she created in his absence—is dead. Miyax's bitter reflection also implies that this romanticized version of Kapugen might have only ever existed in her mind. Her treasured memories of Kapugen, which Miyax initially relies on to bring her comfort and ancestral wisdom in the Arctic wilderness, show how memory is a powerful tool that can connect people to their loved ones or to entire ways of life that have largely been lost to history. Yet through her reckoning with the disparity between the father she remembered and the father he turned out to be, the novel also highlights the fallibility of memory and the human tendency to become disillusioned after glorifying the past. - Theme: Community and Survival. Description: When Miyax first realizes she is lost in the Arctic wilderness, it is her participation in a community—a pack of wolves led by Amaroq—that allows her to survive. Miyax is resilient and highly resourceful, but nature's unpredictability and brutality present her with many situations where these qualities are not enough to ensure survival. For example, when Miyax has a terrifying surprise encounter with a grizzly bear, she escapes unscathed only because Amaroq and his pack warn her of the bear's approach. Afterward, Miyax observes, "had [the grizzly] come upon her tent, with one curious sweep of his paw he would have snuffed out her life while she slept." She then thanks the wolves, acknowledging the critical role they played in saving her life. Miyax reciprocates this act of loyalty and compassion later on, when she nurses Kapu, a young wolf, back to health after hunters severely injure him. And beyond safety, community also provides Miyax with companionship. The novel emphasizes the foundation of mutual respect, affection, and love that underlies the wolves' commitment to one another: as an honorary member of the pack, Miyax addresses the wolves using familial titles (such as "brother" or "father"), and she and the wolves often exchange physical gestures of affection. The novel further emphasizes the practical and emotional advantages of living in a community by exposing the negative consequences of individualism and selfishness. Jello, the "lone wolf" member of Amaroq's pack, is antisocial and independent to a fault. His behavior alienates him from his pack, lowers his status, and culminates in his death. Amaroq doesn't respect him, and as a result, none of the pack does either: Jello has to eat last when the wolves feast on their kill, and he's often relegated to the role of babysitter for the pack's five young pups while the adults are out hunting. Because Jello's status in the pack is already low, Amaroq's favoritism toward Miyax threatens him. Jello retaliates against this threat by breaking into Miyax's camp, destroying her house, and stealing her food. Miyax's father, Kapugen, once explained to her that wolf packs turn on lone wolves that steal from the pack's pups because "there is no room in the wolf society for an animal who cannot contribute." And indeed, Jello pays the ultimate price for his actions when Amaroq kills him for the threat his individualism poses to the pack. Julie of the Wolves juxtaposes the negative consequences that befall self-interested characters like Jello with the security and personal fulfillment that Miyax gains through her commitment to Amaroq's wolf pack. In so doing, the novel suggests that community and compassion are more rewarding and conducive to survival than rugged individualism. - Theme: Tradition vs. Assimilation. Description: Miyax Kapugen straddles a divide between two vastly different worlds: her ancestors' Inuit traditions and gussak (white) American culture, which disrupts and displaces the old way of life. Miyax's very name illustrates this conflict. Among her own people, she is Miyax Kapugen, an Inuit girl who takes pride in the rich cultural and spiritual traditions her people—though these beliefs are increasingly perceived as "old-fashioned," even within the Inuit community. In another world, she is Julie Edwards, an American girl who is coerced into assuming an English name, learning to read and write in English, and complying with the Bureau of Indian Affairs's regulations. After Miyax runs away from home, while trying to survive in the Alaskan wilderness, she fantasizes about alternative lives that evoke both extremes. She imagines either leaving society to lead a traditional Inuit life in the Arctic tundra or running away to live an entirely modernized life with her gussak pen pal, Amy, in San Francisco. In Miyax's mind, there is no middle road: assimilation, no matter how slight, comes at the direct cost of dishonoring her past. Although Miyax doesn't make it to San Francisco, she metaphorically turns her back on the past when she decides to return to an Inuit village, live with Kapugen (her father), and become Julie. But after she realizes how much Kapugen has distanced himself from Inuit culture in the years they've been apart, Miyax resolves to abandon her father, leave town, and return to the wilderness to live in absolute accordance with her ancestral ways. This changes when her bird friend, Tornait, dies shortly after they leave town together. In a state of utter loneliness and grief, Miyax realizes the futility of her quest to reclaim her Inuit identity. After singing a mournful song about the end of "the hour of the wolf and the Eskimo," Miyax, whom the book now calls Julie, "point[s] her boot toward Kapugen," implying that she will abandon her plans and return to her father. The erasure of Miyax's indigenous name in the final line of the novel evokes a sad truth about the likelihood that she'll be able to preserve her indigenous culture. Even if Miyax can practice certain customs and maintain a degree of pride in her indigenous heritage as she lives in town, non-indigenous culture's coercive influence means that Miyax will always be met with circumstances that force her to compromise her cultural integrity. She will always be "Julie" if she chooses to return to society. Miyax's final decision to give up her Inuit name and culture pessimistically suggests that assimilation and indigenous cultural preservation may be mutually exclusive. As long as the pressure to assimilate exists, traditional ways of life remain at risk of disappearing. - Climax: Miyax reunites with Kapugen but feels betrayed by his assimilation into non-indigenous society. - Summary: Part 1 begins on the Alaska North Slope. Miyax, a 13-year-old Inuk girl, finds herself starving, alone, and hopelessly lost after running away from Barrow, Alaska to escape an unhappy homelife. She spots some wolves nearby and remembers how her father, Kapugen, once told her about a pack of wolves that led him to a freshly killed caribou on one of his hunting trips. Miyax vows to observe the wolves, gain their acceptance, and encourage them to share their food with her, too. Miyax focuses on Amaroq, a black, regal wolf who is clearly the leader of the pack. Although the wolves ignore Miyax at first, she gradually wins them over by mimicking their behavior and learning how to convey respect, dominance, and submission. Miyax becomes particularly friendly with one pup, whom she names Kapu, after Kapugen. All the other wolves—Silver, the mother; Nails, another adult male; and the pups, Zing, Zat, Zit, and Sister—accept Miyax into their pack. However, Jello, the antisocial, lone wolf whom none of the others respect, repeatedly antagonizes Miyax. The bond between Miyax and the wolves grows stronger, and Amaroq lets Miyax take meat from a freshly killed caribou. Miyax grows more optimistic that she will survive long enough to continue her journey toward Point Hope, where she plans to board a ship bound for San Francisco to visit her pen pal, Amy. Still, Miyax remains wary of the approaching winter, knowing the tundra will be immersed in a months-long darkness in the near future. One day, Miyax returns to her camp and finds Jello eating the meat she stored in a makeshift underground cellar. Miyax chases Jello away with a knife but knows the loss of meat could have a devastating effect on her chance of survival. Shortly after this setback, the wolves leave, and Miyax is alone once again. Part 2 is a series of flashbacks that chronicle Miyax's life up until this point. Miyax remembers moving with her father to an Inuit seal camp after her mother died, and she regards the years she spent there as the happiest time in her life. At the camp, Miyax reconnects with nature and her Inuit culture. During the Bladder Feast celebration, an old priestess whom people call "the bent woman" gives Miyax an i'noGo tied, a totem made from seal fur and blubber. One day, Kapugen's Aunt Martha arrives at the camp unannounced. She and Kapugen argue. Afterward, Kapugen tells Miyax that she has to move back to Mekoryuk with Martha to enroll in a Bureau of Indian Affairs school. Before Miyax leaves, Kapugen tells her that if she ever needs to escape, she can marry his friend Naka's son, Daniel. Miyax moves to Mekoryuk and assumes her American name, Julie. One day, an old man from the seal camp comes to Martha's house and reveals that Kapugen disappeared while on a seal hunt and is presumed dead. The news devastates Julie, but she accepts her fate and moves forward. She tries to adapt to her new life in Mekoryuk, but the other Inuit girls tease her about her poor English and unfamiliarity with gussak (white) culture. Determined to fit in, Julie throws away her i'noGo tied and learns to read and write in English. One day, a gussak man named Mr. Pollock invites Julie to be pen pals with his 12-year-old daughter, Amy, who lives in San Francisco. Julie gladly accepts Mr. Pollock's offer and starts receiving weekly letters from Amy. Through these letters, Julie learns about the exciting, modern world that exists on the mainland. At the end of each letter, Amy begs Julie to visit her and describes the pink room Julie will stay in when she arrives. Meanwhile, Julie grows tired of her life in Mekoryuk. Amy's letters make the town seem dull, and Julie and Martha fight constantly. Julie decides to move to Barrow to marry Daniel. When Julie meets Daniel for the first time, she is shocked to learn that he is developmentally disabled, and she momentarily wonders if her father knew about Daniel's condition when he made the arrangement. Julie's new life in Barrow is initially bearable. She helps Nusan, Daniel's mother, sew clothing to sell to the tourists. Daniel mostly ignores her, and she befriends a girl named Pearl Norton. However, Julie soon discovers that Naka is an alcoholic who beats Nusan when he is drunk. One night, Daniel comes home angry because the schoolchildren have been teasing him about not being able to "mate" his wife. He assaults Julie, attempting to rape her, and threatens to repeat the attack tomorrow. That night, Julie reclaims her Inuit name and leaves town on foot. She plans to board a ship at Point Hope and travel to California to see Amy, but she gets lost along the way. In Part 3, the narrative returns to the present. Miyax discovers that somebody has destroyed her camp and stolen all her meat. The culprit, Jello, emerges from the reeds. Miyax chases him away, packs her things, and continues her journey across the tundra. The first snow falls. Miyax sets up camp and hears her pack's familiar howls. Before Miyax can grasp what's happening, Jello reappears and steals her pack, which contains all her most important tools. Miyax knows her situation is hopeless. She drifts to sleep and mentally prepares to die. Miyax awakens to find Jello's mutilated body next to her pack. She knows that Amaroq killed Jello to punish him for harming her, and she praises her "adopted father." Miyax continues her journey. Meanwhile, the days grow shorter, and the air grows colder. Miyax has a frightening encounter with a grizzly bear, but her wolf pack reappears to protect her. When she Miyax passes an oil drum, she knows civilization isn't far away. Wary of the gussak hunters who are likely nearby, Miyax sings to her wolf pack to warn them not to continue any further. Miyax finds a lost bird at her camp that night. She names the bird Tornait and takes him with her. The weather worsens, and Miyax loses track of her wolf pack. One afternoon, an airplane of hunters appears overhead. One of them shoots Amaroq, killing him. Another bullet wounds Kapu. Miyax brings Kapu to her camp and tends to his wounds. After seeing the violence the gussaks have inflicted on her friends, Miyax no longer daydreams about modern life in San Francisco. Instead, she builds an icehouse and resolves to live an authentic Inuit lifestyle in the wilderness. One day, a family of Inuit hunters from Kangik, a nearby village, stumble upon Miyax's camp. The wife, Uma, tells Miyax about a master hunter from their village named Kapugen. Miyax realizes that Uma is talking about her father and heads to Kangik the next morning. Miyax reunites with Kapugen but feels betrayed when she sees that Kapugen has married a gussak woman named Ellen, assimilated to gussak culture, and abandoned the old way of life. Miyax leaves Kangik to return to the wilderness, but her plans change when Tornait dies suddenly. Miyax buries Tornait and sings a song to mourn the dying animals' spirits and the end of the Inuit. She reclaims her non-indigenous name, Julie, and returns to Kapugen.

- Genre: Novel; Speculative Fiction; Alternate History - Title: July’s People - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: South Africa - Character: Maureen Smales. Description: The main protagonist of July's People, Maureen is married to Bam Smales, a white, affluent South African architect. The couple has three children: Victor, Gina, and Royce. The Smaleses pride themselves on their progressive, anti-apartheid views and always gone to great lengths to treat their Black house servant, July, with dignity and respect. Maureen's father, "the shift boss," made a fortune in the mining industry under apartheid, exploiting and mistreating his Black workers for profit. Maureen is ashamed of her family's complicity in the oppression of South Africa's Black population and tries desperately to distance herself from her past. However, while Maureen outwardly supports Black liberation, her latent racism becomes increasingly evident once the racial hierarchy of post-apartheid society robs the Smaleses of the status and privilege they enjoyed—if reluctantly—under apartheid. The Smaleses rely on July for food, shelter, and protection in July's rural village, and Maureen struggles to accept this new power dynamic. While she acknowledges that her family owes their lives to July, she resents being beholden to him and begins to question his loyalty. Maureen's doubt about July grows after she sees villagers using items from the Smaleses' home in Johannesburg, which July presumably stole over his many years of service. Maureen repeatedly confronts July about his abuses of power, such as when he and a friend leave the village in the Smales' bakkie without asking for permission. July's rebuttals to Maureen's increasingly hostile confrontations also shed light on the many ways that Maureen has unintentionally insulted and dehumanized July over his years of service. While Maureen never overtly confronts her latent racism, the culture shock and powerlessness she experiences while living in July's village gives her a new perspective on how alienated and oppressed July must have felt working for them in Johannesburg. In the final scene, Maureen abandons July's village and her family to chase down a helicopter that has just landed in the distant bushland, though she doesn't know whether the helicopter carries ally or enemy forces. Simultaneously too ashamed to confront or reject her internalized racism and other demons, Maureen abandons her old life in pursuit of the unknown. - Character: Bam Smales. Description: Bam Smales is Maureen Smales's husband and one of the book's central protagonists. He is an affluent, white South African architect. Bam prides himself on his progressive, anti-apartheid views and strives to treat his family's Black house servant, July, as an equal. These views are put to the test, however when the Smaleses flee their suburban home in war-torn Johannesburg for the safety of July's rural village. In July's village, the Smales no longer possess the racial and social privilege they benefited from under apartheid, and they're suddenly forced to rely on July for food, shelter, and protection. As such, the new situation radically transforms the power dynamic between July and the Smaleses. However, while Maureen immediately resents having to answer to July, Bam trust in July is unwavering—at least, at first. Like Maureen, Bam's latent racism becomes increasingly apparent the longer he resides in July's village. While Bam appears outwardly supportive of Black liberation, he constantly tunes in to the radio for news of an end to fighting and a return to the white-controlled status quo. He also underestimates the Black villagers, as evidenced by his completely illogical assumption that nobody in the village is aware of the shotgun he keeps hidden in the thatched roof of his family's hut. Additionally, Bam and Maureen both resent July's insistence on keeping the keys to the bakkie, the Smaleses' pickup truck. They panic when he and a friend drive the vehicle into town without asking the couple for permission. Bam grows increasingly distant from Maureen as they both struggle to accept the reality that their desire to return to their old life under apartheid contradicts their outward espousal of liberalism and racial equality. - Character: July. Description: July is a Black man who has worked as a house servant for the Smales family, who are affluent, white South Africans, for 15 years. When a Black uprising overthrows apartheid rule in South Africa and puts the country's minority white population in danger, the Smaleses accept July's offer to shelter them in his rural village. While Maureen and Bam Smales are grateful to July for saving their lives, the move drastically alters their relationship with him. Suddenly, they must rely on their former servant for food, shelter, and protection. In apartheid-era Johannesburg, in contrast, July was at the mercy of the Smaleses. While Maureen and Bam always made a point to treat July with more respect than most wealthy, white South Africans treated their Black staff, July's existence as a Black man was more oppressive and stifling than they could appreciate. The Smales might believe that they have a good relationship with July, but the racial and social superiority that apartheid afforded them has always prevented them from interacting with him as equals. When the Black uprising ends apartheid and renders white people powerless, the power dynamics in July's relationship with his employers shift, and the Smaleses begin to question July's loyalty and honesty. One early source of conflict is July's decision to keep the keys to the Smaleses' bakkie. July's control of their vehicle effectively severs the Smaleses' last remaining connection to their old life and reaffirms how beholden they are to him. July has a wife, Martha, to whom he sends letters and a portion of his salary. The couple isn't very close, however, since July only returns to the village once every two years. Martha and July's mother disapprove of his decision to house the Smaleses. Both women criticize July's decision to continue to serve the Smaleses, reminding him of the consequences he could face if people outside of his village discover that he is helping a white family. July, too, struggles to reconcile his allegiance to the Smaleses with his loyalty to his people. Nevertheless, July continues to protect and provide for the Smaleses, even as they grow increasingly resentful of the new power that he holds over them. - Character: Martha. Description: Martha is July's wife and the mother of his children. Because July can only return to his village once every two years, Martha and July don't have a very close relationship. Prior to the violent situation in Johannesburg forcing July and the Smaleses to abandon the city, Martha's contact with her husband was limited to letters and the regular paychecks he would send home to support his family. Martha opposes July's decision to house the Smales family. She struggles to understand July's loyalty to the Smaleses and what compels him to continue to serve white people who no longer have the means to pay him. Like July's mother, Martha has had minimal contact with white people and generally distrusts them. She urges July to convince the Smaleses to seek shelter outside of July's village. While Martha never becomes friendly with the Smaleses, she respects July's loyalty to the family by helping them out herself. For instance, she gives Maureen an herbal medicine to help with the children's coughs. She also chastises July's mother for being judgmental of Maureen's ignorance about the region's native plants. - Character: July's Mother. Description: July's mother is an elderly woman who lives in the village with the rest of July's extended family. She agrees to give up her hut to house the Smales family when violent riots force them to flee their home in Johannesburg. Like Martha, July's mother is skeptical of the Smales and white people in general. She complains about the Smaleses' extended stay in the village but goes along with her son's requests. July's mother has difficulty understanding her son's loyalty to the Smaleses. Unlike July, she has never served white people and is vehemently opposed to taking orders from them. While July's mother is not openly hostile toward the Smaleses, she regards them skeptically. She believes that all white people are trouble—even those as desperate and powerless as the Smales family. - Character: Daniel. Description: Daniel is a young Black man who lives in July's village and is friends with July. He teaches July to drive the bakkie, and the two of them spend their days working on or hanging around the vehicle in its hiding place outside of the main settlement. Bam teaches Daniel to shoot after Daniel expresses interest in the gun, foreshadowing Daniel's later decision to steal the gun from its hiding place in the thatched roof of the Smales' hut. Unlike July, whose loyalty to the Smales family somewhat contradicts his allegiance to his people and Black identity, Daniel is steadfast in his support of Black liberation. At the end of the book, after stealing Bam's shotgun, Daniel runs away to join the Black fighters. - Character: The Chief. Description: The chief has authority over settlements in July's region. After word spreads that July is housing a white family in his village, the chief orders the Smales family to see him. He will allow them to remain in July's village—but only if they ask for permission in person. That the Smaleses must appeal to a Black authority figure to be in a Black-dominated space illustrates how radically the end of apartheid has upended the racial hierarchy. During the Smaleses' meeting with the chief, the chief asks Bam many questions about the ongoing civil war and expresses interest in learning to shoot Bam's gun. Bam is shocked to hear the chief claim that he would prefer to shoot Black rebels than cede his land to outside tribes that have joined forces with the South African fighters. The chief condemns Black liberation and the ongoing war. He wants the white apartheid government to take back control of South Africa, since their system protects his land from being invaded by Black people from outside tribes. - Character: Ellen. Description: Ellen is July's "town woman," a Black office cleaner with whom July had a romantic relationship while working for the Smaleses in Johannesburg. July loses touch with Ellen when he and the Smaleses flee Johannesburg for July's rural village. Maureen uses Ellen as leverage against July. She condemns July's ignorance about what became of Ellen after he and the Smaleses left Johannesburg and judges him for having an extramarital affair in the first place. When July orders Maureen not to work in the fields with the other village women, Maureen assumes that July is afraid that she will tell Martha (July's wife) about Ellen. - Character: Lydia. Description: Lydia was an older Black woman whom Maureen's wealthy family employed as a servant when Maureen was a child growing up in a mining town. She would regularly walk Maureen home from school. Lydia sometimes scolded Maureen, but other times they were "conspirators," laughing and trading gossip together as friends. Maureen remembers one scene from her childhood when a photographer stopped her and Lydia on the street to take their photograph. In the photograph, which Maureen only stumbles upon years later, Lydia carries Maureen's backpack balanced atop her head. When Maureen reflects on the photograph as an adult, she can't believe how unaware she had been of the power dynamics between herself, her family, and Lydia. In retrospect, the backpack balanced on Lydia's head is a glaring symbol of Lydia's subservience to Maureen. Maureen reflects on this memory of Lydia during her stay in July's village, implicitly drawing a connection between her former ignorance about the nature of her and Lydia's relationship and her present inability to make sense of her relationship with July. - Character: Gina. Description: Gina is the Smaleses' young daughter. Like her siblings, Gina adapts to the culture of July's rural village and doesn't seem to miss her family's old life in Johannesburg all that much. She quickly becomes friends with Nyiko, one of the village girls. The ease with which the girls form a close bond highlights how readily the Smales children accept the culture of July's people compared to Maureen and Bam. - Character: The Shift Boss. Description: "The shift boss" is the title Maureen uses to refer to her father, a wealthy mining boss who exploited and underpaid his Black workers. Maureen reflects shamefully on her privileged upbringing throughout the book. She prides herself on the progressive, anti-apartheid views she adopted as an adult and resents her inherited complicity in the oppression of South Africa's Black population. Maureen's habit of invoking the impersonal title "shift boss" illustrates her desire to distance herself from her family and past. - Character: The Man with the Red Box. Description: The man with the red box is something of a wandering beggar and the rural region's equivalent of "travelling entertainment." He travels to villages throughout the area with a red box containing a record player and amplifier to project music. When the man wanders into July's village toward the end of the book, the community comes together for a celebration called "gumba-gumba," which involves music, drinking, and dancing. - Theme: Racial Hierarchy and Apartheid. Description: July's People was published in 1981, a decade before the end of the apartheid era in South Africa. Apartheid, an Afrikaans word meaning "apartness," was a system of racial oppression enforced in South Africa after the all-white National Party gained power in 1948, until around 1991, when the administration of President F.W. de Klerk began to repeal much of the era's core legislation. The legislation of the apartheid era enforced racial segregation, limited contact between the country's white and non-white populations, and disenfranchised non-white citizens. July's People turns the racial hierarchy upheld under apartheid on its head, imagining a world where apartheid ends when a Black liberation movement propels the country into a bloody civil war that removes the minority white ruling class from power and puts all of the country's white residents in danger. This social and political upheaval forces the Smaleses, an affluent, white South African family, to flee their home in Johannesburg to seek refuge in the rural village that July, their Black house servant, is from. Upon arriving in July's village, the Smaleses once more find themselves the minority white population of a majority Black community. However, the racial hierarchy of this new society renders them powerless and wholly unable to control their destiny. At the same time, July and other Black characters, who were second-class citizens under apartheid, are now the "big men" in town. For example, the Smales must receive permission from the regional chief, a Black man, to remain in July's village. This is a symbolic and practical reversal of the Pass Laws that were in effect under apartheid. Pass Laws required non-white South Africans to obtain special documents that authorized their presence in spaces restricted for usage by white South Africans only.   July's People creates an alternate history that subverts South Africa's racial hierarchy under apartheid. In so doing, the book draws attention to and challenges the white supremacist ideologies that formed the basis of apartheid-era legislation and social attitudes. - Theme: Gratitude and Resentment. Description: Maureen and Bam Smales are well aware that they owe their lives to July for helping them flee the violence of Johannesburg and providing them with food, shelter, and protection in his rural village. Yet, despite this awareness, they struggle to reconcile their gratitude for July's generosity with their growing feelings of resentment toward him for leveraging their indebtedness against them. In Johannesburg, July was the Smaleses' servant, and their feelings toward him were unanimously positive because they were the ones dictating the terms of the relationship. However, July's gracious act of sheltering the Smaleses upsets this relationship, and the Smaleses suddenly find themselves at the mercy of a man over whom they once had the upper hand. Immediately upon their arrival at the village, July begins to act in ways that emphasize the Smaleses' indebtedness to him and test the limits of their gratitude. An early example of this is July's insistence on keeping the keys to the bakkie, the Smaleses' vehicle. July frames the decision as a practical matter: the Smaleses cannot safely drive the bakkie, since doing so would put them at risk of being apprehended and killed by Black rebel soldiers. It's essential, too, that the bakkie remain hidden from view, since the presence of a white family's vehicle could easily catch the attention of authorities, placing the Smaleses and July in danger. July's familiarity with the geography of his homeland means that he's better equipped to hide the vehicle than the Smaleses are. July's reasoning tracks, yet the Smaleses can't help but feel resentful toward him for taking advantage of their helplessness. Their resentment magnifies when July increasingly uses the bakkie less out of necessity and more to raise his social status in the village. July's People suggests that when people lack the ability to control their circumstances, gratitude becomes indebtedness, which invariably leads to resentment. - Theme: White Liberalism and Hypocrisy. Description: Bam Smales, a wealthy, white South African architect, and his wife, Maureen, consider themselves fundamentally different from white South Africans who support apartheid. They preach the progressive ideals of racial equality and human rights and pride themselves on treating their Black house servant, July, with dignity and respect. Yet, many of the Smaleses' actions contradict the liberal ideologies to which they subscribe. Their progressivism is disingenuous and performative, and they are ignorant about the ways their thoughts and behaviors reinforce the oppressive ideologies that they claim to reject. While living as displaced refugees in July's rural village, Maureen and Bam constantly listen to the radio, waiting to receive word of the white victory that would allow for their safe return to Johannesburg and restore the safety and privilege they enjoyed under apartheid rule. While the Smaleses take pride in their anti-apartheid politics, they take no issue with the oppressive policies of the era the minute their own comfort and power come under attack. Moreover, though the Smaleses might claim to see July as equal, they feel threatened whenever July oversteps a boundary or goes against their wishes in a way that emphasizes the reality that, in this new, post-apartheid social order, they no longer have power over him. Many of the Smaleses' comments and behaviors suggest their internalized belief in the superiority of western, Euro-centric culture. For instance, Maureen establishes a clear distinction between the Black children who "belong" in the rural conditions of July's village and her own children, who belong in society. July's People emphasizes discrepancies between the Smaleses' progressive political ideals and their prejudiced attitudes and behaviors, thus revealing deep-seated hypocrisy in modern white liberalism. - Theme: Power. Description: July's People explores the power dynamics at play in a society that enforces a racial hierarchy. Power dynamics influence every aspect of life in the fictionalized post-apartheid South Africa of the novel, from the political and systemic forces that shape legislation to the interpersonal relationships and everyday interactions between characters. When July smuggles the Smaleses into his rural village to help them escape the dangerous conditions of war-torn Johannesburg, the Smaleses' new status as powerless refugees drastically alters their relationship with July. In town, July had been the Smaleses' house servant. He was also a Black man in a society that afforded preferential treatment to white citizens while oppressing non-white citizens. Life in July's village alters the power dynamic between the Smaleses and July, as the Smaleses no longer hold the power of employment or social hierarchy over him. July's empowerment gives him more freedom to dictate the terms of his relationship with the Smaleses. The Smaleses, in turn, realize that their reliance on July for food, shelter, and community acceptance drastically alters the way they interact with him. For instance, they become more cautious and deferential—just as July had been when he worked for them in town. This subversion of power forces the Smaleses to see their former relationship with July in a new light. Maureen, in particular, realizes how significantly uneven power dynamics destabilize and delegitimize what she had formerly considered to be a loving friendship between herself and the man who used to be her servant. July's People presents human life as a complex, interconnected system of power dynamics in which every decision or action that increases or preserves the power of one person or group comes at the direct expense of another. In explicit and nuanced ways, the characters in July's People repeatedly assess situations and make decisions based on who is empowered, who is oppressed, and what they must do to preserve or improve their own status. - Theme: Cultural Displacement. Description: One of the biggest challenges that life in July's rural village poses for the Smales family is learning to adjust to a culture that is drastically different from their own. The Smaleses are an affluent, white South African family. Their old life in Johannesburg, which Maureen and Bam refer to as "back there," was defined by the ease, comfort, and material pleasures that their race, class, and social status afforded them. When civil war necessitates that they flee to July's village, the move forces them to give up the social and cultural frameworks that not only occupied their time but formed the basis of their identities and gave their lives meaning. "Back there," the Smaleses lived in a spacious, suburban home outfitted with countless material comforts and the freedom of privacy. In July's village, the family of five inhabits a small, earthen hut. Privacy is nonexistent, and their material possessions consist of a radio that rarely works, the clothes on their backs, and very little else. Instead of their newfound lack of distractions drawing the family closer, the opposite occurs. Stripped of the familiar cultural customs and social norms that used to dictate their thoughts and interactions, the Smaleses become strangers to themselves and each other. Maureen stops referring to Bam and her children by their names, relying instead on impersonal signifiers like "the blond man" and "the children." Bam and Maureen become estranged from each other, too. Their desire for physical intimacy disappears, and their conversations are increasingly limited to superficial small talk. July's People suggests that culture and identity are deeply intertwined. When a person experiences cultural displacement, they lose the cultural and social reference points that gave their lives comfort, structure, and meaning. - Climax: The Smales family discover that Bam's gun is missing from its hiding place in their hut's thatched roof. Maureen confronts July and accuses him of stealing the gun. - Summary: July's People imagines an alternate history in which a Black liberation movement forcefully overturns apartheid rule, embroiling the nation in a violent civil war that endangers the lives of the country's minority white population. These circumstances force the Smaleses, an affluent, white South African family, to flee their suburban Johannesburg home. When rebel takeover of ports and airports makes escaping the country impossible, the Smaleses gratefully accept their Black servant, July's, offer to seek refuge in his rural village. Forced to abandon their old life with no notice, the Smaleses arrive at July's village with the clothes on their backs and little else. The Smaleses are well aware that they are lucky to be alive. However, life in July's village is a huge culture shock for the family, who previously enjoyed a comfortable, privileged lifestyle in town. In July's village, the family resides in a small, earthen hut. With no access to modern amenities, they learn to bathe in the river and cook over an open fire. Bam hunts for warthogs with the other villagers, and Maureen helps the women unearth root vegetables and gather grass for thatching. While the children—Gina, Victor, and Royce—quickly adapt to life in July's village, their parents have more difficulty accepting their present situation. Maureen and Bam are a liberal couple who proudly condemn apartheid. However, at July's village, they obsessively tune in to the radio, anxiously listening for news that fighting has ceased and order has been restored. Although such thinking radically undermines their progressive political views, the reality is that Smaleses long to return to the privileged, comfortable life in Johannesburg that the oppressive system of apartheid—and July's services—have allowed them to enjoy. Maureen considers the fantasies she used to have about taking a family trip to July's village to teach her children how to experience and appreciate a life and culture so radically different from their own. With no choice but to experience that culture firsthand and wholly reliant on July for food, shelter, and protection, Maureen regards her earlier attitude as idealistic and misguided. She and Bam grow increasingly resentful of having to answer to July and begin to question his loyalty to their family. One major source of doubt for the Smaleses is that July has the keys to their bakkie, or pickup truck. The Smaleses' suspicions that July is disloyal come to a head when July and a friend drive the Smaleses' bakkie into town without asking permission or saying where they are going or when they plan to return. As Bam and Maureen anxiously await July's return, they argue over July's motivations for helping their family and whether or not they can trust him. While Bam believes that July is helping them out of genuine love and concern for the family's wellbeing, Maureen is more skeptical. Eventually, July returns to the village. When Bam and Maureen confront him about taking the bakkie without their permission, their attempt to reassert control over the vehicle backfires. July explains that he only drove the vehicle to the shops to pick up food and other supplies, including batteries for the Smaleses' radio. July's explanation implicitly reminds the Smaleses that their survival is dependent on his willingness to provide for them, effectively putting them in their place while reaffirming his authority. Tensions continue to rise. July's mother and his wife, Martha, express their concern and disapproval of July's decision to house a white family in the village. The Smaleses' presence poses a significant risk to everyone. Word travels fast, and if rebel forces receive information that the village is sheltering a white family, they might choose to attack. Eventually, the chief finds out that the Smaleses have been staying in the village and demands to meet them in person. When July relays the chief's message to Maureen and Bam, they assume that the chief will banish them from the village. The family is immensely relieved, then, when the chief allows them to remain in the village. Much of their meeting with the chief involves a discussion of the ongoing civil war. The chief opposes the fighting, arguing that the Black liberation movement attracts outside tribes that may jeopardize the chief's control over his land. The growing threat of violence makes the chief want to defend his land against rebel forces. Somehow, the chief learns that Bam owns a shotgun, and he requests that Bam give him a shooting lesson. The chief's position horrifies Bam, who can't imagine how the chief could want to shoot his own people. Sometime later, a man carrying a red box wanders into the town. The man is the village's equivalent of "travelling entertainment." He removes a record player and amplifier from his box and engages the village in a raucous celebration called "gumba-gumba," which consists of music, dancing, and drinking. The Smaleses are in no mood to celebrate and head back to their hut. Upon their return, Bam realizes that his shotgun is missing. After the family's frantic search fails to produce the missing weapon, Bam collapses onto the bed in despair. Maureen leaves the hut and finds July in his usual spot at the bakkie's hiding place outside the main settlement. She accuses him of stealing the gun but quickly realizes that he has no idea what she's talking about. Maureen remembers that July's friend Daniel wasn't at the gumba-gumba with the rest of the village and identifies him as the probable thief. July informs Maureen that Daniel left the village a few days ago. However, July also insists that the missing gun isn't his problem and refuses to tell Maureen where Daniel went. He tells Maureen that her family's presence in the village is causing him too many problems, insinuating that it won't be long before he orders them to leave. July's obstinance enrages Maureen. Throughout her stay at July's village, Maureen has witnessed numerous villagers using objects she recognizes from her family's house in Johannesburg. Now, she accuses July of stealing from her family and betraying their trust. July proceeds to yell at Maureen in his language. Although Maureen can't understand his words, his message is abundantly clear: Maureen's repeated attempts to dignify July have had the opposite effect. Throughout July's 15 years of service, Maureen's patronizing attitude and controlling demeanor have only dehumanized and alienated him. Finally, July switches to English to tell Maureen that Daniel has run away to join the rebel fighters. Maureen escalates the situation further, accusing July of being opportunistic and big-headed. She claims that July is a coward who has no qualms about staying behind, driving around in the stolen bakkie, and pretending to be a "big man" while others, like Daniel, fight on behalf of his people. The next day, Maureen is sewing in her family's hut when she sees a helicopter fly over the village before landing somewhere in the distant bushland. Maureen can't see any markings to determine whether the aircraft carries an ally or an enemy. Nevertheless, she drops her sewing, exits the hut, and walks away from the village. Maureen picks up speed as she nears the river and then crosses it. Ignoring her family's calls, Maureen runs forward into the bushland to meet the helicopter and her uncertain fate.

- Genre: Novel, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction - Title: Jurassic Park - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: Isla Nublar, a fictional private island off the coast of Costa Rica - Character: Dr. Alan Grant. Description: Dr. Alan Grant is a paleontologist who specializes in the breeding and social behavior of dinosaurs including hadrosaurs and raptors. He receives funding from John Hammond and consulted for InGen in the early phases of its Jurassic Park project. Along with his colleague Dr. Ellie Sattler, Grant travels to Isla Nublar to report on the feasibility and safety of the park for Donald Gennaro. When the tour vehicles become disabled and a tyrannosaur attacks the guests, Grant escapes with Tim and Lex Murphy, safely guiding them to the visitor center at the main resort complex. He shows bravery and level-headedness in several encounters with the park's raptors. Grant distrusts computers, perhaps because he doesn't understand them. Thus, he doesn't share John Arnold's confidence in the park's systems to ensure safe operations. In contrast to Hammond and his chief geneticist Dr. Henry Wu, Grant demonstrates a humble attitude towards nature that rises in part from his understanding of deep time. The fossils he studies come from creatures that died so long ago it's almost impossible to conceptualize; even the surface of the earth has undergone unimaginably massive changes over the vast time stretches of its existence, compared to which a human lifetime is infinitesimal. And, as much as Grant has been able to hypothesize about dinosaur physiology and behavior from a careful study of their remains, he understands how little dried bones can actually teach him. Thus, caution tempers his excitement over being able to observe living dinosaurs in the environment of Jurassic Park, and he doesn't share Wu and Hammond's confidence that the dinosaurs can be trained or controlled. Throughout his time on the island, Grant closely observes everything he can, using the new information that he gleans from his surroundings to update his knowledge base rather than sticking to his preconceived beliefs and biases. In these ways, he models the approach towards nature that the book argues humanity should take: respecting the power—and chaos—of life, observing carefully and in an unbiased way, and treating the environment with respect and care. - Character: Dr. Ian Malcolm. Description: Dr. Ian Malcolm is a mathematician and chaos theorist hired by John Hammond to consult on his Jurassic Park project. When Donald Gennaro invites some of the consultants to visit the island and asses its safety and feasibility, Malcolm accompanies him, Dr. Ellie Sattler, and Dr. Alan Grant to the island. Malcolm carries himself like a rockstar, wearing only black clothes and naming his discoveries like "the Malcolm effect" after himself. And while he approaches the world with a deep sense of pessimism and skepticism, a dry sense of humor tempers his outlook. As the voice of chaos, Malcolm provides the most consistent—and insistent—voice countering the confidence of men like Hammond, John Arnold, and Dr. Henry Wu, who believe humans can control nature and its chaos. In his descriptions of chaos theory and his philosophizing considerations of human hubris, unchecked and uncritical technological experimentation, and the history of science, Malcolm gives voice to the novel's main claims about the limited nature of human knowledge and control. He also highlights the need for regulation and oversight of human inquiry, and the pervasive nature of human flaws. Nor is Malcolm unwilling to admit his own flaws, including the fear and panic that drive him from the protection of the park vehicle during the tyrannosaur attack. After he flees, the dinosaur catches him and injures him severely. Gennaro and Robert Muldoon rescue him and bring him back to the lodge, but despite receiving the best care that park veterinarian Dr. Harding can give him, Malcolm eventually succumbs to his injuries and dies just before the Costa Rican authorities arrive to evacuate the survivors. And, since he predicted the park's failings long before his arrival, his death due to the very problems he foresaw becomes the final rebuke of Hammond's flawed plan. - Character: John Hammond. Description: John Hammond is the eccentric, immensely wealthy businessman who conceives of the idea for Jurassic Park and brings it to fruition on his private island. Although he is in his mid-70s, he still possesses lots of energy, and he has worked hard to keep himself in shape, since he plans to live well beyond 100. Greed motivates Hammond. He founds a biotechnology firm because he sees the promise of wealth in developing genetic engineering technologies. And he focuses on amusement applications rather than humanitarian ones because, while he can charge anything he likes for a luxury good like an amusement park, most people react badly when companies try to make too much money off of their lifesaving innovations. In addition to greed, hubris drives Hammond's decisions, which are based on the arrogant assumption that enough wealth and technological expertise grant him and his employees the ability to tame the chaos that is life. Hammond believes absolutely in the rightness of his own vision, willfully closing his eyes to evidence that contradicts his ideas; for example, after asking Dr. Ian Malcolm to consult on the park project, he subsequently ignores Malcolm's analysis because it predicts failure. But when it becomes clear that Malcom was right, Hammond blames others for the park's failure, including his chief geneticist Dr. Henry Wu and his chief engineer John Arnold. Hammond also demonstrates a deep selfishness, putting his needs and concerns ahead of the safety of others. In an attempt to keep Donald Gennaro from shutting down the park, he invites his grandchildren Lex and Tim Murphy to the island, putting them in grave danger, even though the park's history of accidents includes several deaths by dinosaur mauling. In the end, however, Hammond falls prey to his own grandiosity when he's injured in the forest, allowing the scavenging "compy" dinosaurs to immobilize and eat him. - Character: Donald Gennaro. Description: Donald Gennaro is both a major investor in InGen and the company's chief legal counsel. His business association with John Hammond stretches back to the days when Hammond was wooing InGen's initial investors, and he's one of the few people beyond the confines of the island who knows that InGen is cloning dinosaurs. Greed and self-protection motivate Gennaro; he becomes an investor in the park project based on Hammond's promise that it will make them all very, very rich. But after Hammond turns furtive and Gennaro begins to worry that the eccentric businessman is covering up issues with the park, he invites Drs. Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm to visit the park and report on its safety and viability. When it becomes clear that the park has several major issues, Gennaro's initial impulse is to shutter it and destroy the evidence; this is why he cheers the news that the Costa Rican authorities plan to bomb it into oblivion. Nevertheless, his actions on the island demonstrate his ability to feel empathy and to place human life and safety above profits. Despite his fear, he joins Robert Muldoon in several search and rescue missions, and when John Arnold dies before he can restart the main generator, Gennaro steps up to the plate and tries to finish the job. Thus, while he initially stands as a stark reminder of the results of unbridled greed and irresponsibility, Gennaro's personal evolution offers hope that humankind can survive, if only it learns to overcome its baser instincts. - Character: Dr. Ellie Sattler. Description: Dr. Ellie Sattler is a colleague of Dr. Alan Grant who works with him at his Montana dig site. She is a paleobotanist, a scientist who studies the vestiges of ancient plant life. John Hammond invites her to visit the park with Grant and Dr. Ian Malcolm. There, she strikes up a working relationship with Dr. Harding, the park's vet, when her knowledge of botany and dinosaur behavior helps solve the mystery of why some of the animals keep getting sick. She demonstrates courage and quick thinking when she distracts some of the park's raptors long enough for Grant to access the power plant and when she joins him and the reluctant lawyer Donald Gennaro in surveying the raptor colony. Although she holds a different opinion about the nature of scientific progress than Malcolm, like him, Grant, and Muldoon, Ellie demonstrates a more thoughtful approach to the world than Hammond, John Arnold, and Dr. Henry Wu. She recognizes the fierce competition of life in nature, even among plants, and this endows her with a respect for the change and chaos that characterize existence. Therefore, she approaches the natural world with curiosity and humility, attitudes that serve her well on the island and help ensure her survival. - Character: John Arnold. Description: John Arnold is Jurassic Park's chief engineer. His career, before John Hammond hired him, included working on many world-famous amusement parks like Disney World and Land. It also included working with dangerous technologies, including a submarine-launched nuclear missile. Arnold's experience with long-term and complicated projects has made him into a worrier and he has more concerns about the park's chances of running smoothly and safely than either Hammond or Dr. Henry Wu. Nevertheless, he expresses confidence in the ability of the park's sophisticated computer system—and by extension its operators, including himself—to ultimately control all of the many variables at play in running Jurassic Park. Even after Dennis Nedry sabotages the computer programming, once Arnold reboots the machines, he feels that he has regained control. But in the end, this arrogance costs him his life: the computer systems are still vulnerable to human error, and one of his errors ends up cutting power to the park and requiring a restart of the main generator. While he attempts this hazardous task, a raptor attacks and kills him. - Character: Dr. Henry Wu. Description: Dr. Henry Wu is the chief geneticist for the Jurassic Park project. As a graduate student, Wu worked in the lab of John Hammond's former geneticist; when that man died, Hammond recruited Wu with promises of wealth and recognition. Professional pride motivates Wu; he only agrees to work for Hammond after receiving assurance that when the park opens he'll be able to publish his work. Like his employer, Wu believes that his knowledge and technological prowess give him power over nature. He sees DNA as a blank medium to be manipulated as he pleases and feels total confidence in his ability to modify the park's dinosaurs as necessary, by making them all female or lysine-dependent, for example. Still, he finds himself at odds with Hammond on several counts: Wu's confidence in his ability to manipulate his creations runs afoul of Hammond's desire to have dinosaurs that are as true to life as possible. Wu feels uncomfortable about the old man's apparent lack of concern over the safety of his guests, and the realization that some of the animals have begun breeding independently convinces Wu that their work needs to be reassessed before the park can open. But before he can address the lapses in his judgment and scientific processes, Wu becomes the victim of his own creation when an escaped raptor attacks and kills him. - Character: Robert Muldoon. Description: Robert Muldoon is the Jurassic Park warden. Along with Dr. Henry Wu and John Arnold, he bears responsibility for showing John Hammond's early guests around the island. Muldoon grew up in Kenya and spent his early career as a guide for big game hunters. Subsequently, however, he changed paths and became a conservationist and wildlife consultant for zoos and nature preserves around the world. Muldoon doesn't share Hammond's or Wu's easy assurance about their ability to control and contain the park's dinosaurs. His experience with modern apex predators makes him cautious, and he feels that the dinosaurs that prove themselves to be particularly dangerous should be exterminated. In this way, Muldoon represents a more moderate and appropriate view of nature than the other park employees, since he recognizes his relative powerlessness—at least as long as he isn't armed with guns and rockets—against poorly understood, massive, prehistoric predators. - Character: Dennis Nedry. Description: Dennis Nedry is the brilliant computer systems analyst hired by InGen to design the computer systems for Jurassic Park. His crass and disrespectful attitude bothers John Arnold and Dr. Henry Wu. Shrewd, intelligent, and greedy, Nedry resents John Hammond and his company after they force him to do extra work without pay. Thus, he willingly accepts Lewis Dodgson's offer of $1.5 million for stealing some of InGen's dinosaur embryos. In the end, however, his greed proves to be his downfall. When he deactivates the security systems to steal the embryos, he unwittingly turns off the fences. And when he gets lost driving to the dock to hand the goods off to his contact, a herd of escaped dinosaurs attacks and eats him. - Character: Lewis Dodgson. Description: Lewis Dodgson is the chief geneticist at Biosyn, the rival of John Hammond's company, InGen. Pure greed motivates Dodgson, and in his desire to make money he willingly engages in immoral practices like experimenting on people without their consent, conducting dangerous experiments to see if he can increase the virulence and communicability of already deadly diseases, and engaging in corporate espionage by hiring Denis Nedry to steal frozen dinosaur embryos from Jurassic Park. As a character, he provides a warning about the kind of people that can flourish in a field without proper regulatory oversight or the internal will to police itself. - Character: Ed Regis. Description: Ed Regis is the publicist for InGen's Jurassic Park project, although John Hammond's cost-cutting and miserliness means that Regis ends up saddled with odd jobs, like accompanying injured workers to the mainland for medical treatment or babysitting Hammond's grandchildren. Because he has an intimate knowledge of the damage a dinosaur attack can do to a person, Regis fears the animals a great deal. Yet he still participates in advertising the park and trying to attract visitors. In this way, he demonstrates the ways in which greed privileges money over the health and safety of other people. He shows his own selfishness and fear when he abandons Tim and Lex Murphy in the midst of a tyrannosaurus attack; while the children survive, the dinosaur ends up tearing Regis's body into pieces. - Character: Tim Murphy. Description: Tim Murphy is John Hammond's grandson and the sister of Lex Murphy, with whom he travels to Jurassic Park. Eleven years old, Tim is a bit shy and bookish, more interested in dinosaurs and science than sports. In this way, he is unlike his sister. Tim knows Dr. Alan Grant by reputation and has read some of his books. Although he is scared of heights, he overcomes his discomfort when his survival demands it, as when he's thrown into a tree by a dinosaur or when he has to climb over the high fences around the tyrannosaur enclosure. Tim successfully figures out how to run the computer systems following the deaths of John Arnold and Dr. Henry Wu. His attention to the dinosaur behavior and the messages of the computer demonstrates the importance of critically assessing the evidence in front of one to draw the correct conclusions. Because he is a child and has fewer biases and beliefs than the adults around him, Tim proves to be more flexible and adaptive in this thinking. - Character: Lex Murphy. Description: Lex Murphy is John Hammond's granddaughter, whom he brings to the park along with her brother, Tim. Seven or eight years old, Lex is athletic and energetic. She speaks her mind and whines when she doesn't get her way. When the tyrannosaurus attacks her and the others in the ride vehicles, she panics and temporarily reverts to a more child-like state, calling the creature "aminals" instead of "animals." Dr. Alan Grant rescues her and Tim from that situation and keeps them safe as they travel back to the visitor center. Although she bickers with and teases her brother, she follows his lead when necessary. - Character: Dr. Harding. Description: Dr. Harding is the veterinarian at Jurassic Park. Prior to being hired by John Hammond, he was the chief vet at the San Diego Zoo. His expertise in modern birds positions him as the best expert on dinosaur anatomy and physiology, although there are still many things he does not understand about the dinosaurs and their health. He joins the park out of a sense of pride; few discoveries or innovations remain in the modern era, and he wants the worldwide acclaim and acknowledgement he expects to receive as the author of the first book about dinosaur veterinary medicine. - Character: Dr. Marty Guitierrez. Description: Dr. Marty Guitierrez is a field biologist who trained at Yale University before moving to Costa Rica. When a mysterious lizard attacks tourist Tina Bowman, Dr. Guitierrez consults with the family and the hospital to identify the animal. And although his training tells him it must be a basilisk lizard and he initially discounts Tina's dinosaur-like drawing of the culprit, he continues to gather evidence that troubles his initial conclusion. When he recovers part of the lizard and realizes that it isn't the animal he expected, he sends it to a scientist in New York for identification. He continues to work with the Costa Rican government as they track unusual animal activities on the mainland; after they rescue Dr. Alan Grant and the other survivors from Jurassic Park, Dr. Guitierrez consults with Grant about these animals. - Character: Bob Morris. Description: Bob Morris is a lawyer who works for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and is charged with investigating John Hammond and his company InGen. He visits Dr. Alan Grant to ask questions about Hammond and his company's activities. Morris's inability to gather the necessary evidence, even though his gut correctly warns him that Hammond is up to no good, contributes to the book's call for regulatory oversight of potentially dangerous biotech research and development projects. - Character: Dr. Richard Stone. Description: Dr. Richard Stone, the director of the Tropical Diseases Laboratory at Columbia University in New York City, receives the remains of the mysterious lizard that bit Tina Bowman. The reptile expert whom Dr. Marty Guitierrez wanted to identify is abroad, and his lab wants Stone to make sure the sample doesn't have any dangerous pathogens. Stone, like many others in the book, looks for evidence that supports his previously held beliefs, rather than critically assessing the evidence in front of him; thus he discounts the dinosaur-like features in the sample and belittles Alice Levin for pointing out the obvious (if improbable) truth that the lizard is, in fact, a dinosaur. - Character: Tina Bowman. Description: Tina Bowman is the daughter of Mike and Ellen Bowman. On vacation with her family in Costa Rica, a mysterious lizard (which turns out to be a procompsognathus, escaped from Jurassic Park) bites and seriously injures her. She survives the incident and draws a picture of the lizard that adults like Dr. Marty Guitierrez and Dr. Richard Stone dismiss as fanciful. However, as her parents attest, Tina is an observant child—she and her drawing thus provide an example of how unbiased observation leads to insight. - Character: Ellen Bowman. Description: Ellen Bowman is the wife of Mike Bowman and the mother of Tina Bowman. She is vacationing with her family in Costa Rica in part to explore the country's natural beauty and in part because it has inexpensive, widely available plastic surgery options. Despite being a beautiful woman, she feels insecure about her appearance and spends time and money enhancing it. She thus demonstrates that, despite humanity's evolution, as a species we are still plagued with flaws like vanity. - Character: Elena Morales. Description: Elena Morales is a Costa Rican midwife who attends to patients at clinics, including the one run by Dr. Roberta Carter. She is a practical, experienced woman who nevertheless chooses to cover up her encounter with one of Jurassic Park's escaped animals, a procompsognathus that attacks a newborn in her care, to protect herself from criticism. - Theme: Chaos, Change, and Control. Description: As he attempts to create a theme park of dinosaurs resurrected from the deep past, John Hammond believes that, because he owns the island and has paid for the technological advances made in its genetics lab, he can command nature itself. But the lessons of natural history, especially as chaos theory interprets it, suggest that very little lies within human control, and the book explores the unintended or unexpected consequences that can arise from humankind's thoughtless actions. For instance, deforestation fulfils a need for raw materials (timber) or for arable land, but it also drives climate change and ecosystem losses that change animal behavior. Hammond's failure in the park illustrates the danger of humanity ignoring—or worse, overstepping—its limited control over nature. Mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm's study of chaos theory provides the starkest evidence that humans can never hope to control the innumerable variables in nature. Life doesn't follow a linear pathway, and the effects of even initially small variables can be magnified through repetition. Even after centuries of study and the development of powerful computers to help us assimilate and interpret the data we collect, humanity still struggles to accurately predict the weather or understand non-Newtonian physics. While Hammond rejects Malcolm's theories, events in the park quickly prove their accuracy: life escapes human control when the dinosaurs gain the ability to reproduce and when they literally escape their manmade enclosures. And although Hammond confidently predicted that the dinosaurs, being animals, could be trained, the raptors prove not only resistant to training but also lethally clever. But despite humanity's essential powerlessness in the face of random chance and ongoing change, Malcolm's function in the novel effectively reminds readers that humans can't hope to ever unlock all of nature's secrets. Instead, by accepting our limitations and respecting the power of change to create life in a bewildering array of forms, we can chart a path into the future that allows us to survive and thrive in a chaotic world. - Theme: Sight and Insight. Description: For many people in Jurassic Park, seeing isn't believing. Sometimes external sources cloud the picture, like the literal fog and mist that shroud John Hammond's island or his attempts to locate the park beyond the sight of his investors, regulatory bodies, and governments. At other times, people see what they want to, ignoring the evident truth when it contradicts their beliefs or hopes. For example, Dr. Guitierrez discounts the observant Tina's drawing of the lizard that attacked her because it contradicts his expectations, and Dr. Stone refuses to see a dinosaur in the sample he assesses because he believes (reasonably) that dinosaurs are extinct. These examples of willful blindness stand in stark contrast to the insight of people like Drs. Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm, who calmly assess the evidence set before them. The conflict between Hammond's grand—but incomplete vision—and the clearsighted observations of his consultants shows how true insight requires both accurate vision and unbiased assessment of the available evidence. Blinded by greed and arrogance, Gennaro, John Hammond, and Dr. Henry Wu overlook evidence that contradicts their expectations. Perhaps the clearest example of this is setting the computer to count only the animals they already expect to be on the island. In contrast, real insight requires adding new evidence to pre-existing paradigms. Sometimes this means being less attached to one's biases—children and less-invested adults (like Alice Levine) are better at seeing the escaped dinosaur as it is than the so-called experts. But experts can do it too, as when Lewis Dodgson (also a pioneering geneticist) realizes that the odd business decisions EPA lawyer Bob Morris can't interpret point to InGen cloning dinosaurs. And every time he observes the park's animals, Grant assimilates his new knowledge with the picture of dinosaur behavior he has built through years of careful paleontological study. In a key moment near the end of the book, Grant tries to force insight on Gennaro by making him participate in the wild-bred raptor count. This requires Gennaro to see and acknowledge the failures of the park—and his complicity in its downfall. In doing so, Grant underlines the importance of keeping an open mind and acting on the available information rather than relying on assumptions or hopes. - Theme: Flawed Human Nature. Description: Although the novel is ostensibly about dinosaurs, Jurassic Park shines a light on the amazing capabilities and ingenuity of human beings, the most advanced animals ever to evolve on earth. But, the book argues, humans are still full of flaws that threaten our survival. Chief among these are greed, pride, and selfishness. Greed motivates John Hammond and Dr. Henry Wu to focus on entertainment over humanitarian research. It motivates men like Donald Gennaro to invest in the park. And it characterizes InGen's business practices, which prioritize saving money over human life and safety. Still, pride might be an even stronger motivation. Dr. Harding, park vet, and John Arnold, chief engineer, both join the project to cement their own legacies. And in a broader sense, an arrogant belief that humankind can control nature drives Hammond's grand vision for the park. Dr. Ian Malcolm criticizes Hammond and his kind for treating scientific power as a kind of inherited wealth that they can apply without proper discipline. And selfishness flows naturally from greed and pride. Hammond callously exposes his grandchildren to harm hoping that they'll keep Gennaro off his case, while Gennaro wants to avoid taking responsibility for his part in the park fiasco. By showing how human flaws lead to disaster on a small scale (on a remote island, with fewer than 25 people directly affected), the book makes an argument for how these same flaws endanger humanity, especially against the backdrop of deforestation, climate change, and global political upheaval driven by pride, selfishness, and greed. Unless humanity choses to address these flaws, Jurassic Park suggests, it will destroy itself, leaving other forms of life to thrive on earth in its absence. - Theme: Technology. Description: Jurassic Park explores the breathtaking capability of technology to recreate the world around us, but the novel also warns that technology is only as good or bad as the ends to which humans direct it. The story takes place in 1989, during a scientific gold rush. Ground-penetrating scanners are revolutionizing paleontological research, allowing scientists like Drs. Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler to find and explore fossils without lengthy excavations. DNA analysis allows them to identify discoveries so fragmentary that they would otherwise have been worthless. And—perhaps less impressive to contemporary readers—modems and fax machines are gaining power in an increasingly connected world. But many innovations, the novel implies, fail to make the world better. Sometimes, when companies like Biosyn (with its controversial chief geneticist Lewis Dodgson) or Hammond's InGen allow greed or pride to direct their research, the results are pointless. Biosyn engineers high-visibility trout that are prone to sunburn and that taste terrible; medical advances allow both life-saving treatments and increasingly sophisticated plastic surgery for insecure women like Ellen Bowman. In worse cases, companies can use their technology in dangerous ways, like when Biosyn engineers a more communicable strand of rabies—an exceptionally lethal virus—to test the efficacy of their new vaccine. Or when InGen resurrects dinosaurs after millions of years of extinction and places them in a glorified zoo without any real insight into their natural behavior. The lack of human insight into the consequences of their scientific exploration prompts Dr. Ian Malcolm to provocatively declare all acts of discovery a violent and dangerous "rape of nature." He further criticizes men like Hammond, his chief geneticist Dr. Henry Wu, and his chief engineer John Arnold for being "thintelligent" in their application of technology to the natural world. Without pausing to consider the bigger picture, they make mistakes and miscalculations that have massive consequences. Hammond seems aware that his ideas might provoke resistance; this is why he constructs his lab and conducts his experiments on a remote private island, far from governmental oversight and regulation. By chronicling his fictitious downfall, however, the book makes a real and urgent argument that scientific research and technological development should be carefully directed and overseen to avoid predictable catastrophes. - Climax: The survivors of Jurassic Park restart the generators and regain control of the Park's computer systems. - Summary: It's the late summer of 1989, and in Costa Rica, strange events are unfolding. American expat Dr. Roberta Carter treats a construction worker who looks like he was mauled by an animal while building a secretive resort on a remote island. Then, a lizard attacks Tina Bowman, an American tourist, on a beach. Local biologist Dr. Guitierrez assures her parents that she encountered a known species of lizard, but he nevertheless sends samples of the creature—and a drawing made by Tina—to New York City for analysis. Meanwhile, Dr. Alan Grant discovers the complete fossil of a baby velociraptor at his paleontological dig site in Montana. A visit from Bob Morris, a lawyer investigating John Hammond and the suspicious actions of his company (InGen) on his private island near Costa Rica, interrupts his work. Morris interviews Grant because he consulted on the resort project a few years before. After Morris leaves, Grant receives two phone calls: one from a lab tech in New York who wants his opinion on the remains from the Costa Rican beach attack—which look like a well-executed dinosaur hoax—and one from Hammond, inviting Grant and his colleague Dr. Ellie Sattler to visit the island. With Hammond, Donald Gennaro, fellow consultant Dr. Ian Malcolm, and computer systems analyst Dennis Nedry, Grant and Sattler arrive on Isla Nublar, where a hand-written sign welcomes them to Jurassic Park—a theme park filled with dinosaurs resurrected from the deep past using genetic sequencing and cloning technologies. Hammond's grandchildren Lex and Tim Murphy join the group as park warden Robert Muldoon, chief geneticist Dr. Henry Wu, and chief engineer John Arnold show off the nearly completed park. In the genetics lab, Wu explains the process of extracting genetic material from parasitic bugs preserved in amber, sequencing the DNA, and inserting it into crocodile eggs. They must do this because Wu has made all the dinosaurs female to keep them from breeding in the wild. While Nedry stays behind to address bugs in the park's computer system, electric ride vehicles whisk the rest of the guests around the island. The highlight of the pre-programmed itinerary is the chance to watch the adult tyrannosaurs gobble up a live goat. Next, the group stops at the stegosaur enclosure, where Grant and Ellie help the park's veterinarian, Dr. Harding, diagnose a periodic illness the giant herbivores experience. While doing so, Grant discovers fragments of a dinosaur egg. A storm brews in the distance. Ellie stays with Dr. Harding as Grant and Malcolm radio the discovery of the dinosaur egg fragments to the control room. A revised computer survey of the animals reveals dozens running loose on the island; some species, including the raptors, have developed the ability to breed without anyone noticing. What's worse, on the drive back to the visitor center, Tim and Lex catch a glimpse of two stowaway raptors heading back to the mainland on the island's supply ship. As they're trying to warn the control room, the storm breaks overhead and Nedry cuts power to the park's security systems so he can steal some of the dinosaur embryos. With stolen goods in hand, he heads for a rendezvous with a buyer who has hired him to steal the embryos, but he gets lost and eaten by a herd of small carnivorous dinosaurs. The power outage cut electricity to the enclosure fences, allowing the tyrannosaurus to break free. It attacks the stalled vehicles and their occupants, throwing Tim into a tree, seriously wounding Malcolm, and killing park publicist Ed Regis. Although Muldoon and Gennaro race to the scene, where they find Regis's dismembered leg and the injured Malcolm, Grant and the children have already fled in search of safe shelter. Throughout the night, Arnold and Wu uncover and begin to undo Nedry's sabotage while Muldoon, Harding, and park employees fix the fences and round up escaped dinosaurs. Malcolm spends the night in the lodge tended by Ellie, while Grant and the children find shelter in the sauropod enclosure maintenance hut. In the morning, Arnold restores the park systems with a hard reboot, allowing the control room to watch the escaped adult tyrannosaurs hunt and kill another dinosaur. Because they are trying to cross the field at the time, Grant and the children get a much closer view of the attack. Desperate to find a way back that affords some protection from the carnivorous beast, Grant finds a raft to carry himself and the children back to the resort on the park's manmade river. They float through the dangerous territories of the park's aviary (the giant cearadactyls are excessively territorial) and the dilophosaur enclosure (these animals can spit venom). The tyrannosaur stalks them the whole time, until it corners them where the river ends by going over a waterfall into a lagoon. Fortunately, they find a maintenance shed that contains a vehicle and a juvenile, wild-bred raptor that Grant tranquilizes and brings along as evidence. Back in the control room, the entire park suddenly goes dark. When Arnold rebooted the computers, he forgot to restart the main generator. Running on auxiliary power for hours drained the secondary generators. And it means that the enclosure fences have been unelectrified for hours, allowing the park's dangerous raptors to escape. When Arnold tries to access the power plant to restart the generator, they attack him. Muldoon kills one and wounds another, and the surviving animals scatter. One corners and kills Arnold in the power plant and another—the injured one—attacks Gennaro, frustrating his attempt to restore the power. When Grant, Tim, and Lex finally make it back to the visitor center, they find utter chaos and destruction. But they also find a radio, allowing them to learn that the survivors are all in the lodge, where the raptors are chewing through the (currently unelectrified) bars on the skylights. Leaving the children in the cafeteria, where Tim successfully fends off an attack by trapping a raptor in a freezer, Grant gains access to the power plant, restarts the generator, and finds the terrified Gennaro huddled in a powerless vehicle. The two men return to the visitor center, but no sooner have they found the children than the raptors corner them all in the genetics lab. Grant dispatches the dinosaurs with the lab's dangerous chemicals. With the danger managed, they can turn their attention to restoring the park's systems through the computer interface in the control room. While the survivors await rescue helicopters from the mainland, Hammond wanders off, and some of the smaller carnivores attack and kill him. Meanwhile, Malcolm succumbs to his injuries. Grant forces Gennaro to confront the consequences of InGen's actions by helping them count the wild-bred raptors. Finally, after arriving on the mainland, Grant learns from Dr. Guitierrez that more evidence of escaped Jurassic Park animals has surfaced. Until the government gets a handle on what happened on the island, no one associated with the park will be allowed to go home.

- Genre: Contextual Modernism, Short Story - Title: Kabuliwala - Point of view: First Person - Setting: Calcutta (present day Kolkata), India - Character: The Narrator. Description: Mini's father and the story's unnamed first-person narrator and protagonist. The events of this story largely take place in the narrator's study and just outside of his house. The narrator describes himself as a "Bengali Babu," a respectful title that implies that he is financially comfortable, educated, and respected in his hometown of Calcutta, India. The narrator loves his only child, Mini, who is five years old at the beginning of the story. While the narrator's wife finds Mini's constant chatter tiring, the narrator loves to listen to his daughter prattle away about all sorts of topics. The narrator is a writer, and is working on his novel when the story starts. The novel is an adventure story, which reflects his own curiosity about different places and people around the world. The narrator has never had the opportunity to leave Calcutta, hence his fascination with such faraway places, though he also admits that he's a homebody. The narrator is friendly with Rahamat because he enjoys seeing him laughing with Mini when he visits, and because Rahamat tells him stories about life in Afghanistan and what he's seen on his travels as a fruit vendor, or Kabuliwala. Despite his interest in Rahamat, the narrator is quick to forget him after Rahamat is sent to jail. Years later, when the man shows up unannounced after being released from prison, the narrator tries to get rid of him as fast as possible, thinking of him as a criminal rather than as his daughter's childhood companion and not wanting to be bothered on Mini's wedding day. It's only after Rahamat reveals that he also has a beloved daughter Parvati, back in Afghanistan, that the narrator recognizes that they have far more in common than he originally thought. Having established this personal and emotional connection with him, the narrator gives Rahamat money from Mini's wedding fund to help him get back to Afghanistan and be reunited with his family. - Character: Rahamat / The "Kabuliwala". Description: Rahamat is a traveling fruit seller from Afghanistan, or a Kabuliwala, and is often referred to as such. He is first seen wearing "dirty baggy clothes," which indicates that he is from a lower class. As he is not from Calcutta and speaks broken Bengali, Rahamat is something of an ostracized figure in town, and the narrator treats him with suspicion until the man makes friends with the narrator's five-year-old daughter, Mini. Rahamat bribes Mini with pistachios to talk to him at first, but eventually they develop a real friendship. He visits the narrator's house every day and brings Mini more nuts, fruits, and raisins, and listens to her excitable chatter for as long as he can before he has to return to work. Occasionally, he also talks with the narrator about Afghanistan and what life is like there. One day while he is collecting debts from customers in the neighborhood before returning to his home, Rahamat gets into a fight with someone who won't pay him and stabs the customer. Rahamat is promptly arrested and led away by the police, but he has the chance to explain to the narrator what happened and where he is going. Eight years later, Rahamat is released from jail and goes straight to the narrator's home to see Mini again, but is shocked to see that she has grown up. It is Mini's wedding day, and when she comes into the room to see Rahamat, she is wearing her wedding clothes. Rahamat tries to rekindle their former friendship by telling her an old joke they used to have about her going to her father-in-law's home, but instead of laughing, Mini becomes shy and blushes before silently leaving the room. This reminds Rahamat that his own daughter, Parvati (who still lives in Afghanistan), will have grown up and become a different person. The story ends with the narrator giving Rahamat the money he will need to get home and be reunited with his family, the men having bonded over the love they both have for their daughters. - Character: Mini. Description: Mini is the only child of the narrator and his wife. At the beginning of the story, she is a talkative, inquisitive, and energetic five-year-old. She is very close with her father, preferring him instead of her short-tempered mother who frequently scolds her for talking too much and asking too many questions. As a child, Mini spends a lot of time in her father's study, hanging out with him while he works on his novel. One day, she sees Rahamat, a local fruit vendor, coming down the road and starts yelling "Kabuliwala" at him until she gets his attention and he comes over with his boxes of grapes and nuts. Mini is shy and afraid of him at first, but unbeknownst to the narrator, Rahamat and Mini gradually strike up a friendship. The narrator discovers this one day when he walks out of the house and sees Rahamat sitting with Mini and eagerly listening to her talk. Later, Mini tells the narrator about some of the inside jokes she has with Rahamat and that he comes over almost every day. The friendship between the two flourishes as long as Rahamat is in town, but soon he has to leave to return home to Afghanistan. However, before he leaves, he is arrested after an altercation with a customer. The last time Mini sees him that year is when he is being taken away in handcuffs. Mini forgets about Rahamat after he goes to jail, and she also starts spending less time with her father as the years go by, preferring the company of other children. Eight years later, Rahamat is released from jail on Mini's wedding day. Rahamat pleads with the narrator to let him see Mini, but Mini is shy, uncomfortable, and doesn't respond to him the way she did when she was five. This interaction leaves Mini's father feeling sad that she is so different, and Rahamat anxious about what kind of changes might have happened in his own daughter, Parvati (who was about Mini's age when Rahamat left, which explains why he was so drawn to Mini at first) since he last saw her. - Character: The Narrator's Wife / Mini's Mother. Description: Like the narrator, Mini's mother is never named in the story. Unlike the patient and laidback narrator, Mini's mother has a short temper and is quick to scold Mini for her excitable chatter and endless questions. Although they are both homebodies, the narrator often dreams of adventures and leaving Calcutta, while Mini's mother is terrified of the danger that exists outside of their neighborhood, and even asks the narrator to keep an eye on Rahamat to make sure he isn't going to kidnap Mini and sell her into slavery in Afghanistan. However, like the narrator, Mini's mother is "progressive" and chooses to let Mini enjoy a carefree childhood rather than spending her whole life preparing her for marriage. - Character: Parvati. Description: The narrator refers to Rahamat's daughter back in Afghanistan as "his little mountain-dwelling Parvati," suggesting that that's her name. Rahamat only mentions his daughter at the end of the story when he reveals to the narrator that he always carries around a paper with her handprint on it to remind him of her. Mini also reminds Rahamat of Parvati, which is why he makes such an effort to get to know her. While he is in Calcutta and unable to be present in his daughter's life, Mini becomes a stand-in for Parvati, and the interactions between Rahamat and Mini closely resemble a father-daughter relationship. Although she does not make an appearance in the story, Parvati is the reason that the narrator is able to finally form a real, meaningful connection with Rahamat. Despite their differences in culture and social class—and Rahamat's newfound status as a criminal—both men are united by their fatherly love for their daughters. At the end of the story, the narrator gives Rahamat money from Mini's wedding fund so that he can return to Afghanistan and his now-grown-up daughter. - Theme: Connection. Description: Perhaps the most powerful element of "Kabuliwallah" is the way Tagore portrays the human connection as it transcends social class, time, age, and culture. In the beginning of the story, the unnamed narrator describes the close relationship he has with his five-year-old little daughter named Mini. Mini is friendly and quickly makes friends with an Afghan Kabuliwallah (a peddler) named Rahamat. When Rahamat is sent to jail for stabbing a customer who refused to pay their debt, however, both Mini and the narrator forget about him and move on with their lives. Eight years later, Rahamat is released from jail and discovers that Mini has grown up and has forgotten him, which forces him to face the fact that his own daughter, Parvati, back in Afghanistan will have forgotten him, too. In "Kabuliwallah," Tagore argues that real, meaningful connections can only be made when people recognize the common humanity in one another regardless of their differences. Rahamat and the narrator could not be more different at first glance, and this initially prevents the narrator from believing he could have anything in common with Rahamat. In the opening scene of the story, the narrator is working on his novel, but it is unclear if this is his only form of work or even if he is successful at it. However, it becomes evident that the narrator is financially well-off because they can afford a gatekeeper and because Rahamat uses the respectful term "Babu" when talking to him. Rahamat, on the other hand, is "dressed in dirty baggy clothes" and, at best, speaks a "hybrid sort of Bengali." Furthermore, Rahamat is forced to trek far away from his home and family in order to make a living, indicating that opportunities back home are limited and that he ahs not been able to earn enough abroad to be able to stay with his family permanently. While the narrator's daughter, Mini, quickly develops a meaningful connection with Rahamat, the narrator has difficulty seeing him as anything but an inferior. This is shown by the narrator's insistence on giving Rahamat money for the nuts he gave Mini as a gift—the narrator is unable to recognize that the two of them have developed a real connection despite differences in age, ethnicity, and social class. The connection that the narrator and Rahamat eventually develop begins with their mutual connection with Mini, who brings them both a kind of happiness their present situations would typically prevent them from experiencing. The narrator says that Mini "can't stop talking for a minute," and while his wife loses patience with this and "scolds her," he simply "can't do that." Unlike Mini's mother, the narrator enjoys answering Mini's questions and teaching her more about the world that he himself longs to explore. Rahamat, on the other hand, spends a large portion of his time away from his wife and young daughter, limiting his ability to be an active and present father. Mini, however, fills this void and gives Rahamat the kind of happiness denied him by the distance between himself and his daughter. To the narrator, Rahamat is little more than his daughter's play-fellow. He says seeing them together gave him "pleasure," but this evidently has more to do with the image they present to his mind ("a young child and a grown man laughing so heartily") than with any personal liking for Rahamat himself. Because the narrator initially sees Rahamat as an inferior, it is easy for him to forget about Rahamat after his arrest. Rahamat doesn't truly become human to the narrator until many years later when he learns of the common ground they share: that they both have daughters that they love dearly. Mini is going to "darken her parents' house" by leaving it to get married, which makes the narrator sentimental as he thinks about their former close connection. When Rahamat suddenly appears at the narrator's house, the narrator initially only sees him as a "would-be murderer" and treats him coldly when he asks to see Mini. Once again, the narrator assigns mercenary motives to Rahamat's interest in Mini, shown by the narrator's attempt to give him money to leave. This changes when Rahamat shows the narrator his only "memento" of his daughter—a handprint on a piece of paper that he keeps tucked inside the breast pocket of his shirt. Only then does the narrator "forget" their differences and recognize all that they, as fathers, have in common, saying, "I understood then that he was as I am" and is able to connect to him on a human level. Although class pride and bias initially prevent the narrator from treating Rahamat with respect and equality, their common ground as fathers of well-loved daughters ultimately suggests that they're not so different after all, allowing them to truly connect to one another on a human level. - Theme: Fatherly Love. Description: Love, specifically fatherly love, is one of the central threads of "Kabuliwallah." The narrator of the story has one child: a precocious five-year-old daughter named Mini who "can't stop talking for a minute" and frequently visits him in his study to talk and hide from her impatient mother. The narrator is touched by the liking that a local Kabuliwallah (fruit-seller) named Rahamat takes to Mini, and he enjoys watching them joke around and talk every day. When Rahamat is taken to jail shortly before returning to his home in Afghanistan, he's quickly forgotten. However, on the day of Mini's wedding, Rahamat returns to see her again only to find that she's grown up and does not respond to him as she used to. Only then does he reveal that he has a daughter of his own, Parvati, back in Afghanistan, and the narrator finally understands why Rahamat became so interested in Mini. In "Kabuliwallah," Tagore suggests that fathers harbor a particularly fierce and self-sacrificial love for their daughters, but that this love also entails the painful process of letting them go as they grow up. From the very beginning of the story, the narrator establishes that he and Mini share a close relationship. Mini is talkative and her mother "often scolds her," but the narrator "can't do that" because he finds it "unnatural" when Mini is quiet. This illustrates his desire to let Mini be herself rather than trying to mold her into something more convenient or proper. The narrator is a writer and describes himself as something of a dreamer who wants to explore the world but is "condemned to [his] house" (though he admits to being a homebody by nature, too). This explains why he, unlike Mini's mother, is okay with Mini exploring the immediate world around them and befriending Rahamat: he wants her to have more experiences than he did. Although the narrator is preoccupied with the outside world, it's at least partially his love for Mini that keeps him "rooted." As a father, he's made himself content with staying home because it enables him to be there to provide for Mini and watch her grow. By contrast, Rahamat is frequently away from his home and family—in a way, he's living the narrator's dream of travel—but love for his daughter motivates all his actions. Rahamat belongs to the lower classes, shown by the narrator's description of his "dirty baggy clothes" and his unfortunate job as a travelling fruit peddler. It is not until after Rahamat is let out of jail eight years later that the narrator learns about his daughter back in Afghanistan. Rahamat says it was with his daughter "in mind" that he showed up with raisins for Mini, which also explains why he had spent so much time with her before he went to jail: she'd become a stand-in for his daughter, giving Rahamat the opportunity to do fatherly things until he returns home. Despite his love for Mini, the narrator feels "condemned" to Calcutta, but Rahamat could argue that he's "condemned" to being away from his home. Just as the narrator has given up his desire to travel in part to be a good father to Mini, Rahamat has given up his desire to stay home with his daughter in order to be a good provider for her. Even though both men have different pictures of what it means to be a good father, both of them center their worlds around this goal. Both the narrator and Rahamat love their daughters and have sacrificed their own self-interest in favor of promoting that of their children, but in the end, they are confronted with the pain of losing them. When Rahamat shows the narrator his daughter's handprint that he keeps with him, the narrator realizes that Rahamat "was as I am," meaning Rahamat knows what it is to let go of a child, something the narrator is still learning. The narrator calls Mini down and she appears in her wedding attire, forcing Rahamat to face the fact that his daughter will have also aged and changed in the time he's been gone. In this, the two men's roles are reversed: the narrator is learning to say goodbye to Mini as she grows up and gets married, and Rahamat has to learn how to "become re-acquainted" with his daughter after a long absence. As fathers, Rahamat and the narrator share a good deal of common ground, but they are also traveling in different directions: Rahamat journeys from saying goodbye to his daughter to finding his way back to her, while the narrator, who has never been away from Mini, learns to say goodbye for the first time, allowing her to make the leap from childhood to womanhood. By coming to understand one another, however, Rahamat and the narrator also learn how to face the future and adapt to their ever-changing roles as fathers. - Theme: Curiosity and Growing Up. Description: One of the characteristics that the narrator and Mini share is their curiosity about the world. They both have a thirst for knowledge and an openness to new experiences, but in their little Calcutta neighborhood, they are stuck in a domestic routine with few opportunities to explore something new. This changes when Mini spots Rahamat, a Kabuliwallah selling fruit in the neighborhood, and calls out to him. The unlikely pair become fast friends. As the narrator states, Mini "had never found so patient a listener" (except for the narrator himself), and Rahamat satisfies her desire to ask questions and learn their answers. For the narrator, who dreams of adventure, Rahamat offers the opportunity to learn about different worlds from someone with firsthand experience. However, not everyone in the narrator's home shares their friendly feelings towards Rahamat. Mini's mother has no curiosity and is terrified of the dangers that exist outside of her home. Rahamat's arrest after stabbing a customer who refused to pay seems to validate Mini's mother's fears, and over time Mini grows apart from her father and gradually loses her innocent curiosity about the world and other people. To Tagore, few things are more tragic than a child's loss of curiosity and innocence as they grow up. The narrator and Mini are very close and spend a lot of time together during her early childhood, bound by the mutual pleasure they take in Mini's curiosity and the narrator's ability to satisfy it. Mini's mother has little patience for Mini's chatter and prefers to "make her shut up" when she asks questions rather than answer them, but the narrator thinks it's "unnatural" when Mini isn't being inquisitive, suggesting that such unbridled curiosity is simply a part of being a child. The narrator's positive and patient attitude towards Mini's curiosity—which Tagore seems to imply is the right way to respond to a child's endless supply of questions—is due to his own curiosity about the world. The narrator has never left his hometown, but his "mind roves all over the world" and he expresses his desire for adventure by devoting writing adventure novels. When Rahamat enters the scene, he indulges both the narrator and Mini by answering their questions and listening to them, becoming a symbol of their shared curiosity and desire to explore the world around them. Their mutual friendship with Rahamat is the one real adventure they have together, but when Rahamat goes to jail, he seems to take their shared curiosity about the world with him. With Rahamat no longer in their lives, the narrator and Mini grow apart from one another, and their curiosity about the world begins to unravel. Mini stops coming to his father's study to chat, and he "in a sense, drop[s] her." As she grows apart from her father, Mini grows closer to her mother, who has a very different outlook on the world. Mini's mother is "easily alarmed" and believes "the world is overrun with thieves" that might hurt her or Mini. As Mini grows closer to her mother, it's natural that she would start adopting her worldview, especially as her mother prepares her for her future domestic role of wife and mother. This is in part because, as a wife in a society that upholds traditional gender norms (despite having "progressive" parents) Mini's place will likely be in the home, and too much curiosity and hunger for adventure could be considered bad qualities in a wife or a distraction from her eventual duties as a mother. Furthermore, the narrator also seems to lose his own openness to experiences and people, shown by his new distrust for Rahamat after his release from jail even though the narrator knows he is a kind person. When Rahamat suddenly appears in the narrator's study eight years after his arrest, the narrator has little interest in reigniting a friendship with him because he is a "would-be murderer," which seems to somewhat justify Mini's mother's fears about him. However, Rahamat reveals that he also has a daughter, and that they are both united by their fatherly love for their daughters. With tears in his eyes, the narrator imagines Rahamat's "little mountain-dwelling Parvati," and it makes him nostalgic about his own daughter, who is not so little anymore. The narrator calls Mini into the room to say hello to her old friend, but she, too, has lost her openness to the strange and unfamiliar that Rahamat represents. Instead of boisterously entering the room like she did as a child, Mini comes in "timidly" and "[stands] close by" the narrator instead of going forward to her old friend. As Rahamat attempts to interact with her in the friendly way they used to, Mini stands silently and blushes, obviously uncomfortable. She then leaves the room without a word. Seeing this evidence of Mini's loss of openness, the narrator's "heart ache[s]," and he mourns the curious and friendly little girl that his daughter once was. Rahamat is also saddened by this interaction, as it is an indication of the changes that likely have occurred in his own daughter in the eight years he's been gone. With heavy hearts, both fathers realize that with age comes a loss of innocent curiosity and a certain zest for life—a perhaps normal but nonetheless tragic part of growing up. Despite the heaviness of this scene, the story ends on an optimistic note with the narrator giving Rahamat enough money to go back home and "become re-acquainted" with his daughter. However, the fact remains that their two daughters are no longer children and are now entering womanhood. The tragedy of this story is not so much Rahamat's loss of time with his daughter or Mini "darken[ing] her parents' house" by leaving it, but the poignant loss of innocence, curiosity, and openness happens as children grow up. - Climax: Rahamat, recently released from jail, returns to the narrator's house and asks to see Mini. - Summary: "Kabuliwallah" opens with the narrator describing his five-year-old daughter, Mini. She "can't stop talking for a minute" and is frequently scolded by her mother for it. The narrator, on the other hand, thinks that it's "unnatural" when Mini is quiet, and so he spends a lot of time talking to her and answering her many questions. One morning, Mini chats with her father while he's working on an adventure novel. She looks out the window and spots a Kabuliwallah named Rahamat and starts calling to him. However, when he comes over, Mini runs into another room, convinced that his large bags are full of children, not goods. A few days later, the narrator finds Mini sitting next to Rahamat and talking to him with a pile of raisins and nuts in her lap. The narrator tells Rahamat not to give her any more treats and gives him a half-rupee, which Rahamat takes. Later, Mini's mother scolds Mini for having a half-rupee, which Mini says Rahamat gave her. The narrator saves Mini "from her mother's wrath" and brings her outside where she tells him that Rahamat has come by almost every day to listen to her talk. Among the numerous jokes they have together, one starts with Rahamat telling Mini, "don't ever go off to your śvaśur-bāṛi." Mini doesn't understand what this means because the narrator and his wife are "progressive people" who "don't keep talking to [their] young daughter about her future marriage," and so she innocently asks him if he is going to his. Rahamat jokingly shakes a fist and says he'll "settle him," making Mini laugh. It is autumn, which the narrator associates with kings setting out "on their world-conquests," which further reminds him that he has never left Calcutta even though he longs to explore the world. He has an active imagination and frequently imagines distant lands, but he is "a rooted sort of individual" and whenever he does leave his "familiar spot" he will "practically collapse." Because of this, the narrator is happy to spend a morning just listening to Rahamat's stories of Afghanistan and traveling. Mini's mother is very different: she is scared of the outside world and imagines it is full of extreme dangers. Unhappy with Rahamat, a complete stranger, spending so much time with Mini, she warns the narrator to keep an eye on him. When the narrator tells her there is nothing to worry about, she talks about the possibility of Mini being kidnapped and sold into slavery. Rahamat, however, continues to come and the narrator continues to enjoy seeing him with Mini. Rahamat is preparing to go home. Part of these preparations is to go all around Calcutta and collect money that customers owe him, but he always makes time in the evening to stop at the narrator's house to talk with Mini. One morning, the narrator hears something going on in the streets and looks out the window to see Rahamat, covered in blood, being led down the street in handcuffs. The narrator runs outside, and Rahamat tells him that he got into a physical altercation with a customer who had refused to pay and, during the fight, he stabbed the customer. Mini comes out and asks Rahamat if he's being taken to his śvaśur-bāṛi, and he says that he is. Rahamat is sent to jail. It does not take long for Mini to forget Rahamat and find new friends, first with the groom (someone who takes care of horses) and then with girls her age. She stops visiting her father's study and the narrator says he "dropped her," as well. A few years later, the narrator and his wife are preparing for Mini's wedding day. The house is full of people setting things up and the narrator has isolated himself in his study. Rahamat suddenly arrives and tells the narrator he had been released from jail the day before, which reminds the narrator of his crime and sets him on edge. The narrator tells Rahamat that they are busy and he will have to go, but Rahamat asks if he can see Mini. Once again the narrator tries to brush him off and Rahamat prepares to leave, but as he walks out the door he asks the narrator to give Mini some grapes, nuts, and raisins he brought for her as a reminder of their past friendship. The narrator gets some money to pay Rahamat for them, but he refuses payment and tells the narrator that he had come with his own daughter "in mind," not to do business. Rahamat pulls "a crumpled piece of paper" out of the breast pocket of his shirt and shows the narrator the handprint of his daughter, Parvati, that he carries with him while he travels for work. Seeing it, the narrator "forgot then that he was an Afghan raisin-seller and I was a Bengali Babu," instead recognizing that "he was a father just as I am a father." This changes the narrator's mind about sending Rahamat away and instead he calls Mini down. When she comes in, she's "dressed as a bride" and acts shy and uncomfortable. Rahamat tries to joke with her as he used to, asking if she's going to her śvaśur-bāṛi, but instead of laughing and asking questions, Mini "blushed […] and looked away." The narrator's "heart ache[s]." When Mini leaves, Rahamat suddenly realizes that his daughter, like Mini, will have grown up and be different from the little girl he once knew. As Rahamat thinks about Afghanistan and his daughter, the narrator pulls out some money and asks Rahamat to use it to get home. He tells Rahamat that, "by your blessed reunion, Mini will be blessed." Giving Rahamat the money means that Mini's wedding party is not as grand as it might have been, but the narrator is happy with it, believing that "the ceremony was lit by a kinder, more gracious light."

- Genre: Short Story - Title: Keeping it from Harold - Point of view: Omniscient narrator - Setting: Barnes, London, England - Character: Harold Bramble. Description: Harold Bramble is a precocious ten-year-old boy whom his parents call "a model of goodness and intelligence." He has won prizes for his spelling and dictation as well as his Sunday school lessons, and he spends his afternoons memorizing poetry and Scripture verses. His father Bill considers Harold "a little gentleman" and believes the boy "would die of shame" if he knew his father boxed for a living. Luckily for Bill, Harold is a "self-centred child" who doesn't question his parents' fiction that Bill is a salesman. However, Bill is proven wrong in believing that Harold would "die of the disgrace" at having a professional boxer for a father. In fact, the boy shocks his parents by declaring that he has "made a study" of the sport since a young age and is betting on his father as "Young Porky" to win his upcoming bout with Jimmy Murphy. If anything, Harold is dying for Bill to give him a signed picture so that he can impress all his friends and shed the nickname "Goggles." - Character: Jane Bramble. Description: Jane Bramble is Harold's mother and Bill's wife. Described as both dim-witted and good-tempered, she is also exceptionally proud of and utterly devoted to her son. Jane wants to give Harold "a better start in life" than she or Bill ever had, and as such is self-conscious about her husband's allegedly uncivilized profession as a boxer—even as she understands that this profession allows her to live in comfort with servants doing most of the domestic labor, and to provide her child with "as good an education as any duke ever had." She usually domineers over her mild-mannered husband, overruling his ideas for naming their son, for instance, and being the first to suggest that they hide his career from the boy. However, she cannot change Bill's mind when he decides to withdraw from a big match before Harold could read possibly about it in the newspaper. - Character: Bill Bramble. Description: Bill Bramble is the wife of Jane, the father of Harold, and a professional pugilist, or boxer, who fights under the name Young Porky. In the past, he enjoyed his reputation as an unpredictable fighter with a powerful left hook, confidently boasting that he could beat anyone in London "weighing eight stone four" in a twenty-round contest. Despite his violent vocation, Bill is "the mildest and most obliging of men" in his personal life. He lets his wife name their son and thinks of Harold as being a league above himself. Bill firmly resolves to quit boxing lest Harold learn the truth about his rough profession, although he fears the subsequent wrath of his wife and his trainer, Jerry. He plans to retire and become a boxing instructor for boys' schools or colleges, where his record of respectability and sobriety could be rewarded with a cushy, well-regarded position—and where, ironically, many young men will want boxing lessons. - Character: Major Percy Stokes. Description: The brother of Jane Bramble, Major Percy Stokes is a missionary for the Salvation Army—a Protestant Christian church and charitable organization that traditionally uses military structure. The Salvation Army prohibits its members from drinking, smoking, taking drugs, and gambling. Despite his purported devoutness and insistence that boxing is sinful, Percy readily borrows money from his sister and interferes uninvited in her family life. Though criticized for being a narcissist who "liked the sound of his own voice" and "could talk the hind leg off a donkey," he is supposedly a "persuasive" missionary nevertheless. He once persuaded a "publican," or pub owner, to donate all his goods to the poor—starting with his "stock in trade," or beer; a large riot quickly ensued. This indicative example of Percy's accomplishments as a missionary—winning free beer for the public—illustrates that he is a laughable preacher who does no real good for the cause. He attempts to persuade his brother-in-law, Bill, to quit boxing by telling him that young Harold will likely read about his next fight in the newspaper, and Bill doesn't want the boy to know about his career as a boxer. Percy proudly refers to Bill a "brand from the burning," or a convert who has been saved from purgatory, but Bill's rationale is more practical than spiritual—he doesn't personally disapprove of his sport's association with violence and gambling. When Bill's trainer Jerry Fisher confronts them, Percy cowers and avoids taking responsibility for the boxer's sudden change of heart. - Character: Jerry Fisher. Description: Jerry Fisher is Bill Bramble's hot-tempered boxing trainer at the White Hart club. He calls Bill "a pleasure to train" and is shocked when the boxer decides to quit right before a huge match. He tries to punch Major Percy Stokes for leading his trainee astray, before his fiery anger lands on Bill. Feeling quite "badly treated" by the boxer, of whom he had formerly been so "fond and proud," he avenges himself on Bill's son Harold, telling him the boy the truth about Bill's secret career as a boxer. He calls Harold "Tommy," a British nickname for young men. When Harold reveals that he is an enormous fan of boxing, Jerry triumphantly brings Bill back to the White Hart to resume training for the match. - Theme: Morality and Hypocrisy. Description: In "Keeping it from Harold," the adults in ten-year-old Harold Bramble's life are greatly concerned with morality. The fact that Harold's father, Bill Bramble (a.k.a. "Young Porky") boxes for a living is considered so indecent that Bill is willing to withdraw from one of the most important matches of his career to avoid confessing his double life to his precocious son—a confession, the adults believe, that would offend young Harold's righteous spiritual principles. Yet throughout the story attempts to abide by dictates of respectability lead only to deception, while the supposedly immoral act of boxing takes on an air of nobility in that it helps the Brambles provide for their son. As such, Wodehouse satirizes pretentious sensibilities that are only concerned with the appearance of morality, and, in fact, do little more than encourage hypocrisy. While the Brambles consider Bill's boxing career to be dishonorable, it is not so objectionable a vocation that they feel bound to renounce it altogether. In fact, boxing proves an invaluable source of income. Upon learning that Bill won't proceed with the match, Jane Bramble admits that while she's never liked her husband's profession, "it's earned you good money and made it possible for us to give Harold as good an education as any duke ever had, I'm sure." Boxing, then, no matter how supposedly offensive, has allowed the Brambles to build the best life they can for their child. What's more, Bill's decision to stop boxing is presented not as a moral or spiritual awakening so much as a practical resolution to an increasingly difficult problem (that is, of keeping the nature of his work hidden from Harold). Major Percy, Jane's brother and a missionary of the Salvation Army, takes credit for helping Bill see the sinfulness of his profession, yet Bill insists that it was not Percy's spiritual arguments that convinced him to skip the match. Instead, it was the fact that the press coverage had become impossible to hide from Harold: "it was Harold that really made me do it." Bill doesn't reject boxing for the sake of his divine soul, but for mundane, earthly reasons. Excessive hand-wringing over the sinful nature of boxing, then, comes across as silly and overwrought, pushing characters further from honesty and deeper into more obvious moral transgressions. To be sure, had Bill truly been concerned for his soul he would also have ceased another allegedly wicked practice—lying to his son. Yet even the devout Percy doesn't suggest that Bill come clean and repent; on the contrary, Percy tells Bill, "I hope you are keeping it from Harold. It is the least you can do." Condemning boxing while condoning lying seems fairly hypocritical, but the Brambles readily agree with Percy: "They were lovers of truth, but they had realized that there are times when truth must be sacrificed." Even the "senior curate of the parish" urges Bill to lie to his son rather than quit boxing; evidently the clergyman doesn't view Bill's occupation as truly immoral, or he also would have counseled him to cease fighting. The inconsistent judgment of religious figures on the subject of Bill's matches subverts their authority on the matter.  Percy comes across as especially sanctimonious, despite presenting himself as a deeply religious man and, it follows, an arbiter of moral justice. For one thing, he is notably dependent on his sister for money (which, of course, comes from Bill's boxing career). When Percy announces that he has metaphorically out-wrestled Bill, his physical form is ridiculed: "'You!' said Mrs. Bramble, with uncomplimentary astonishment, letting her gaze wander over her brother's weedy form." Unlike a typical "Major" in the military, Percy cowers and hides from confrontation rather than stand his ground, "diving underneath the table and coming up the other side like a performing seal." Bill and his wife, for their part, are presented as weak-willed and simple-minded, lacking independent thought or conviction. Wodehouse's depiction of all of these adults suggests none are great models of moral authority and skewers the broader religious conceptions of right and wrong that shape their hypocrisy. Even Harold, whom the adults believe to be a model of innocence, undermines the moral objection to boxing when he defies their expectations and expresses pride in his father's profession. Harold's bookish, spiritual nature is taken for nobility of character that the adults around him would hate to sully. He sings in the church choir and attends "Sunday-school with a vim which drew warm commendation from the vicar." As the narrator puts it, "You simply couldn't take a boy like that aside and tell him that the father […] was affectionately known to a large section of the inhabitants of London as 'Young Porky.'" Bill says of his son, "He'd die of the disgrace of it. He ain't like you and me, Jerry. He's a little gentleman." But rather than becoming upset upon hearing the news that his father is a boxer, Harold is more disappointed that Bill plans to drop out of the match: "'It's thick,' he said, in the crisp, gentlemanly voice of which his parents were so proud." His "gentlemanly" demeanor doesn't stop him from enjoying the "disgraceful" sport in the least. He studies it as intently he studies his classics and his Bible: "I've made a study of [boxing] since I was a kid […] All the fellows at our place are frightfully keen on it." It's clear that Harold doesn't view boxing as obscene or depraved, but rather relishes it. In fact, he even places bets on matches—revealing that even the story's most outwardly righteous figure takes joy in a secret vice. This story thus at once illustrates the hypocrisy of the adults who lie to Harold while comically undercutting the moral case against boxing in the first place. - Theme: Class and Social Status. Description: So seemingly perfect is Harold Bramble that the adults in his life fear that the truth of his father's profession would damage his delicate sensibilities. Harold's mother, Jane Bramble, insists that "his very perfection had made necessary a series of evasions and even deliberate falsehoods on the part of herself and her husband." However, immediately thereafter, the story goes into greater detail about how the couple's charade began: "While he was a baby it had not mattered so much. But when he began to move about and take notice, Mrs. Bramble said to Mr. Bramble, 'Bill, we must keep it from Harold.'" The fact that the Brambles first agreed to hide the truth about Bill Bramble's boxing only when Harold started to "move about and take notice" calls into question their claim that his singular virtue is what prompted them to lie. The story ultimately argues that the supposed immorality of boxing is secondary to the Brambles' general class anxiety, which, itself, is presented as arbitrary and shallow. Bill's winnings from boxing allow the Bramble family to live in a comfortable and respectable fashion, with sufficient funds to pay for Harold's private school tuition and plentiful books, as well as for servants to take care of the household. As Harold gives a poetic recitation early in the story, Wodehouse illustrates how the boy's brilliant intellect appears to correspond to the grandness of his environment: "He cleared his throat and fixed his eyes upon the cut-glass hangings of the chandelier." Yet the Brambles evidently feel that these middle-class comforts should have a corresponding white-collar foundation, seeing that they invent a traveling salesman job for Bill in place of his true profession. Harold's apparent "perfection," thoroughly in keeping with his well-to-do upbringing, causes his parents to feel even more insecure about the way of life that had previously suited them. Before Harold was born, Bill happily "had gone about the world with a match-box full of press-notices, which he would extract with a pin and read to casual acquaintances." Now, of course, he is plainly ashamed to admit to Harold, who was born into this rarified lifestyle, that he supports the family by the lowlier profession of boxing. Wodehouse writes, "With an ordinary boy it would have mattered less. But Harold was different […] The fact was, as Bill himself put it, Harold was showing a bit too much class for them." So genteel is Harold that his parents "had come to regard him as a being of a superior order." According to Harold's parents, "You simply couldn't take a boy like that aside and tell him that the father whom he believed to be a commercial traveller was affectionately known to a large section of the inhabitants of London as 'Young Porky.'" A boy like Harold, they believe, would never want to be associated with a father whom the public regards with such familiarity and knows by such a crass nickname. That the Brambles consider Harold to belong to a higher "class" or "order" than them specifically suggests they worry that he would look down upon them if he knew how they really earned their means. Beloved by the coarse masses, boxing is a violent, low form of entertainment, not worthy of the highbrow boy who learns poetry by heart in his free time. As such, the Brambles seek to distance themselves from the commonness associated with boxing. Bill hopes to soon replace his "disgraceful" labor with a more socially-acceptable teaching post "at one of these big schools or colleges. He had a splendid record for respectability and sobriety and all the other qualities which headmasters demanded in those who taught their young gentlemen to box." Ironically, young gentlemen may take boxing lessons and remain gentleman; only he who boxes for a living is seen as a disgrace. The Brambles don't seem to be conscious of this prejudiced paradox at the heart of their standards of respectability. In fact, even the young men of affluence and intellect with whom Harold attends school all glorify these figures of pure strength and grit. Harold testifies, "There's a fellow at our school who goes about swanking in the most rotten way because he once got Bombardier Wells's autograph. Fellows look up to him most awfully, and all the time they might have been doing it to me." When Bill realizes that he has the approval of his "little gentleman," he immediately relents and returns to his training. This all suggests that the upper classes derive a particular kind of pleasure from this brush with the less civilized side of life, a spectacle that they can observe without ever having to experience such rough circumstances for themselves. The sheltered rich can take even more vicarious pleasure in the sport of boxing than everyone else, the story implies, though they're no less "wicked" and bloodthirsty than the fighters in the ring. Ironically, the Brambles' misunderstanding of elite tastes only further reinforces their alienation from the very class they aspire to belong to; "gentlemanly" Harold would have been happy with the truth all along. - Theme: Pride. Description: Many of the adults in "Keeping It from Harold" profess to act selflessly. Bill and Jane Bramble, for instance, hide the truth of Bill's boxing career from their virtuous son allegedly to save him from feeling offended or ashamed; Percy and Jerry (Bill's trainer), for their part, insist they're only trying to convince Bill to follow the most advantageous course for his future. However, Wodehouse shows that these supposedly noble and unselfish adult concerns are actually prompted by simple pride. The story satirizes the futile taboo against openly acting in one's own best interest. Indeed, only Harold himself—a child ostensibly less aware of or concerned with social propriety—freely acknowledges his opportunism. A healthy amount of human pride is natural and inevitable, Wodehouse ultimately implies, and denying this is useless. The Brambles are extremely pleased with their bright, well-behaved son, to the extent that they elevate him far above themselves: Wodehouse writes, "Proud of him as they were, both Bill and his wife were a little afraid of their wonderful child." Their high regard for Harold leads them to imagine that he has duly high standards for them. As such, Bill becomes fiercely determined to keep his rough livelihood hidden from his son, lest Harold "die of shame," or "die of the disgrace of it." When Bill is set to retire, Jane is intensely relieved: "For the first time since Harold had reached years of intelligence she was easy in her mind about the future." Harold's parents badly want to keep their beloved son from feeling disappointed in them. Jane in particular makes her husband and son the core of her existence, and her place in their lives the only purpose from which she can derive any self-worth. From the start readers see that she is a "domestic creature, wrapped up in Bill, her husband, and Harold, her son." When she beholds Harold, Wodehouse notes her "extraordinary resemblance to a sheep surprised while gloating over its young." Likening Jane to a "domestic creature" such as a "sheep" characterizes her as a being who lives only to breed a fitter generation. Bill formerly had a great deal of pride in his own independent accomplishments, and even carried "a match-box full of press-notices, which he would extract with a pin and read to casual acquaintances." However, since Harold's birth, this vast pride that constantly fed upon the admiration of multitudes can only find like fulfillment in one boy's regard. Believing that this regard would be entirely extinguished should Harold learn the truth of his profession, Bill is willing to back out of a critical match and trade the esteem of millions for his son's respect. Unmoved by Jerry's reminder to think "of all the swells that'll be coming to see [him]," Bill insists, "I've got to think of Harold." The extent in which Bill's pride in himself is contingent upon Harold is evident when he swears to his son that he won't fight anymore—"Not if the King of England come to me on his bended knees." This devotion to his son is certainly laudable, and in some ways a rejection of his earlier pride in his career; at the same time, though, his decision is fueled by the desire to avoid inducing shame, the opposite of pride, in himself or his child. Percy, meanwhile, claims that he couldn't help but intervene in Bill's life out of selfless concern for his brother-in-law's fate if he continued to follow his "wicked ways" as "a man of wrath." However, Wodehouse implies that Percy cares more about his personal triumph than Bill's salvation. Throughout the story, Percy emphasizes his own achievement rather than Bill's decision: "I been wrestling with Bill, and I been vouchsafed the victory," Percy announces to his sister when he and Bill decamp from the training center. He continues to boast: "'I been vouchsafed the victory,' repeated the major […] 'At the eleventh hour it has been vouchsafed to me to snatch the brand from the burning.'" Jerry also maintains that he's invested in Bill's training for Bill's sake. He entreats his trainee: "Think of the purse […] Think of the Lonsdale belt they'll have to let you try for if you beat this Murphy […] Think of all the trouble you've took for the last weeks getting yourself into condition." However, when Bill continues to refuse him, Jerry's goodwill sours and he becomes increasingly agitated. After he pleads with Bill to think "of what the papers'll say" and, then, to "think of me," the reader begins to suspect that what most concerns Jerry are his pride and reputation as a trainer. Eventually Jerry seizes the opportunity to get back at Bill for the humiliation of losing his champion before the biggest fight in his career: "He considered that he had been badly treated, and what he wanted most at the moment was revenge. He had been fond and proud of Bill Bramble, but those emotions belonged to the dead past." His warm pride in Bill only lasts as long as Bill's wins bolster his Jerry's pride in himself. Harold is the only character who openly admits to serving his pride. When he hears about his father's career, he calls it as he sees it: an opportunity to boost his reputation among his peers. "Pa, can't you give me a picture of yourself boxing? I could swank like anything," he exclaims. Harold's parents have kept the truth about Bill's boxing from him precisely because they've believed he would not be as impressed with Bill's physical feats as all the simple "swells" in London were. They believed that their "perfect" son would be above taking pride in his father's fame. Ironically, Harold is thrilled at the chance to impress the other boys with his famous father—"they'd […] look up to me like anything," he declares. Harold's humorously self-serving reaction proves that his parents were wrong to imagine him unaffected by the human weakness of pride. No matter what lengths the adults went to convince themselves that they were acting purely in another's interest, they couldn't escape the force of pride and merely deluded themselves. In the end, everyone is happiest when they are honest with their desires, and their pride is appeased—Harold's parents no longer have to fear his punishing disappointment, Jerry can hope for a championship, and Harold can chuck the taunt of "Goggles." Only Percy and his "foolish talk" are foiled, which suggests Wodehouse's disapproval of vain moralizing. - Climax: Jerry Fisher reveals the truth of Bill's career as a boxer to Harold. - Summary: Jane Bramble is darning a sock while her son Harold studies. Harold asks his mother to help him with his recitation of a poem while he reads it aloud it from memory. After he recites a verse, his mother urges him to take a break from studying and go for a walk. He obeys, prompting his mother to reflect on his model behavior and intelligence. Harold's perfection, readers learn, compels Jane and her husband Bill to lie to him about Bill's profession. The local clergy and Jane's pompous brother, Major Percy Stokes, also steered the Brambles towards deceiving their son. Bill easily agreed to their plan, being a mild and obliging man at heart. Bill makes his living as a "professional pugilist," or boxer. Though he had formerly been quite proud of his career and had even carried around a number of news clippings testifying to his skills in the ring, after Harold was born he shunned the publicity—afraid that his "little gentleman" of a son would read about him. Harold excels in both his academics at a private school and his religious studies, and his parents thus pretend that Bill has a respectable job as a commercial traveler, or salesman, rather than admit the truth: that he is a boxer known as "Young Porky." Jane is happily thinking about Bill's plans to retire after his next match when her brother and husband arrive home unexpectedly. Upon asking why Bill isn't training at his gym, Percy responds excitedly about having convinced Bill of the sinful nature of his profession. Bill announces he is indeed not going to fight in his upcoming match, but maintains that it wasn't Percy's lectures about morality that spurred the decision; rather, the big match-up would be covered by major newspapers with his picture, and Harold would see it and realize the truth. While Jane has never liked her husband's career, she points out that it's earned them good money and allowed them to give Harold a superior education. Jane starts to cry even as Bill insists that this is for Harold's own good. Just then Bill's trainer, Jerry, walks in and furiously pleads with Bill to come back to the gym—urging his client to consider the money, the crowds, the publicity, and Jerry's own reputation as a trainer. Still, Bill refuses. When Harold then returns from his walk, Jerry seeks revenge on Bill by telling the boy the truth about his father's profession. To the adults' communal shock, Harold reveals that he has already bet on the match—and, as such, his father mustn't spoil his bet by refusing to fight. Harold then laments that Bill kept the truth from him, since being able to brag that his father was "Young Porky" would've surely stopped the other boys at school from taunting Harold by calling him "Goggles." Harold and his friends have followed the sport for years, he continues, before begging his father for a picture of him boxing to show everyone. A relieved Jerry and Bill return to the gym, and Harold resumes practicing his recitation.

- Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Neo-Slave Narrative, Literature - Title: Kindred - Point of view: First person - Setting: California, 1976 and Maryland, pre-Civil War - Character: Dana (Edana) Franklin. Description: The protagonist and narrator of the novel, Dana is a black woman from 1979 California who gets pulled back in time to Antebellum Maryland to save the life of her white ancestor, Rufus Weylin. Dana is a strong, resourceful, intelligent woman, as well as a writer like her white husband Kevin. Dana learns how to adapt to the oppression of the Antebellum (pre-Civil War) era, but always retains her sense of self and autonomy despite Rufus's attempts to force her to become a true slave. Dana struggles between the relationships she has built with fellow slaves on the Weylin plantation, such as Sarah and Nigel, her sisterhood with the enslaved Alice, and her blood tie to Rufus as she tries to survive in the past with as little damage as possible to herself and others. As Butler deals with issues of freedom and privilege, she displays in the bonds between Dana and Rufus the delicate balance between master and slave and in Dana and Kevin the eventual possibilities of truly beneficial interracial relationship. Dana loses her left arm after her final trip to the past, bearing a physical reminder of the burden that many descendants of slaves bear from this family history. - Character: Kevin Franklin. Description: Dana's husband, a white man with eerily pale eyes. Kevin, like Dana, is a writer, and the two bond over their feelings of isolation and detachment from the other people in their machinery office. Kevin is an example of the progress that some white people have made in rejecting racism and treating people of color with respect, though he does not fully understand Dana's background as a black woman. He and Dana do research her past, and Kevin supports Dana as much as possible when they are transported to the past together. In the Antebellum South, Kevin must come to grips with his own emphasized privilege as a white man and avoid becoming a monster who oppresses others to survive in this harsh time. Butler draws comparisons between Kevin, Rufus, and Tom, as these white men alternately help or harm other people using their privilege. Kevin works to free slaves using his relative safety as a white man and strives to protect Dana whenever possible. - Character: Rufus Weylin. Description: A white, red-headed slave owner in Antebellum Maryland, and Dana's ancestor. Rufus is a product of his time and culture, becoming harsher, more selfish, and crueler as the years go by and he is more immersed in the patriarchal slave-holding culture of the South. While Dana attempts to teach Rufus respect for all people regardless of race, Rufus is unable to overcome his upbringing and societal pressure. He loves Alice, but the obsessive and possessive nature of his affection provides a horrifying glimpse into an interracial relationship gone wrong. Throughout the novel, Butler uses Rufus to show the complicated relationship that slaves can have for their masters, as Dana comes to regard Rufus with a mix of fear, loathing, and even a small amount of affection. However, Rufus never learns to truly treat black people with respect and becomes an irredeemable character by the end of the novel. - Character: Alice Jackson (Greenwood). Description: Though born a free black woman, Alice becomes a slave of the Weylin estate after the arrest of her first husband, Isaac Jackson. Rufus retains an obsessive love for Alice since childhood and forces Alice to become his mistress. Alice later bears two children with Rufus, Joseph and Hagar – and Hagar turns out to be Dana's great-grandmother. When Dana travels back in time, she and Alice build a sister-like relationship. They often fight, but ultimately share a deep bond. Alice consistently attempts to reach her freedom, showing the fiery viewpoint of slaves who were willing to escape slavery at any cost, and she tragically commits suicide when Rufus sells her children as punishment for a failed runaway attempt. - Character: Sarah. Description: The cook of the Weylin family, who chooses to stay a slave in order to ensure the safety of her deaf, mute daughter Carrie. Sarah and Dana become friends and Dana learns to respect Sarah's endurance and self-sacrifice. Butler uses Sarah to undermine the "mammy" stereotype of a slave who becomes too close to the white family they serve. Sarah's subservient attitude to the Weylin family masks a deep rage at the abuse that the Weylins have put Sarah through by selling her children. - Character: Tom Weylin. Description: Rufus' father. Tom is a harsh master to his slaves, but Dana notes that Tom is not an entirely cruel man. Tom does what he thinks is right for a man of his standing during this time period, which means putting black people "in their place" when he feels they are being too presumptuous and whipping them himself when they "deserve" punishment. Tom is also cold and distant to his own son, up to and including whipping Rufus. Tom is very dismissive of his wife Margaret. Though Tom is not necessarily a bad man, he does represent the harmful actions that many men in the south during this time period committed in order to assert their masculinity and privilege in society. - Character: Margaret Weylin. Description: Tom Weylin's wife and Rufus's mother, a hysterical and high-strung woman who relieves her boredom and sense of uselessness by making the lives of her house slaves miserable. She particularly hates Dana due to Dana's higher education and confidence. Margaret's sense of propriety and insistence on acting like a lady mask a deep-seated insecurity, fed by both her husband's and her son's callous treatment of her and the rumors that she came from a white-trash family. In her old age, Margaret mellows when she becomes addicted to laudanum. - Character: Nigel. Description: A slave on the Weylin estate, Nigel is the personal servant to Rufus and enjoys some of the advantages of living close to white people. Nigel does what he wishes despite the threat of whippings, like his father Luke. Yet Nigel is tied down on the Weylin plantation when he marries Carrie and has a son, Jude. Nigel eventually helps Dana cover up Rufus's death and raises Joe and Hagar in Baltimore. Nigel consistently puts family above everything, as another character who displays the importance of kinship in the novel. - Character: Carrie. Description: A slave on the Weylin estate, Carrie is Sarah's daughter and the only child Sarah has left (as the others have been sold). Carrie is deaf and mute, but finds other ways to assert her power and agency in her own life. Carrie eventually marries Nigel and has three sons, including Jude. - Character: Alice's Mother. Description: Alice's mother is a free black woman, legally making Alice free as well. Alice's mother teaches Alice to be strong, but is unable to protect her daughter from the harsh reality of life for all black people in the slave-holding American South. Alice's mother also agrees to help Dana as long as it does not further endanger herself and Alice, but her true priority is only her own family. - Theme: Family and Home. Description: Starting with the book's very title, family and kinship are some of the most important considerations to the characters and plot of Kindred. The family bond between Rufus and Dana is the driving force of the story, as Dana travels back in time to save Rufus each time he is trouble, because she has to keep Rufus alive so that he can bear the child that will continue Dana's family line. Yet family is not a simple concept in the novel, as Rufus and Dana also have to navigate what it means to be family when Dana is black and Rufus is white. Butler highlights the fact that American families are very rarely purely one race or another, and that the very idea of racial purity is a fiction meant to perpetuate the damaging racial hierarchy of white and black in America. Dana must then decide whether her familial responsibility belongs with the enslaved African Americans on the Weylin plantation or with Rufus Weylin himself. Dana admires the strength of the bonds between the black families on the plantation, and laments that these families are not given legal or societal protection within the institution of slavery. In contrast, Rufus and his parents seem unable to form meaningful and healthy relationships with one another and rarely help each other in times of trouble. Dana then attempts to help Rufus bond with his own children, born from the enslaved Alice, in an effort to help Rufus see that families have to support each other in order to survive. Butler points out that families have a responsibility to help one another, even if it is only to ensure their own survival. The slave families are forced to put these bonds to the test, forming connections—in order to endure the harsh treatment from their masters—that are far stronger than the blood bonds between other characters. Dana chooses to remain loyal to Alice and the slaves who suffered with her rather than simply looking at the biological connections that tie her to Rufus. Butler further explores the ways that families can be formed by choice, giving Dana and her husband Kevin a new definition of home. Dana and Kevin act as each other's family when their respective biological families are unable to support their career ambitions or their interracial relationship. When they are separated by time travel, both Dana and Kevin are unable to feel at home when the other person is not there. The notion of home becomes more than a place, but rather the location where a person can be with the people that they love. Even as Dana desperately wants to get "home" to the present and to Kevin and escape the pain of life in the past, the Weylin plantation begins to feel like home precisely because Dana feels as though she belongs with the people there and has a responsibility to help care for them through the "stronger, sharper reality" of this intense time. Dana has both biological ancestral family and chosen family on the Weylin plantation, and therefore feels caught between her home in the past and her home in the present each time she travels. When the time travel finally ends, Dana and Kevin bring these two notions of home together by going to Maryland and researching the fates of Dana's biological ancestors. Butler asserts that home is made up of places where people have strong personal connections, even if those connections are as fraught with pain as Dana's racially complicated family history. - Theme: Interracial Relationships. Description: Butler depicts the complicated dynamics and power struggles of many different types of interracial relationships, in the romantic relationship between Dana and Kevin, the master-slave relationship between Rufus and Alice, and the complex familial relationship between Dana and Rufus. In Dana and Kevin's marriage, Butler shows the possibility of an interracial relationship that is built on true connection based on shared personality and experiences, as the couple each struggle to become writers, rather than focusing narrowly on the differences in their race. However, Dana and Kevin's relationship is not free from the harmful effects of racial discrimination. They each have to fight against prejudiced family members and co-workers, while maintaining a balance where Dana's writing career does not come second to Kevin's, even though Kevin is more socially accepted as an author due to his race and gender. Still, Dana and Kevin each put in the necessary effort to meet each other with mutual respect and support to make an honest, loving relationship possible. In contrast, Rufus and Alice are the ultimate example of an unhealthy interracial couple. Rufus is obsessed with "possessing" Alice as both a slave and the object of his affection, while Alice regards Rufus, her master, with a mix of fear, loathing, pity, and hints of affection. The social structures and injustice surrounding black and white relations in the Antebellum South make it impossible for Rufus and Alice to escape the twisted power discrepancy of Rufus as a master and the de-humanizing oppression of Alice as a slave. A romantic relationship between them cannot be beneficial for either partner, because there is no respect or common ground between them. Rufus sexually exploits Alice with no regard for her human feelings, forcing Alice to give up her consent and freedom as well as subjecting her to the resentment of the other slaves. If Alice gives in to Rufus's sexual desire for her, she both gives up control over her own body and "betrays" her fellow slaves by taking advantage of the comforts that sleeping with the plantation master gives her. In the end, Alice chooses to take her own life rather than losing her self-respect by becoming Rufus's loyal mistress, and Rufus is also destroyed because he cannot recognize the necessity of respecting black women as equals instead of objects. Contact between these two couples influences the dynamic between Dana and Kevin as well as Rufus and Alice. Dana, as a present day descendent of both the white master and the black slave, tries to approach Rufus from the position of an equal and convince Rufus to acknowledge Alice as a fellow human and true romantic partner. Yet the time that Dana and Kevin spend in the past also exposes their healthy marriage to the harmful effects of slavery on black-white relations. Butler emphasizes the physical similarities between Kevin and Rufus (as well as Rufus's father Tom) as well as between Dana and Alice, stressing how interracial relationships in the present are not free from the legacies of oppression and privilege between the races in America. Butler acknowledges the unique conflicts that interracial couples face, yet also advocates for increased acceptance of interracial couples so that these couples can move forward in a more supportive atmosphere and provide crucial first steps to healing the racial divide in America. It is only when systems of oppression and privilege are not present that couples have a chance of stripping away the differences of race and racial experience in order to connect in a positive way. While this one healthy couple certainly doesn't solve the centuries of pain that white masters inflicted on black slaves, Kevin and Dana do offer a future in which white and black people are equal and integrated and have a chance at an authentically loving relationship. - Theme: History and Trauma. Description: Much of the novel focuses on the many ways that American slaves faced incredible emotional and physical pain throughout the history of the American slave states. Butler, led by a desire to remind Civil Rights activists not to blame slaves for accepting their abuse by offering a reminder of the extent of the trauma that slaves faced, bears visceral witness to the terrible things that slaves daily survived. Rather than using the enslaved characters as simple objects for displaying the horrors of slavery, Butler takes care to make each of her black characters nuanced and complicated human beings. By giving the awful facts of oppression and harm human faces, Butler acknowledges both the pain inflicted in the past and the pain of forgetting or minimizing what African American ancestors endured when this history is reduced to statistics and stereotypes. By actually traveling back in time, Dana is forced to grapple with the insane violence of slavery instead of passively reading about it or pretending that it didn't happen in order to go on with her life. Butler gives a voice to the aspects of slavery that others try to sanitize for a present day audience in the name of "moving on." Recognizing that the trauma of slavery continues to affect the descendants of slaves in the present day, as seen in the racial discrimination that Dana faces at her job and the resistance to interracial relationships that Dana and Kevin encounter, Butler stresses the importance of understanding the past in order to come to terms with histories of trauma rather than ignoring past violence in a foolhardy attempt to erase those wrongs. In fact, Butler gives support to the old adage, "those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it" by marking the similarities between the centuries of American slavery practices and the crimes against the Jewish population in Europe during the Holocaust. The historical practices of slavery offered a model for oppression later followed by tyrants, which would continue as long as people remain ignorant to the real horror faced by oppressed groups in the past. Dana's wounds in the past and the loss of her arm physically bring this trauma back to the present, making it clear how much trauma in the past influences the lives of those in the present. Though the novel centers on one woman traveling back to the antebellum period, Butler makes it clear that Dana's purpose is not to change the course of the Weylin family or their slaves. Dana is actually supposed to make sure that history happens how it did, so that Dana's ancestor Hagar can be born. While Dana is there, she realizes that she cannot change history, but she can witness it and move past it. She does what she can to minimize the pain of those in her immediate surroundings, but the entire social history of the South cannot be changed by one person. Similarly, Kindred as a whole does not attempt to rewrite history or cast the burden of slavery in a new light, but instead testifies to the pain that slaves went through and honors the sacrifices and trauma they had to live through so that African Americans in the present could have a chance at a better life. - Theme: Freedom and Privilege. Description: As Dana moves between time periods, she (and her husband Kevin) also move between various states of freedom and privilege. Dana, a modern African American woman, has to deal with the total loss of her freedom in order to keep herself alive on the estate of her white ancestor, Rufus Weylin, in the oppressive Antebellum South. In contrast, Kevin must learn to resist the increased privilege he gains as a white male in the Antebellum South. Though Kevin and Dana already have to balance Kevin's white male privilege in their relationship in the present, the gap between them is even more pronounced in the past. Kevin is encouraged to use the full extent of his privilege to brutalize others in the past, straining their relationship and threatening to demean Dana as an abused slave and Kevin as a cruel master. While taking on the persona of a slave, Dana must be very careful not to forget her own freedom. She faces the constant struggle against white supremacy as embodied by Rufus and his family who believe that they can use and abuse all black people however they see fit. Various characters remark that Dana sounds "white" due to her education and writing ability, equating freedom of expression and self-confidence with whiteness. No matter where in time she is, Dana finds freedom in writing, using the practice to assert her own identity in the face of male privilege when Kevin, and later Rufus, expect her to write for their purposes instead of her own. Furthermore, Dana feels guilty at how much she hates her small episodes of living in slavery, knowing that she has been far more privileged than any of the slaves born on the Weylin estate simply because she knows that African Americans will achieve freedom in the future. Dana thus holds on to some vestiges of privilege through her education and her healthy self-esteem even when she is surrounded by the harmful and dehumanizing system of slavery. However, freedom in the "present" is still marked by racial and sexual discrimination. Butler recognizes that freedom, privilege, slavery, and oppression are all measured on sliding scales based on factors of race, gender, ability, and more. There is not a simple binary between free and not free or privileged and not privileged, as Dana is "free" in the present and has some markers of privilege, yet is still oppressed as a woman of color. The future is not perfect, and is still marked by racial discrimination and the systems of white and male privilege that made life unbearable for Dana in the past. Significant strides have been made, but there is still work to be done to ensure that every member of American society is truly free and that systematic privilege based on race or gender does not dehumanize or distort relationships between people. - Theme: Choice and Power. Description: As Butler delves into the everyday lives of Antebellum slaves in a neo-slave narrative, she also points out the places where slaves take back agency and power in their lives despite the oppressive system that attempts to rob them of their choice and humanity. At points, it seems as though slaves are choosing to stay oppressed. The Weylins' cook, Sarah, flatly refuses to think of running away to the North, a choice that Dana secretly thinks would be seen as weak and cowardly by later generations of African Americans. Yet Butler points out that these supposedly weak choices actually display the strength of slaves who are choosing to accept abuse to keep themselves and their loved ones safe. Sarah cannot attempt to run away as long as she has to worry about keeping her mute daughter Carrie free from harm. The Weylin slaves do not need Dana (or Kevin) to step in and educate them on how they should be taking back their own freedom—rather they need Dana to respect the choices that they have made in order to survive within this horrific societal system. As Butler portrays it, the life of a slave is marked by using the illusion of powerlessness to protect what agency and choice the slaves can save for themselves. Carrie is the ultimate example of this, without even a voice to express her pain and an inability to communicate verbally that suggests that she has no power or choice over her own life. Yet Dana finds out that Carrie still finds ways to communicate through self-devised sign language, and that Carrie is actually one of the brightest slaves on the Weylin estate. Though Carrie may not seem to have any agency, she is one of the few slaves to escape at the end of the novel, as Butler overturns the usual expectations about power and potential. The insane horror of slavery sometimes pushes the slaves to make the hardest choice of all, when it is the only choice left to them. For some, this means choosing death when life is unbearable, such as when Alice chooses to commit suicide after the perceived sale of her children. Butler certainly does not glorify this choice, but she does present it as an understandable reaction to Alice's feeling that all of her power, choice, and life's purpose had been taken away. In comparison, Dana consistently asserts her power in her interactions with Rufus, making sure that Rufus understands that he must respect her if he wants her to continue to help him when he gets into trouble. Yet Dana must temper her power with the knowledge that Rufus may lash out at other slaves if Rufus feels that Dana is stepping out of her "place" too far, eventually choosing to feign powerlessness in order to protect others. When other tactics of entering a healthy partnership with Rufus ultimately fail, Dana makes the difficult choice of taking Rufus's life in self-defense. Rufus has no respect for Dana's agency over her own body, and underestimates Dana's power over his life. This fundamental lack of understanding pushes Dana past her breaking point and into this critical decision of murder. Throughout the novel, Butler shows the ways that people who might seem powerless might actually be the most powerful. Yet the mask of powerlessness comes with a price. When people's fundamental agency is constricted, they can be pushed into making life-or-death decisions that display their true power. - Climax: When Rufus finally crosses the line of Dana's freedom and attempts to rape her, Dana manages to stab Rufus and kill him. She returns to her present, but loses her left arm in the process. - Summary: Dana (Edana) wakes in the hospital with her left arm amputated. Her husband, Kevin, comes in, and the couple hopes that the police won't investigate the incident any further. The trouble began on June 9th, 1976 as Dana and Kevin are moving to a new house in Los Angeles, California. Dana feels dizzy and blacks out, then finds herself at a river where a young boy is drowning. Dana saves the child and gives him CPR, despite the protests of the boy's mother. The boy's father comes and points a rifle at Dana, but Dana is transported back to her home before the man can shoot. Kevin crouches over Dana, explaining that she was only gone a few seconds, though Dana is sure she spent minutes saving the boy. Kevin isn't sure if he believes Dana about where she went, but knows that something very strange is happening. Dana tries to put the incident behind her, but a few hours later she again feels dizzy and finds herself transported to a bedroom in a wooden house. A boy—who looks like an older version of the boy that Dana saved from the river—is staring at his curtains burning in the corner of the room. Dana throws the curtains out the window, then tries to talk to the boy to find out what is happening. The boy's name is Rufus, and he remembers almost drowning and then being saved by Dana when he was five. When Rufus repeatedly calls Dana, a black woman, a "nigger," Dana starts to believe that she is in the pre-Civil War South. According to Rufus, the date is 1815 and they are in Maryland, close to the town of Easton on the Weylin plantation. Dana realizes that she must be traveling through space and time, but she doesn't understand how this is happening. Dana vaguely remembers an old family Bible that listed the names Rufus Weylin and Alice Greenwood Weylin as the parents of Dana's great-great-grandmother Hagar Weylin. Dana realizes that she must travel through time and save Rufus each time his life is in danger in order to ensure the survival of her own family line. To avoid meeting Rufus's cruel father again, Dana sneaks out of Rufus's house and heads for Alice's family cabin in the woods. Rufus gives her directions, saying that Alice is a "free black" and a friend of his. As Dana approaches the cabin, white men ride by and begin to terrorize the black family living there. These patrollers are supposed to ensure order among the slaves, but really just enjoy torturing black people. They whip Alice's father for leaving the Weylin plantation without a pass and drag him off, then beat Alice's mother. After they leave, Dana creeps up to the house and secures a safe place to stay for the night. But another patroller waits outside and snatches Dana when she goes out to collect another blanket. Fighting for her life, Dana struggles not to let the patroller rape her and eventually knocks the man unconscious. Terrified that the man will kill her when he wakes, Dana tries to run away but gets too dizzy and blacks out. When Dana wakes, she is back in her home with Kevin. Dana explains that she traveled back in time, and Kevin realizes that she must be traveling to the past whenever Rufus is afraid he will die, and then returning to the present when she herself is afraid of death. The couple put together an emergency bag so that Dana will be ready when this happens again. Dana and Kevin first met while Dana was working another temp job to fund her lifestyle of writing through the night. Kevin is also a writer, and has a book published. The two bond over their isolation from society and the fact that they have both lost their parents, and they soon begin dating. Others in the office make comments about their interracial relationship, as Kevin is white, but Kevin and Dana pay little attention. Back in the present, Kevin helps Dana clean herself up after the beating the patroller gave her, but Dana then gets dizzy and returns to Rufus's time with Kevin in tow. Rufus is sprawled on the ground, having broken his leg falling from a tree as a young slave boy named Nigel watches, unsure how to help. Dana sends Nigel to get Rufus's father, who comes back with a wagon and a large slave named Luke. They get Rufus back to the house and Rufus's father, Tom, lets Dana stay with Rufus. Kevin pretends to be Dana's master in order to avoid questions, and he starts to tutor Rufus while his leg is broken. Dana joins the household, helping the cook Sarah and Sarah's mute daughter Carrie and reading to Rufus when his strict father and hysterical mother, Margaret, are not around. Dana still has difficulty fitting in, however, because she is educated like a white person though everyone in this time expects her to act like a slave. Eventually, Dana starts teaching Nigel to read as well, but the two are caught in the cookhouse by Tom. Tom drags Dana into the yard and whips her viciously, until she wonders if Tom is trying to kill her. Kevin hears the commotion and comes to the yard, but can't reach Dana before she transports back to the present. Kevin and Dana had decided to get married even though their surviving family members did not support an interracial marriage. Now back in the new house that they had bought together, Dana does not feel at home without Kevin there. She carefully tries to wash the lash wounds on her back and recovers for eight days in the present before she is called back to the past. She finds herself in the woods with Rufus, now a young man, who is fighting a young black man while Alice watches. Dana convinces the young man, Isaac, not to kill Rufus, though Rufus raped Alice after Alice married Isaac. Isaac and Alice run away, heading North, while Dana gets Rufus back to the Weylin house. Dana learns that Kevin waited for her a while, but five years have passed since Dana left and Kevin is now in the North. Rufus agrees to let Dana write Kevin a letter, but makes Dana burn a book on slavery and a map of Maryland so that Dana can't escape on her own. Four days later, Alice and Isaac are caught by patrollers. Rufus goes to town and buys Alice back, while Isaac is punished horribly and sold to Mississippi. Alice is in terrible shape from the patrollers' beatings and dog packs, but Dana manages to nurse her back to health and keep her wounds free from infection. As Alice recovers, Rufus forces Dana to convince Alice to become his mistress. Alice hates it, but does so to keep herself safe from more punishment. In Rufus's room, Alice finds Dana's letter to Kevin—unsent. Dana decides to run away on her own rather than trust Rufus. She sneaks out and manages to make it past Easton town, but is betrayed by another slave. Tom and Rufus find Dana and bring her back, then whip her soundly. Dana spends a week recovering, then finds out that Tom wrote to Kevin on her behalf. Kevin arrives and he and Dana try to escape the Weylin estate. Unluckily, they meet Rufus on the road and Rufus threatens to shoot first Kevin, then Dana, if they leave. With Rufus's rifle pointed at her face, Dana gets scared enough that she transports herself and Kevin back to the present. Kevin struggles to readjust to the present after five years spent in the past trying to help slaves escape while keeping himself alive. He can't even write anymore, and Dana sees traces of Tom and Rufus in Kevin's face and voice. After a few hours at home, Dana is transported to the past again and finds Rufus unconscious in a heavy rainstorm. She and Nigel get Rufus back to the house, where Tom puts Dana in charge of healing Rufus from the ague (malaria). Dana does her best with her limited medical knowledge. It has been six years for the Weylins, and Alice has had a child with Rufus named Joe. Dana still desperately waits for her ancestor Hagar to be born so she can be freed of her connection to the Weylin family. After Rufus recovers, Tom has a heart attack and dies. Though there is nothing Dana could do, Rufus blames Dana and sends Dana out to the field for a day of backbreaking work under the harsh overseer's whip. As an apology, Rufus then assigns Dana to the relatively easy work of being a servant to Margaret, who is now addicted to laudanum. With her education, Rufus also puts Dana in charge of household affairs. He seems to see Alice and Dana as two halves of his wife. Alice has another child, this one finally Hagar, and makes plans to run away as soon as the baby is old enough to withstand the trip. Dana tries to convince Alice to wait and persuade Rufus to officially free Alice's children, but neither is responsive. Rufus then crosses the line by selling off a slave who had committed the "crime" of speaking to Dana and making Rufus jealous. Stripped of the semblance of control over her life, Dana sends herself back to the present by cutting her own wrists. Kevin helps Dana get medical attention for her wrists and the two have 15 days of peace to heal and reaffirm their relationship. They have a hard conversation about whether Dana can manage to kill to Rufus if she travels again. Dana believes she can if Rufus attacks her or attempts to rape her. On July 4th, Dana is called back to Rufus. She finds him distraught outside the Weylin house, and learns that Alice has committed suicide by hanging herself in the barn. Rufus punished Alice for trying to run away again by pretending to sell Joe and Hagar, plunging Alice into a deep depression that ended in her death. Dana convinces Rufus to be a true father to Joe and Hagar, even drawing up certificates of freedom for the children when he brings them back to the Weylin plantation from Baltimore. Yet Rufus wants Dana to stay with him and act as a mother to his children. He forces himself on Dana in her room in the attic, and Dana is compelled to get her knife from her emergency bag and stab Rufus. When Rufus dies, Dana is catapulted back to the present, but the place on Dana's arm where Rufus's hand was clamped is severed and crushed in the wall of Dana's house. After Dana's amputated arm heals, Kevin and Dana travel to Maryland in the present to find out what happened to the Weylin family. Nigel covered up Rufus's death with a fire and he and Carrie, now Nigel's wife, took Joe and Hagar to Baltimore to raise them. Dana knows that she will never find out everything about her family's past, and Kevin encourages her to look to the future free of Rufus and her other ancestors.

- Genre: Novella - Title: Kitchen - Point of view: First Person - Setting: Urban Tokyo in the 1980s, primarily at an apartment near Chuo Park. - Character: Mikage Sakurai. Description: The protagonist and narrator of Kitchen, whose mother and father died when she was very young. Mikage was raised by her grandmother, who died a few days before the story begins. The story thus revolves around Mikage's visceral experiences of grief—in the first half of the story, she grieves her grandmother, and in the second half of the story, Mikage grieves Eriko, who forms a motherly bond with Mikage when she and her son Yuichi take Mikage in. Mikage has lived in the shadow of death her whole life and battles a deep sense of loneliness and isolation throughout the story, though she knows the only thing she can do is keep on going. Yoshimoto symbolizes Mikage's pain with metaphors of darkness throughout the novel, while light represents Mikage's joy. Mikage is obsessed with kitchens and finds them extremely comforting in her darkest moments. Just as Eriko once advised her, Mikage finds that her experiences with suffering enable her to have a profound understanding of the joy that cooking fills her with. Over the course of the story, Mikage develops a bond with Yuichi that evolves into romantic love. They understand each other because they have both experienced profound loss in their lives. Nonetheless, Mikage is afraid to pursue a relationship with Yuichi because she doesn't know if they can build a life together from the dark place of their collective experiences with bereavement. At the story's climax, Mikage impulsively tracks Yuichi down by breaking into an inn he is hiding away in to bring him some delicious fried pork, which revives him and pulls him out of his dark state of mind. Heartened by Mikage's visit, Yuichi returns to Tokyo instead of running away, while Mikage makes peace with the necessity of suffering and joy in life and is finally able to embrace her love for Yuichi. - Character: Yuichi Tanabe. Description: Eriko's son and Mikage's love interest in Kitchen. He developed a deep bond with Mikage's grandmother when she was alive, which prompts him to offer Mikage a place to stay while she grieves her grandmother's death. When Yuichi's biological mother died when he was a baby, Yuichi's biological father made the decision to become a woman, open a nightclub, and raise Yuichi as the boy's mother. Yuichi has a calm and sweet life with Eriko and—despite his emotional obtuseness—forms a bond of friendship with Mikage that evolves into a romantic connection over the course of the story. Yuichi is torn apart with grief after Eriko dies, feeling that he lost both his mother and his father in one fell swoop. He eventually reaches out to Mikage for support. However, Yuichi fears appearing unmanly in front of Mikage so he runs away to begin a new life but Mikage tracks him down and feeds him a meal to lift his spirits. Mikage essentially saves Yuichi from being broken by grief, which enables him to embrace his feelings for Mikage. - Character: Eriko Tanabe. Description: The central maternal figure in Kitchen. Eriko is an empowered transgender woman who runs a nightclub, raises her son Yuichi, and takes on a motherly role with Mikage after Mikage's grandmother dies. Yoshimoto leverages Eriko's character to emphasize that transgender womanhood is just as valid as cisgender womanhood, in particular through descriptions of Eriko's feminine beauty and through Eriko's own assertions about identifying as a woman. Yoshimoto also voices the guiding philosophies of the plot through Eriko. For example, Eriko urges Mikage to see that a person cannot really understand joy without experiencing suffering. Suffering, therefore, is both insightful and necessary and it cannot be eradicated but must be embraced. Eriko also becomes a mother to Mikage, which underscores Yoshimoto's view that family is not bound up with biology. Eriko is tragically murdered by a stalker halfway through the story, and her death motivates part of Yoshimoto's exploration of grieving, as well as the complicated path that Mikage and Yuichi walk while trying to navigate love in the midst of bereavement. - Character: Mikage's Grandmother. Description: Mikage's only living relative, who dies a few days before the story begins. Mikage's mother and father died when Mikage was a baby, so Mikage's grandmother raised her. Yoshimoto leverages Mikage's grandmother's death to motivate her exploration of bereavement in the first half of the story. Yoshimoto also shows, through Mikage's grandmother's loving bond with Yuichi, that family is not restricted to relatives. - Character: Yuichi's Biological Mother. Description: Eriko's late wife, who was Eriko's foster sister. Yuichi's biological mother ran off with Eriko when they were teenagers, and she gave birth to Yuichi soon after. Yuichi's biological mother died of cancer when Yuichi was a baby, which accounts for Eriko's profound understanding of bereavement. Eriko begins her transition to a woman after Yuichi's biological mother dies. - Theme: Death and Grief. Description: Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen is a moving exploration of the processes of grieving. The story, which is divided into two parts, begins with death and explores how people survive painful losses and are able to move on without breaking. At the start of the novel, the protagonist, Mikage Sakurai, is grieving her grandmother, who raised her. The second part opens with Mikage learning that Eriko Tanabe, the woman who took her in after her grandmother died, has been murdered. In describing the aftermath of these two deaths, Yoshimoto captures the physical and emotional sensations of grieving, particularly the feelings of disassociation from the body, uncontrollable crying, loneliness, and, finally, finding the strength to make peace with death and find joy in living once again. Yoshimoto's ultimate message is an uplifting one: though each of the grieving characters feels lost and sometimes even feels like they want to die, they know that survival is the only option. Yoshimoto argues that the simple act of surviving—of putting one foot in front of the other to keep going—is nothing short of heroic, and, at the same time, the only option a person really has. It's what leads people through the grieving process and enables them to connect, once again, with life. Yoshimoto often describes the physical experience of grief to underscore that grieving is as physical as it is emotional. After Mikage clears out her grandmother's apartment, Yoshimoto shows how physically overwhelming the experience of grief can be. Mikage feels as if she's "falling down drunk" and her body is acting "independently" of her as tears pour down her face, and she wonders if she's losing her mind. Similarly, when Mikage learns that Eriko is dead, she can't see or breathe properly in her grief. The street around her feels "warped," she feels as if she's "choking," and she feels as if she's lost control of her body. For Yoshimoto, surviving grief entails allowing space for physical processes to happen and requires taking care of the body as well as the mind. For example, when Mikage allows herself to have a proper cry over her grandmother for the first time—a physical expression of grief—she is finally able to sleep soundly. Similarly, when Eriko and her son Yuichi take Mikage in, the soft sofa that they turn into Mikage's bed is as comforting to Mikago as the emotional support they provide. Throughout the story, eating is depicted as a healing force for those who are grieving. For example, Mikage saves Yuichi from a dark place by feeding him fried pork, which revives his body, and by extension, his spirits.  Though many of the novel's characters experience grief so painful that they want to die, each of these characters come to the conclusion that the only thing they really can do is press on and keep surviving. For Yoshimoto, pain is a part of life, and enduring pain is part of what it means to live. For example, Mikage wants to die when she learns about Eriko's death, but she acknowledges that "tomorrow" and "the day after tomorrow" will come, and as hard as it seems, she will still be alive.  Mikage concludes that "despite the tempest raging inside me, I walked calmly." She puts one foot in front of the other and—literally and metaphorically—keeps going. Yoshimoto describes the feeling of grief as painfully lonely, isolating, and hopelessly full of "despair." For Yoshimoto, the only way to get through it is with simple, everyday actions that ground people and bring them back into connection with the rhythms of living—something that, in the novella, is often symbolized by kitchens. When Mikage is forced to confront the reality of her grandmother's death, she says that "there was only one thing to do—humming a tune, I began to scrub a refrigerator." Similarly, when Mikage is grieving Eriko's death, she pushes through her despair by cleaning Eriko's kitchen. The more she scrubs, the calmer and more collected she becomes. Yoshimoto thus shows that sometimes the only thing a person can do in the face of deep pain is complete the immediate task in front of them. Yet somehow, that's exactly the thing that will get them through. After cleaning her grandmother's refrigerator, and making plans to meet her ex-boyfriend, Sotaro, Mikage concludes that "In this world there is no place for sadness." Yoshimoto means that in times of pain, it's best for a person to focus on something simple and act, rather than letting their emotions break them. As painful as death is for the novel's characters, their grief doesn't kill them. They choose to press on, because that's the only thing they really can do. With this, Yoshimoto sends the heartening message that for those grappling with intense grief, days will come and go, and the bereaved will get through it as time passes. - Theme: Gender. Description: Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen, which was written in Japan in the 1980s, questions gender conventions in Yoshimoto's time through the story's central characters. Towards the end of the story, the protagonist, Mikage Sakurai, and her love interest, Yuichi Tanabe, poke fun at traditional notions of masculinity by showing that Yuichi's desire to be "manly" when grieving his mother is damaging. Yuichi's mother, Eriko Tanabe, is transgender. Her backstory reveals that she was Yuichi's biological father, but now lives as a woman and as Yuichi's mother. Yoshimoto emphasizes that Eriko is a woman through and through, highlighting her beauty, femininity, and empowerment throughout. Yoshimoto thus questions cisgender bias by offering a positive representation of transgender womanhood and exposes patriarchal values as banal clichés. Yoshimoto consistently emphasizes Eriko's womanhood to show that womanhood is not limited to cisgender people but includes Eriko and, by extension, transgender women in general. All the characters refer to Eriko with feminine pronouns throughout Kitchen. Yuichi always describes Eriko as "she" when referring to a post-transition Eriko. Yuichi even occasionally refers to a pre-transition Eriko by the pronoun "she" as well, to emphasize that this is Eriko's dominant gender designation. For example, Yuichi says "Eriko quit her job, gathered me up, and asked herself, 'What do I want to do now?' What she decided was 'Become a woman.'" Eriko herself explicitly asserts her womanhood at several points in the story, for example, when she exclaims "it's not easy being a woman" to Mikage while watering the plants. Similarly, Eriko writes "I'm body and soul a woman" in her will. Yuichi also refers to Eriko as his mother rather than his father as does Eriko herself. Yuichi says to Mikage, "Could you call someone who looked like that 'Dad?'" Similarly, in her will, Eriko writes, "I am a mother in name and in fact." Yoshimoto thus asserts that there is no ambiguity in Eriko's gender designation: she is—in life and in death—a woman. Yoshimoto reinforces Eriko's status as a woman by emphasizing her beauty and femininity throughout the plot. Mikage often reflects on how dazzled she is by Eriko's beauty. For example, Mikage is "stunned" by Eriko's beauty when she first meets Eriko, and later refers to Eriko as "the beautiful Eriko." Yoshimoto also emphasizes Eriko's femininity through Mikage's frequent descriptions of Eriko's feminine body. For example, when Eriko is watering the plants, Mikage describes Eriko's "slender, graceful hands." In fact, Eriko is so feminine that Mikage often has to remind herself that Eriko used to be a man.  Yoshimoto depicts Eriko as the most empowered character in the story, while depicting Yuichi—the central male character—as somewhat weak, especially in his grief. Through this juxtaposition, Yoshimoto questions patriarchal values that associate masculinity with strength and power. Mikage describes Eriko as a "powerful mother" when they have a heart-to-heart while Eriko waters the plants. Even when Eriko is murdered, her strength is emphasized: she goes down fighting and beats her murderer to death. Yuichi, on the other hand, avoids Mikage after Eriko dies because he doesn't want Mikage to see his weakness. It's Mikage, the female protagonist, who springs into action and saves a passive Yuichi when he is at his weakest, which reinforces the association of femininity with power. Simultaneously, Yoshimoto undermines masculine power when Mikage and Yuichi joke about the "tough guy" trope, exposing its absurdity. For example, Yuichi jokes that he should "pick up a car and throw it" to re-establish his masculinity after being saved by Mikage. Through her depictions of the story's three central characters, Yoshimoto thus questions conventional gender dynamics that privilege patriarchal values and cisgender biases, and offers a potent counter-narrative in which women are the empowered characters, and the transgender woman is the most empowered character of all. - Theme: Family. Description: Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen is a love letter to the non-traditional family. None of the story's central characters are raised in a conventional family environment by two biological parents. The protagonist, Mikage Sakurai, was raised by her grandmother, who has just died when the story begins. Mikage's love interest, Yuichi Tanabe, is raised by his transgender parent Eriko (who was Yuichi's biological father but now identifies as his mother). The most central family dynamic in the plot is Mikage's found family. Mikage is taken in by Yuichi and Eriko when her grandmother dies, despite barely knowing them at all. Through Eriko's relationship with Mikage, Yoshimoto emphasizes that consistent nurturing and emotional support are what really make people family, regardless of their biological relationship to each other. Eriko's relationship with Mikage, as well as other relationships in the story, show that Yoshimoto considers day-to-day nurturing as an essential component of what creates a bond of family between people. Eriko, who runs a nightclub, pops home every night just to check in and say hello to her son Yuichi and Mikage, and make sure they're alright. Eriko also imparts frequent advice to Mikage, even after Mikage has moved out, showing that Eriko continues to care for Mikage from a distance. Eriko's son Yuichi similarly forms a bond with Mikage's grandmother before she dies. Yoshimoto underscores that their day-to-day companionship was what fostered a bond of love between Yuichi and Mikage's grandmother. Mikage's memories of her grandmother also center on the day-to-day moments they shared, such as Mikage's grandmother's daily greeting of "Welcome home," their chats over tea and coffee, and watching TV together. Yoshimoto also believes that the people who take time to provide emotional support, especially about difficult topics like coping with pain and finding meaning in life, are essentially taking on a parental role in those actions. Mikage often reflects on her deep conversations with Eriko, which make Mikage feel seen, understood, and supported as a person. For example, Eriko, who grieved her spouse, tells Mikage that deep joy cannot be felt without the experience of deep pain, which enlivens Mikage and makes her feel more hopeful about navigating the path through her grief. Yoshimoto shows that people can love each other like family even if they are not biologically related. Eriko refers to Mikage as her "daughter" and "precious child" even though they are not related. When Mikage's grandmother dies, Mikage describes Yuichi's grieving as so intense that it seems his love surpasses her own, even though Yuichi and Mikage's grandmother are not related. Mikage reflects, "When he saw my grandmother's picture on the altar, again his tears fell like rain. My first thought when I saw that was my love for my own grandmother was nothing compared to this boy's, whoever he was." While none of the family relationships emphasized in the story fit the conventional picture of family, the relationships nonetheless epitomize its true meaning. Yoshimoto thus portrays family as a bond that emerges from day-to-day interaction, nurturing, and emotional support, rather than from biology. - Theme: Joy and Suffering. Description: Banana Yoshimoto infuses Kitchen with frequent references to "light" and "dark" to impart her philosophy about the balance of joy and suffering in life. Throughout the story, the protagonist, Mikage Sakurai, struggles to connect with joy while grieving, and worries that life is really just about enduring pain, or dwelling in darkness. Yoshimoto, however, speaking through the voice of Eriko Tanabe—the woman who takes Mikage in at the start of the story—believes that no person can eradicate pain. In fact, suffering is needed to truly understand joy. Yoshimoto argues that a person will only experience true happiness when they accept the presence of suffering, just as Mikage does towards the end of the story. Yoshimoto argues—through Eriko's voice—that people who have not experienced true suffering cannot understand real joy, implying that both are necessary in the world. When Mikage is grieving her grandmother, Eriko consoles Mikage by saying, "if a person hasn't ever experienced true despair, she grows old never knowing how to evaluate where she is in life; never understanding what joy really is. I'm grateful for it." Mikage struggles throughout the story with the worry that she will dwell in darkness and never be happy because of her encounters with death. It's only when Mikage accepts that her painful experiences are part of life that she is able to experience a joy that surpasses the happiness of those of who have never experienced pain. For example, Mikage describes the women in her cooking class, like her competitors for the cooking assistant job, as limited in their happiness because they've known no suffering. Mikage, in contrast, is able to experience "bliss" through her cooking, because of her experiences with grief. Yoshimoto uses the symbols of light and dark to capture the balance of joy and pain respectively, illustrating that true peace of mind emerges when the darkness of pain is infused with (rather than replaced by) light. Yoshimoto captures Mikage's happy moments with metaphors about light emanating from the places and people she loves, such as kitchens, Eriko, and Yuichi. Mikage describes her most painful moments as a feeling of pervasive darkness. For example, when grieving her grandmother, Mikage dwells on the "blackness of the cosmos." Yoshimoto captures Mikage's acceptance of the necessity of both pain and joy with the metaphor of dark spaces that are punctuated with sources of light. For example, when Mikage finally makes peace with the idea that life is a perpetual balance of pain and joy, she describes a lighthouse that casts its light beam on the dark ocean waves. Similarly, when Mikage realizes that she can build a happy life with Eriko's son, Yuichi, even though both of their lives have been marked by loss, she describes a "glittering crystal" that pierces the darkness of her mind with light. Through Eriko's voice and Mikage's experiences, Yoshimoto asserts that suffering is a necessary part of life that cannot be erased. However, this fact is no tragedy, for the experience of suffering is what allows people to experience true joy. In other words, those who have endured suffering are the ones who can truly appreciate something that glitters in the dark. - Climax: Yuichi calls Mikage at the inn she is staying at to say he's returned to Tokyo instead of running away and will pick Mikage up when she gets back to Tokyo tomorrow. - Summary: Mikage's grandmother has just died, and Mikage is in a haze of grief, unable to sleep. Mikage's mother and father died when Mikage was very young, so Mikage's grandmother raised her. Now that her grandmother is dead, Mikage has nobody in the world and feels utterly alone in the dark universe. The only place Mikage can sleep is in the kitchen, which is where she's been for days when Yuichi Tanabe knocks on her door. Yuichi goes to Mikage's university but she doesn't know him well, although Yuichi was close with Mikage's grandmother. Yuichi suggests that Mikage come to stay with him and his mother Eriko for a while. Yuichi seems to glow with light and Mikage is compelled to accept the invitation. When Mikage enters Yuichi's apartment, she is drawn to the kitchen full of plates, pots, and pans, and sinks into the massive, soft sofa. Mikage is dazzled by Eriko's beauty and amazed when Yuichi explains that "[Eriko] is a man." Eriko was actually Yuichi's biological father, but after Yuichi's biological mother died of cancer when Yuichi was a baby, Eriko decided to become a woman, open a nightclub, and raise Yuichi as his mother. It seems perfectly natural to Yuichi to see Eriko as his mother as she's so feminine. Mikage feels strangely comfortable in their apartment and agrees to stay, sleeping on the giant sofa in the kitchen, next to a window framing a dark sky dotted with stars. Mikage stays with Yuichi and Eriko for several months, falling into an easy rhythm of working part-time and tending to the house. She cooks for Eriko and Yuichi often and they enjoy sharing meals together. Eriko is very motherly towards Mikage, which warms Mikage's heart. One day, as Mikage is cleaning out her grandmother's apartment, her ex-boyfriend, Sotaro, calls to check in. They meet for a friendly catch up, and Sotaro tells Mikage that Yuichi's girlfriend slapped Yuichi in the cafeteria when she heard about Mikage living with Yuichi. Mikage laughs and explains that Yuichi and Eriko more or less adopted her and there's no romance going on. Mikage dated Sotaro because she was drawn to his perpetually upbeat outlook, but now she feels more at home among the "strange cheerfulness" of the Tanabes. That night, Mikage tries to subtly broach the topic of the cafeteria incident with Yuichi but, to Mikage's irritation, he's completely dense and doesn't pick up on her cues. Eventually, Mikage has to ask Yuichi about it directly and he smiles bitterly, saying it couldn't be helped. Mikage can tell Yuichi is touched by her concern and they warm to each other in a different way. Soon after, Mikage goes to her grandmother's apartment to finish cleaning it out. It's dark and chilly as she catches the bus home. On the bus, she watches a grandmother soothe her grandchild. Mikage gets off the bus and sobs violently, crying for the first time over her grandmother's death. That night, Mikage sleeps soundly. Mikage wakes in the middle of the night after having a strange dream about cleaning her grandmother's kitchen with Yuichi and singing a song with Yuichi about a lighthouse in the dark ocean. Yuichi is also awake and is hungry for ramen—which he also asked for in his dream. They are both shocked to realize they had the same dream. Mikage feels as if they are standing in a brightly lit room that pierces the vast darkness of the world around them. One day, Eriko is gracefully watering the plants and telling Mikage about the time when Yuichi's biological mother died. Eriko tells Mikage that life can be very hard, but those who never suffer can never understand joy. Mikage is comforted by Eriko's words and thinks to herself that she'll experience many moments of pain in her life but knows that she'll keep going and won't let her spirit be broken. That autumn, Eriko is murdered by a stalker who couldn't get over the fact that he was attracted to a transgender woman. He attacked Eriko one night with a knife, and, in her dying moments, Eriko beat him to death with a barbell. Mikage doesn't find out until several months later, when Yuichi is finally able to call and break the news. Mikage feels blank and disoriented but hurriedly packs an overnight bag and rushes to Yuichi's place, feeling like she can't see or breathe. Yuichi is thin, downtrodden, and terrified that Mikage is angry at him for taking so long to call, but Mikage dismisses the thought. That night, Mikage reads Eriko's will. Even in death, Eriko is empowered. Her will is a cheerful letter assuring Yuichi that if she's dead now, he should remember that she was—in body and soul—a beautiful woman and mother who loved her life, no matter what end she met. Eriko also writes that she thinks of Mikage like a daughter. Mikage misses Eriko so much that she feels she'll go mad and cries herself to sleep. The next day, she offers to cook a feast for Yuichi to cheer him up. Yuichi is enlivened by the idea and rushes out to get the ingredients. Suddenly, Mikage feels heavy as visions of Eriko's face torment her. Not knowing what to do, Mikage starts to clean the kitchen. As she cleans, she starts to feel better. Yuichi's excited to eat Mikage's food because she's a professional now. Mikage became obsessed with cooking over the summer when living with Eriko and Yuichi, and poured her heart and soul into it, feeling utterly blissful. She now works for a famous cooking teacher. Mikage feels that although the students in the cooking school seem happy in their comfortable lives, their happiness falls short of her own joy. Mikage cooks with a profound joy that she can only appreciate because of the suffering she's experienced. That night, Yuichi drunkenly asks Mikage to stay for a while, and she asks him to explain if he needs her as a friend or a lover. Yuichi becomes despondent, saying he can't think straight. Mikage discovers that Yuichi has been drinking himself to sleep every night and is in a dark place. Mikage imagines her and Yuichi climbing down a ladder to hell and realizes they can't create a life together in this place of pain. The next morning, Mikage rushes to work, not knowing what to do about Yuichi. Luckily, Mikage's boss says she needs Mikage to come on a work trip to the Izu Peninsula. Mikage jumps at the chance to get some distance and perspective. While Mikage is chopping vegetables at work with her colleagues Kuri and Nori, a girl named Okuno storms in. Okuno accuses Mikage of leading Yuichi on and emasculating him, before storming out. That evening, Mikage feels drawn to Yuichi while they go out for tea. She buries her head into Yuichi's arm as he walks her home and he says they'll go for tea again when Mikage is back from her trip. That night, as Mikage is packing, Eriko's dramatic friend Chika calls with urgent news for Mikage. When they meet, Chika explains that Yuichi came to the club feeling lost and alone. Chika says she knows Yuichi and Mikage are in love and gives Mikage the address of the inn she sent Yuichi to, urging Mikage to chase her lover. It's evening at the Izu Peninsula and Mikage walks around town looking for food. She walks into a brightly lit cafeteria and orders fried pork. Impulsively, she calls Yuichi, who sounds faraway. He jokes that there's no food where he is except tofu. Suddenly, Mikage has an intuition that her and Yuichi are negotiating a turning point and things could go either way for their relationship. Yuichi lies that he's coming back soon and they say goodbye. Mikage feels exhausted. The pork is served and it's mind-blowingly delicious. Mikage inhales it and it brings her back to life. Suddenly, she's seized by an impulse and grabs another order to go. Before she can think about it, she's in a taxi headed far away to Yuichi's inn. Yuichi's inn is locked up tight and nobody is answering the phone. Mikage decides to scale the wall and somehow manages to haul herself onto the roof. As she lies in a puddle, clutching the pork and her arm (which is now bleeding), Mikage stares up at the moon with a profound sensation that she was destined to wind up in this predicament. Mikage knocks on Yuichi's window and he is shocked to see her standing there with takeout food and a bleeding arm. Yuichi's eyes look cold and Mikage is suddenly frightened, feeling like she's trapped in Yuichi's pain. Mikage confronts Yuichi about running away to start a new life and tells him to eat the pork first, which he guiltily takes. As Yuichi opens the container, happy memories of Mikage's good times with Eriko and Yuichi come flooding back to Mikage like a dazzling crystal. Mikage is no longer afraid. Mikage tells Yuichi that she doesn't want to lose him. Yuichi, who has been devouring the delicious pork, looks Mikage in the eye. He explains that he was running away because he didn't want Mikage to see him in his weak and unmanly state. Mikage thinks he's being ridiculous and cracks a joke about Yuichi tearing a telephone book in half to reclaim his manliness. Yuichi is enlivened and they joke about increasingly absurd shows of manliness. Glad to see some light coming back into Yuichi's face, Mikage leaves him to think about what she said and they goodbye. Back in Izu, Mikage walks along the icy beach at night, looking at the dark waves. A lighthouse in the distance casts its beam of light towards Mikage and she makes peace with all the pain and joy that is yet to come. When Mikage gets back to the inn, Yuichi calls. They joke a little and Yuichi says he'll pick up Mikage at the station when she gets back to Tokyo tomorrow.

- Genre: Science Fiction - Title: Klara and the Sun - Point of view: First Person - Setting: An unspecified part of the future United States - Character: Klara. Description: Klara is an Artificial Friend (a type of robot) whom Josie and the Mother purchase. She is described as looking like a French woman. From the very beginning, when she is on display in the store run by Manager, Klara has surprisingly astute powers of observation. She is fascinated by the daily movements of the Sun (perhaps because she is solar powered), and she eventually develops superstitions about the Sun's ability to provide nourishment and healing. After being purchased, Klara does her best to learn how to be a good friend for Josie, who often needs supervision due to a chronic illness. As time passes, Klara learns that her goal is not only to assist Josie but in fact to be put into a new body and become Josie, should Josie die of her illness. Klara is willing to do this, but she maintains hope that perhaps Josie may one day be cured. In an attempt to cure Josie, Klara asks for help from Josie's friend Rick and tries to get the Sun to intervene on Josie's behalf. Klara even enlists the help of the Father to destroy a pollution-spewing construction vehicle called the Cootings Machine, believing that this will make the Sun happy. One sunny morning, Josie does start getting better, which seemingly confirms Klara's beliefs about the Sun. But Klara has a limited lifespan, and so shortly after Josie goes to college, Klara is left in a place called the Yard for her "slow fade," where she spends the rest of her days putting her old memories into order. As a character, Klara provides an outside perspective on humanity, showing how human actions look to a character who isn't human. At the same time, however, Klara seems to have many of the same thoughts and emotions as a human, raising questions about what it really means to be human. - Character: Josie. Description: At the beginning of the story, Josie is a 14-and-a-half-year-old girl who lives with her mom (the Mother) and their housekeeper (Melania Housekeeper) in a nice home in a rural area of the United States. She sees Klara in a store that sells Artificial Friends (robot companions) and convinces her mom that Klara is the one they should buy. Josie walks with a noticeable limp and suffers from a mysterious chronic illness that comes and goes, causing periods of intense exhaustion. It is later revealed that Josie's illness is a result of her mom's decision to have her "lifted"—a mysterious procedure that is a prerequisite for most colleges and that is intended to make children smarter. Josie's best friend is her next-door neighbor, Rick, and they have a plan to spend the rest of their lives together. The problem with their plan, however, is that Rick hasn't been lifted, and so there's only one major college that will even consider his application. All of Josie's future plans are almost derailed when she has a particularly acute attack of her illness and seems likely to die. Ultimately, however, Josie makes a seemingly miraculous recovery (which Klara credits to the intervention of the Sun) and ends up going away to college. In the time before she leaves, Josie becomes more independent and spends less time with both Klara and Rick. The last time Josie sees Klara is right before she goes to college, at which point Klara is put in the Yard, a place for Artificial Friends to spend the last parts of their lives. Josie's story illustrates the transition from childhood to adulthood and how growing up can cause a person to change their values. She illustrates the advantages of a privileged life (since her family is richer than Rick's) but also shows how no amount of privilege is enough to stop external forces like disease. - Character: The Mother. Description: Josie's mom is called Chris (or Chrissie) by fellow humans, but she is always referred to by Klara as "the Mother." Throughout the story, the Mother's main goal is to provide the best possible life for Josie, but she often has disagreements with other characters like the Father, Melania Housekeeper, Rick, and even Josie herself about what is best for Josie. The Mother has been divorced for several years, and it is later revealed that she had another daughter named Sal who died at a young age of disease. This makes it particularly hard for the Mother to witness Josie's illness, especially since it was her choice to have Josie "lifted" (a process that prepares children for college but that apparently caused Josie's disease. In order to cope with the potential of losing Josie, the Mother takes Josie to Mr. Capaldi, telling Josie that Mr. Capaldi is making a "portrait," when in fact he's making an Artificial Friend in Josie's exact likeness. The plan is that if Josie dies, Klara will take over the consciousness of the Josie-like Artificial Friend and "continue" Josie, although at times the Mother is doubtful this plan will work. In the end, however, Josie survives, and the plan never takes effect. The Mother represents the difficulties of parenting, showing how challenging it can be to decide what's best for a child. - Character: Rick. Description: Rick is Josie's best friend and next-door neighbor. He and his mother, Miss Helen, are originally from Britain. Rick and Josie spend a lot of time together and have a plan to be together for the rest of their lives. Josie introduces Klara to Rick shortly after purchasing Klara. The problem with Josie and Rick's plan to be together, however, is that Josie has been "lifted" (a special procedure that children undergo and that most colleges require) and Rick hasn't, meaning that unless Rick gets into one very selective school, he and Josie won't be able to go to college together. Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that Rick is unlifted and that he doesn't fit in with the other kids Josie knows, he is very intelligent and has a particular aptitude for building model drones. Sometimes, Rick and Josie fight, but they always make up. When Josie gets especially sick and seems likely to die, Klara asks the Sun for help, promising the Sun that the love between Rick and Josie is true and, therefore, that Josie is worth saving. Josie survives, but ultimately, she and Rick drift apart in the years right before college, as Josie spends more time with her college-bound friends. Rick demonstrates how sometimes intelligent people, particularly those who aren't wealthy, can be held back because they lack arbitrary credentials. He also represents how people change, and how the things people value in childhood are not necessarily the same as what they value as adults. - Character: Melania Housekeeper. Description: Melania Housekeeper is a housekeeper who lives with the Mother, Josie, and eventually Klara. English is not her first language, and she often speaks bluntly in ways that surprise Klara. Melania Housekeeper is especially wary around Klara at first, perhaps because she senses that a robot like Klara could soon make her own housekeeping job obsolete. Nevertheless, Melania Housekeeper learns to work with Klara, in part because she cares deeply about Josie and is even willing to contradict the Mother to help Josie, such as when she asks Klara to keep a close eye on the mysterious portrait-maker Mr. Capaldi. Melania Housekeeper shows the complicated relationship that household workers have with the people who employ them, providing a comparison with Klara, who is also a sort of domestic worker but who isn't human. - Character: Manager. Description: Manager is a human woman who runs a store in an unspecified American city that sells Artificial Friends (a type of robot), including Klara, Rosa, and Rex. Klara, Rosa, and Rex are all B2 AFs, but soon a new, more advanced line of AFs called B3s begin to fill the store. Manager is particularly interested in Klara because she realizes that Klara is one of the most observant AFs. After Klara is purchased by Josie and the Mother, Klara doesn't see Manager for a long time, but she meets Manager again near the end of her lifespan. Manager is kind to her and congratulates her on being a good AF. Just as Klara is a parent figure to Josie, Manager is a parent figure to Klara. - Character: Beggar Man. Description: Beggar Man is a man Klara watches through the window of the store run by Manager. Beggar Man seems to live on the street with his dog, and one day he stops moving, leading Klara to wonder if he's dead. No one on the street does anything, but, on the next morning, Beggar Man gets up. Because it was a sunny morning when Beggar Man recovered, Klara believes it was the Sun that healed him (in part because she herself is solar powered). This incident inspires Klara to ask the Sun for help later, when she hopes to cure Josie from her life-threatening illness. - Character: Miss Helen. Description: Miss Helen is Rick's mother. She is known for speaking her mind, arguably too much. Rick often worries about her, and it is strongly implied that she is often drunk or otherwise impaired. Though she is not as wealthy as the Mother, she used to be popular when she was younger and had many men who were interested in her. One of her former lovers was Vance, who ended up in an influential position at one of the only colleges in the world that will consider accepting Rick. Despite her and Rick's attempts to charm Vance, Vance can't let go of the past and wants to humiliate Miss Helen for revenge. Miss Helen provides a contrast to the Mother (who provides more traditional stability for Josie than Miss Helen does for Rick), showing how the lives of children are affected by their parents. - Character: The Father. Description: The Father is Josie's father and the Mother's ex-husband. A talented engineer, he is still on speaking terms with the Mother, but they often disagree about what's best for Josie, particularly when it comes to the mysterious Mr. Capaldi, who wants to help the Mother create a portrait of Josie (the "portrait" is actually a robot clone) that can "continue" her if she ever dies. The father lives in an insular community that Miss Helen calls "fascistic," but the Father believes his community is simply preparing to defend itself from real threats. The nature of these threats is never specified, and many aspects of the Father's life remain mysterious, although it is implied that outside of the relatively comfortable area where Josie lives, many parts of world are more violent. The Father helps Klara destroy a Cootings Machine (which Klara hopes will please the Sun by reducing pollution). The Father's interest in engineering symbolically connects him to Josie's inventive friend Rick, and so the disintegration of the Mother and the Father's relationship foreshadows how Josie and Rick will both grow up to value different things in life. - Character: Mr. Capaldi. Description: Mr. Capaldi is a man who lives in the big city and has been hired by the Mother to make a "portrait" of Josie. In fact, however, the portrait is a lifelike Artificial Friend, and the plan is that Klara will learn how to be Josie, so that if Josie ever dies, Klara can inhabit the artificial Josie's body. Many characters, including the Father and Melania Housekeeper, distrust Mr. Capaldi and even suspect him of being a pervert. In the end, Mr. Capaldi does not seem to be a pervert, but in his quest to be at the forefront of Artificial Friend technology he arguably disregards many of the important ethical questions that arise when trying to create an artificial duplicate of a living human. - Character: Coffee Cup Lady and Raincoat Man. Description: Coffee Cup Lady (named because she is the same shape as the coffee cups Klara sees in Manager's store) and Raincoat Man (named because he wears a raincoat) are two people that Klara watches through the store window. They are both older, and it appears that they suddenly reunite after many years of not seeing each other. Watching them reunite helps Klara learn more about human behavior. - Character: Vance. Description: Vance is an old lover of Miss Helen's who ends up holding an influential position at the college Atlas Brookings—the only school that considers accepting students (like Rick) who haven't been "lifted." Though Vance is impressed with Rick's drawings of drones and seems to genuinely admire Rick, he is still hung up on the past and mostly uses their meeting as a chance to go over old grievances with Miss Helen and try to humiliate her. Vance is not Rick's literal father (because he and Miss Helen had previously been out of contact for 27 years), but he embodies both the positive and the negative aspects of a father figure for Rick. - Character: Sal. Description: Sal is the Mother's daughter and Josie's sister who died of disease at a young age. It was a painful event for everyone, and this prompted the mother to have Mr. Capaldi create a replica of Sal as a sort of grieving doll (which Miss Helen happens to see through a window), although the doll was apparently discarded soon after. The experience with Sal is what prompts the Mother to hire Mr. Capaldi to create a "portrait" of Josie (which is not really a portrait, but in fact a lifelike replica that will be filled with Klara's consciousness if Josie ever dies). - Character: Rosa. Description: Rosa is a B2 Artificial Friend (a type of robot) from the same store as Klara and Rex. Rosa and Klara are often together, but Rosa doesn't seem to be as observant as Klara, suggesting that Klara's powers of observation are unusual. One day, Rosa is suddenly purchased, and Klara never sees her again, although Klara learns later from Manager that things didn't end up working out for Rosa and her new family. - Character: Rex. Description: Rex is a B2 Artificial Friend (a type of robot) from the same store as Klara and Rosa. Unlike Klara and Rosa, who are Girl AFs, Rex is a Boy AF, meaning he was designed to look like a male human. He is sold before Klara, and she never sees or hears from him again. - Character: Mr. McBain. Description: Mr. McBain, who never appears in the story, owns a barn near Josie's house that happens to be right where the Sun sets from Josie's window. The barn becomes a Stonehenge-like place of worship for Klara, and she goes there (with Rick's help) to ask the Sun to cure Josie. - Theme: The Meaning of Love. Description: Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun is a story that looks at love from a variety of different perspectives. Perhaps the most difficult question about love that the novel poses is about whether or not love itself is a strictly human experience. The "portrait" of Josie that Mr. Capaldi makes particularly emphasizes this question. The "portrait" is actually a robotic replica of Josie, and the Mother's plan if Josie dies is for Klara—a robot—to "continue" Josie's life by trying to literally become her. Many of the characters in the novel wonder how well this plan would work—is there something special about humans like Josie that makes them irreplaceable to the people who love them, or can a robotic clone inspire the same feelings of love? What's in a person's heart, and is it possible to replicate it? Ultimately, Josie survives, and these questions are never put to the test, but readers and characters alike are still left to grapple with them. Klara, for her part, concludes at the end of the novel that there is something special about Josie—if not inside her, then in the love that other people have for her. In turn, Klara and the Sun reaffirms the idea that love is a central part of the human condition and, more specifically, something that ultimately makes life worth living. And yet, at the same time, if the thing that makes someone like Josie special is the love other people have for her, then it's arguable that she really could be replaced by a convincing replica, as long as her loved ones were unable to discern a difference. In this way, the novel both celebrates the deeply human experience of being in love while also challenging readers to consider the possibility that love itself can be created artificially—though it's also reasonable to suggest that this only demonstrates love's truly universal quality. - Theme: Costs and Benefits of Progress. Description: Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun is a science fiction novel that imagines how humanity might progress (or regress) in the near future. One of the most important futuristic concepts in the novel is a process called "lifting." Although the precise mechanics of lifting are intentionally left vague, it seems to refer to a procedure that parents choose to have done on their children at a young age for the purpose of increasing their intelligence. Although lifting comes with benefits (it is a prerequisite for every elite college except one), it also comes with serious drawbacks. Josie, for example, contracts a grave illness as a result of being lifted, and she nearly dies from it. Although Josie tells her mom (the Mother) that she doesn't regret being lifted, the benefits are unclear, since her neighbor Rick is also very intelligent even though he is "unlifted." This suggests that perhaps the real benefit of lifting is its social value and how it helps preserve the illusion of meritocracy by giving wealthy students (Josie's family is richer than Rick's) a tangible way to "prove" their worth. Although lifting is a fictional concept, it has clear parallels to the pressures and challenges that real prospective college students face today, like applications and standardized tests—which may not be as deadly as Josie's fictional illness but can nevertheless cause students to neglect their mental or even physical health. Ultimately, lifting represents not just the dangers of rigid educational systems but also how supposed progress often comes with serious side effects that must be weighed against the benefits. - Theme: Faith and Hope. Description: One of the unusual aspects of Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun is that the most spiritual character is a robot. Although human characters occasionally say things like "Oh my God," there's nothing to suggest that any of them are particularly religious. By contrast, while Klara also has no traditional concepts of any god or religion, she treats the Sun as if it's a personal god with the power to intervene in her life as well as human lives. When her human, Josie, gets very sick, Klara directly asks the Sun for help. She goes down to McBain's barn (which is like a church or other place of worship) and forms a request to the Sun in her mind (which is like praying). On the one hand, the book could be interpreted as a critique of faith, since Klara's whole religion is based on a misunderstanding (because she is solar powered, she believes humans also get "nourishment" from the Sun). But faith in Klara and the Sun is more complicated than that, and other aspects of it are portrayed positively. For example, Rick, who has an aptitude for engineering and rational thinking, supports Klara's rituals, even though he believes her actions are ultimately "AF superstition." When Josie does seem to make a miraculous recovery, it begins on a morning when the Sun shines brightly in her room. Even Rick admits that it really does seem as if Klara's "superstitions" have a certain kind of power, even if he doesn't necessarily believe the same things as Klara. Ultimately, Klara and the Sun demonstrates that perhaps the most important aspect of faith is how it gives individuals the hope to keep trying. - Theme: Environmentalism. Description: One of the central paradoxes of Klara and the Sun is that, while Klara is a robot created by humans out of artificial materials, she gets nourishment from nature: in particular, the Sun. Even though Klara is a product of industrialized human society, then, she appreciates nature more than many of the humans around her. One of the recurring images in the book is the Cootings Machine (which seems to be some sort of construction vehicle that spews pollution while fixing roads). The humans that Klara observes all dislike the Cootings Machine, but none of them ever take action against it. This represents how many people have become complacent and have accepted the consequences of "progress," which in the case of the Cootings Machine means putting up with air and noise pollution in the name of construction and further industrialization. Klara, however, sees the Cootings Machine as an evil that shouldn't be tolerated, envisioning the conflict between the machine's pollution and the Sun in religious terms. Klara's outsider perspective helps illuminate how normal people have gotten used to ideas that, from the outside, seem intolerable. The fact that Klara takes action by destroying the Cootings Machine—and that people are happier when the machine goes away—suggests that there are ways to resist an environmentally destructive status quo. Nevertheless, the fact that the sabotaged Cootings Machine is soon replaced by an even larger Cootings Machine suggests that the challenges environmentalists face are formidable and can create a feeling of helplessness. While it is debatable whether Klara's destruction of the Cootings Machine actually caused the Sun to cure Josie of her illness, Klara and the Sun nevertheless implies that there are benefits to protecting the environment, even when strong opposition makes these efforts seem hopeless. - Climax: The Sun seems to cure Josie of her illness. - Summary: Klara, the narrator of the novel, is an Artificial Friend (AF), which means that she's a special type of solar-powered robot that is sold to help assist with raising children. She begins her life in a store run by a human woman that she calls Manager. The store is located in a city somewhere in the United States in the near future. Though Klara is not the most advanced model of robot in the store, Manager notices that Klara is very observant. In particular, Klara likes looking out the window onto the street, where she can see the people outside in the Sun. She is dismayed whenever she sees the Cootings Machine, a construction vehicle that spews pollution that blocks the Sun. One day, Klara witnesses a man on the street—whom she calls Beggar Man—stop moving. He seems to be dead, but he's resurrected the next morning when the Sun comes out. Watching this happen convinces Klara that the Sun has the ability to heal and nourish humans. Klara is one of the last robots of her kind to be sold at the store. Eventually, however, she is purchased by a 14-year-old girl named Josie and her mom, whom Klara refers to as the Mother. Josie promises to buy Klara the day they meet, but it takes a long time until that day actually comes because Josie is delayed by her chronic illness. Josie's house is located in a more remote, rural area. At Josie's house, Klara is happy to learn more about Josie and how she can be a good Artificial Friend. One of the most important people in Josie's life is Rick, her neighbor and best friend. Rick has an aptitude for engineering, and he and Josie plan on spending the rest of their lives together. This plan faces one significant obstacle, however: Josie has been "lifted" and Rick hasn't. Lifting is a procedure that supposedly makes children smarter and better prepared for the future, but it also carries potentially deadly side effects—lifting is the cause of Josie's chronic illness. Because Rick hasn't been lifted, most colleges won't accept him, and so it is likely that he and Josie will have to be apart when Josie goes to college. As Klara spends more time with her new family, the Mother asks Klara to learn as much as she can about Josie and even to try imitating her sometimes. Klara slowly learns that Josie is having a "portrait" made of her by an eccentric man named Mr. Capaldi. As it turns out, the portrait is not a painting but a near-exact AF replica of Josie's body. Klara thinks perhaps she is intended to train the new Josie if the old Josie should ever die, but she soon learns that she has been chosen for her powers of observation to become Josie and to try to "continue" her as if the real Josie were still alive. Josie's dad, the Father, objects to this plan, and even the Mother has doubts about whether she could ever accept a new version of Josie. Klara determines to do everything she can so that nothing bad ever happens to the original Josie. Klara remembers how the Sun seemed to help Beggar Man, and so she calls on the Sun to help Josie get better. With Rick's help, she goes to McBain's barn, which is behind Josie's house and which, from the vantage point of Josie's window, looks like it's located at the place where the Sun sets on the horizon. Klara promises the Sun that Josie and Rick have a true love and that they deserve the Sun's help. She also promises that she will do something to please the Sun. When she's in the city, she enlists the help of the Father (who is an engineer) to destroy a Cootings Machine, hoping that if she removes this source of pollution, the Sun will be happy. Klara is disappointed, however, to see that as they leave the city, the destroyed Cootings Machine has simply been replaced by a newer, bigger one. Nevertheless, Klara continues to trust the Sun. One morning, her faith is seemingly rewarded. Though Josie's health initially takes a turn for the worse, on one sunny morning, Josie begins making a miraculous recovery. Even Rick, who is more skeptical than Klara about the Sun's power, later mentions that it really seems like Josie's recovery was related to that one sunny morning. After Josie recovers, she begins to drift apart from both Klara and Rick, spending more time with other young people in her area who are also headed to college. Rick begins to make his own new friend group. When Josie leaves for college, she says goodbye to Klara for the last time. Klara eventually ends up in the Yard, a place where other AFs go to have their "slow fade" at the end of their lifespans. Klara becomes immobile, and although people offer to move her closer to other AFs, she prefers to be alone so that she can organize her old memories. One day, she is visited by Manager, who sometimes stops by the yard to check for out-of-commission AFs that she once sold at her store. Klara tells Manager about the time when the Sun was kind to Josie, and Manager says she always knew that the Sun would be good to Klara.

- Genre: Romance Novel, Erotic Literature - Title: Lady Chatterley’s Lover - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: The English Midlands in the years after World War I - Character: Lady Constance Chatterley. Description: Born Constance Reid, Connie Chatterley is Sir Malcolm Reid's daughter, Hilda's younger sister, and Clifford Chatterley's wife. Throughout the novel, Connie is distinguished by her hyper-feminine appearance and her intuitive grace. Though Connie begins the book disinterested in physical pleasure, her devotion to "the life of the mind" wanes early in her sexless, unsatisfying marriage with Clifford. After a brief and painful affair with writer Michaelis, Connie finds her way to Oliver Mellors, her husband's rough-spoken gamekeeper. With Mellors, Connie learns to give in to her bodily instincts, embracing the "piercing, consuming, rather awful sensuality" of their affair over the hyper-verbal, philosophical life she shares with Clifford. In falling for Mellors, Connie also distances herself from the materialism and status she was raised in, preferring instead to live a life close to nature; she identifies with the spring flowers she sees and begins to think of herself "like a forest," brimming with impulsive life. By the end of the novel, Connie is pregnant with Mellors's child, a beacon of hope for the future that suggests the "tenderness" of their love will extend beyond their coupling. - Character: Oliver Mellors. Description: Oliver Mellors is the gamekeeper for Clifford's Wragby estate and the man that Connie begins an affair with. Though Mellors is working-class, his years in the military have endowed him with a degree of sophistication and ease that most of the wealthier characters in the novel lack. This contradiction—between his rugged work and his effortless manners, his use of broad Midlands dialect and his razor-sharp mind—is what draws Connie to Mellors. Their bond is then strengthened by a shared passion for sex and particularly by Mellors's appreciation of Connie's body. Crucially, Mellors takes a much more traditional view of gender roles than Clifford, emphasizing sexual dominance as the key quality of masculinity. Because of these rigid views, Mellors loathes his estranged wife, Bertha Coutts, critiquing her for stubbornness and sexual aggressiveness. At the same time, however, Mellors is uniquely gentle with Connie, who praises him for being "kind to the female in her," believing he is the rare man who has "the courage of [his] own tenderness." Both Mellors's quick temper and his intense warmth show that, unlike the even-keeled and mechanical Clifford, he is a man in tune with his own natural instincts. - Character: Sir Clifford Chatterley. Description: Sir Clifford Chatterley is Constance's husband, Sir Geoffrey's son, and Emma Chatterley's younger brother. After his father dies, Clifford inherits his father's baronet status (making him a low-ranking member of the British aristocracy) and Wragby Hall, the family's large Midlands estate. After his time fighting in World War I leaves him paralyzed from the waist down, Clifford becomes dependent on a mechanized wheelchair to get around; frustrated by his immobility, Clifford turns to a variety of intellectual pursuits, first writing short stories and then studying chemistry and cutting-edge mining technologies. Though Connie is initially charmed by Clifford's quiet intellect, over time, she grows to resent his focus on "the life of the mind" and his insistence on industrial wealth instead of natural simplicity. Clifford, frequently insecure about his masculinity, lashes out at Connie, turning for comfort to his hired nurse, Ivy Bolton. Ultimately, the novel satirizes Clifford's insistence on the superiority of the upper classes while depicting his technological obsessions as a real threat to others' peace and happiness. - Character: Mrs. Ivy Bolton. Description: Ivy Bolton is a local widow in Tevershall, whom Clifford eventually hires as a nurse. Though Mrs. Bolton is bossy and authoritative with the colliers of her small town, with Clifford, she becomes quiet and subservient, a shift in behavior that pleases Clifford and confounds Connie. Mrs. Bolton resents the aristocracy for the way they hoard wealth and neglect the miners (including her dead husband) who make them rich, but she also wants to gain access to these aristocrats—to know "all that the gentry knew, all that made them upper class." Thus, Mrs. Bolton bonds with Connie, silently supporting her affair with Mellors, but she also stands with Clifford, staying up late into the night to gamble with him. After Connie leaves Clifford, Mrs. Bolton becomes his lover of sorts (or perhaps a stand-in for something like a lover), a role she finds simultaneously thrilling and horrifying. Still, even as she becomes more intimate with Clifford, Mrs. Bolton never forgets "the touch" of her deceased husband Ted, bolstering the novel's idea that truly passionate sex is rare but transformative. - Character: Michaelis. Description: Michaelis is an Irish writer, known and beloved across the US and the UK for his popular plays satirizing wealthy society. Though Clifford does not like Michaelis, he invites him to Wragby in a bid to increase his own fame. Connie is immediately drawn to Michaelis, with his stark features, his childlike interest in wealth, and his rebellious outsider status. Connie and Michaelis begin a love affair, and though Michaelis pressures Connie to leave Clifford, he is also cruel to her, insulting her for caring too much about her own orgasms during sex. This behavior deeply wounds Connie, and she distances herself from Michaelis, though he continues to write to her, making contact whenever she is in London (and even when she goes off to Venice with her sister Hilda). - Character: Sir Malcolm Reid. Description: Sir Malcolm Reid is a prominent R.A. and painter, the father of both Hilda and Constance. Though Sir Malcolm has earned great social status and wealth by the time the novel begins, he still frets that his working-class, Scottish roots will prevent him from joining the highest echelons of English society. For that reason, Sir Malcolm at first disapproves of Connie's affair with Mellors—though once he actually meets Mellors, the two bond over their shared love of vigorous sex and old-fashioned masculinity. Sir Malcolm favors Connie over Hilda (and often goes to great lengths to ensure Connie's happiness), largely because he admires his younger daughter for being so in touch with her sexual desires. - Character: Hilda. Description: Hilda is Sir Malcolm's eldest child and Connie's older sister. Though the two girls were close in their youth, as they get older, Hilda becomes more similar to her mother: snobby and easily frustrated, claiming socialist values at dinner parties but refusing to actually "mix" with the working classes. Though Hilda initially defends Connie in her marriage, forcing Clifford to hire Mrs. Bolton to protect her sister's mental health, she turns against Connie once Mellors comes into the picture. Like Clifford, Hilda is satirized in the novel, as her sense of superiority is juxtaposed with her bad manners and awkward behavior. - Character: Duncan Forbes. Description: Duncan Forbes is a well-known painter and a longstanding friend of Sir Malcolm Reid. Constance likes Duncan for his easy-going manners, even if she (and Mellors) think his art, with its abstract "tubes and valves and spirals," is ugly and a little insidious. Duncan has had a crush on Connie for decades, so when she needs someone to pretend to be the father of her illegitimate baby, Duncan agrees—on the condition that Connie will model for one of his paintings. - Character: Sir Geoffrey Chatterley. Description: Sir Geoffrey Chatterley is Clifford and Emma's father and the wealthy gentleman in charge of Wragby. Sir Clifford is a baronet—meaning he is a low-ranking member of the English aristocracy—and he values his Midlands estate for its sprawling landscapes and long history, though he pays little attention to the mines that have actually made the Chatterleys rich. Clifford initially finds his father ridiculous (especially because of Sir Geoffrey's nostalgic, useless patriotism), but he must step into his father's shoes when, soon after the end of World War I, Geoffrey passes away. - Character: Miss Emma Chatterley. Description: Emma Chatterley is Sir Geoffrey's middle child and Clifford's older sister. She resents Clifford for marrying—the siblings had once sworn they would never do so—and she makes Connie feel unwelcome when she first arrives at Wragby. Eventually, however, Emma moves to London, leaving Connie and Clifford to deal with Wragby on their own. - Character: Squire Leslie Winter. Description: Leslie Winter is Clifford's godfather and a well-known squire (meaning major landowner) in the Midlands. Winter lives in a beautiful estate called Shipley; though Winter once encouraged the local colliers to spend time on his property, he now resents their encroachment. Winter is one of the people who most hopes that Clifford will regain his potency and give birth to an heir. - Character: General Tommy Dukes. Description: Tommy Dukes is a respected military general and a member of Clifford's philosophical, male-dominated social circles. Dukes is more thoughtful and less misogynistic than his friends, and he and Connie quickly bond. Dukes also shares Connie's frustration with the constant discussion of "the life of the mind"; Dukes feels that real knowledge stems from "your belly and your penis as much as your brain." Though Dukes becomes an important confidante for Connie, Connie struggles with the idea that Dukes views attraction and friendship as mutually exclusive. - Character: Charles May. Description: Charles May is an astronomer and part of Clifford's academic friend group (alongside Hammond and Tommy Dukes). May is a bachelor, and he believes that sex is merely a necessity, like food—important for survival, but not nearly as interesting as "the life of the mind." Connie resents May for his cavalier attitude towards romance and for his insistence on language and philosophical thought above all else. - Character: Bertha Coutts. Description: Bertha Coutts is Mellors's estranged wife and the mother of his daughter, Connie Mellors. Mellors and Bertha grew up together. Though he was initially impressed by her worldliness and "sensuality," the couple soon grew to resent each other's sexual habits. Bertha disliked how much Mellors craved sex, while Mellors felt that Bertha was selfish in the pursuit of her own orgasm. During the war, Bertha left Mellors for another man, but after Mellors files for divorce, Bertha tries to stop him by spreading rumors about his affair with Connie. In the novel, Bertha exemplifies the aggressive sexuality that Mellors—and later Connie—comes to see as deviant. - Character: Giovanni. Description: Giovanni is the gondolier that Connie and Hilda hire during their time in Venice. Giovanni is depicted as sleazy and greedy, especially because he hopes that the sisters want to hire him as a male sex worker. He introduces Connie and Duncan Forbes to his friend Daniele, who is quieter and more intriguing. - Character: Daniele. Description: Daniele is one of Giovanni's friends in Venice. Though he seems introverted and lonely, he actually has a wife and two children, prompting Connie to reflect that "only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone." Daniele is also notable for his extraordinary physical beauty. - Theme: Intellect vs. Bodily Experience. Description: At the beginning of D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, Connie Chatterley finds great joy in clever short stories and long-winded conversations, and in her teenage romances, she prizes good conversation above any physical intimacy. But while Connie and her impotent husband, Clifford, originally share an appreciation for the "life of the mind," Connie's adventurous affair with game-keeper Oliver Mellors allows her to embrace a more physical form of joy. With Clifford, Connie discusses philosophy and reads famous French authors; with Mellors, Connie tries out profanity and the Midlands dialect, using language not to distance herself from the human body but to praise and explore it. And as her affair deepens, Connie puts increasing emphasis on her body over her mind, growing to "hate" words because they "suck the life-sap" out of physical experience. Structurally, too, the novel tries to counteract the modern focus on "the life of the mind" above all else. Throughout Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lawrence uses explicit, detailed language to describe Connie's most intimate moments, shifting his readers' attention to the body in the same way that Connie shifts hers. And while Clifford is obsessed with traditional forms of learning (he is always studying chemistry, poetry, or finance), the novel suggests that the most important kind of knowledge is bodily. As one of Connie's friends, Tommy Dukes, puts it, "real knowledge" comes "out of your belly […] as much as out of your brain and mind." In other words, then, Lady Chatterley's Lover shows that "the life of the mind" is something of an illusion, suggesting that it's only by paying attention to embodied experience that people can find real meaning and understanding. - Theme: Nature vs. Machinery. Description: Lady Chatterley's Lover, D. H. Lawrence's novel about Constance Chatterley's affair with her husband's gamekeeper, is set in the Midlands region of England, once a land of rugged woods and stunning natural beauty. But by 1920, when Connie arrives, these lovely hills have turned into the mining town of Tevershall; at all hours of the night, Connie smells the smoke and hears the clanging sounds of the nearby mines. And just as the picturesque landscape is overrun by these industrial machines, Connie and her friends feel that people themselves are becoming mechanized. Connie's lover Oliver Mellors and her husband's nurse Mrs. Bolton worry that people have been consumed by their love of money and consumption. Connie herself feels that the miners and their employers (including her husband Clifford) are not "not men" but creatures "of the elements, carbon, iron, silicon"—a thought that underscores the extent to which the people around her have succumbed to (and even come to internalize) industrialization. For Mellors in particular, the increasing mechanization of life signals humanity's impending collapse. But even as the novel reflects Mellors's anxiety, it also honors Connie's hope that natural growth and feeling will ultimately triumph. Over and over again, Lawrence details the beauty of various spring flowers, which push through the cold earth and stay "alive" despite the poor air quality and the trampling machines. Similarly, Connie and Mellors often understand their sexual intimacy—the result of a decision to give into their most natural impulses—as a kind of return to nature, threading flowers through each other's hair and dancing naked in the rain. Indeed, the novel ends on an explicitly "hopeful" note, suggesting that Connie and Mellors's passion for each other and for the land around them will allow them to triumph over mechanized doom. - Theme: Class, Consumerism, and Money. Description: Throughout D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, protagonist Constance Chatterley finds herself surrounded by consumerist obsession. Her husband, Clifford, wants only to maximize the wealth he earns from his mining pits; the miners (known as colliers) who work for Clifford pine for the clothes and excursions they want but cannot afford. And while wealthy people like Clifford and Connie's sister Hilda insist that class hierarchies are "fate[d]" and immovable, Connie thinks that everyone in the modern world has become a "moneyboy" or a "moneygirl"—the only real "difference was how much you'd got, and how much you wanted." Throughout the novel, Lawrence contests this consumerist mindset in several ways. First, he demonstrates Connie's sexual and romantic frustration with the wealthy gentlemen of her own class—only to depict her happiness once she falls in love with the working-class Oliver Mellors, beginning an affair that flies in the face of materialism and upward mobility. And second, Lawrence satirizes wealthy characters like Clifford (bratty and ridiculous) and Hilda (awkward and ill-mannered), showing that status is not a matter of fate but of arbitrary circumstance. Ultimately, then, Lady Chatterley's Lover reveals that people are happiest when they focus less on consumption and more on things that cannot be bought, whether it is sexual pleasure or natural beauty—when they discover, as Mellors puts it, that "living and spending isn't the same thing." In turn, the novel demonstrates that while some amount of money is necessary to survive, too much wealth is both unsatisfying and unflattering for the people who possess it. - Theme: Gender and Sexuality. Description: Lady Chatterley's Lover has made waves for nearly a century due to its frank, explicit descriptions of Connie's sexual encounters. Lawrence breaks with tradition from beginning to end, using profanity and paying a great deal of attention to the mechanics and physical realities of sex. In fact, the final line of the novel sees Connie's lover, Oliver Mellors, tenderly referencing his paramour's genitalia. But even as Lady Chatterley's Lover takes an open-minded view of sexuality, it also reiterates traditional—and traditionally restrictive—gender norms. Connie begins the novel engaging in spirited conversation with her sister, Hilda, and writing books with her husband, Clifford, but these intellectual pursuits leave her unsatisfied. Only when Connie throws herself wholeheartedly into her affair with Mellors, becoming his "passive, consenting thing," does she find true happiness, suggesting that Lawrence believed women should primarily define themselves through their relations with men. Similarly, the novel mocks Clifford for not being a true "man" because of his lack of sexual potency, equating masculinity with sexual prowess just as it equates femininity with passivity. Ironically, therefore, the novel's progressive views on sexuality end up underscoring its regressive views on gender, as Connie's seeming liberation is in fact a return to a more old-fashioned, constrained approach to womanhood. - Theme: Catastrophe, Continuity, and Tradition. Description: D. H. Lawrence's 1932 novel Lady Chatterley's Lover begins just after the trauma of World War I. Even from the very opening lines, Lawrence locates his reader in this fractured era: "the cataclysm has happened," the book begins, "we are among the ruins." For many of the characters, including Clifford Chatterley and his band of intellectual friends, the loss and chaos of the war presents a chance to rebuild differently. They focus on new inventions (like the radio) and new forms of industry (like the cutting-edge mining technologies Clifford obsessively studies). But for Clifford's wife, Connie, and her lover, Oliver Mellors, this post-war industrialization feels less like recovery and more like destruction, as if this new version of their country has completely replaced everything that came before it. This kind of development is, in Connie's mind, "not organic, but mechanical"—a sentiment suggesting that she values the idea of continuity, or the notion that the future should somehow be connected to everything that came before it. Whereas Connie and Mellors crave a more "organic" form of continuity, Clifford obsesses over finding more efficient ways to run his mines, thinking that inventions and new beginnings are the best way to forge ahead. By juxtaposing Clifford's "mechanical" rebuilding with Connie's more natural view of continuity and restoration, then, Lady Chatterley's Lover suggests that nostalgia, care for nature, and an attention to "history" are all key to moving forward from catastrophe without "blot[ting]" out everything that came before. - Climax: Constance decides she wants to leave her husband Clifford for his gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. - Summary: Constance and her sister Hilda, the daughters of prominent British R.A. Sir Malcolm Reid, lived a carefree youth: they spent their days with their father's artistic friends or at boarding school in Dresden, learning music and having love affairs with talkative young men. But when World War I started, the German lovers were killed, the pre-war parties ground to a halt, and the girls were sent back home to London. While war raged on, Hilda tied the knot with an older man, and Constance fell for and married Clifford Chatterley, a soft-spoken member of England's aristocracy. Now, the war is over, and Constance and Clifford have settled in Wragby Hall, the Chatterley's mansion in the English Midlands. Clifford's stint as a soldier has left him paralyzed from the waist down and sexually impotent. Though Connie does not mind her husband's dependency (he relies on her to bathe him and get him in and out of his mechanized wheelchair), she does lament her lack of a baby. She also struggles with her new proximity to downcast Tevershall village, the mining town that has long supplied the Chatterleys with their wealth. The working-class miners (colliers) and their wives resent Connie, and the smoke and sound from the mines pollute the once-beautiful landscape. Clifford starts writing short stories, which get published in prominent magazines. Inspired by Clifford's work, a group of intellectual men begins visiting Wragby; Connie resents some of these men (like astronomer Charles May) and admires others (like military general Tommy Dukes). These men endlessly debate "the life of the mind," minimizing sex and romance as vestigial and unimportant. Though Connie listens to these conversations, they make her anxious and bored. When Sir Malcolm visits, he frets that his daughter has become thin and sickly, even suggesting to Clifford that Connie should have an affair to alleviate stress. Clifford then tells Connie that he would accept it if she had a baby with another man, as long as she raised the child as Clifford's. In a bid to increase his fame, Clifford befriends Michaelis, an Irishman whose satirical plays have recently brought him international fame. Though Michaelis has money now, he was born without wealth, and the playwright's outsider status makes him attractive to Connie. Shortly after Michaelis's first visit to Wragby, he and Connie sleep together. Though they keep it secret from Clifford, Connie and Michaelis continue their tryst for the next several months. It ends only when Michaelis insults Connie, criticizing her for focusing too much on her own orgasm during sex. Spring rolls around and the flowers bloom, but without Michaelis, Connie falls deeper into depression. One day, while Clifford and Connie are on a walk through the Wragby grounds, they stumble on Oliver Mellors, the property's gamekeeper. Connie is surprised by Mellors's gentlemanly bearing, given that he has such a working-class job (and that he sometimes speaks with the thick Midlands dialect). Privately, Connie asks Clifford about Mellors, and Clifford explains that Mellors rose through the military ranks in World War I, learning upper-crust habits as he climbed. Clifford also shares that Mellors is legally married to a woman named Bertha Coutts, though Bertha has left him for another man. When Hilda visits Wragby, she sees what a burden taking care of Clifford has become for Connie, and she forces Clifford to hire a nurse. Clifford is reluctant, but eventually he agrees to bring on Ivy Bolton, a well-respected local widow. Mrs. Bolton bonds with both Chatterleys: she stays up late playing chess with Clifford, and she introduces Connie to the swirl of Tevershall gossip. But still, Connie feels miserable. To break up the endless monotony, Connie begins visiting the little hut where Mellors tends to a group of mother hens. After a few weeks, the hens' eggs start to hatch, which causes Connie to burst into tears; the chickens' "brooding female bodies" remind her of her own plight, "forlorn and unused." Connie's tender crying sparks a flame of attraction in Mellors, and the two have sex. Though the actual sex is underwhelming, both Connie and Mellors feel a new sense of "life" after this brief encounter. The next day, Connie returns to Mellors's hut, and they have sex again. Mellors is eager to touch Connie's naked body, and his desire enchants and overwhelms her. Wanting to clear her head, Connie stays away from Mellors's hut for a few days. To distract herself, she visits Leslie Winter, Clifford's godfather, and Mrs. Flint, one of Clifford's tenants. Mrs. Flint has just had a baby, and Connie cannot help feeling jealous of this woman's motherhood. On the way back from Mrs. Flint's house, Connie runs into Mellors, who wonders why she has been avoiding him. The two have sex in the woods. This time, Connie and Mellors orgasm at the same time, which Mellors feels is a rare and beautiful experience. As she walks home, Connie considers having a child with Mellors. Connie's affair with Mellors continues, and their feelings for each other deepen, though Mellors does not want to have a child; he is deeply pessimistic about the future, which he believes is being ruined by emasculating, polluting machines. Mrs. Bolton realizes what is going on, while Clifford remains ignorant, only feeling angry that Connie is spending less and less time at home. Clifford now gives most of his time to the mines, shifting his focus from short stories to new chemical and industrial technologies. His interest in maximizing the Tevershall mines' profits and efficiency makes him feel a renewed sense of manhood, and he (deludedly) begins to believe that he could one day conceive a child, after all. Connie's father suggests a family trip to Venice, and Connie decides to go—not because she wants to travel, but to pretend that she conceived a child on the trip (while secretly getting pregnant via Mellors). Clifford makes Connie promise that she will come back to him after the trip is done, though she privately plans to run off with Mellors as soon as she returns. Before she leaves, Connie introduces Mellors to Hilda, and the two instantly spar over their differences in class and their conflicting mannerisms. Then Connie and Mellors share one final night together, in which they decorate each other's genitalia with flowers. In Venice, Connie finds herself disgusted with all the consumerism and materialism that goes into tourism. She reconnects with Duncan Forbes, an old family friend who has earned some acclaim from his modern art; she also discovers that she is pregnant. Clifford writes to tell Connie that Mellors's wife has returned with a vengeance, spreading the news that Mellors is having an affair with Connie—so Clifford has fired Mellors. Connie leaves Venice and reunites with Mellors, who is now living in London. Connie tells Mellors about her pregnancy, and though he is nervous at first, she reassures him that all will be fine: "be tender" to the child, she instructs, "and that will be its future." The couple agrees that they need to separate while they both work out their complex divorces, but they hope to be reunited soon. The novel ends with Mellors working on a farm, biding his time and waiting hopefully for his life with Connie to begin.

- Genre: Novella, Epistolary novel - Title: Lady Susan - Point of view: Epistolary (first person) - Setting: A wealthy estate (Churchill) and a townhouse in London - Character: Lady Susan. Description: Lady Susan is an impoverished widow and mother to Frederica Vernon. She instigates the novella's events by inviting herself to stay with her brother-in-law, Charles Vernon, and his wife, Catherine Vernon. Her ulterior motive for this visit reveals her selfish nature: she was previously staying with a married man, Mr. Manwaring, and seduced both Mr. Manwaring and his friend Sir James Martin, who was engaged to Mr. Manwaring's sister, Miss Manwaring (Lady Susan intended to force Frederica to marry Sir James). Lady Susan is a skilled manipulator—because she's beautiful, intelligent, and outwardly polite, she's able to convince others of her innocence, though her true character is revealed in her letters to her friend and co-conspirator Alicia Johnson. Lady Susan's two-facedness is particularly clear in her relationship with Catherine's brother Reginald De Courcy: while Reginald initially distrusted Lady Susan, he soon falls in love with her and begins to parrot her lies. The two eventually become engaged, but after Reginald learns of her affair with Mr. Manwaring, he breaks off the engagement, and Lady Susan marries Sir James instead. Throughout the novella, Lady Susan's motivations are unclear; her late husband, whom she disliked, was bankrupt when he died, meaning that she's in need of money—but her actions never indicate that she's mercenary. For instance, her insistence that Frederica marry Sir James doesn't seem solely motivated by money—Frederica later develops a crush on Reginald, and if money were all Lady Susan wanted, she would accept that match as a substitute. Instead, she seems to simply enjoy controlling others, especially because her power as a poor widow in 19th-century society is otherwise limited. For instance, she tells Alicia that she flirts with Reginald not because she likes him, but because she enjoys how she completely changed his opinion of her. Similarly, she insists on Frederica's marriage mostly to punish Frederica. At the end of the novella, Lady Susan hasn't changed significantly—though she's married to Sir James, he's easily manipulated, meaning that Lady Susan's schemes will likely continue. - Character: Catherine Vernon. Description: Catherine is the wife of Lady Susan's brother-in-law, Charles Vernon; she's Sir Reginald and Lady De Courcy's daughter and Reginald's sister. Catherine is a practical woman whose main focus in the novella is preventing Reginald from marrying Lady Susan. Lady Susan has a bad reputation, but Catherine has her own reasons for disliking her: six years prior to the start of the novella, Lady Susan tried to convince Charles not to marry Catherine. Apart from Lady Susan's daughter, Frederica Vernon, Catherine is the only central character who doesn't fall for Lady Susan's lies. In letters to her mother, Catherine laments Reginald's infatuation with Lady Susan and, true to her logical and clear-headed nature, tries to put a stop to it. First, she tells her mother to call Reginald home on false pretenses. When this doesn't work, she hopes to help Frederica, who is in love with Reginald, attract his attention. Though Catherine is largely polite to Lady Susan, as "common decency" necessitates, she does eventually confront her about her cruelty toward Frederica, and she's disgusted by Lady Susan's continued manipulation. Though both Catherine and Lady Susan have little real power in society because women in their time (the 19th century) generally had fewer rights and opportunities than men, Lady Susan is more skilled than Catherine at wielding what little power she has. At the end of the novella, Reginald ends his engagement to Lady Susan not because of Catherine's interference, but because he randomly learned about Lady Susan's affair with Mr. Manwaring from Mr. Johnson. - Character: Reginald De Courcy. Description: Reginald De Courcy is Sir Reginald and Lady De Courcy's son and Catherine Vernon's brother. He comes to visit Catherine and her husband, Charles Vernon, at the same time Lady Susan does, hoping to be amused by Lady Susan's antics. Instead, he quickly falls for Lady Susan's lies and becomes infatuated with her—while he was certain of her wicked nature prior to his visit, her beauty and intelligence (as well as her skilled manipulation) convince him that her bad reputation is nothing but "slanderous tales." Though Reginald initially appears to be an intelligent, if fun-loving character, he's quickly revealed to be gullible and easily influenced. Lady Susan, for her part, flirts with and eventually becomes engaged to Reginald not because she loves him, but because she wants to punish him for his initial low opinion of her, as well as for doubting her off and on throughout the story. But as Reginald falls in love with Lady Susan, Lady Susan's daughter, Frederica, falls in love with Reginald—however, Reginald only takes notice of Frederica after she asks for his help in breaking her engagement to Sir James Martin. Reginald's kindness and sympathy toward Frederica briefly disillusions him about Lady Susan's character, but he doesn't break off his engagement with her until the end of the novella, when he learns of her affair with Mr. Manwaring during a chance encounter with Mr. Johnson. A year later, his family pressures Reginald into a marriage with Frederica, which suggests that he continues to be easily influenced, even after his experience with Lady Susan. - Character: Frederica Vernon. Description: Frederica is Lady Susan's meek, submissive daughter. Lady Susan drops her off at boarding school prior to the start of the novella, but midway through, she runs away and ends up staying with Lady Susan at the Vernons' estate. Prior to meeting Frederica, Charles Vernon and Catherine Vernon are under the impression that she's an ill-behaved, unintelligent girl—but after she arrives, they realize that she's just "timid" and afraid of her mother, who speaks ill of her to others and attempts to micromanage her life. In fact, Catherine believes that Frederica is "very pretty" in her own right and might appear so to others if her mother weren't such an overwhelming presence. As it stands, however, Lady Susan's control over the passive Frederica is absolute: she hopes to force Frederica to marry Sir James Martin, whom Frederica despises, and she sent her to boarding school as a temporary punishment for refusing. After Sir James arrives unexpectedly at the Vernons', Frederica appeals to Catherine's brother, Reginald De Courcy, who is in love with Lady Susan, asking him to break her engagement to Sir James. Frederica has a crush on Reginald, who previously ignored her, and he becomes temporarily sympathetic to her plight after her plea for help. Because Frederica is so afraid of Lady Susan, her appeal demonstrates that she may be courageous enough to eventually break free of her mother's clutches. Throughout the novella, however, characters use her as a pawn—Catherine even plots to use Frederica's crush on Reginald to break up Reginald and Lady Susan's relationship. Eventually, Lady Susan relinquishes her hold on Frederica when she decides to marry Sir James herself, and Frederica eventually marries Reginald (after his family convinces him to do so). Her passivity apparently continues even without her mother's presence, though her moral character is rewarded with a reasonably happy marriage. - Character: Alicia Johnson. Description: Alicia Johnson is Lady Susan's confidante and co-conspirator; she lives in London and is married to the old and ill Mr. Johnson. Lady Susan's letters to Alicia reveal her true character to readers, as she openly admits her cruel schemes to her friend but hides them from her family in person. And Alicia is cruel herself: her husband hates Lady Susan and prevents them from seeing each other, and as a result, the two women hope for his ill health and death. Alicia is eventually involved in Reginald De Courcy's breakup with Lady Susan; Reginald learns of Lady Susan's affair with Mr. Manwaring after arriving at Alicia's London home. At the end of the novel, Mr. Johnson forces Alicia to cut off contact with Lady Susan, threatening to make her move to the countryside if she refuses. This loss of a fellow schemer is part of Lady Susan's light punishment for her actions. However, the pair's letters remain cheerful to the last, suggesting that the bond between Alicia and Lady Susan was never particularly deep or important to either of them. - Character: Sir James Martin. Description: Sir James Martin is a rich, but "contemptibly weak" man who met Lady Susan while she was staying with Mr. Manwaring and his family. At the time, he was engaged to Miss Manwaring, but he was soon seduced by Lady Susan, who hoped to secure him as a husband for her daughter, Frederica. Lady Susan and Frederica both dislike Sir James; in a letter to Reginald De Courcy, Frederica calls Sir James "silly and impertinent and disagreeable," and she strives throughout the novella to end their engagement. Interestingly, Sir James seems to want to marry Frederica primarily because of her relationship to Lady Susan; as Lady Susan's friend Alicia tells her, Sir James would gladly marry either of them. Eventually, this is exactly what happens: after her breakup with Reginald, Lady Susan marries Sir James (against the wishes of Miss Manwaring, who continues to try to get her fiancé back). At the novella's conclusion, the narrator asks readers to pity Sir James—though Lady Susan's marriage will certainly be unhappy, Sir James is gullible enough that she can easily manipulate him. - Character: Mr. Manwaring. Description: Prior to the events of the novella, Lady Susan was staying with the married Mr. Manwaring, his wife Mrs. Manwaring, and their family at their home. While she was there, she seduced Mr. Manwaring, causing enough chaos that she had to leave abruptly. However, Mr. Manwaring—who is both unfaithful and jealous—continues to pursue her from afar, and when Lady Susan returns to London after her stay with Charles Vernon and Catherine Vernon, Mr. Manwaring finds her there. Because Lady Susan is planning to marry her current paramour, Reginald De Courcy, she has to find a way to get rid of Mr. Manwaring. But Lady Susan seems to genuinely like him: she negatively compares Reginald to him and says that if Mr. Manwaring were able to marry her, she would agree to it. Reginald eventually leaves Lady Susan after he learns of her affair with Mr. Manwaring. - Character: Sir Reginald De Courcy. Description: Sir Reginald De Courcy is Catherine Vernon and Reginald De Courcy's father and Lady De Courcy's husband; he's a quick-tempered, reactive man, but he's also easily persuaded by others. After he accidentally learns about Reginald's attachment to Lady Susan, he writes his son a strongly-worded letter objecting to the match—because it would make Reginald unhappy, because Lady Susan is penniless, and because the family's good name would be at stake due to Lady Susan's bad reputation. Reginald responds, saying that he has no intention of marrying Lady Susan. Catherine knows this to be untrue, but Sir Reginald believes it, suggesting that he's easily influenced. - Character: Lady De Courcy. Description: Lady De Courcy is Catherine Vernon and Reginald De Courcy's mother and Sir Reginald De Courcy's wife; throughout the novella, she is Catherine's most frequent correspondent, and she learns of Lady Susan's various schemes via letters. She worries about her son and initially hopes to keep his attachment to Lady Susan a secret from Sir Reginald; she and Catherine plot to break the two up themselves, but ultimately the breakup happens due to Reginald's chance encounter with Mrs. Manwaring. This implies that Lady De Courcy and Catherine had minimal power over the novella's events, despite their efforts to influence people. - Character: Mr. Johnson. Description: Mr. Johnson is Alicia Johnson's husband. Mr. Johnson has gout, and Alicia and Lady Susan frequently hope for his declining health and eventual death; for his part, he hates Lady Susan and often tries to force Alicia to end their friendship. Mr. Johnson is also Mrs. Manwaring's guardian, but he cut her off after she married Mr. Manwaring. At the end of the novella, Mrs. Manwaring comes to the Johnsons' home in search of her husband, who is having an affair with Lady Susan. Because of this visit, Reginald De Courcy (Lady Susan's fiancé) learns about the affair from Mr. Johnson and breaks off his engagement to Lady Susan. After this, Mr. Johnson convinces Alicia to cut off contact with Lady Susan by threatening to force Alicia to move with him to the countryside. - Character: Mrs. Manwaring. Description: Mrs. Manwaring is Mr. Manwaring's wife; her husband is having an affair with Lady Susan. Mrs. Manwaring is very jealous, though she's powerless to stop the affair from happening. At the end of the novella, she visits the home of her guardian, Mr. Johnson, hoping to find Mr. Manwaring there. This visit alerts Reginald De Courcy to Lady Susan's infidelity and causes him to break off their engagement. - Character: Miss Manwaring. Description: Miss Manwaring is Mr. Manwaring's sister. She was previously engaged to Sir James Martin, but this engagement ended because Lady Susan seduced Sir James, hoping to secure him as a husband for her daughter, Frederica Vernon. Miss Manwaring continues to try to get Sir James back—at the end of the novella, she returns to London in search of Sir James, only to find that Lady Susan has already married him herself. - Character: Charles Vernon. Description: Charles is Lady Susan's brother-in-law (the older brother of her late husband) and Catherine Vernon's husband. Prior to the events of the novella, Lady Susan tried to prevent Charles from marrying Catherine—and while Catherine still resents her for this, Charles seems to have forgiven her. As a result, when Lady Susan invites herself to visit the Vernons at their lavish estate, Churchill, Charles is much more open-minded and accepting of her than Catherine is. In fact, he comes off as downright gullible, giving Lady Susan money and allowing her to stay with them despite her reputation as a liar and manipulator. Charles's rather foolhardy acceptance of Lady Susan into his home is what allows the events of the story to unfold: when Catherine's brother Reginald comes to visit the Vernons as well, Lady Susan is able to seduce him (all the while having an ongoing affair with Mr. Manwaring). And while the Vernons seemingly have a happy marriage, it's telling that Catherine is never able to directly confide in Charles about her suspicions of Lady Susan—likely because, in the polite society of the novella, women are held to a higher standard of propriety and discretion than men are. Though Charles doesn't play a particularly active role in the novella, his naïvely rosy view of Lady Susan is what sets the story in motion and enables her web of lies. - Theme: Gender, Power, and Manipulation. Description: Lady Susan's titular character, Lady Susan Vernon—an aging but attractive widow—is clever and cruel. She decides to visit her brother-in-law, Charles, and his wife, Catherine, because she's been kicked out of her previous residence: she was staying with a married man, Mr. Manwaring, and his wife and family. After seducing Mr. Manwaring and his friend, Sir James Martin (who was engaged to Mr. Manwaring's sister, Miss Manwaring) Lady Susan left the estate. Upon arriving at the Vernons', Lady Susan continues to engage in schemes that give her a sense of power over other people, all the while making those people miserable. But her cruelty is seemingly motiveless, which seems to suggest that Lady Susan is bored and frustrated rather than truly vindictive. And as a woman in 18th-century Britain with fewer rights and opportunities than men, her apparent power over others is largely illusory—in reality, she depends on the very people she manipulates and takes advantage of. By presenting Lady Susan as a monstrous female character who is still powerless, the novella suggests that Lady Susan's villainy is actually the result of the social limitations placed on women at this time. Although Lady Susan tells her friend Alicia Johnson that she's "independent," she's actually in a dependent position due to her gender and financial status—what little power she has comes from others. As Lady Susan reveals in a letter to Alicia, she decides to visit her brother-in-law, Charles, because it's her "last resource": when her husband was alive, they sold their estate, and there's little money left. She's happy that Charles is gullible, but he has all the power in this dynamic, so he could force her to leave at any time. Furthermore, while Lady Susan's daughter, Frederica, is submissive, Frederica is mostly afraid that Lady Susan will force her to marry the "contemptibly weak" Sir James—which Lady Susan does plan to do. This means that Lady Susan's power over Frederica depends on her manipulation of Sir James; Lady Susan is "sure of" his cluelessness, but she still needs his cooperation. In some cases, Lady Susan isn't able to manipulate situations directly, which shows that she lacks any real power. In order to sustain her affair with Mr. Manwaring, Lady Susan needs Alicia to ensure that her husband, Mr. Johnson, isn't around to interfere. Alicia already resents her husband, but Lady Susan must feed into that resentment to get the outcome she wants—again, she depends on other people to achieve her aims and feel powerful. Furthermore, Lady Susan doesn't even seem to have a concrete motivation for seeking power over others—she acts out of boredom, frustration, and a desire to prove that she's in control, even if she really isn't. Her affair with Mr. Manwaring is a perfect example: early on, Catherine's brother, Reginald, describes the affair as giving Lady Susan the "gratification of making a whole family miserable." He's probably right—Lady Susan had nothing else to gain, since Mr. Manwaring can't marry her because he already has a wife. Lady Susan later decides to marry Reginald, again with no obvious motive; while the marriage would help her financially, she'd depend on Reginald's father for money, meaning that this arrangement wouldn't give her any real agency. She persists in the scheme because she's angry at Reginald for being kind to Frederica, and she wants to spend their marriage punishing him. Above all, she seemingly just wants to convince Reginald (and other people) that she has power over him. But this is largely illusory, since, as a man, Reginald will always have more legal rights and social influence than Lady Susan does—regardless of Lady Susan's ability to manipulate him within their relationship. While Lady Susan's inferior social status as a woman is the reason why she has no actual power (she merely has the illusion of power), she utilizes and benefits from the limitations imposed on other women—in fact, her ability to manipulate exists in part because of these limitations. Ironically, stereotypical expectations of women in 18th-century Britain—that they're natural conversationalists, and that they should be attractive to men—are what gives Lady Susan the power to control others. Reginald is seduced by her beauty, and even her sister-in-law, Catherine, admits that Lady Susan is uniquely "brillia[nt]" and later guesses that Lady Susan's "command of language" is what allows her to lie convincingly. Lady Susan eventually confirms to Alicia that she's good at manipulating language because her prescribed role as a woman in society means that most of her time is spent conversing. Catherine is the person who best understands Lady Susan's deceit, since she spends time with her in person. However, "common decency" dictates that she can't warn Reginald about Lady Susan directly. Instead, Sir Reginald, their father, writes to Reginald and openly disapproves of Lady Susan—but this disapproval would mean more coming from Catherine, who has met and observed her. Because Catherine is a woman, however, it's not her place to say anything, and her limitations leave Reginald vulnerable to Lady Susan's manipulation. While Lady Susan is undeniably cruel, she isn't harshly punished for her cruelty. At the end of the story, Lady Susan's engagement to Reginald falls through, Mr. Johnson forces Alicia to stop contacting her, and she decides to marry Sir James. Though none of this was what Lady Susan planned, she isn't losing anything particularly meaningful: she never truly loved Reginald, and her friendship with Alicia was shallow. It's unclear as to whether "Lady Susan was or was not happy," and it's implied that readers should pity Sir James more than Lady Susan, since he's easily manipulated—Lady Susan could do worse than a rich, gullible husband. Lady Susan's rather favorable outcome suggests that author Jane Austen doesn't condemn her—even though she doesn't approve of Lady Susan's actions, she seems to sympathize with the root of her frustration at being financially and socially dependent on others. And although Lady Susan's schemes will likely continue, it seems that she'll never have any real power of her own. - Theme: Public Appearance vs. Private Reality. Description: Lady Susan is an epistolary novel, meaning that—apart from its conclusion—the story is told entirely through letters. Characters often reveal their true feelings and intentions to their recipient; for instance, readers are aware of Lady Susan's lies and schemes due to the cruel letters she sends to her friend Alicia, and readers understand Catherine Vernon's hatred of Lady Susan because of Catherine's letters to her mother. However, characters hide these feelings from others, and act outwardly polite in person because social etiquette in 18th-century Britain demanded this. The separation between public and private life grows more problematic as the novella progresses, since no one is able to voice their true feelings, which allows Lady Susan to easily manipulate situations. By demonstrating this failure of communication and its repercussions, the novella suggests that polite society's strict social code has dire consequences—often, the gulf between people's public and private lives is what allows lies to fester. Throughout the novella, few characters can voice their true feelings—the epistolary form is the only reason readers know these feelings at all. Though Catherine doesn't want to host Lady Susan at the Vernons' estate, she and her husband, Charles, are obligated to do so. This is, in part, because Lady Susan has made an effort to be outwardly polite to them, even though she once tried to stop Charles from marrying Catherine. At this point in the story, readers are aware of Lady Susan's cruelty, but the rules of society dictate that because she repented for her actions, Catherine must receive her warmly. Catherine's letters to her mother, Lady De Courcy, are the only evidence of her continued dislike. After Catherine's brother, Reginald, grows infatuated with Lady Susan, Catherine wants to force him to leave their estate so that he can't propose. But "common decency" prevents her from saying this—instead, she asks her mother to help trick Reginald into leaving using "any plausible pretence." But Catherine's roundabout method fails: even though Catherine and her parents agree that they should take action to prevent Reginald's marriage to Catherine, their collective will can't overpower society's rules of "common decency." Even when characters understand one another's feelings, they're required to speak in code. At one point, Catherine speaks with Lady Susan's daughter, Frederica, about Reginald—though both characters have reason to dislike Lady Susan, Catherine must "recollect" herself before saying anything negative about her in front of Frederica. There's little reason for this—Frederica is powerless, and likely wouldn't tattle on Catherine—but Catherine's politeness seems instinctual, suggesting that the society of the novella demands decorum even when it doesn't make logical sense. Because characters are required to be outwardly polite, the story's most significant developments happen through letters and probably couldn't have happened in person. After Sir James arrives at the Vernons' estate, Frederica takes action—her mother wants her to marry Sir James, but Frederica despises him. Because Lady Susan doesn't listen to her, Frederica instead appeals to Reginald to stop the engagement. But although the two are staying in the same house, Frederica does so via letter (she hands him a note as the two walk past each other). Afterward, Frederica tells Catherine that she needed to gather her "courage" just to hand a note to Reginald; more than likely, the rules of polite society would have prevented her from appealing to him in person. At the end of the novella, Reginald breaks up with Lady Susan, having learned of her affair with Mr. Manwaring. This breakup also happens via letter, even though Reginald and Lady Susan are both in London when he writes to her. If Reginald had not relied on letters, the breakup might never have happened—earlier in the story, he attempted to leave Lady Susan after learning of her cruelty to Frederica. But he spoke to her in person before leaving, and after exiting Lady Susan's "dressing-room," told Catherine that he had misunderstood the situation. In person, Lady Susan is able to distort the truth by upholding a public persona that's very different from who she really is; in a letter, however, Reginald can hold his own. However, letters don't always reveal the truth—even they can be a vehicle for manipulation, which suggests that lies can and will fester without in-person honesty. When Lady Susan leaves for London, she plans to string Reginald along until his father dies and the two can be financially independent. In order to make this happen, she writes a letter to Reginald that reveals truth to the reader but conceals truth from Reginald. Readers learn for the first time that Lady Susan and Reginald are officially engaged—something that Catherine only suspects. But readers also learn that Lady Susan is lying to Reginald: her reason for the delayed marriage (that their union would upset Reginald's family) is false. Lady Susan is unable to convince Reginald to stay away from London, but the fact that he comes to see her proves that he believes her performance of selflessness. Because Lady Susan is a skilled manipulator in person, her lies even find their way into the otherwise-truthful letters of others. The most obvious example is Reginald's letter to his father, which parrots Lady Susan's falsehoods—but even Catherine, who despises Lady Susan, spreads her lies in letters. For instance, Lady Susan is surprised by Sir James's arrival at the Vernons'—but in a conversation with Catherine, she makes it seem like Frederica and Sir James are happily engaged, and like she planned his arrival. In a letter to her mother, Catherine doesn't dismiss Lady Susan's claim, instead saying that "she cannot help suspecting the truth of everything [Lady Susan] says." But she also quotes Lady Susan's dialogue verbatim, meaning that, even if she "suspects" that it's all lies, she's still spreading those lies to her mother. Thus, while letters seem to be a space for honesty, honesty can be distorted as long as society demands politeness over truth. - Theme: Love and Transaction. Description: The characters in Lady Susan experience and act on various kinds of love, both romantic and familial. Characters' relationships with one another are what drive the story, which centers around Lady Susan's potential engagement to Reginald De Courcy and her schemes involving her daughter, Frederica. But in each significant relationship—between lovers, parents and children, or siblings—at least one character always hopes to gain something. By presenting several different relationships between people who should love each other unconditionally, and by instead demonstrating that ulterior motives underlie those relationships, the novella suggests that in 18th-century Britain's polite society, love is always transactional. True to her selfish nature, Lady Susan always aims to benefit from love. While she strings along three men—Reginald, Mr. Manwaring, and Sir James—over the course of the story, her interest in them always depends on their devotion to her. She takes pleasure in "subdu[ing] Reginald," who previously disliked her; brags about how Mr. Manwaring is "devoted" and "distracted by jealousy"; and hopes to coerce Sir James into a marriage with her daughter, Frederica. Sir James presumably agrees to because of his infatuation with Lady Susan (Lady Susan's friend, Alicia, tells her that Sir James would "marry either" Frederica or Lady Susan). Lady Susan's interest in Reginald immediately fades after he tries to leave her, concerned about her treatment of Frederica. She quickly changes his mind and forces him back into "devot[ion]," but she "cannot forgive him" and debates whether she should punish him by breaking up with him or by marrying him and "teazing him for ever." Because Reginald isn't unconditionally devoted to her, Lady Susan dismisses his love—still, she aims to benefit from it by exacting revenge on him, thereby proving that she can control him. Lady Susan's inability to love without ulterior motive also applies to her relationship with Frederica. It's obvious that Lady Susan doesn't care about Frederica; she refers to her as a "stupid girl" and a "little devil," and she constantly tries to limit her freedom. But she still tries to benefit from the relationship: her attempt to force Frederica to marry the wealthy Sir James would help Lady Susan's financial situation. It would also prove that Lady Susan has power over Frederica, who subverts her mother's authority by running away from boarding school and by asking Reginald to help her break her engagement to Sir James. All of Lady Susan's supposedly loving relationships are transactional—not even her daughter is exempt. Unfortunately, Lady Susan's transactional view of love isn't unique—even the best examples of love in the novella come with a cost. Catherine Vernon, Lady Susan's sister-in-law, appears to feel genuine affection for her brother, Reginald—as do Reginald and Catherine's parents. The family's attempts to stop Reginald from marrying Lady Susan should seemingly be motivated by that love—but in reality, Catherine's indirect attempts to stop the engagement, as well as her father's more direct attempts, have just as much to do with their disapproval of Lady Susan as with Reginald's happiness. Though Catherine is genuinely concerned about Reginald, her father, Sir Reginald, tells his son that everything would be "at stake" in a marriage to Lady Susan: "[his] happiness, that of [his] parents, and the credit of [his] name." In other words, while the family might care about Reginald, they're also concerned with Lady Susan's impact on their financial and social status, since Lady Susan is a penniless widow with a bad reputation. At first glance, Frederica appears to love Reginald without an ulterior motive, since Frederica's infatuation doesn't benefit her—in fact, it actually hurts her, because Lady Susan wants her to marry Sir James, and she herself is romantically involved with Reginald. But even though Frederica doesn't have an ulterior motive, others adopt ulterior motives on her behalf. For instance, Catherine approves of Frederica's crush on Reginald not because the match would make Frederica or Reginald happy, but because it would "detach [Reginald] from [Frederica's] mother"—in other words, their marriage would break up the engagement between Lady Susan and Reginald. This means that, while the marriage might not directly benefit Frederica, it would certainly benefit others. Most importantly, because Reginald hardly notices Frederica, she'd need Catherine's help to secure him—so Frederica would (and later does) benefit from Catherine's ulterior motive. Because love in the novella is always transactional, all of its characters view others' feelings as malleable. This is what enables Lady Susan to quickly shift Sir James' attentions from Frederica to herself—allowing her to marry him at the end of the novella—and it's what enables Reginald's family to eventually "talk," "flatter," and "finesse" him into marrying Frederica. This decidedly unromantic ending implies that, in the world of Lady Susan, there's no example of pure, constant love—everyone always hopes to selfishly benefit in some way. - Climax: Reginald learns that Lady Susan is having an affair with Mr. Mainwaring - Summary: In a letter, the poor, recently widowed Lady Susan Vernon invites herself to stay at Churchill, the estate of her brother-in-law, Charles Vernon, and her sister-in-law, Catherine Vernon. She reveals in a different letter to her friend, Alicia Johnson, that this isn't by choice—she was previously staying with a married man, Mr. Manwaring, and his wife, Mrs. Manwaring. While she was there, she seduced Mr. Manwaring and a man named Sir James Martin, intending to secure Sir James as a husband for her daughter, Frederica. However, Sir James was already engaged to Mr. Manwaring's sister, Miss Manwaring. In the wake of the chaos she caused, Lady Susan had to leave, and she now plans to drop Frederica off at boarding school en route to Churchill. Meanwhile, corresponding with her mother Lady De Courcy and brother Reginald De Courcy, Catherine notes that Lady Susan has a bad reputation—only Reginald, hoping to be amused, is excited about her visit. Six years before, Lady Susan tried to prevent Charles from marrying Catherine, and Catherine hasn't forgiven her. When Lady Susan arrives, her behavior doesn't match up with her reputation, and she's able to charm Charles—though Catherine recognizes that Lady Susan has a talent for lying. In a letter to Alicia, Lady Susan reveals that she plans to force Frederica to marry Sir James against her will—boarding school is just a temporary punishment. Meanwhile, Reginald begins to change his opinion of Lady Susan, prolonging his stay to spend time with her; while Lady Susan has no plans to marry him and is still toying with Manwaring from afar, she enjoys tormenting Catherine by flirting with Reginald. Catherine, believing that Reginald might actually be in love with Lady Susan, shares her concerns with Lady De Courcy—but her letter finds its way to her father, Sir Reginald De Courcy. Sir Reginald writes to Reginald, disapproving of Lady Susan, both because she would make Reginald unhappy and because her reputation would damage the family. Reginald responds that he won't marry her, but that her reputation is undeserved—Catherine, however, still believes that the match will happen one day. Catherine also reveals that Frederica has run away from boarding school, and Frederica soon arrives at Churchill. By observing Lady Susan with Frederica, Catherine concludes that Lady Susan doesn't love her daughter—but Reginald, still infatuated with Lady Susan, blames Frederica for everything. Meanwhile, Frederica grows enamored with Reginald, and Catherine approves of the match because it would separate Reginald from Lady Susan. However, Sir James soon arrives at Churchill, to the surprise of both the Vernons and Lady Susan. Frederica (who despises Sir James) is alarmed, but Lady Susan tries to convince Catherine that she planned it all along, and that Sir James and Frederica are happily engaged. Out of desperation, Frederica secretly gives Reginald a letter, in which she begs him to convince Lady Susan to break her engagement. Reginald attempts to do so and becomes disillusioned with Lady Susan because of her unkindness to Frederica. Catherine then writes to her mother to tell her that Reginald plans to leave Churchill, which is a relief—not long after, however, Lady Susan convinces him to stay by pretending that she'll leave instead. Lady Susan tells Alicia that she's furious with Reginald and might marry him just to punish him; for now, however, she's going to London to see Alicia. Alicia warns Lady Susan that Mr. Manwaring is still infatuated with her; if she wants to marry Reginald, she'll have to get him out of the way. Furthermore, Alicia's husband, Mr. Johnson, will be in town at the same time—he hates Lady Susan, so the two will have to avoid him in order to enact their schemes. Lady Susan, who's begun spending time with Mr. Manwaring again, tries to convince Reginald—to whom she is now engaged—to stay away from London temporarily, claiming that she doesn't want to upset his family with their engagement. In reality, she hopes to delay their marriage until after Sir Reginald is dead, because then the two will inherit Sir Reginald's money and be financially independent. Undeterred, Reginald comes to London anyway. His visit has disastrous consequences for Lady Susan, as he runs into the jealous Mrs. Manwaring at the Johnsons' home—Mr. Johnson is her guardian, and she came to beg for his interference in Lady Susan's affair with Mr. Manwaring. Reginald then learns all about the affair from Mr. Johnson, and he writes to Lady Susan to break their engagement. This time, Lady Susan is unable to change his mind. Alicia advises Lady Susan to marry Sir James instead and tells her that, due to Mr. Johnson's interference, she can no longer correspond with Lady Susan. An unnamed narrator reveals that, while Lady Susan initially persisted in forcing a marriage between Frederica and Sir James, she eventually changed her mind and returned Frederica to Churchill. Lady Susan then married Sir James herself, and after a year, Reginald's family persuaded him into loving and marrying Frederica. Ultimately, the narrator does not pity Lady Susan and instead pities Sir James and Miss Manwaring, who lost Sir James to Lady Susan.

- Genre: Short story; black comedy - Title: Lamb to the Slaughter - Point of view: Third-person limited - Setting: Late 1940s or 1950s, in the Maloney house and a nearby grocery store - Character: Mary Maloney. Description: The story's protagonist, Mary Maloney is the wife of Patrick Maloney, a detective. A happy and devoted housewife who is six months pregnant with her first child, Mary spends much of her time caring for and thinking about her husband while attending to domestic tasks such as cooking and sewing. After Patrick reveals that he is leaving her, however, Mary suddenly kills him with a frozen leg of lamb. She then cunningly covers up the murder, using her role as an "innocent," supposedly-foolish housewife to trick the investigators. - Character: Patrick Maloney (the husband). Description: The husband of Mary Maloney, Patrick Maloney is a police detective who cares more about his work than his marriage. Despite Mary's best attempts to make him comfortable and care for him, he does not reciprocate her efforts or feeling. He callously tells Mary that he has decided to abandon his marriage, and is then killed by Mary herself with a frozen leg of lamb. Though the narrator explicitly discusses Mary's idolization of Patrick and his masculinity, Patrick's name is not revealed until halfway through the story, after he has already died. - Character: Jack Noonan. Description: Jack Noonan is a sergeant and friend of the Maloneys. Jack is one of the first officers to arrive at the scene of the murder. Like the other officers on the case, he is sympathetic and condescending towards Mary and does not suspect her of Patrick's murder at all. Instead, he tries to comfort her and, along with his colleagues, is persuaded by Mary to eat the leg of lamb, unaware that it is actually the murder weapon. - Character: Sam. Description: Sam is the grocer who unwittingly becomes Mary's alibi. After the murder, Mary chats casually and briefly with Sam, giving the impression that she is buying vegetables for her husband's dinner at Sam's store. Later, the police confirm her story with the grocer, who, like the detectives, has been deceived by Mary. - Theme: Gender and Marriage. Description: Throughout the short story, Mary Maloney is firmly situated in a patriarchal society—that is, a system in which men hold more power than women politically, socially, and economically. Historically, women have been often consigned to the private sphere of domestic life, as they were deemed by men to be intellectually and emotionally unfit for the public sphere outside of family and home life. Men, on the other hand, were able to move through both spheres, enjoying the comforts of domestic life provided by wives and mothers while interacting with the political and economic institutions of the public arena.Mary's marriage is a perfect example of gendered hierarchy, as her entire life revolves around that of her husband. While Patrick works in the public sphere as a detective, Mary stays at home in the private domestic sphere, working on her sewing and eagerly awaiting his return "after the long hours alone in the house." Once her husband arrives, all of her energy is devoted to anticipating his needs. Fulfilling the duties of a stereotypical housewife, Mary, demonstrates her affectionate submission by performing various domestic tasks for her husband — for example, hanging up his coat, making him drinks, offering to fetch his slippers and make supper — despite the fact that she is six months pregnant and Patrick barely acknowledges her efforts.Like the society in which the story is set, Mary's marriage is heavily influenced by male or masculine dominance. The narrator explicitly describes Mary's love for her husband as an idolization of or subservience to masculinity. Patrick's return home is "blissful" for Mary not only because she has been isolated in the house all day but also because she "loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man, and to feel—almost as a sunbather feels the sun—that warm male glow that came out of him to her when they were alone together." Mary's comparison of masculinity to the sun, to a powerful celestial force indifferent to yet shining upon mere humans, reinforces a gender hierarchy in which men are associated with strength and perfection, and women with weakness and inferiority. This male dominance also manifests in the lack of reciprocity in the Maloneys' marriage. Despite Mary's repeated endearments of "Darling" and attempts to make her husband more comfortable, Patrick responds brusquely, without reciprocating her affection or acknowledging the effort it must take her, as a heavily pregnant woman, to care for him and the house. Furthermore, when Mary attempts to engage him in conversation or requests that he eat something, Patrick ignores her, but when he wishes to speak to her, he orders her to "Sit down," expecting her to submit as a dog would to its master. Whereas Mary attends to both his physical and emotional needs (preparing him drinks, offering him food, sympathizing with him about his job), Patrick assumes that his wife is little more than a creature to be "looked after" financially when he leaves her. After breaking the news of his imminent departure, he dismisses his wife's potential reactions and emotions as "fuss," coldly asserting that it would be bad for his job. Patrick's privileging of his work over Mary stands in stark contrast to the life she has built around him.After Mary murders her husband, then, she is able to escape suspicion partly because of her cleverness and partly because the policemen hold traditional, patriarchal views of women as caregivers incapable of violence or deceit. When Jack Noonan, a detective and friend of Patrick, asks Mary is she would prefer the company of her sister or of his own wife, he reinforces the stereotype of women, and thus of Mary, as caregivers. When he explains to Mary what happened to Patrick, he implicitly assumes the culprit is male, using masculine pronouns such as "him" and "he" to describe the murderer. The detectives consider "impossible" the idea that Mary has deceived them all as well as Sam, the grocer who unwittingly becomes her alibi. - Theme: Role Reversals. Description: Dahl subjects his characters to various reversals in their traditional roles. Most prominent of these role reversals is that of Mary Maloney, whose act of murder defies the policemen's assumptions about her and about the culprit. By physically attacking her husband, with a club-like weapon no less, Mary subverts gender stereotypes and takes on the traditionally male role of violent attacker and murderer. Her quick thinking and ability to deceive others causes the policemen to sympathize with (and to some extent infantilize) her as if she were a victim, despite the fact that she is actually the murderer.Mary's weapon of choice, a leg of lamb, is also subject to role reversal in the story and symbolizes her transformation. The lamb, often portrayed as a gentle, sacrificial creature, is literally sacrificed as food, with its leg frozen in the Maloneys' cellar, waiting to be eaten. However, once Patrick Maloney decides to leave his marriage, the lamb then becomes a tool for violence, rather than a recipient of violence. This is can also be seen in the ironic wordplay of the story's title, "Lamb to the Slaughter": Mary's sudden violence renders Patrick the figurative "lamb" to be slaughtered, while the frozen leg of lamb is literally the instrument of slaughter.Patrick Maloney's role reversals are two-fold. First, in contrast to the story's early account of Mary's infatuation with his masculinity and power, Patrick is now "feminized" as the power in his marriage shifts to his wife when she attacks and kills him. Second, his death then undermines his role as a detective. Whereas previously his duties as a detective would have entailed preventing the crime in the first place or bringing the culprit to justice, now he unable to do so as he must fulfill the role of murder victim. Like Patrick, the other detectives in the story also switch roles, not by becoming Mary's victims but by serving as her unwitting accomplices. After hours of unsuccessfully searching for the murder weapon, the policemen are persuaded by Mary to eat the leg of lamb, unaware that they are assisting a murderer by destroying the evidence. - Theme: Food/Consumption. Description: Much of "Lamb to the Slaughter" is occupied with eating and food. At the beginning of the story, food is closely linked to domesticity and marriage. Mary's repeated attempts to feed Patrick demonstrate not only her affection for her husband but also the role she plays as homemaker and housewife. Similarly, Patrick's refusal to eat Mary's food is a rejection of that affection and foreshadows his rejection of the domestic life Mary has built around him. Even after Patrick's death, food still is (or appears to be) associated with marriage, as Mary attempts to maintain the façade of domestic bliss by establishing her alibi of buying Patrick's food from Sam, the local grocer. After Patrick tells Mary he is leaving her, food becomes a literal and figurative weapon. In the literal sense, food is weaponized when Mary kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb, which is said by the narrator to be as effective as a "steel club." Metaphorically, food also works against the other policemen, as they never suspect that Mary's frozen meat could be used as a weapon, and they begin to eat the evidence for which they have been searching all night.Just as the weaponization of food is both literal and metaphorical, so too is the motif of consumption. Mary, a happy housewife, is consumed with her marriage and her husband's masculinity, and thus her role within a male-dominated culture. Obsessed with domestic bliss, her entire life revolves around her husband. Patrick, on the other hand, is consumed with his work. Though he is always tired because of his work as a detective, he values his job more than he does his wife. After Patrick's death, this consumption becomes literal and possibly cannibalistic for the detectives, who eat the murder weapon. As the detectives' "thick and sloppy" mouths wolf down the leg of lamb, the men fail to realize that it had been bashed into Patrick's skull and may even contain his blood. Whereas Patrick Maloney was once consumed with his work, now he is consumed by his work, or rather by his former friends and colleagues on the police force. Like the men's suspicion that the weapon is "right under our very noses," this is another example of the story's ironic black humor. - Theme: Betrayal. Description: Patrick's betrayal of his marriage drives the rest of the story's plot, leading to both his wife's betrayal and that of his colleagues. When he leaves his wife, Patrick betrays not only the love Mary has for him but also the unborn child she is carrying and their private domestic life together. At the sudden breakdown of her marriage and the world she built around Patrick, Mary commits her own betrayal by killing her husband. Covering up the murder primarily for the sake of her child, Mary calls the police, maintaining a façade of innocence and manipulating the policemen to inadvertently commit a betrayal of their own. As they investigate the murder, the policemen unknowingly betray both their former colleague and their profession by drinking whiskey on the job and by eating the evidence, ironically speculating in another example of Dahl's black humor that the murder weapon is "right under our very noses." Through this succession of betrayals, Dahl seems to be suggesting that betrayal begets betrayal, that disloyalty and deception will only lead to more treachery. - Climax: Mary kills her husband - Summary: The story begins with Mary Maloney faithfully waiting for her husband Patrick to come home from his job as a detective. Six months pregnant and happy in her marriage, she eagerly watches the clock while she sews. When Patrick arrives, she is ready to hang up his coat, prepare a drink for him, and sit in silence with him as he rests. For Mary, who is alone in the house during the day, this after-work ritual is one she looks forward to. However, as Mary attempts to care for her husband, Patrick brushes off her efforts, drinks more than usual, and declares that he has something to tell her. While a nervous Mary scrutinizes him, Patrick tells her that he is leaving her. Though the narrator leaves out the details, it becomes clear that Patrick still plans to take care of her financially but that their marriage is over. Mary, who is in disbelief, decides to act as if nothing has happened and fetches a frozen leg of lamb from the cellar to prepare their supper. When Patrick tells her not to bother and begins to leave, Mary suddenly swings the frozen meat at the back of Patrick's head and kills him. Once Mary realizes that her husband is dead, she thinks rapidly of how to protect herself and thus her unborn child from the penalty of murder. She puts the meat into the oven, and while it begins to cook, she practices her expression and voice, and then goes out to a nearby grocery store and chats amiably with Sam, the grocer, about what she needs to buy for her husband's dinner. On her way home, she purposefully acts as if everything is normal, and then is shocked to "discover" Patrick's body on the floor and begins to cry. Distraught, she calls the police, and two policemen, Jack Noonan and O'Malley, friends and colleagues of Patrick, arrive. Mary, maintaining her façade, claims that she went out to the store and came back to find Patrick dead. As other detectives arrive and ask her questions, her premeditated chat with Sam is revealed to be her alibi and she is able to elude suspicion. The policemen sympathize with Mary and attempt to comfort her. Despite Sergeant Noonan's offer to bring her elsewhere, Mary decides to stay in the house while the police search for the murder weapon. Jack Noonan reveals to Mary that the culprit probably used a blunt metal object and that finding the weapon will lead to the murderer. After nearly three fruitless hours of searching in and around the house for the weapon, the policemen are no closer to finding the murder weapon and never suspect that it could be the frozen meat cooking in the oven. Mary is able to persuade the tired, hungry, and frustrated policemen to drink some whiskey and eat the leg of lamb that by now has finished cooking. As the men eat the evidence in the kitchen, Mary eavesdrops from another room, giggling when one of the men theorizes that the murder weapon is "right under our very noses."

- Genre: - Title: Laminex and Mirrors - Point of view: - Setting: - Character: Narrator. Description: – The unnamed narrator and protagonist is an Australian eighteen-year-old girl who has just taken a job as a hospital cleaner. The narrator plans to work at the hospital throughout the summer, and has calculated that that in three months, she will have enough money for a trip to Europe. At that point, she plans to quit her job. This plan allows the narrator to brush off some of the more unpleasant tasks (and people) she encounters at her workplace, and focus on the fact that her life has a more positive trajectory than that of her working-class colleagues. Throughout the story, she remains confident that her job at the hospital is only temporary, and that soon she will be taking in the culture and sophistication of Paris and London. However, after spending more time with her coworkers Dot and Noeleen, two women who support each other and create joy in everyday moments, as well as Mr. Moreton, a kind hospital patient who is dying of cancer, the narrator experiences a change of heart. First, she spends two shifts' worth of money to support Dot's catalogue side business. Then, just before Mr. Moreton's daughter and grandchildren come to visit him, she breaks him out of his room and takes him to an old wing of the hospital so that he can have a private bath. Charmed by the happiness and human dignity this simple bath inspires in Mr. Moreton, she also decides to sneak him outside of the hospital and give him the cigarette he has been asking for since the two met. When the narrator learns that her transgression will soon be discovered, and that she will surely be fired as a result, she peacefully accepts her fate, wheeling Mr. Moreton through the front entrance of the hospital in a moment of pure joy and laughter. - Character: Mr. Moreton. Description: – Mr. Moreton is an "old bloke, ex-Army" who is a patient at the hospital where the narrator works. Though he often jokes and laughs with the narrator, he appears melancholy in the environment of his hospital room. He rarely sleeps, hates his stifling oxygen mask, and appears to have lost his appetite for hospital food. Mr. Moreton is dying of lung cancer, but continues to ask the narrator to sneak him cigarettes on a daily basis, a request which she denies for fear of being fired. Eventually, Mr. Moreton informs the narrator that he has been given a matter of weeks to live, and that his daughter and grandchildren are planning to visit him now that they know he is close to death. During the climax of the short story, the narrator decides to sneak Mr. Moreton out of his hospital room and take him to the abandoned bathroom in the "Menzies wing" for a private bath. Seeing the way in which this small gesture transforms Mr. Moreton, making him appear younger, happier, and "like anyone's grandpa," the narrator takes him outside and finally gives him a cigarette. When the two get locked outside, Mr. Moreton worries that the narrator will lose her job because of him, but she tells him not to worry. As he hums "It's a Long Way to Tipperary," Mr. Moreton readies himself to enter the hospital, laughing, coughing, and then laughing again as he approaches the doors with the narrator. - Character: Dot. Description: – Dot is one of the narrator's coworkers at the hospital and Len's wife. On her first day of work, the narrator remarks, "I've never met anyone like Dot, whose hair is backcombed into an actual beehive and who blinks hard with watery-eyed nervousness when anyone addresses her directly." Dot sells cleaning products and cosmetics from a catalogue to her coworkers. Though her husband doubts that she will be able to achieve the "Christmas bonus gift" awarded to top salespeople, Dot reaches this goal with the help of the narrator, who spends two shifts' salary on the catalogue products. Dot and her husband are overjoyed by her sales success. Though Dot is somewhat timid, she is kind and supportive. She frequently gives the narrator advice about how to save money and clean more effectively. Like Noeleen, Dot seems to not have much money to spare. - Character: The Matron. Description: – The matron is an unnamed woman who holds a supervisory position in the hospital where the narrator works. Though she never speaks in the narrative, her presence and her policies loom large in the hospital hallways. The matron is particularly adamant that the narrator does not provide Mr. Moreton with his coveted cigarettes, and is also angered by the narrator's decision to "linger" in Mr. Moreton's room to chat with him—so much so, in fact, that she enlists Marie to punish the narrator for it. At the end of the short story, the narrator imagines the matron waiting for her at the nurse's station to punish (and likely fire) her for breaking Mr. Moreton out of his hospital room. - Character: Marie. Description: – Marie is the head cleaner at the hospital. She serves as the narrator's supervisor, and often speaks to her in a cold, harsh manner. Though she is intent upon upholding the matron's policies, her own work ethic appears to be lacking. The narrator finds Marie reading with her feet up in the storeroom on her first day, and later appears annoyed by her hypocrisy when Marie angrily scolds the narrator for abandoning her work to chat with Mr. Moreton. - Character: Noeleen. Description: – Noeleen is another of the narrator's hospital coworkers, a working-class woman who—like Dot—gives the narrator several pieces of cleaning advice throughout the narrative. She supports Dot's catalogue side business by purchasing body care items even though she does not appear to have a lot of money to spare. Like Dot, she has a friendly personality and appears comfortable with her daily routines at the hospital. - Character: Len. Description: – Len is Dot's husband. He visits Dot on her morning break as he is coming home from his night shift at the printing works. Len doesn't "take [Dot's] home business seriously," and doubts that she will be able to achieve the "Christmas bonus gift" awarded to successful salespeople. Because of this, the narrator expects that he will be put in his place when he finds out that Dot has achieved and exceeded her sales goal. Instead, Len is "radiant with pride," and the narrator realizes she has made a mistake in making assumptions about him and his relationship with Dot. - Character: Tony. Description: – Tony is a male nurse from South Africa who works at the hospital. The narrator explains that she has agreed to go to the hospital's staff Christmas party with him because she is moved by the way in which Tony comforts the post-operative "nose job girls" as they emerge from surgery. - Theme: Joy and Drudgery. Description: Cate Kennedy's "Laminex and Mirrors" follows one summer in the life of an Australian teenager, the story's unnamed narrator, who takes a cleaning job at a local hospital. As the narrator goes about her daily work, she believes that her youth, energy, and exciting future plans sharply contrast with the grim atmosphere created by the hospital's strict routines and tired veteran staff. However, as the narrator learns more about her colleagues, as well as the patients whose rooms she is tasked with cleaning, she begins to understand that although hospitals seem bleak and austere, there is still joy to be found there—and that she can be the one to create it. As the story develops, the narrator ultimately decides that her role in helping others to experience joy in an environment punctuated by sickness and drudgery is more valuable to her than dreaming of a future she presumes will be happier than theirs. When the narrator begins her work as a cleaner, she believes that her youthful enthusiasm—especially with regard to her work tasks and her relationships with others—is uncommon in the space of the hospital, and appears to think that her coworkers are less vibrant and friendly than she is. The narrator describes her fellow cleaners as "glazed and unhurried," while she describes herself as "eager-beavering [her] way through [her] allotted duties on this holiday job." The narrator's language here suggests that her enthusiasm is likely related to the fact that she knows her job at the hospital is only temporary, whereas her coworkers have become tired of their daily routines over time. As the story unfolds, the hospital matron and Marie, the head cleaner, emerge as cold and authoritarian symbols of hospital policy, further suggesting that the hospital is a joyless place. Both women vehemently disapprove of the narrator's friendly relationship with the elderly hospital patient Mr. Moreton, which forms the emotional and symbolic center of the short story. Marie teaches the narrator that developing friendships with patients is unacceptable and punishes the narrator severely for her so-called transgression by demanding that she clean a bathroom slated for demolition—an entirely impractical task meant only to instill the narrator with the value of following the rules rigidly. However, as the narrator spends more time at the hospital—and especially with her coworker Dot—she begins to have a change of heart. Dot sells jewelry and body care items from a catalogue to her fellow hospital staff, which the story implies is a way for Dot to make ends meet. However, Dot claims to not believe in the quality of these items, and her husband, Len, expresses doubts about her capacity as a saleswoman, thus underscoring the joylessness of her enterprise. Noticing Dot's old purse and the careful way in which she handles change, the narrator pities her coworker, realizing that money must be tight for her. The narrator takes her opportunity to spread joy by helping Dot achieve and exceed her Christmas bonus—the narrator buys so much from Dot's catalogue that it costs her two full days of work at the hospital. Besides delighting Dot, this act of kindness allows the narrator to witness how excited Len becomes for his wife as a result of the achievement. While this moment convinces the narrator of her own capacity to help others experience joy in the midst of less-than-ideal circumstances, it also shows her that perhaps Len and Dot's situation wasn't as bleak as she assumed: although both Len and Dot's lives are characterized by the drudgery of low-wage work, the couple experience a moment of pure happiness together that highlights that their lives are also filled with love, tenderness, and delight in the little things in life. As she watches the pair celebrate, the narrator learns that she has misjudged both Dot and Len's capacity to squeeze joy out of any circumstance. Inspired by her experience with Dot and her husband, the narrator decides that assisting someone in need of a little happiness is more valuable to her than her trip to Europe, and thus decides to allow Mr. Moreton a morning of peace and small pleasures. Mr. Moreton, who is fighting a losing battle with lung cancer, has a gloomy life in the hospital: he feels generally stifled and uncomfortable in his hospital room, struggles to find the appetite to eat his bland hospital breakfasts, and has trouble sleeping. To remedy this, even just temporarily, the narrator sneaks Mr. Moreton out of his room and provides him with the opportunity to take a bath and smoke a cigarette outside. Though the narrator's decision is self-sacrificial, given that she will almost certainly lose her job as a result of her actions, the joy of the escape compounds, and Mr. Moreton's happiness spreads to the narrator as well. Through her interactions with both Mr. Moreton and Dot, the narrator comes to see that joy can be found just about anywhere, and that she can be the one to spread such delight. As Mr. Moreton and the narrator enter the hospital, "smothering laughter," and meet their fate, the narrator thinks about her fellow staff members going about their daily routines at the hospital. She thinks in particular about the matron, who "will be waiting for us […] in the no-man's-land of the hospital's thermostatically cool interior, its sterilised world of hard surfaces, wiped clean and blameless. Someone else's jurisdiction now." This sterile "no-man's-land" is clearly associated with a cold sense of obligation—"someone else's jurisdiction"—and a lack of genuine human emotion. However, even as the matron epitomizes joylessness, it's clear that she hasn't won: though the narrator is moments away from losing her job and Mr. Moreton is weeks away from dying, the two are "content, just for this perfect moment, to believe we can go on humming, and that this path before us will stretch on forever." Even in the face of impending tragedy, the narrator and Mr. Moreton can find, spread, and savor joy. - Theme: Wealth and Class Identity. Description: The narrator of "Laminex and Mirrors," a young Australian woman who has just turned eighteen, has set her sights on traveling to Europe when the summer is over. She calculates that working at her new job as a hospital cleaner until that time will allow her to save up just enough money for her trip. Because the narrator considers her job temporary, she sees herself as different from and better than the working-class employees at the hospital, who are older and more permanent fixtures of the hospital's staff. However, after spending more time around her new colleagues, the narrator begins to understand that her method of associating identity with class status oversimplifies her peers and diminishes the value of their contributions. At the beginning of the short story, Kennedy's narrator clearly defines herself apart from her new job duties. She also leans upon her confidence that she is not intended to remain a hospital cleaner to avoid staying present in the unpleasant situations that her work presents her with. "Laminex and mirrors, that's me," the narrator says by way of introducing herself, and then qualifies the statement: "Or at least that's meant to be me." The suggestion here is that though she thinks she is "meant" to be defined by her daily task—cleaning the laminate and mirror surfaces of the hospital—she does not see herself that way. Likewise, when the narrator is faced with an unpleasant task or interaction, she thinks about how she will soon be in London, and therefore distanced from the daily routines and connotations of low-wage work. While cleaning the rooms of patients who are recovering from elective surgeries, for example, the narrator remarks, "Like these girls, I'm filling in my own allotment of time here, except that when I leave, it'll be to buy that plane ticket to London, and be gone." In other words, the narrator's brief job as a hospital cleaner is a mere stepping stone on her way to bigger and better things. Though the narrator disassociates her identity from her low-wage job, she is not the only one at the hospital to do so. Both her coworkers and a hospital patient evaluate her as someone who is not destined to remain a hospital cleaner, a phenomenon that initially appears to validate her class-based biases. Mr. Moreton, one of the patients whose rooms the narrator is charged with cleaning, remarks that he didn't perceive her job at the hospital as a permanent one. He says, "I didn't think you were the kind of girl looking for a lifetime career cleaning tables. Not that there's anything wrong with cleaning. It's all work, isn't?" Here, it is clear that although Mr. Moreton does not think the work of a hospital cleaner is unworthy of respect, he thinks that the narrator comports herself in a way that suggests that she might find the work unfulfilling. Similarly, after seeing her reading a novel for pleasure, the narrator's colleagues Dot and Noeleen begin jokingly calling her "the scholar," which the narrator initially finds annoying. Her frustrations stem from the fact that this teasing assumes that she is still in school rather than reading for pleasure, a habit that she assumes her coworkers cannot understand due to their working-class backgrounds. After spending more time with her coworkers, the narrator begins to understand that the classist biases she had formed about them were misguided. As a result, she modifies both her perceptions and her behavior toward those around her. Though the narrator breezes through her first work tasks and finds her coworkers "glazed and unhurried," she soon begins to learn that they have a lot to teach her. Noeleen shows her how to use the floor polisher by "using her hips" to stabilize it, and Dot teaches her how to use newspaper to more easily clean the mirrors for which the short story is named. In this way, the narrator learns that they are not the incompetent, sluggish employees she first imagined them to be, but rather smart, capable women who handle their tasks with ease because of their experience. When she witnesses the poor condition of Dot's purse, as well as the careful way in which her coworkers handle their coins, the narrator's perception of her coworkers begins to shift even further. She is no longer bothered by the way in which her fellow employees tease her about her education. She also spends two shifts' worth of salary on Dot's jewelry and body care merchandise so that Dot can obtain a "Christmas Gift Bonus" through the catalogue company. This act not only emphasizes that the narrator feels guilty about her previous arrogance, but it also is an equalizing moment between the two women, as the narrator uses her funds to elevate her coworker so that she can receive a bonus. By getting to know her coworkers, the narrator learns that the line she has drawn between her identity—which includes a bright future and travel in Europe—and theirs, which sentences them to a lifetime of working-class drudgery, is too harsh, and does not reflect the complexities of human experience. Although at first her belief that her background makes her different than her peers is validated by both Mr. Moreton and her coworkers themselves, the narrator comes to see that she has a lot to learn from these women she assumed were beneath her. - Theme: Death and Dignity. Description: Cate Kennedy's short story "Laminex and Mirrors" features an Australian teenager who begins a friendship with a man named Mr. Moreton, an elderly veteran dying of lung cancer, as she navigates her first few days as a hospital cleaner. The teenager, who is also the unnamed narrator of the story, describes the hospital as a site heavy with the inevitability of death. Her descriptions of Mr. Moreton in particular demonstrate the grim and often demoralizing nature of end-of-life care. By tracing the narrator's exposure to this environment, and her ultimate response to the difficult circumstances her new friend must face, Kennedy argues for the importance of allowing those who are dying to experience agency and dignity in their final days. Cate Kennedy's language in "Laminex and Mirrors" paints the narrator's new workplace as a sterile, cheerless place in which the terminally ill await their eventual deaths. Moreover, she employs Mr. Moreton's character to demonstrate the ways in which certain features of the hospital and its procedures contribute to feelings of melancholy and dehumanization in its patients. The narrator describes the sick patients plodding along the hospital corridors as "the slow, measured perambulation of those with an endless, unvarying stretch in front of them." Even the bathroom in an old wing of the hospital, which is slated for demolition (and thus, perhaps another suggestion of lifelessness), reminds the narrator that patients of that wing once spent a great deal of time listening to the sound of leaky taps, and "listen[ed] to that nocturnal dripping like a relentless echoing clock, marking their time left." Though a hospital is clearly intended to function as a site of recovery and healing, these moments draw a clear association between the hospital and the omnipresence of death. While talking with the narrator, Mr. Moreton remarks that he is not sure if the matron of the hospital or his lung cancer will kill him first. He is joking in this scene, but his comment emphasizes that he finds the matron's policies—such as denying him the choice to smoke a cigarette or chat with a friendly hospital employee in the final days of his life—stifling and demeaning. When the narrator begins her job, she initially obeys the matron's policies, but after seeing Mr. Moreton's entire demeanor brighten after having his first bath in years, she is inspired to disobey them entirely. When she suggests to Mr. Moreton that he put on some aftershave before his family arrives at the hospital, he asks her to pass the bottle over to him, saying cheerfully, "Why not […] Pass it over here!" She notes that in that moment, "it's the recklessness in his voice that decides me." In asking Mr. Moreton if he'd like to put on some aftershave, the narrator gives Mr. Moreton a small moment of agency, which he laps up eagerly. The energy, zest, and "recklessness" in Mr. Moreton's voice shakes the narrator out of the routines and expectations of her job and reminds her of the importance of making her charges feel like they still have dignity and some semblance of independence even within the confines of the hospital walls. When she begins to understand the way in which the environment of the hospital impacts employees and patients alike, the narrator decides that providing her new friend a single morning of autonomy and dignity is worth the risk. When she finally provides Mr. Moreton with his treasured cigarettes—which he has been asking for, unsuccessfully, every day—she symbolically asserts her decision to give him a moment of dignity as he approaches death. Though Mr. Moreton has lung cancer and smoking a cigarette—the culprit of his sickness—most certainly will not help, the narrator allows him to make that choice by himself. Furthermore, after bathing and clothing Mr. Moreton, the narrator observes that he looks handsome, and that he has become "like a different man with a cigarette in his hand." Mr. Moreton affirms this, remarking that he feels "bloody great." In breaking the rules to give Mr. Moreton a real bath in a bathtub—instead of forcing him to shower sitting in a plastic chair as is hospital protocol—the narrator treats Mr. Moreton with dignity, and essentially transforms the man with this small act. The fact that a single morning brings about such a marked change in Mr. Moreton suggests the power of the narrator's commitment to treating her patients with respect and trying to give them some sense of agency over their lives. As the narrator takes Mr. Moreton back inside the hospital after "breaking him out" for a smoke, the pair appear temporarily transformed. Though their relationship was punctuated by moments of awkwardness before, and their escape characterized by moments of fear and anxiety, they greet their likely punishment with grace. Describing the way in which they enter the hospital's front doors, the narrator notes, "Mr. Moreton's shoulders go back and his chin lifts and we're clipping along now, left right left, there's no way I'm going to do him the disservice of skulking in, it's up and over the top for us." A sense of confidence as well as a sense of dignity is present in the characters' physical posture here, as well as the narrator's powerful claim that "there's no way" she will let Mr. Moreton down. Though the narrator of "Laminex and Mirrors" begins her work as a hospital cleaner thinking only of when she will quit, she is quickly affected by the vulnerability and humanity of those she works with. She is also struck by evidence that the environment of a hospital does not always provide its patients what they need to feel respected or feel like themselves. Although the narrator is taught to adhere to policies that deprive Mr. Moreton of the ability to make his own choices and retain his dignity as he approaches death, she decides that she has the ability and the motivation to prioritize his dignity over those regulations. - Climax: - Summary: The narrator, the short story's unnamed protagonist, begins the narrative by describing her first day at her new job as a hospital cleaner. As she goes about her first cleaning tasks, she is surprised by the "glazed and unhurried" way in which her coworkers navigate their own cleaning routines, noting that she, by contrast, is youthful, energetic, and eager to impress. After finishing her first assignments early, the narrator goes to ask her supervisor, Marie, for something else to do. Marie, who has been relaxing in the storeroom, assigns her to clean out the hospital's ash bins, a disgusting task that the narrator thinks is Marie's way of taking "revenge" on her for "working too briskly." The narrator describes one of her coworkers, Dot, as a shy, helpful woman with a beehive hairdo. While cleaning the patients' rooms, the narrator meets an elderly veteran named Mr. Moreton. He asks her to take the money from his drawer and buy him a pack of cigarettes, a request which the hospital's matron has forbidden her to comply with. The narrator denies his request, a decision that she will repeat on a daily basis as Mr. Moreton continues to beg her for cigarettes. Despite the narrator's refusal, the two begin developing a friendship. One day, after witnessing the narrator chatting with Mr. Moreton, a nurse pulls her aside to tell her that she should not "fraternise" with the patients, especially if she is a cleaner. The narrator apologizes and continues her work, moving next to the area of the hospital dedicated to elective surgeries. She considers that, like the recovering elective surgery patients, she is "filling in [her] own allotment of time" at the hospital, but she will be on her way to Europe when she finally leaves. At work one day, Dot—who sells household products, cosmetics, and jewelry from a catalogue as a side business—hands the narrator a catalogue and an order form "as if it's already a done deal." The narrator knows that Dot's husband, Len, doubts that she will ever succeed as a saleswoman or achieve the catalogue company's "Christmas gift bonus." Speaking of Christmas, the narrator has accepted Tony's offer to go to the office Christmas party with him because she was affected by the way he kindly comforted the insecure "nose job girls" as they emerged from surgery. Mr. Moreton tells the narrator that he's been given "a few weeks or a month or two" to live, and that his family will be coming to visit him soon. When the narrator apologizes again for not bringing him a cigarette, explaining that getting fired would prevent her from traveling to Europe, Mr. Moreton is understanding and remarks that she doesn't seem like the type of person to spend a lifetime working at the hospital. When Mr. Moreton makes a comment about his approaching death, the narrator takes his hand, and Marie suddenly appears at the door. Marie furiously scolds the narrator for "lingering" in Mr. Moreton's room, and appears even angrier for the fact that the matron sought her out to tell her about it. Marie then punishes her by demanding that she clean the bathroom in the wing of the hospital that is slated to be demolished that week. The narrator tries to concentrate on the fact that she will be leaving at the end of the summer. Later, Dot and Noeleen talk about Dot's catalogue products and refer to the narrator as "the scholar." They began using the nickname after Dot saw the narrator reading a book at the bus stop. The narrator finds the nickname annoying, but says that she changed her mind when she saw the poor condition of Dot's purse, and the careful way that the women handled change when Noeleen bought a product from Dot's catalogue. Taking the catalogue, the narrator orders enough items for Noeleen to achieve the Christmas gift bonus as well as the "Gold Seller" stickpin. The amount she spends will cost her two days' work at the hospital. She is looking forward to seeing the expression on Len's face when he finds out about Dot's achievement, but he proudly congratulates her instead, making the narrator realize that she made unfair assumptions about him. Mr. Moreton tells the narrator that his daughter is visiting him tomorrow, and that she wouldn't be coming unless he was about to die soon. The next day, the narrator arrives at work early and sneaks into Mr. Moreton's room. She then takes him to the bathroom in the wing that she has just cleaned and lets him take a bath. Mr. Moreton enjoys the experience immensely. When the narrator takes him back to his room, his visible change in behavior, and the "recklessness" in voice in particular, motivates her to wheel him out of the hospital and give him a cigarette from her purse. He relishes the cigarette and enjoys the warm morning air. Watching him, the narrator remarks that he looks handsome, and thinks to herself that he looks like a different person entirely. They hear the propped-open exit door close behind them, and the narrator imagines a plane to London taking off without her. Mr. Moreton realizes aloud that the narrator will lose her job, but the narrator responds that she "couldn't care less about the job," and that she will travel to Europe another time. The narrator and Mr. Moreton steel themselves as they move toward the entrance of the hospital. Mr. Moreton begins humming, then laughing, and then coughing. The narrator holds his hand until his coughing fit is over, and they begin moving forward again, laughing all the while. The narrator imagines her coworkers going about their routines without her, Marie making comments about her absence, and the matron waiting ominously for her at the nurse's station. But she calls her entrance with Mr. Moreton "a perfect moment," and says that they both contentedly believed that the path ahead of them "[would] stretch on forever."

- Genre: Arthurian romance - Title: Le Morte d’Arthur - Point of view: A first-person narrator, apparently the author, relates a number of events to which he has only second-hand or third-hand knowledge. - Setting: England ("Logris") and France - Character: King Arthur. Description: The son of Uther and Igraine, and raised by Sir Ector, Arthur was always destined to pull an enchanted sword (Excalibur) out of the stone and prove his worthiness to be king. Arthur becomes one of the kingdom's youngest kings, though he quickly establishes himself in military prowess and conquers many lands. Arthur considers loyalty a virtue almost above all else, and is often willing to grant mercy to knights who swear allegiance to him. Throughout the book, Arthur often seems to be acting not entirely of his own will, but rather to be following steps laid out for him long ago by fate or by the requirements of his position. In the later books, he is even more of a passive character, partly because his knights take turns in proving their own honor and prowess, and partly because he is cuckolded by Launcelot through his affair with Arthur's wife, Queen Guenever. - Character: Queen Guenever. Description: Arthur's wife and the lover of the knight Launcelot. Guenever seems to love Arthur as well, remaining politically loyal to him throughout the book, though until the downfall of the empire she refuses to give up her affair with Launcelot even when it appears she might be burned at the stake for treason. Guenever also enjoys the support and love of the knights of the Round Table, for whom she serves as a symbol of the feminine honor that they claim to fight for. In fact, it is only once some of the knights definitively turn away from Guenever, no longer worshipping her as their beloved queen because of their jealousy of Launcelot, that the kingdom begins to unravel—suggesting that it was Guenever who managed to hold competing interests together for so long. - Character: Sir Launcelot du Lake. Description: By most accounts the knight of greatest prowess in the kingdom, Launcelot is only matched by Tristram. Launcelot always adheres to knights' code of honor: defending ladies in distress, granting mercy to knights whom he conquers, and never fleeing from a potential battle, no matter how risky. However, the book is ultimately ambivalent regarding Launcelot's character, especially since due to his affair with Guenever, he does not have the kind of spiritual purity required to achieve the Holy Grail. Launcelot's jousting glory may be unparalleled, but he is also limited to earthly success, unlike, for instance, his son Galahad. - Character: Merlin. Description: A sorcerer who arranges for Arthur to be brought up outside the royal court, in exchange for providing Uther with the means of attaining Igraine as his wife. Merlin's powers include foretelling the future and enchanting mortals to follow his command. But his powers are also partial and limited, and ultimately he succumbs to the very mortal weakness of desire, which leads to his death. - Character: Morgan le Fay. Description: A sorceress and Arthur's half-sister, who often attempts to trick the knights of the Round Table. Morgan symbolizes all that is both alluring and frightening about women for the men in this story. She is beautiful and often is involved with one affair or another, but she is also bent on getting what she wants, whether it is plotting to replace Arthur with her own lover on the throne, or trapping Launcelot in a castle for her own purposes. There is a near-constant slippage in the book between women characterized as witches and women who just "use" witchy, magical tools to gain their will—another way of describing the peculiar kind of power to which women, barred from so many other elements of knightly life, have access. - Character: Tristram (Tramtrist). Description: The son of a king from Liones, Tristram is destined to become one of the kingdom's greatest knights, matched only by Launcelot. Tristram is initially not one of the knights of the Round Table, though Arthur makes him one later on, and the tales of his exploits—which seem to make up a massive digression in the middle of the book—provide a counterpoint for some of the book's themes from an outsider's perspective, including honor, chivalry, the ambivalence of love, and revenge. - Character: Sir Mordred. Description: Arthur's illegitimate son by Margawse. Mordred is destined to kill his father someday, and Arthur attempts to have him killed as a child by sending all children born in the month of his birth on a ship to be sunk, but Mordred alone survives. He participates (along with his brothers) in the killing of Lamorak, and finally turns against Arthur when Arthur is off fighting Launcelot abroad. Mordred's very existence is a testament to the book's fascination with royal lineage and destiny, especially when tied to the omnipresent tendency to competition and jealousy—seeming to make it inevitable that a son will rise up against his father. - Character: Isoud (La Beale Isoud). Description: The daughter of King Anguish, and Tristram's one great love. Isoud is married off to King Mark, but she never forgets Tristram, even forgiving him when he briefly forgets about her and marries someone else (Isoud les Blanches Mains). Isoud is subject to the desires of men, who are physically stronger and politically more powerful than she is, but she is also clever enough to find a way to fulfill her own wishes whenever she can. Her love story with Tristram provides a parallel to that between Launcelot and Guenever, and at one point these four are referred to as the only true "lovers" in the kingdom. - Character: Sir Galahad. Description: Son of Launcelot and Elaine of Corbin, destined to surpass even his father in knightly prowess. Galahad comes to court as a young, untested knight, but he soon proves himself fated to become an unequalled knight in a similar fashion to King Arthur—by pulling a sword out of a stone. Galahad is contrasted to his father Launcelot in that the son is pure in body and mind in addition to being a knight of great prowess. As a result, only Galahad, among all the knights of the Round Table, is allowed to see the mysteries of the Holy Grail. - Character: Sir Gawaine. Description: A knight in Arthur's court, and nephew of Arthur. Gawaine often fails to live up to courtly ideals, such as when he refuses to grant a knight mercy and then kills the knight's lady by mistake. But he seems to strive to be a good, worthy knight, and pledges total loyalty to Launcelot, who serves as his idol for the kind of knight he'd like to be. However, Gawaine's temper and obstinacy ultimately contribute to the downfall of the empire, as he refuses to forgive Launcelot for mistakenly killing Gareth in battle, and this leads to an intractable conflict between members of Arthur's court. - Character: Sir Gareth (Beaumains). Description: Also known as Beaumains, Gareth proves himself at court under an unknown identity: he comes from noble blood, but would rather be known for his actions than for his illustrious lineage. He is the brother of Gawaine, Gaheris, and Agravaine, but he refuses to participate in his brothers' murder of Lamorak, distancing himself from his family ties and instead aligning himself with Launcelot. Launcelot nonetheless accidentally kills him in battle, underlining just how much the court has gone tragically awry by the end of the book. - Theme: Honor and Chivalry. Description: Every year, at the Christian feast of Pentecost, the Knights of the Round Table renew their oaths to follow the code of chivalry as proclaimed by King Arthur. Chivalry includes showing mercy, fighting for good, and protecting ladies whenever they may be in harm. This is a code that is meant to govern the knights' actions throughout Le morte d'Arthur—however, Malory also takes care to show just how difficult, if not impossible, this code proves for many of the knights, as well as how it can be easily corrupted through circumstance and human folly. Malory's collected stories contrast the results of following the code of chivalry with what happens when a knight breaks that code or succumbs to temptation. Sir Gawaine, for instance, refuses to grant mercy to a man who asks for it (thus breaking part of the code) and, as his lover hurls herself forward to protect him, accidentally kills the lady—carrying the shame of this act with him for the rest of his adventures. Conversely, Launcelot always grants mercy to a knight that asks for it, underlining his characterization as an honorable knight—in battle, if not in spiritual purity. Indeed, Malory's view of the knights and of Arthurian society in general often verges on the cynical, as he shows how various knights succumb to the temptations of lust or of the selfish search for glory. For instance, only Galahad, who steers clear of both (mostly because he is so young and is also divinely fated to do so), can attain the Holy Grail, while the other knights are not "pure" enough—that is, they lack the greatest honor and chivalry. Malory thus shows how deep of a gap there is between the chivalric ideal and the sorry morals of those inhabiting it. Besides, even this chivalric ideal is internally contradictory: the ideal of chastity is somewhat at odds with the ideal of defending a lady, for instance, and Malory never explicitly condemns Launcelot's affair with Guenever—even though it leads to a tragic end—simply because their love is so strong and "pure," and because Launcelot is such a skilled knight in other aspects. Instead, Malory seems content to describe these contradictions as they are without reconciling them, and without explicitly condemning them to hypocrisy. - Theme: Jealousy, Competition, and Revenge. Description: The book largely supports and defends the ideals of honor and chivalry, but these ideals are then often contrasted with the actions of many knights who fail to live up to them. As part of the requirement of maintaining their honor, the Knights of the Round Table must either defend a woman—or one's "ownership" of a woman—or else defend their land and property from rivals. Malory gives us an unflinching view of the petty jealousy and rivalry of many of the knights, although his tone shifts regularly from gravity to irony, depending on the situation.Launcelot, for instance, is usually a more tragic than comic character in his wholehearted desire to compete for Guenever's heart, and to defend her against any other rivals (even though she is married to King Arthur). The lust between Launcelot and Guenever—and the increasing lack of subtlety in their affair—ultimately leads to the downfall, not only of Arthur, but also of the kingdom itself. The affair sets in motion a series of circumstances, from Arthur's sentencing of Guenever to death to the murder of several knights to the declaration of war between the two camps, that seem to lead inevitably to a tragic conclusion. The code of honor that the knights follow, indeed, seems to make revenge a never-ending affair, as each side continues to declare an act of revenge for the other side's prior act. This is also true in the realm of politics, as with King Arthur's knights' battles with Rome, just as much as it is in love.Other subplots in the book emphasize just how extensive these so-called values of competition and revenge can become. The love triangle between Sir Tristram, Isoud (whom he loves), and King Mark, who marries Isoud, is shown as tragic but also, as with Guenever and Launcelot, immoral, given that it rests on adultery. In this case, too, competition and jealousy are part of an unending process of battle and response, one in which secular desire and pride are portrayed as just as powerful, if not more so, than the Christian and courtly ideals the knights are supposed to follow. - Theme: Trickery and Mistaken Identity. Description: Le Morte d'Arthur begins with a search for an unknown king, one who, by the workings of fate, will be the only one able to pull the enchanted sword Excalibur from the stone. In this case, enchantment ensures that the true king will be properly identified, but as is often the case in Le Morte d'Arthur, trickery—magical and otherwise—also disrupts social norms and confuses more than it reveals. Like Arthur, Sir Gareth, another knight, is also seemingly without a past as he first makes his appearance, and his several quests can be understood as an attempt to prove himself—that is, prove his true identity as an honorable, chivalrous knight (and one with noble blood). The book shows just how much many will risk in this society to prove their identity to themselves and to others. At other times, however, identity cannot be so easily pinned down—and this is especially the case among the knights, who in battle are covered with armor and only identified by their shields or "colors," which can be easily changed. Because of the various levels of concealment at work in the kingdom, Arthur does not really know where he comes from even after being anointed king. He unknowingly sleeps with his half-sister Margawse as a result, leading to a whole host of fated complications. The tragic element of mistaken identity is also evident in Balin and Balan's fight to the death: they both kill each other and realize only at the moment of death that they are brothers. While mistaken identity can often be an element of tragic fate, at other times such mix-ups are a consequence of conscious trickery. The book seems to hold the view that men are particularly vulnerable to the tricks of women: Launcelot, for instance, is tricked into sleeping with Elaine of Corbin, while Merlin is tricked into being magically sealed in a cave by the woman he loves, Nimue. With all these examples of trickery and mistaken identity, the reader is on constantly shifting ground, never quite knowing which characters are which and who means what in the book. As a kind of literary masked ball, these stories show such trickery to be entertaining, to be sure, especially as Malory's characters often purposefully disguise themselves in order to confuse or impress others. But Malory is also writing at a tumultuous moment in English history, when the members of warring dynasties often switched sides and alliances, so Malory's emphasis on trickery also reflects a broader insecurity with people's identity in society. - Theme: Journeys and Quests. Description: The most obvious journey in the book is the quest for the Holy Grail, a holy cup with powers to grant eternal food, youth, and happiness. For most of the characters in the book, the Grail is no more than a seductive, distant goal, as they lack the spiritual purity and chivalric perfection necessary to attain it. Sir Galahad is the only one of the knights who manages to truly attain the Holy Grail, as he remains a chaste virgin, an honorable knight, and also a skilled fighter. A number of knights are deemed worthy enough to embark on a quest to seek the Grail, but only Percivale, Sir Bors, and Galahad are permitted to actually enjoy the fruits of the Grail, and only Galahad is worthy enough to actually see the spiritual mysteries that it holds. For the rest of the knights, in the Holy Grail section and in others, journeys and quests are not entirely meant to achieve something specific—instead, they form a way of life for the knights. Every scene of feasting and quiet contentment at Arthur's court is soon interrupted by the desire or necessity to undertake another journey or "adventure." The knights may technically have their home around the Round Table, but their true home is on the streets and in the forests where they follow the commands of Arthur, pursue the code of chivalry, and also attempt to constantly test their own strength and skill. This image of the wandering errant knight pursuing adventures would, after Malory's time and in no small part thanks to him, become a nostalgic ideal that many others would turn to in literature. This emphasis on journey as ethos, rather than a means to an end, can be picked up and reinterpreted even in a very different context than that of King Arthur's court. - Theme: Women: Weakness and Power. Description: In many ways, women are left out of the exciting adventures that the knights of the Round Table embark upon throughout Malory's tale. While their husbands, lovers, and brothers seek glory and honor in combat, they are more likely to stay at home—indeed, when we encounter women it's most often inside, in domestic settings, and if they are out in the world, it tends to be because they're in need of rescuing by some errant knight. Many of these knights tend to think of women as potential or actual possessions: they often talk of getting the "right" to a woman, or of "gaining" her, just like a horse or shield. Much of this language, though jarring to a modern audience, would have been quite normal in the historical period of writing. Even so, the apparent powerlessness of women in the book is somewhat deceptive: some women in Le morte d'Arthur also gain agency by seducing men, plotting their downfall, or even using "sorcery" of some kind to get their way.Guenever and Isoud, for instance, both manage to successfully carry on affairs outside marriage, despite prevailing social and religious customs. For Guenever, it is not necessarily her affair with Launcelot that leads to the kingdom's downfall (since everyone has always known about it) but rather Agravaine's insistence on breaking with discretion and revealing that affair to Arthur. Nimue manages to spirit Merlin away into a cave when she grows tired and afraid of him, and Morgane le Fay, as a queen and sorceress, uses a number of plots against far more powerful men. However, "magic" and "sorcery" have an uncertain status when applied to women in the book. Some women, indeed, are identified as enchantresses or witches, but "magic" also seems to be used to describe any woman who manages to assert her will—actions which, when taken by men, are too routine to even be noted. Men in the book can be deeply suspicious of the women in their life, even if (and perhaps especially when) they fall in love with them, fearing that the privileged gender position they enjoy might not be as all-powerful as they'd like. - Climax: Arthur's illegitimate son, Mordred, prepares to usurp the throne while Arthur is away fighting his formerly loyal knight, Launcelot. - Summary: Le morte d'Arthur begins with the story of King Arthur of Camelot's birth. King Uther needs to find an heir to his throne, and he has an eye on Igraine, the wife of the Duke of Cornwall, when they come to visit the court. Together with the wizard Merlin, he hatches a plan to lay siege to the Duke's court while Igraine is at another castle. The Duke is killed in the siege, and Uther (whom Merlin has made to look like the Duke) sneaks into the castle. Uther manages to sleep with Igraine, who only later finds out that her husband has died. In exchange for his help, Merlin asks Uther to hand over the son that he will conceive with Igraine. Uther and Igraine marry, as Igraine is convinced this will be best for the kingdom, and she gives birth to a boy: Arthur. Merlin sends him to be raised by a knight, Sir Ector, alongside Ector's son Kay. After Uther's death, the kingdom is in a precarious state, left without a king. Merlin, sharing his plan with the Archbishop of Canterbury, has an enchanted sword, Excalibur, placed in a stone by the great church in London. All the lords gather and each attempts to draw the sword out, but none proves able. Sir Ector comes to London for a New Year's Day tournament and brings Kay and Arthur. Kay has just been made knight, but he's forgotten his sword at home, so he asks Arthur to retrieve it for him. Hurrying home, Arthur sees the sword in the stone and easily pulls it out. But when he comes back, Ector recognizes it, and they return to the stone so that Arthur can prove he managed to pull it out himself. Everyone present agrees that Arthur is the proper king of England, and he is soon crowned king. But it doesn't take long for other kings to become skeptical about such a young king of England, and wonder if they can take advantage of Arthur's inexperience to gain some lands for themselves. Merlin warns Arthur of the threat, and suggests Arthur ask for help from two kings, King Ban and King Bors, and then return the favor by fighting in their wars. Together the kings come close to routing King Lot and his allies, but they stop once Merlin counsels Arthur to quit while they're ahead. Then Arthur's men defeat the enemies of Ban and Bors. While abroad Arthur first meets Guenever, who will later become his queen, but he also meets and sleeps with Margawse, wife of Lot and father to Gawaine, Gareth, Agravaine, and Gaheris, though Arthur he does not realize she is his half-sister. She will give birth to a son by Arthur, Mordred, who is fated to kill his father and overturn the kingdom. Merlin counsels Arthur to send all the children born in May (the month of Mordred's birth) onto a ship that will be shipwrecked—he does so, but Mordred is the only one to survive, while the senseless deaths of the other children make many in the kingdom angry with Arthur. Arthur does what he can to bolster his kingdom's strength by establishing the fellowship of the Round Table, in which dozens of knights take up a place around a huge physical table and pledge to seek honorable quests, grant mercy to opponents, and defend ladies wherever they might find them. Arthur will need this fellowship, especially since Merlin fades from the story—he falls in love with Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, who learns sorcery from him and then, once she grows tired of him and afraid of his power, entraps him in a cave forever. Arthur also has to deal with the trickery of Morgan le Fay, his sister and a sorceress, who is always trying to either kill him or trick him into doing her will. Although Arthur has defeated Lot and his men, he soon has to face more threats when Emperor Lucius of Rome demands tribute from him. Believing this to be a shameful demand that would threaten his sovereignty, Arthur refuses and takes his knights onto the European mainland, where they have a number of adventures, including the slaying of a dangerous giant, before defeating the Roman armies and returning in triumph. Launcelot du Lake, one of Arthur's knights, performs particularly well in Rome. He accomplishes a number of adventures back in England as well, and proves himself as the world's greatest knight. At Pentecost every year, the knights of the Round Table reunite to share stories of their exploits and regroup before returning to their quests and adventures. One year, an unknown squire arrives to court to try to prove himself. He's dressed shabbily and no one knows who he is, so Arthur has him help out in the kitchen. Kay makes fun of the boy, calling him "Beaumains" or "Fair-hands," though the other knights rebuke Kay for his teasing. When a damsel, Linet, comes to court asking for a knight to rescue her sister Lionesse from the Knight of the Red Launds, Beaumains asks to fulfill this quest. He rides out, pursued by Launcelot, and asks Launcelot to be made knight. Once he shares his true identity with Launcelot—Beaumains is actually Gareth of Orkney, brother of Gawaine—Launcelot agrees. But no one else knows Gareth's true identity, and Linet continues to harangue him for his shabby clothes and lack of noble identity, even when Gareth strikes down many knights and proves to have great prowess. Finally Gareth defeats the Knight of the Red Launds, and "wins" Lionesse. Only after Gareth proves himself at the Pentecost jousting, however, does Linet stop preventing him from sleeping with Lionesse, and the couple is married. For a large part of the book, the narration then switches to a knight outside of King Arthur's court—Tristram, son of King Meliodas. Tristram's stepmother tries to poison him out of jealousy, and while Tristram forgives her—establishing his knightly honor—his father sends him out of the country. When he grows up, he proves himself by defending King Mark of Cornwall against King Anguish of Ireland, and by fighting a knight of the Round Table named Marhaus. Tristram wins but is wounded, and Anguish's family takes care of him, not realizing who he is. He falls in love with the king's daughter, La Beale Isoud. Before long, Isoud's mother learns who Tristram really is, and while Anguish understands that Tristram had to defend Mark on account of his honor, he sadly sends Tristram from his court. Tristram stays at King Mark's court, but after they both fall in love with the same lady—Isoud, who loves Tristram—Mark grows wildly jealous and begins to plot Tristram's downfall. Mark decides to order Tristram to fight and "win" La Beale Isoud so that Mark can marry her himself. As a good king's subject, Tristram does so, though he and Isoud continue to love each other. One knight of Mark's eventually tells the king of their mutual infatuation, and he locks Isoud away. Tristram escapes to King Howel's land, where he briefly falls in love with (and marries) another woman, Isoud La Blanche Mains. He ends up leaving this Isoud and meets up with a knight of Arthur's court, Lamorak de Galis, to defeat a tyrant together. Meanwhile, back at Arthur's court, another unknown knight, Breunor le Noire (La Cote Male Taile) comes to court anonymously, proves himself through his knight's prowess, and is made a knight of the Round Table. A number of the Round Table knights meet and joust with Tristram, who still resists being made a knight of the Round Table, since he thinks he's not worthy enough—besides, Launcelot, who has learned of Tristram's infidelity to La Beale Isoud, is angry with him. Tristram sneaks back to Mark's court, but once again is found out. After a fight with Isoud he flees into the forest, where he seems to lose his sanity for a time. He is eventually brought back to court as a madman, but eventually Isoud recognizes him—once his identity is revealed, Mark banishes Tristram from court. Finally Tristram, after proving himself on the battlefield in Arthur's tournaments, is made a knight of the Round Table. Mark hears of this and is jealous, so he sneaks into England—though not before killing two of his knights who refuse to help him kill Tristram. A few knights of Arthur's court then come across Mark (though he hides his identity). Finally one, Dinadan, learns who he is, and Mark is brought to Arthur. Arthur has him swear not to plot against Tristram any longer, and Mark does so, and brings Tristram back to court with him. Meanwhile, Gawaine and his brothers lose out to Lamorak at a tournament. Jealous, they kill their mother Margawse—Lamorak's lover—and eventually Lamorak too. Back at Mark's court, Mark is forced to ask Tristram to help him in defeating enemies. Mark's brother also performs very well, so Mark grows jealous and kills him. But the brother's wife and son, Alisander, escape. Mark continues to plot to destroy Tristram, but Launcelot is back on Tristram's side, and together they manage to imprison Mark for a time. Free to have adventures on his own, Tristram joins with several other knights, including Gareth, Palomides, and Dinadan, and they pursue a number of quests. But Palomides is also in love with La Beale Isoud, and after Tristram gains glory at a tournament, Palomides grows nearly sick with jealousy. The two prepare to fight for their honor, but Tristram is wounded and so cannot battle Palomides. Meanwhile, Launcelot—who maintains an affair with Queen Guenever, to whom he is loyal for the entire book—is tricked into sleeping with Elaine of Corbin, who gives birth to Galahad, a knight fated to surpass even his father in greatness. Later, Galahad arrives at court without sharing his identity, but it soon becomes clear that he is holier than any of the other knights when he pulls yet another sword out of an enchanted stone. With great fanfare, his arrival means the start of the quest for the Sangreal or Holy Grail—a vessel that is able to grant limitless food and drink, and also reveal spiritual mysteries, though only to the one who is holy enough. Arthur is sorry to see so many of his knights leave on the quest, since he knows most of them will not be worthy enough to achieve it. Galahad's adventures on the quest are detailed first, as he frees several castles from evil knights and defends several damsels. Percivale, another knight on the quest, tries to find Galahad, but instead has to confront his own quests, which involve temptations from and battles with the devil in various guises. Launcelot too is confronted with such temptations, and while he battles well as always, he is told by a number of figures that because of his earthly sins—like sleeping with Guenever and embracing earthly pride—he will never be able to achieve the Holy Grail. Sir Bors also faces a number of spiritual tests, first having to choose between saving a lady and saving his brother Lionel. He chooses the lady, thus showing his knightly honor, but Lionel grows furious and, possessed by the devil, tries to kill his brother. However, Bors manages to flee and join Percivale. They meet up with Galahad, where they have many adventures together. They meet Percivale's sister on an enchanted ship, where there is a sword and scabbard invested with holiness because of their connection to a Biblical figure and early guardian of the Holy Grail, Joseph of Arimathea. Galahad turns out to be fated to take this sword and scabbard. Eventually, the three knights reach the Castle of the Maimed King, Pellam, where Galahad heals the king, thus fulfilling a prophecy. Another king throws them into prison, but the Holy Grail ensures that they are kept fed and healthy, and when the king dies Galahad is crowned king of the land. After some time, Galahad finally is granted the right to see the spiritual mysteries of the Holy Grail, and is raised to heaven. Percivale becomes a holy man and dies not long after, while Bors returns to Arthur's court, where many of the original knights of the Round Table have died. Back at court, Launcelot soon forgets the vow he had made to become a holier man, and resumes his affair with Guenever. Soon, however, one knight Pinel tries to poison Gawaine out of jealousy at Guenever's feast, but accidentally kills a knight Patrise. Everyone thinks it is Guenever, but Launcelot defends her against Pinel. Several tournaments are held, and Launcelot proves himself mightily. At one point he stays with a lord Bernard and his daughter, Elaine le Blank, who falls in love with him, although Launcelot continues to be loyal to Guenever—Elaine eventually dies out of grief. After another great tournament, the kingdom is at peace for a time. Soon, however, a knight named Meliagrance tries to take advantage of Launcelot's absence from court to kidnap Guenever, whom he is in love with. Launcelot is captured and thrown into prison, but finally, thanks to a damsel's intervention, he escapes and kills Meliagrance in battle. But another knight, Agravaine, is jealous of Launcelot and decides to plot against him. Launcelot's affair with Guenever has always been an open secret at court to everyone but Arthur, and Agravaine finally shares the secret openly and proves it to Arthur by surrounding Guenever and Launcelot when they are in bed one night. Launcelot escapes, and Guenever is sentenced to death. Launcelot manages to ride in and rescue Guenever before she is burned at the stake, though in the mayhem he accidentally kills Gareth and Gaheris. Their brother Gawaine has always been loyal to Launcelot, but this is the last straw, and he vows to destroy Launcelot. Arthur sorrowfully agrees to fight against his best knight and friend. At one point Launcelot, who has taken Guenever to his tower, returns her to Arthur, who would happily end the civil war, but Gawaine refuses to be satisfied until Launcelot is killed. Launcelot flees to Benwick with some knights loyal to him, and Gawaine and Arthur, with their knights, depart to lay siege there. While they are away fighting, Mordred hears of Arthur's death and crowns himself king, making Guenever his wife. Even after he finds out Arthur is still alive, he refuses to give up his position. Arthur and Gawaine are forced to return. Gawaine is mortally wounded and on his deathbed tells Arthur he forgives Launcelot and is sorry for ever starting the war. Arthur is told to sign a truce with Mordred until Launcelot can return to fight for him, but at the last minute an accident renders the truce null, and Arthur and Mordred mortally wound each other. Only then does Launcelot return, though it's too late. Guenever retires to a nunnery, and many of the other knights become holy men or hermits, giving up a life of battle. A new king, Constantine, is crowned, ending the story of the Round Table.

- Genre: Short story, Fantasy - Title: Leaf by Niggle - Point of view: The story is told in first person by an unnamed, omniscient narrator who mostly uses the third-person perspective to narrate Niggle's life. - Setting: The countryside, the Workhouse, and the land of Niggle's painting - Character: Niggle. Description: Niggle is the protagonist of the story. He lives in the countryside and wants to spend all his time painting, but he feels bombarded by the requests of others and the practical tasks he must tend to. He doesn't really fit in with the people around him: his preoccupation with his painting means his garden and house are unkempt, and he's not interested in what others deem useful or productive. Niggle isn't altogether unkind or antisocial—he helps his neighbor, Parish, even when it's inconvenient for him—but requests for help often seem to him like inconveniences. Niggle's time in the Workhouse forces him to reflect on his tunnel-visioned mindset, and he regrets being so caught up in his own work that he neglected the world around him. The transformation of his character is evident when he reaches the "next stage," the land that resembles his painting, and dedicates himself to the practical tasks of building a homestead and tending to the land, understanding now that beauty is not only dreamed up but also cultivated physically. Niggle's growth allows him to feel ready to head into the mountains with the shepherd at the end of the story, and his positive influence on others is finally proven by the use of his land as a place for many others to convalesce before climbing the mountains themselves. - Character: Parish. Description: Parish is Niggle's only neighbor in the countryside. At the beginning of the story, he is more of a hassle than a friend to Niggle, constantly asking him to run errands and only valuing Niggle's painting as a source of wood and canvas. He has an injured leg and depends on Niggle to complete physical tasks, though at times he appears to use this as an excuse to take advantage of his neighbor. When Niggle ventures into town on Parish's behalf to fetch the builder and the doctor, he (Niggle) becomes too sick to finish his painting. While Parish is a hurdle to Niggle's creativity in the first part of the story, Niggle eventually realizes that Parish's gardening knowledge and practical skills are invaluable, so he calls upon Parish while creating a paradisal land after his time in the Workhouse. Parish's transformation is almost the opposite of Niggle's. When he reaches the land of Niggle's painting, he is finally able to appreciate the beauty that Niggle has imagined, and he spends his time basking in it rather than burying himself in the tasks with which he once filled his days. - Character: Parish's Wife. Description: Parish's wife lives with Parish in the house next to Niggle's home. She refers to Niggle in an offhand way as "that Mr. Niggle" and is perhaps slyer than Parish himself in taking advantage of their neighbor. It's clear that Parish is devoted to her, given that he stays behind to wait for her when Niggle goes into the mountains with the shepherd. - Character: The Inspector of Houses. Description: The Inspector of Houses is an especially tall man who comes to visit Niggle. He, like all visitors, is perceived as a nuisance by Niggle, doubly so because his purpose is to ensure that everyone is working to maintain the houses in the neighborhood. Like everyone else who encounters Niggle's painting in its canvas form, he thinks only of how the materials can be used for construction and repair, further highlighting the fact that in this society, art is barely valued. - Character: The Driver. Description: The Driver is a strict and mysterious figure dressed in black who comes to collect Niggle for his dreaded journey. He is focused only on ensuring that Niggle makes it to the station in time for his train, and he rushes him along without allowing him to gather any important items. A comparison could easily be made between the Driver and the Grim Reaper, a character from many cultures' mythologies who shepherds souls to the afterlife. - Character: The Porter. Description: The Porter first appears on the platform at the station where Niggle gets off the first train. Instead of yelling the name of the stop, he yells Niggle's name, implying he has some knowledge of Niggle and his journey. The second time they meet is when Niggle is leaving the Workhouse and getting on his next train. The Porter acts as a guide more than a typical station porter, and his specific connection to Niggle is quite uncanny, emphasizing the story's fantastical elements. - Character: The Doctor. Description: The doctor tends to Niggle at the Workhouse. When Niggle first arrives, the doctor treats him harshly, prescribing bitter medicine. But at the end of Niggle's time in the Workhouse, the doctor gives him a bottle of tonic, some salve for his hands, and a train ticket. The doctor's character is a vehicle for Tolkien to demonstrate that Niggle's endurance of rough treatment is rewarded by gentleness. - Character: First Voice. Description: The First Voice is one of the two Voices Niggle hears when he is ordered to rest after his long stint of hard labor at the Workhouse. The Voices discuss whether Niggle is ready to move on to the "next stage," something the First Voice, the harsher critic of the two, is doubtful of. The Voice is "more severe than the doctor's" and focuses on the mistakes Niggle made during his life in the countryside. However, it seems to yield to the Second Voice, suggesting that it holds less authority to decide the cases of those in the Workhouse. - Character: Second Voice. Description: The Second Voice is one of the two Voices that discuss Niggle's character and decide whether he deserves to move from the Workhouse to the "next stage." It is gentler than the First Voice and focuses more on Niggle's genuine efforts to abide by the laws of his country and help his neighbor. The First Voice mentions that the job of the Second Voice is to "put the best interpretation on the facts," and it yields to its decision, implying that the Second Voice holds the authority to decide the verdict of each case. This distribution of power implies that, in general, the gentler and more empathetic approach to judging others is perhaps the fairer one. - Character: The Shepherd. Description: The shepherd appears when Niggle ventures to the foot of the mountains after he has finished tending to the land of his painting. He offers himself to Niggle as a guide and reveals that he knows about the life Niggle led before arriving in this new land, further emphasizing the mystical element of the story and suggesting that one's actions and attitudes in life bear a degree of importance in the afterlife. - Character: Councillor Tompkins. Description: Councillor Tompkins is an official of high importance from Niggle's town. At the end of the story, he discusses Niggle's life and work with Atkins—another one of the townspeople—and dismisses Niggle's painting as "private day-dreaming." Tompkins does not find much value in art except if it has been created to share information or aid productivity, and his authority suggests that this is a view held by many townspeople. His character is further revealed when Atkins reminds him that his second residence is actually Niggle's old house and that, instead of showing gratitude, Tompkins only complains and criticizes. Ultimately, his character betrays the society's dismissive views of art, but at the same time suggests that these views are not themselves virtuous. In other words, brashness and greediness go hand in hand with a disregard for creative endeavors. - Character: Atkins. Description: Atkins is a schoolmaster who, at the end of the story, discusses Niggle with Councillor Tompkins. He is more sympathetic towards Niggle and disagrees with Tompkins when he suggests that Niggle was useless before going to the Workhouse. Atkins finds more to appreciate in Niggle's painting than Tompkins does, and he even frames a corner of the painting and donates it to the Town Museum. Atkins's relative gentleness and thoughtfulness suggest that there were people around Niggle who saw him for more than an odd little man. Atkins thus stands in stark contrast to Tompkins, and through him, Tolkien suggests that gentleness and sympathy are qualities also found in someone who finds value in art. - Theme: The Value of Art. Description: "Leaf by Niggle" examines the different ways that people conceive of art, ultimately underscoring the intrinsic value of beauty. There is a dramatic contrast between the reception of Niggle's painting in the old country and the way it is appreciated by those leaving the Workhouse. In Niggle's life as a painter, he is the only one who cares about his creative work. When others notice the huge canvas, it is because they are looking for building materials to repair Parish's house: they cannot see the painting for what it is. Even in Niggle's imagination, the ideal person to admire and commend his work is actually just another version of himself, implying that he's well aware of the lack of interest others have in art. Because there's no public pension for artists, his attempts to complete his most treasured work are constantly interrupted by the necessity to maintain his land and accept visitors. And after Niggle goes on his journey, his art is dismissed by most of his acquaintances, particularly those with higher standing in society like Councillor Tompkins, who calls Niggle's painting "[p]rivate day-dreaming." Tompkins says he would respect Niggle's work if it had any use, suggesting that in this society, art for the sake of beauty is not seen as having any sort of value. Only Atkins, a schoolmaster with less influence than Tompkins, makes an effort to preserve Niggle's work. He donates a single framed leaf, which hangs in an obscure spot in the town museum until the museum burns down—an act that in itself displays this society's lack of care for creative offerings. While Niggle's work is erased from the collective memory of his old country, the complete, animated, inhabitable version of his masterpiece becomes a kind of equivalent to paradise and is used as a place of convalescence for people who complete their time at the Workhouse. Even Parish, once he finds himself in the world of Niggle's creation, expresses delight at its beauty, though he previously only showed interest in the painting because of its raw materials. Niggle finds no reward or acclaim for his creative work before his journey, then, but in the paradisal part of his life, its value is profound. In this way, Tolkien suggests that though capturing beauty and producing art in a world of practical demands is difficult and unrewarding, such efforts are often still worthwhile, since art is invaluable on a spiritual level. - Theme: The Afterlife. Description: Tolkien's depiction of Niggle's journey can be interpreted as an allegory for death and what happens after. The journey looms over Niggle's life, and he is reluctant to prepare for it. Indeed, any preparations he does make are halfhearted and ineffective, and he ends up being forced to make the journey with only a tiny bag of painting supplies—no clothes, food, or anything particularly useful. He's not able to finish his painting before the Driver comes to take him to the station. Similarly, the idea of death and all its uncertainty—when it will arrive, how to best prepare, and what will happen after—looms over every person's life. The only certain element is that the "journey"—or death—will arrive at some point. Niggle's unwillingness to go on his journey is mainly because he wants to have enough time to complete his painting. However, when he is let out of the Workhouse and reaches the "next stage," he sees that the land he has been trying to paint has been fully realized, and it's more alive and beautiful than he ever could have painted it. In turn, Tolkien suggests that death is perhaps not an end point but a pathway to something even more beautiful—and, ultimately, that there's no way to know this until we experience it ourselves. - Theme: Creativity vs. Practicality. Description: Although "Leaf by Niggle" celebrates the inherent value of art, the story also acknowledges the importance of living and working practically within a functioning society. Niggle's priorities as an artist are completely at odds with the expectations and rules of the surrounding society. He doesn't place much value in practical tasks during his life, building a shed for his painting on top of what used to be his potato patch and calling his neighbor (Parish) "Old Earthgrubber" for caring so much about gardening. Even in the Workhouse, distinct from Niggle's old country, his assignments of hard labor are intended to help him realize that his preoccupation with painting got in the way of his obligations to others and to the land, which suggests that the laws of the old country are not simply superficial but are real, spiritual virtues that are valued even after death. After what feels like centuries in the Workhouse, Niggle begins to wish he had focused more on the practical tasks required of him during his life, like repairing the tiles on Parish's roof. His endless hours of practical tasks—carpentry, digging, cleaning—in the Workhouse seem to erase his preoccupation with creativity. Even so, he is not truly satisfied by a purely practical existence; even though he is kept busy completing his tasks, he does not find pleasure in his days. The story's depiction of paradise is the idea of creation as a living thing, represented by the land Niggle enters when he is let out of the Workhouse. In the land that resembles an animated, completed form of his painting, he is compelled to carry out practical tasks to build a pleasant life for himself and for Parish. The story therefore suggests that to be fulfilled, one must work both creatively and practically, thus cultivating the conditions for beauty and creativity to flourish in the first place. - Theme: Actions vs. Intentions. Description: Throughout his mortal life, Niggle struggles to align his true desires with his actions. While he often completes tasks for his neighbors and general errands (as demanded by the laws of his country), he resents the obligation to do so and would always rather be working on his painting. He is not hard-hearted, and in fact he cares about the people around him, but only enough to feel that he should help them—not enough that he is eager or happy to do so. One of the criticisms the First Voice makes of Niggle when deciding whether to move him to the "next stage" is that he complained about the tasks he was asked to carry out and treated them as "interruptions." In turn, the First Voice essentially suggests that people should not only be judged on their actions, but also on the strength of their intentions—what matters, in this context, is whether they are genuinely willing to help others. However, the Second Voice proposes that Niggle made a reasonable effort to follow his country's laws and that his virtue showed through in his lack of expectation for a reward. It's implied, then, that virtue can be found in a person's overall willingness to do the right thing, no matter how hard they find it or how reluctant they may be. This, the story seems to suggest, might be a more realistic expectation to hold people to, since it accounts for the fact that humans are often flawed but still ultimately capable of doing the right thing. - Theme: The Natural World. Description: Throughout "Leaf by Niggle," Tolkien emphasizes the natural world as both an object of beauty and a source of pleasure, though it's often overlooked by those who value productivity. Niggle fixates on his painting, which depicts a huge tree with a background of a forest and mountains. The tree, though a painting, seems to grow organically, "sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots." Even though Niggle has built his painting shed on top of the potato patch and doesn't care very much about tending to the earth, nature has nevertheless found a way into his creative practice. Councillor Tompkins mocks Niggle's preoccupation with leaves and flowers, which he refers to in a utilitarian way as the "digestive and genital organs of plants"—yet these are the things that furnish Niggle's Parish and allow many people to recover their health after spending time in the Workhouse. What's more, Niggle himself finds true happiness when the nature he strove to perfect in his painting meets his own care for the earth, and he takes the time to plant real flowers around the roots of his live tree. Tolkien suggests that nature's beauty persists, whatever value humans may ascribe to it, and that it can bring great pleasure if properly tended and appreciated. - Climax: Niggle's character is judged by the Voices, who send him to the "next stage." - Summary: Niggle knows he must soon go on a long journey, but he's reluctant to prepare for it. He'd rather focus on finishing his painting: a vast canvas with a huge tree and a background of forest and mountains. But he's finding it hard to concentrate because his neighbor, Parish, keeps asking for favors. The laws of Niggle's country order him to complete practical tasks and run errands, and Niggle doesn't mean to disobey them, but he finds himself procrastinating the more mundane activities to make time for his painting. One day, while Niggle works on his canvas, a man called the Driver arrives and orders Niggle to leave with him immediately: it's time to begin his journey. Niggle has not prepared at all and can only take a small bag with him, containing some painting supplies and no clothes or food. The Driver takes him to the station, where he boards a train to the Workhouse. At the Workhouse, Niggle is assigned never-ending tasks involving hard physical labor. When he has worked to the point of exhaustion, the doctor orders absolute rest in the dark of his cell. Niggle feels he's been lying in the dark forever when he begins to hear two distinct voices. The two voices are debating Niggle's quality of character, and whether he deserves to move on to the "next stage." The First Voice is harsher, detailing Niggle's many failures to help others or complete his tasks, but the Second Voice argues that Niggle made the best effort he could to follow the laws of his country. They decide that Niggle deserves to move on from the Workhouse. The next morning, Niggle leaves the Workhouse and boards another train. When it stops, he alights to find a bicycle with his name on it. He rides it through the landscape and discovers, to his shock, that it resembles the land of his painting, including the huge tree, the forest, and the mountains in the distance. He feels the urge to tend to the land and to build a cottage and a garden—and he knows he needs Parish's help to do so. As if summoned by Niggle, Parish appears nearby. Together they begin to cultivate the land and build the cottage. One day, after they have finished their work, Niggle decides he will go on a long walk. Parish goes with him. They walk until they reach the foot of the mountains, where a shepherd comes down to meet them. Niggle knows it is time to follow the shepherd into the mountains; Parish stays behind to wait for his wife. Back in the old country, some of Niggle's acquaintances argue about the significance of his work. Councillor Tompkins declares Niggle's paintings of the natural world to be useless, but Atkins decides to frame a single leaf from Niggle's tree and frame it, later donating it to the Town Museum. The Museum is burnt down, however, taking with it the final trace of Niggle's life. Meanwhile, the two Voices decide it's time to name the land of Niggle's painting, where they've been sending more and more people to convalesce after their time in the Workhouse. It transpires that the Porter has already decided upon a name: "Niggle's Parish."

- Genre: Epic Novel, Historical Fiction - Title: Les Miserables - Point of view: The novel is in third-person, cleaving closely to the minds of several characters, but at times withdrawing as the narrator professes ignorance for certain actions or thoughts. The narrator inserts himself explicitly into the novel at several points, and often makes his own social and analytic commentary on the events he's describing. - Setting: Paris and other provincial towns in France - Character: Jean Valjean. Description: A convict from a poor provincial family, whose long and torturous transformation amounts to the most significant narrative arc of the novel. The 19 years spent by Valjean in the galleys transform him from a desperate boy into a hardened criminal—revealing, according to Hugo, the social evil of the prison system. Valjean is then transformed by his encounter with the Bishop of D---. After he steals from a small boy once more after that encounter, we never see him commit an evil act again. However, at several points throughout the novel we witness Valjean in severe internal struggle with his own conscience. He is constantly attempting to redeem himself for his past life, and one of the novel's major questions is whether this is possible, especially because his past life never truly leaves him. He goes by several other names other than his own across the novel: M. Madeleine, Ultime Fauchelevent, and M. Leblanc. - Character: Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel. Description: Regularly referred to as Bishop of D--, Bienvenu, the novel begins as a story about the Bishop, who is the embodiment of goodness in the book—even as the narrator suggests that ultimate goodness is not the same as great intelligence or even theological knowledge. By creating a religious and specifically Christian figure as the epitome of goodness, Hugo both emphasizes his belief that God is the way to goodness, and offers an alternative to the conception of many religious figures as corrupt and power-hungry. The Bishop is the key to Valjean's redemption—not necessarily in his own person but, according to the novel, as a conduit to God's redemption. - Character: Cosette. Description: Left by her mother at the Thenardier household, Cosette has a bitter, wretched childhood, one that is transformed when Jean Valjean takes her away. Cosette is portrayed as an innocent, deeply good person, whose main characteristics are her love for Valjean and then for Marius. As a character, she also symbolizes one major aspect of social evil: the abandonment and misery of children. - Character: Fantine. Description: Cosette's mother, a young, sweet girl from the provinces who is naïve and innocent. She falls into a love affair with Tholomyes and is ultimately betrayed by him and left with a child. This one event ends up causing her downfall, as she is fired from a factory when people find out about her bastard child, and she is forced to be a prostitute in order to support herself and her daughter. The narrator portrays Fantine as emblematic of social wretchedness, especially as it relates to women, and especially when it results from lack of compassion in society. - Character: Thenardier (Jondrette). Description: An inn-keeper at Montfermeil who takes Cosette in and then attempts to swindle Fantine by demanding larger and larger sums of money for Cosette's care. Thenardier is greedy, selfish, uncaring, and generally evil. He changes little if at all over the course of the novel, as his only goal remains attaining a fortune by any means possible (except by hard work). Thenardier is more of a stock villain than Javert, who is a more complex antagonist. - Character: Eponine. Description: Thenardier's eldest daughter, a spoiled, self-satisfied little girl at the inn in Montfermeil, but later a desperate waif who obeys her criminal father even though it appears that in other circumstances she could have been a morally upstanding person. Eponine will do anything for Marius, whom she's in love with, but this love is compromised by Eponine's jealousy. - Character: Javert. Description: A police inspector who originally met Jean Valjean in the galleys, and who reemerges again and again throughout the novel, constantly threatening to expose Valjean's identity and cause his downfall. Javert believes in authority and obedience to the law above all else. The law is so sacred for him that he cannot envision any other system of morality or justice. Javert's wholehearted devotion to the law is portrayed in the novel as ultimately insufficient, even if it is well-intentioned. - Character: M. Gillenormand. Description: A jovial, somewhat ridiculous old man who lives on the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. Politically reactionary, a ladies' man, and prone to outbreaks of temper, Gillenormand is portrayed as a rather absurd character, prone to making rambling speeches of uncertain meaning. But his love for Marius, even though he often proves unable to show it well, redeems him in the eyes of the narrator. - Character: Marius. Description: The grandson of Gillenormand, who is brought up in his household. Marius is perhaps the character that changes the most throughout the novel, shifting from a youth who parrots his grandfather's reactionary views to a revolutionary himself. According to the narrator, poverty actually strengthens Marius's character, making him devoid of greed or pride. His relationship with Cosette is the main love story of the novel, though it has tragic dimensions in terms of how it prevents Marius from being as forgiving as he might have been to Valjean once he learns of the latter's past. - Character: Magnon. Description: One of Gillenormand's servant-maids, who bears two of his children. Magnon gives her monthly payments to support them. When these two children die, she takes on two of the Thenardier boys to replace them in order to continue to receive the money without Magnon knowing any better. She shares the money with the Thenardiers. - Character: Georges Pontmercy. Description: A timid, shy man who nevertheless becomes a successful colonel under Napoleon. He believes he was "saved" by Thenardier at Waterloo, though in fact Thenardier merely was trying to rob the corpses on the battlefield. He marries Gillenormand's daughter and they have a son, Marius, but Gillenormand doesn't approve of the colonel's politics and so prevents him from seeing his son. Only after his death does the colonel become Marius's hero. - Theme: Love and Redemption. Description: In Les Misérables, Jean Valjean is transformed from a hardened criminal into a paragon of virtue. He ultimately sacrifices himself so that his adopted daughter Cosette might attain happiness with Marius, even as it devastates Valjean to "lose" her to the man she loves. In many ways, Jean Valjean is redeemed by his acts, which constitute penance for the wrongs he committed earlier in life. While generated and accelerated by love, redemption—according to the novel—does not take place on a straightforward path. Instead, it is understood as a process to be constantly fought for.Redemption seems to take place on two major axes in the novel (which also correspond to Christian theology): selfless love and good works. Jean Valjean fulfills the second through his work as mayor of M.-sur-M., as a philanthropist, and as a man of simple tastes and lifestyle. His love for Cosette is another way he redeems himself for his past wrongs. However, Valjean never seems able to fully emerge from the burden of the evil he's done. Internally, he struggles with whether or not he's really a good person—whether his actions and love are no more than a façade concealing his true character, which may never be able to be modified. His past continues to haunt him in the external world as well: in his attempt to lead an ethical factory town, he is partly responsible for Fantine's downfall, and by freeing another man wrongly accused of being Jean Valjean, he is convicted once again and M.-sur-M. falls back into wretched poverty. By choosing to center his account on a relatively minor failed revolt—June 1823—rather than the 1789 French Revolution, July Revolution of 1830, or Revolution of 1848, Hugo emphasizes the difficulty for French society itself (and not just individual characters) to redeem itself for past violence, inequality, and social ills. Love for one's neighbor seems to be the key to undoing these ills, though there isn't much optimism that, in society at large, love will in fact conquer all—at least in the short term. Nevertheless, Hugo portrays his subjects generously and sympathetically, suggesting that the novel lays claim to the possibility of redemption even while starkly depicting the complications in attaining it. - Theme: Mercy vs. Judgment. Description: The characters in the novel live in a world of consistently harsh judgment. Convicts and the poor are considered to be the dregs of society, while the rich, in turn, are assumed to be greedy and worth only as much as they can be tricked out of giving away. Women, especially, are subjected to difficult standards, placed on a pedestal of purity but easily and hastily condemned for diverging from this norm, while men who are promiscuous or simply carefree are celebrated rather than judged. Into this framework, the act of mercy enters as a powerful counterweight, at times shocking its recipients into a new way of life, but at other times proving overwhelming in its radical reversal of social norms. As the novel begins, Jean Valjean is used to being treated and judged as the convict he is. He is therefore dumbfounded by the mercy that Bishop D— shows him in letting him go free after his attempt to steal the bishop's silver candlesticks. Valjean has no idea how to deal with the mercy shown to him—he is so confused, in fact, that his first move is to commit another crime of robbery, as he desperately tries to reaffirm the values of by which he's lived for so long. It takes this final criminal act, committed almost as a reflex, for Valjean to repent and embrace the mercy that the Bishop has shown him. Accepting mercy, then, can be excruciating, and takes profound will and grit. Javert, conversely, doesn't have such mental strength in the end. He finds he cannot live in the contradiction between the judgment he's bestowed upon Jean Valjean and the mercy that Valjean has shown to him, and he kills himself as a result. As a life transformation, the movement from judgment to mercy can be very painful, the novel reveals, even as Hugo celebrates mercy as the morally correct way to live. - Theme: Justice and Injustice. Description: Multiple systems of justice and injustice coexist in the novel. The characters—as well as the morally conscious narrator—must negotiate among all of them in attempting to assign responsibility to certain characters, and in determining how the ethical choices of each one of them compares to the others. No one system of justice triumphs for good in the novel. This is a somewhat radical move for Hugo, who, while embracing a Christian worldview, is less interested in simply parroting official Church authority than in trying, through fiction, to figure out the meaning of right and wrong.One way of comparing justice to injustice is through the legal system, personified by Javert and illustrated in the various courts, juries, and policemen that appear throughout the novel. Yet by creating in Valjean a protagonist who is an escaped convict—one who, in fact, can only continue to do good by remaining outside the law—Hugo challenges the notion that legal justice is just at all. Of course, this notion is complicated, given that the novel doesn't portray those seeking legal justice as entirely evil or malicious. Instead, people like Javert are imperfect, perhaps overly zealous followers of the law who fail to understand that this authority can, in some cases, be unjust.A potentially higher system of justice is the one developed by the Church—a system of justice that embraces mercy, as explained in an earlier theme. But this system also coexists with a system of individual morality, in which characters like Valjean have to weigh imperfect options. The most striking example of this is Valjean's choice to tell the truth and free a wrongly accused convict, even while accepting that this will lead to the downfall of M.-sur-M., rather than saving himself and the town by sacrificing the convict. In this context, what "justice" even means is less clear. Through the diverse systems and examples employed in the book, Hugo develops a surprisingly modern understanding of morality, one in which justice depends on the person, the moment, and the stakes involved. What does "crime" mean when it is committed by someone whom society has abandoned—whom society has, to put it differently, committed its own crime against? In this context, justice and injustice are reversed, and it is up to the characters, and the reader, to establish their meaning. - Theme: History, Revolution, and Progress. Description: Les Misérables is saturated with French history, and a reader not already knowledgeable about the historical figures of Charles X or Louis-Philippe, for example, can easily get lost in all the detail. But this kind of detail plays a larger purpose in the novel. It is telling that Hugo sets his book in the context of a relatively minor revolt, the riots of July 1832, rather than the massive revolutions of 1789 or 1848. Hugo, while socially progressive, was skeptical about revolution—skeptical that a single dramatic event could turn the tide and improve social wellbeing for the downtrodden majority. Instead, the novel suggests that true revolution takes place slowly, incrementally, and that only such careful movement exemplifies real progress. As in other cases, the novel prefers complexity over one single view in advancing this understanding of history and progress. The conversation between the Bishop and a member of the Convention (the French Revolution assembly that ended up descending into factions and leading to the period of the Terror, characterized by the use of the guillotine to behead people) reveals this ambiguity. The Convention member, now (in the 1810s) hated by society, suggests that none of the Convention's violence was any worse than what the populace had been subjected to under the king before the Revolution. The Bishop, on the other hand, cannot bring himself to accept that people had to be beheaded for the common good, but neither of them seems to win the argument. Revolution is therefore a mixed bag; because it is so dramatic and sudden, even its benefits are inevitably accompanied by drawbacks. - Theme: Mystery and Knowledge in Paris. Description: The novel is full of masks, costumes, mistaken identity, and concealment. Much of this mystery takes place in and is enabled by the winding streets of Paris, a city where characters can find anonymity and escape their pasts. Paris in the period of Les Misérables was not the city of wide-open boulevards that tourists know today. Before the 1850s, it was a largely medieval city of unknown alleys, an old, dank sewer system, and ancient walls and fortresses. Throughout the novel characters both take advantage of and are hindered by its mysteries.Hugo wrote Les Misérables while abroad in political exile, and he lovingly depicts the city from afar, with lengthy asides on Parisian architecture and history. Jean Valjean is able to start a new life in Paris with Cosette because of the opportunities for concealment that the city affords.—Paris is a dynamic, changing city whose very identity varies with the changing identities of its inhabitants. The characters that can best take advantage of this aspect of Paris are the ones that possess the deepest knowledge of Paris's secrets, from its sewers to abandoned courtyards and dark alleyways. As an escaped convict, Jean Valjean is one of these characters, but the group of renegades that Thenardier employs to try to snare Valjean are also experts in Paris's mysteries—as is Gavroche, the young son Thenardier abandons, for whom Paris is a playground to be explored. Ultimately, Paris in the novel takes on the qualities of a character itself, allowing Hugo to explore the other themes of mercy and judgment, justice and injustice, that have Paris as their setting. The city becomes a microcosm of society at large, while also acting as a setting for other characters to discover how to master its ways and plumb its secrets. - Climax: Jean Valjean leads a wounded Marius on his back through the sewers of Paris - Summary: Les Misérables opens not with the protagonist, Jean Valjean, but in an anonymous French town of D—, where a Bishop known as "Welcome" or "Bienvenu" is astonishing the inhabitants with his modest ways, his commitment to the poor, and his unyielding acts of forgiveness. The Bishop is not necessarily a brilliant theologian but rather shows his character through his good works. One day, a shady, ominous-looking figure arrives in town, looking for a meal and a bed. Word gets around that this man is Jean Valjean, a convict recently released from the galleys—his yellow passport, a requirement for ex-convicts, betrays him—and everyone refuses to host him. Finally, a woman in the street tells the despairing Valjean to knock at the Bishop's door. He does so, and the Bishop treats him kindly and cordially. That night, however, Valjean wakes up and, after a brief battle with his conscience, tucks the Bishop's silverware and ornate candlesticks under his arm and runs away. The next day, he's brought back by the police, but the Bishop claims that he had given Valjean these things as a gift, so he should be set free. Valjean is absolutely overwhelmed by this act. He heads away from town, struggling to understand how and why the Bishop didn't obey the laws of judgment and revenge that seem, to Valjean, to define society. As he's struggling with the new idea of mercy, Valjean comes across a small Savoyard boy named Gervais, and steals the young boy's money from him. Suddenly, he's stricken by what he's just done—a reflexive act based in his own past—and he races around the area, attempting without success to find Gervais. The novel's focus moves to Paris, where a young, poor, and innocent woman named Fantine has arrived from the provinces to gain a living for herself. She's fallen in with a group of youths, paired off between men and women, and led by Felix Tholomyes, a jovial young provincial man who's in Paris to study but mainly to have a good time. Fantine, however, is sincere in her love for him, and unable to see through his act. At the end of their summer together, Tholomyes and his friends leave a note for the girls saying that they've been summoned back home and must return to reality. But Fantine is pregnant. After she gives birth to her child, Cosette, she knows that she must take desperate measures in order to care for her without revealing the socially stigmatizing fact of Cosette's illegitimacy. Stopping at Montfermeil on the way to the factory town of M.-sur-M., she sees a woman, Madame Thenardier, watching her two children, Eponine and Azelma, play outside. Touched by this sight, she asks the woman to take care of her daughter while she works. Fantine promises that she'll return in six months. Madame's husband, Thenardier, haggles a higher monthly price for taking care of her, and Fantine sets off again. She arrives at M.-sur-M. and is given a job at a factory. However, people slowly grow suspicious of her lack of a family and her constant letter-writing to Montfermeil. Finally, one woman goes to Montfermeil herself and returns with the news of Fantine's bastard child. The supervisor fires Fantine, and she is forced to take all kinds of menial jobs. Meanwhile, Thenardier continues demanding higher and higher sums for Cosette, lying about various sicknesses she's had—while in reality the family has been using Cosette as their personal servant—until Fantine is ultimately required to prostitute herself. One day Fantine is detained, after a dandy on the street torments her until she throws herself on him. The police inspector Javert brings her to the mayor, Madeleine, who was the one responsible for transforming M.-sur-M. from a poor village into a thriving factory town through new industrial methods he invented. The mayor is known for his generosity and kindness, his constant good works, his faith—and his commitment to the Bishop of D---, whose death he mourns profoundly. After hearing Fantine's tale, to Javert's shock, Madeleine tells him to let this woman go. Javert, who believes only in the authority of the law, leaves, fuming. He's been suspicious of Madeleine ever since he saw him achieve a herculean feat, lifting a horse-cart off of a man named Fauchelevent and saving his life. The only man that strong whom Javert ever knew was a convict, Jean Valjean, who is now wanted for another theft against a Savoyard boy. Javert then finds out that Jean Valjean, now going by the name of Champmathieu, has been captured in the town of Arras. Javert tells Madeleine this story, and Madeleine grows pale, for Madeleine is none other than Valjean himself. Madeleine spends a sleepless night wondering if he should abandon the town—and, now, Fantine, who is desperately ill and has asked him to fetch her daughter Cosette—or sacrifice an innocent man. The next day, he decides to go to the trial anyway, still unsure of what he'll say. But once there, he confesses in front of the entire courtroom that he is Jean Valjean, and offers various proofs. In the confusion that ensues, Valjean isn't arrested, and he manages to slip back to his bank, where he withdraws a sum of half a million francs. He hides this in the forest of Montfermeil and then returns to M.-sur-M., where Fantine is at the point of death. Only then does Javert arrest Valjean and send him back to prison. Not long after that, at a port in Toulon where convicts are responsible for cleaning the ships in harbor, one convict loses his balance and nearly falls into the sea, barely able to hold on to the side of the ship. Suddenly, with a crowd watching, another convict races over, climbs down to the other man, and carries him back up to safety. Shortly thereafter, this savior himself totters and then falls into the sea: the convict, Jean Valjean, is declared to be dead. This, however, is not true, and Valjean is able to swim underwater to safety. He travels to Montfermeil, where he comes across a small waif in the forest at night, carrying a massive bucket of water back to the Thenardiers. It's Cosette, who leads him back home, where Valjean sees just how the family has been mistreating her. Valjean looks poor himself, so Thenardier doesn't respect him, until Valjean buys Cosette an extravagant doll, transforming the way the Thenardiers look at him. Valjean pays Thenardier off and takes Cosette away with him to Paris. There, they spend several months in quiet happiness, as Valjean teaches Cosette to read and write and nurses her back from her state of wretchedness and near-starvation. Valjean becomes known as the poor man who gives alms, but one evening he gives money to a beggar and thinks he recognizes Javert in disguise. After growing suspicious that Javert is on his trail, Valjean takes Cosette and abandons their home. That night, he grows aware that Javert is following him through the streets of Paris, eventually leading a whole group of policemen behind him across the Seine and into the streets of the Right Bank. Finally, Valjean reaches an alley with no outlet, only a massive wall. With only a few minutes to spare before Valjean and his men corner them, Valjean uses his massive strength and a spare rope to hoist Cosette and himself up the wall, succeeding in losing Javert. They fall to the other side and encounter none other than Fauchelevent, whose life Valjean had saved, and who now works as gardener in the Petit-Picpus convent. Fauchelevent helps Valjean and Cosette sneak out of the convent and then reintroduces them to the prioress as his brother and niece. Cosette enrolls in the school, and they spend several happy years there until Fauchelevent's death, at which point Cosette and Valjean move away to their own home. Cosette and Valjean are accustomed to walking in the Luxembourg Gardens, where they often encounter a young man named Marius. Marius had grown up with his grandfather, Gillenormand, a somewhat ridiculous but cheery old man with royalist views. Marius' father, Georges Pontmercy, had been a colonel in Napoleon's army, which Gillenormand disapproved of, so after his mother's death Gillenormand had raised Marius himself and forbidden his father from seeing him. Only after his father's death does Marius learn how much his father loved him, and as he learns more about him, his political views begin to change radically. Finally, once his grandfather finds out just how loyal he's become to his father and how liberal his politics have become, he turns Marius out. Marius gets involved with a group of leftist students, the Friends of the ABC in the Latin Quarter, including Courfeyrac and Enjolras. He continues his law studies but falls into abject poverty, moving into a house known as the Gorbeau hovel. Slowly, he becomes infatuated with the unknown girl who walks in the Luxembourg each day with her father. Marius's neighbors at the Gorbeau hovel are the Jondrettes, a wretchedly poor family. The husband Jondrette, rather than working, prefers to send plaintive letters to wealthy benefactors in order to ask for money. One day, Marius peers through a hole in the wall and is able to see the girl from the Luxembourg, with her father, together who have come to give alms to the Jondrettes. The Jondrette husband puts on an over-the-top act of desperation, and the girl's father promises to return that evening with money for them. After they depart, Jondrette exclaims that he recognized that man, and he'll take his revenge on him for good this evening. Terrified that the girl will come to harm, Marius goes to see a policeman—Javert—and tells him of the man's plans. Javert prepares a sting for that evening. Marius witnesses the entire affair: Jondrette hires other criminals, traps the man in his room, and exclaims that he's Thenardier, and he knows the man is the one who stole the girl (Cosette, though he doesn't say her name) away from him. But the man is able to escape, and Javert captures Thenardier and his cronies. Marius is still confused at the identity of the man and his daughter. He moves away from the hovel. But the Thenardier daughter, Eponine, has fallen in love with Marius. She knows he wants to see the girl, and so although it pains her, she finds him and shows him to the garden where Cosette often sits throughout the afternoons. Cosette recognizes Marius from the Luxembourg, and they begin to spend every afternoon together all throughout the spring, without Valjean finding out. However, Eponine's jealousy is such that she cannot bear for Marius to be happy with Cosette. She sends Valjean an anonymous note warning that he is not safe in the house. Valjean has begun to feel in any case that it would be safer for him and Cosette to go abroad, and he tells her that they are moving to London. In despair, Cosette writes a letter to Marius, who goes to see Gillenormand in hopes that his grandfather will, despite his anger at Marius, give him permission to marry. Gillenormand is thrilled to see Marius, but cannot find a way to show his emotions, and Marius ends up leaving, having failed to achieve that permission. Meanwhile, it's early June in 1832, and many people in Paris are distraught at the death of General Lamarque, an extremely popular politician whom the lower classes of Paris adored for his attention to social issues. Tensions are rising in the streets of Paris, and Courfeyrac and Enjolras, among others, are preparing to fight against the army, hoping to spark another revolution that will lead to social change. Marius is wandering around Paris in despair. He hasn't heard back from Cosette, and decides he'll die rather than live without her, so he might as well join the insurgents. They begin to create a barricade around the Corinthe tavern. What follows is a long battle scene, which lasts nearly the entire night. Meanwhile, Valjean finds a draft of a love letter written from Cosette to Marius. He's utterly distraught, thinking that now he'll lose her to another man. Then he intercepts a letter from Marius to Cosette, which was meant to be delivered the next morning, saying that he's died on the barricades. Against his own will, Valjean goes to the barricades himself. There, Javert has been taken prisoner. Valjean asks permission to kill Javert himself, but instead of shooting him, he lets Javert go free. As the army descends on the tavern, killing all the insurgents who remain, Valjean finds Marius, deeply wounded, behind the barricade, and carries him away. There's nowhere for them to escape, however, until Valjean catches sight of an iron grating. He lifts it off and they find themselves in the Paris sewer. Valjean carries Marius for hours through the sewers, growing increasingly exhausted and despairing that he'll ever find a way out. Finally he emerges, only to come face-to-face with Javert, who had been pursuing Thenardier into the sewers. Valjean tells Javert he will surrender to arrest, but first asks permission to deposit Marius at Gillenormand's, and to say goodbye to Cosette. As he ascends the stairs to Cosette's room, he looks out the window and sees that Javert has disappeared. Struggling with Valjean's mercy, and now his own, Javert is in total despair. He cannot find a way to reconcile his belief in authority and the law with this new system of mercy. He throws himself into the Seine, killing himself. Gillenormand nurses Marius back to health, and loses all of his former pride. He and Valjean agree that Marius and Cosette may marry, and the couple passes several happy months together. Valjean eventually tells Marius about his past as a convict, and Marius in response slowly weans Valjean away from Cosette, until he can barely see her at all. However, as Valjean is nearing death, Marius finds out through various sources that Valjean had reformed and enacted many good works as the mayor of Madeleine; that he hadn't killed Javert but had let him go free; and that it was Valjean who carried Marius through the sewers to safety and freedom. Marius and Cosette rush to Valjean's bedside, where he dies, happy, next to Cosette.

- Genre: Realistic fiction, poetic realism, short story sequence - Title: Let the Great World Spin - Point of view: The point of view varies in each section, variously including first person and third person omniscient narration. - Setting: New York City in the 1970s - Character: The Tightrope Walker (Phillipe Petit). Description: A performance artist from France who, after years of training, sneaks to the top of the World Trade Center and walks across a tightrope strung between the north and south towers. Although this character remains unnamed in the novel, he is based on Philippe Petit, who did in fact walk between the Towers on August 7, 1974 (the same day that the event takes place in the book). - Character: John Andrew Corrigan ("Corrigan"). Description: A Catholic monk from Ireland who moves to the Bronx in order to serve in the government housing projects as a religious missionary. Known as "Corrigan," he has a complex conception of what it means to be religiously faithful. He is interested first and foremost in the struggle of everyday life, thinking that the purest kind of belief arises from the most difficult and seemingly godless moments. From a very young age he displays a compassion for those less fortunate than him, and this compassion often drives him to put himself within the same context as the people he hopes to help, ultimately thinking that he might be able to ease their burdens by struggling alongside them. As an adult in New York he becomes a loyal and dedicated friend to many of the Bronx's prostitutes, frequently bringing them water and allowing them to use his bathroom between their clients. His honor to his religious Order—and the various vows of celibacy and dedication he has taken—is ultimately challenged when he falls in love with Adelita shortly before dying as the victim of a hit-and-run car crash on the way back from trying to get two prostitutes, Jazzlyn and Tillie Henderson, out of jail. - Character: Ciaran Corrigan. Description: Corrigan's older brother. Less religiously-inclined than his younger sibling, he is often skeptical of Corrigan's unshakeable trust in drunks and prostitutes. When he moves to New York City to escape the violence of the Northern Ireland Conflict, he stays in Corrigan's small apartment and is initially appalled by the way prostitutes stream in and out of the room. After it becomes clear that he won't be able to convince his brother to move somewhere else—somewhere safer and cleaner—he begins to understand the humanity that Corrigan sees lurking at the heart of the Bronx. Ciaran slowly gets to know the prostitutes that Corrigan has befriended and finds himself capable of empathizing with them, finally able to view them as humans in a tough situation rather than as misguided and ill-intentioned criminals. - Character: Tillie Henderson. Description: A prostitute living in the same building as Corrigan (whom she has a crush on) in the Bronx. Originally from Cleveland, she is a career prostitute, having begun when she was fifteen. She is remarkably intelligent and does not tolerate disrespect. She takes the blame for a robbery she committed with her daughter, Jazzlyn, and is subsequently sentenced to eight months in prison, which later turns into eighteen months. Distraught over her daughter's death, she resolves to kill herself in prison. - Character: Jazzlyn Henderson. Description: Tillie's daughter, a beautiful young woman who seems to fascinate all who meet her. Like her mother, she becomes a prostitute at an early age. Jazzlyn also develops a serious heroin addiction, a habit that her mother dislikes but ultimately does not interfere with. Upon being released from jail after her mother takes the wrap for their joint robbery, Jazzlyn is killed as a passenger in Corrigan's van when they are hit on the FDR Parkway. A mother herself, she leaves behind two little girls, Jaslyn and Janice. - Character: Adelita. Description: A nurse at a nursing home where Corrigan picks up elderly patients to give them time outside. She has three young children and is from Guatemala, where her husband died and where she trained to be a doctor (when she moved to the United States to escape the Guatemalan Civil War, though, her university credentials didn't transfer). Seeing an assortment of bruises on Corrigan's arm one day, she diagnoses him with TTP, a blood disorder. In the time following this diagnosis, she massages Corrigan's arms to get the blood moving, and this is how the two establish their romantic connection. Adelita and Corrigan fall in love, though Corrigan's vows of celibacy make their relationship difficult until their time together is tragically cut short by Corrigan's death. - Character: Claire Soderberg. Description: A wealthy woman living on the Upper East Side of New York City. She belongs to an informal group of mothers who have lost sons in the Vietnam War. The group meets frequently in each other's apartments to talk about their boys. Claire is a rather lonely, nervous woman who sorely misses her son, Joshua. Although her relationship with her husband is strong and relatively fulfilling, she feels more or less alone with her grief and is desperate for someone she might share it with. - Character: Gloria. Description: A member of the support group for grieving mothers that Claire belongs to. She also lives in the same government housing project as Corrigan, Tillie, and Jazzlyn. Gloria grew up in the South, the daughter of modest working class parents. When she goes to Syracuse for college, she leaves her family and Southern life behind, eventually marrying, divorcing, and moving to New York City, where she marries once again and has three sons, all of whom die in the Vietnam War. When Gloria sees Jazzlyn's daughters, Janice and Jaslyn, being taken by child services, she decides to adopt them. Gloria raises them and maintains a lifelong friendship with Claire. - Character: Lara Liveman. Description: A painter from a wealthy family who until recently enjoyed moderate success in New York's art scene. After several years of partying and experiencing the free love movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, she and her husband, Blaine, decide that their drug habits are destroying them, so they move outside the city to a small cabin. In isolation they work studiously on painting in the style of the 1920s, harkening back to the era and living their lives accordingly. Lara is one of the passengers of the car that hits Corrigan's van on the FDR Parkway. In a moment of panic, she tells Blaine to drive away from the scene of the accident despite her own misgivings. Afterward, she has an overwhelmingly guilty conscience and is left feeling that she must atone for her wrongs. She eventually ends up leaving Blaine for Ciaran, who she later marries and moves to Dublin with. - Character: Blaine. Description: Lara's husband and driver of the car that hits Corrigan's van. Having garnered attention and praise for his artwork, he is greatly motivated by recognition and praise. He is especially taken by drugs, despite the fact that he and Lara are supposedly trying to live a sober lifestyle. Unlike his wife, he fails to see the point of feeling remorseful about having fled the accident on the FDR. - Character: Judge Solomon Soderberg. Description: Claire's husband and a judge in downtown Manhattan. He is well-respected in the legal community and is a relatively good judge despite his rather jaded, discouraged approach. He believes deeply in order and greatly respects the law. These days, though, his primary concern seems to be getting through each day, efficiently hearing and sentencing one case after another. Unlike Claire, he does not wish to talk about his son's death. - Character: Sam Peters ("The Kid"). Description: An eighteen year-old computer hacker who works for a small company in California that builds file-sharing programs and that is also contracted by the United States Pentagon to perform various hacks. In order to settle a bet about whether or not the tightrope walker will fall, the group hacks telephone lines so that they can make calls to payphones within a close radius to the Towers and ask pedestrians to tell them what is happening. The Kid is quiet and shy and merely listens as the rest of the group talks to the people in New York. Eventually, though, he breaks his silence to speak to a woman on the other end of the payphone named Sable, to whom he finds himself attracted. - Theme: Political Unrest. Description: Let the Great World spin tacitly addresses an array of political and cultural issues at play in the United States in the 1970s. When Philippe Petit walked a tightrope strung between New York's Twin Towers on August 7, 1974, the country was undergoing a particularly turbulent political period. Only two days later, on August 9th, President Richard Nixon would resign from office due to his involvement with the break-in and wiretapping of the Democratic National Convention's Watergate offices in Washington, D.C. What's more, American involvement in the Vietnam War had only just ended, the last troops coming home in August of 1973, though the wildly unpopular war didn't officially end until 1975. As such, the social and political climate was paranoid and agitated—Nixon's administration had set an example of institutional dishonesty while the messiness of the Vietnam War raged on without America, furthering the idea that the many years and lives spent in the endeavor had all been wasted. Let the Great World Spin uses Petit's tightrope walk as a centerpiece, a story that brings together the many lives existing on its peripheries. In this way, the book frames the daring act as something to be witnessed and shared by all, despite the current moment's political turmoil. Though the walk does not explicitly champion a political viewpoint, there is an implied defiance of authority and dogmatic rules, a striking and refreshing attitude in a political moment in which presidents and other politicians run the country without obeying the laws themselves. By organizing the stories around Petit's walk, McCann is able to make use of what the World Trade Center stood for in the public eye of the 1970s. The tallest buildings in the world, the Twin Towers had only been standing for a year when Petit walked between them, and their presence elicited a vast amount of criticism from New Yorkers and architects alike. Minoru Yamasaki, the Towers' architect, was accused of creating uselessly large buildings that were not only ugly, but also hindering to the city's day-to-day operation: some worried that they would inhibit television reception, while others complained that the buildings were a physical danger for migrating birds—and perhaps most importantly, the offices that the Towers offered were at the time largely unnecessary, since most businesses that needed office space were not located in Lower Manhattan. Overall, the buildings were very poorly received, a sentiment echoed in the chapter "Miró, Miró, on the Wall" when Claire calls them "monstrosities." By the time McCann was writing Let the Great World Spin, though, the Twin Towers had already taken on a deep sense of national significance; in the post-9/11 political climate, the Towers became symbolic of American strength and unity, the two buildings firmly fixed within the country's historical consciousness. By organizing his characters' stories around an act of beauty that took place on the Towers, McCann is able to harness this sense of national unity long before the World Trade Center actually stood for such togetherness. Political unrest in Let the Great World Spin also manifests itself in the presence of violence and war. In fact, war is in the background of many of the book's stories. For Ciaran, narrator of "All Respects to Heaven, I Like it Here," the violence of the Northern Ireland Conflict drives him to move to America, a country tangled up in its own war (albeit safely far from the violence). In "A Fear of Love," Blaine is well-known for his anti-Vietnam films. In "Roaring Seaward, and I Go," Jaslyn's sister is stationed in Baghdad, and when she visits Claire's apartment, a newspaper in the hallway bears news of the Iraq War. In this way, violence, strife, and conflict all serve as a backdrop for ordinary life. Even quiet domestic scenes—perhaps especially quiet domestic scenes—are unable to extricate themselves from the world's senseless calamities, even if these grand-scale tragedies don't act as a central focus. Life, it seems, goes on in spite of its turbulent political circumstances. - Theme: Unity & Human Connection. Description: Chance encounters, serendipitous moments, and relationships that defy racial and cultural boundaries run throughout Let the Great World Spin. Above all, the book is interested in the patchwork of human life and the mysterious convergences or departures that unite people either physically or philosophically. The epigraph, taken from Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project, establishes this interest and sets the novel's tone: "All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is." Let the Great World Spin is not interested in understanding the mysterious way lives often overlap with one another. Rather, it is concerned with examining the beauty inherent in this enigmatic kind of unity. The book champions the idea that two (or more) very different life paths may cross and become intertwined with one another in a way that profoundly alters both trajectories; this is the idea that the people around us—strangers—could, in some way, meaningfully influence us. Within this framework, the characters of Let the Great World Spin frequently deal with questions of compassion. In some cases they lack a certain amount of empathy, as is the case with Ciaran when he first meets the prostitutes his brother has been helping in the Bronx. In other cases, though, characters display an impressive inclination toward empathy, perhaps best exemplified by Corrigan's immense selflessness in the rough environment of the government housing projects. Failure to exercise empathy seemingly closes characters off from the broader world, ultimately resulting in a grief of sorts: Blaine, for example, doesn't take responsibility for the tragedy he has inflicted upon Corrigan and Jazzlyn by crashing into the back of their van—he's only concerned with making a name for himself in the art world, and is blind to everything beyond his own self-motivated priorities. Eventually this costs him his marriage. Lara, on the other hand, is distraught by the fact that she was involved in Corrigan and Jazzlyn's simultaneous death and, motivated by empathy and compassion, seeks to make amends in any small way she can. This, of course, leads her to Ciaran, whom she eventually falls in love with and marries. Empathy and compassion, then, are held up as paragons of human connection and unity. Characters also congregate in more tangible, obvious ways in Let the Great World Spin, as circumstance and shared emotions serve as unifying forces. The Bronx prostitutes, for example, have a network that is something like a family, and they manage to connect meaningfully with one another despite—or perhaps because of—their difficult conditions. Claire and the women in "Miró, Miró, on the Wall" organize themselves around their own grief, sharing stories of their deceased sons with one another in order to lighten the burden of solitary mourning. Similarly, the computer aficionados of "Etherwest" constitute a small community of individuals with a common interest in hacking. As such, McCann is concerned with creating a mosaic of humanity that is held together by the little connections made between people who might not otherwise have very much in common. Unity comes into play in Let the Great World Spin in a structural sense, too: the narratives are all loosely related to one another by way of Petit's tightrope walk. The ripple effect of the event is felt throughout the book. While some characters—like Marcia in "Miró, Miró, on the Wall,"—directly witness the tightrope walk, others—like Jaslyn in "Roaring Seaward, and I Go"—have a more vicarious, removed relationship with the event. As a narrative device, the walk works to bring the multiple storylines together across space and time, ultimately illustrating how an event—current or historical—can connect people from different walks of life, even if that connection is not immediately observable. - Theme: Prejudice & Stereotypes. Description: Cultural and economic divides are felt quite strongly in Let the Great World Spin, and these divisions often bring about an array of prejudices and stereotypes that the characters perpetuate and endure. For instance, characters from drastically different backgrounds are frequently paired with one another, a technique that ultimately emphasizes the rifts between them while simultaneously seeking to explore their prejudices in a more nuanced manner. As such, one of the novel's primary concerns is to deconstruct the beliefs that wedge themselves between human relationships. Throughout the novel, characters often use bigotry—relying on prejudices and stereotypes—to justify their own shortcomings and frustrations. Other characters are subsequently forced to bear the brunt of this mistreatment. One way McCann creates this dynamic is by placing the Bronx at the heart of the book. In the 1970s the Bronx had crime and poverty rates that were notably higher than other New York City boroughs. The government housing facilities were deemed especially unsafe. Into this environment McCann places an array of characters from varying backgrounds, thus inviting confrontations and racial or socioeconomic tensions to rise to the surface. For a book interested in the concept of unity, prejudice and stereotyping can be seen as the antagonistic forces that work to drive people apart. There are several instances in which, despite how desperately a character might want to step outside his or her own prejudices, it proves almost impossible to overcome various deep-seated, widespread paradigms. Claire's friendship with Gloria, for example, transcends racial and cultural divides, but even this relationship is alive with the racial tensions at large in American society in the 1970s. It is McCann's clear intention to explore how people might come together without fully freeing themselves of their most strongly held prejudices. At the same time, McCann is also interested in subverting the stereotypes he establishes. For example, despite the assumption that she is unintelligent, Tillie—a lifelong prostitute, drug user, and petty criminal—quotes 13th century Persian poetry and has an above-average IQ. Even Judge Soderberg—who might be easily characterized as indifferent to the circumstances of those less fortunate than him—has moments in which he displays empathy. It becomes clear that this is a novel that wants to champion the human capacity to contain multitudes; the entire book's project serves as a testament to the fact that people are never simply who they appear to be at first glance. Rather complicatedly, though, such subversions of stereotypes sometimes emphasize the moments in which characters fail to show empathy for one another. By revealing a character's capacity to step outside his or her own perspective, McCann illustrates the fact that all humans—even the most criminally-inclined or hopelessly bigoted—are complex and unique. For example, when Judge Soderberg—who is chiefly concerned with getting through his day quickly and without hassle—sentences Tillie Henderson, he momentarily recognizes her as more than just another criminal to be done away with: "Her face seemed for a second almost beautiful, and then the hooker turned and shuffled and the door was closed behind her, and she vanished into her own namelessness." In this moment we, as readers, feel Soderberg's ability to transcend his own institutionalized racism, but then we watch as he immediately reverts back to apathy, letting Tillie disappear "into her own namelessness," swallowed by the court system. In Let the Great World Spin, even momentary instances of transcending bigotry—that split second in which a character sees somebody as a human rather than as a stereotype—serve as vitally important examples of our capacity to connect with one another despite the greater antagonistic forces working to drive us apart. When this realization is ignored, though, the presence of stereotypes and prejudices are felt even more strongly than before. - Theme: Simultaneity & Time. Description: The idea of simultaneity is important to the construction of Let the Great World Spin. Once again, we can look to the novel's epigraph for guidance: "All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is." Within this is the idea that the world is made up of a great many lives existing all at once, and there is a sense of disappointment at the fact that "we will never know" all of these stories or people. This is the general view that informs Let the Great World Spin's structure: even if they don't directly correlate to one another, the protagonists' stories all overlap, producing a kind of narrative harmony without necessarily fully connecting. What this novel then allows us to do as readers is to experience "all the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be"; as onlookers to a book with many disparate narratives, we are the only ones afforded the privilege of fully experiencing the stories that happen one on top of the other at the same time. Of course, not all of the stories in Let the Great World Spin happen at the exact same time, though. (Jaslyn's story as an adult, for example, takes place roughly thirty years after her mother has died.) As such, the actual passage of time takes on a certain importance. But even those stories that seem to exist outside of the book's primary slice of life are ultimately tied into the narrative by the tightrope walk, an event that epitomizes the idea of simultaneity because of the way the characters engage with it. To illustrate this we can take Jaslyn's relationship with the walk as an example. She is very connected to a picture of Petit on the tightrope because it links her to her mother: "The photo was taken on the same day her mother died—it was one of the reasons she was attracted to it in the first place: the sheer fact that such beauty had occurred at the same time." Although time has put her at a remove, Jaslyn remains vicariously connected to her mother through the tightrope walk. The passage of time in Let the Great World Spin is imbued with the idea that "the city lived in a sort of everyday present." In this "everyday present" the characters' lives overlap, and it is the human layering—the convergence of relationships and experiences—that forge a history that they are able to draw upon. In short, what's held up as important is not the fact that life goes on—that time passes—but rather that relationships and experiences accumulate over time, creating a vast mosaic of humanity. Furthermore, the passage of time is also notable in the emergence of technology in Let the Great World Spin. The 1960s and '70s saw the advent of the ARPANET—an early computer network used for digital communications—which ushered in a new era and method of correspondence. The military made use of such methods in Vietnam (as exemplified in "Miró, Miró, on the Wall" and Joshua's position in the war) while a computer subculture blossomed in America (exemplified by the group of hackers in "Etherwest"). Suddenly people found themselves able to communicate with one another using new technology, a fact that is in keeping with the book's preoccupation with human connection and its interest in marking the advancement of time. Although it is not blatantly evident, Let the Great World Spin is also in many ways a response to the destruction of the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001. Rather than examining the actual moment of catastrophe, though, McCann travels back to a different time, engaging with New York City's history in a way that reframes the present. The Towers undoubtedly loom large in the consciousness of Americans in the early 21st-century, and just as the tightrope walk in Let the Great World Spin factors into many characters' lives, the destruction of the Twin Towers directly or indirectly influences Americans who were alive on September 11th, 2001. This sentiment is very much present throughout the book, and the current absence of the towers is strongly felt; when reading Let the Great World Spin it seems unimaginably long ago that the Towers still stood. - Theme: Doubt & Faith. Description: Doubt is a common theme in Let the Great World Spin, whether it is in regards to religion, relationships, or the self. Perhaps the most evident of these is the doubt experienced in relation to the existence of God, as exemplified by Corrigan; he wants a "fully believable God, one you could find in the grime of the everyday." God, he believes, ought to be doubted because the struggle for belief is divine in and of itself. Other kinds of doubt surface throughout the novel in similar ways. Take, for example, the watchers of Petit's tightrope walk; what captivates them about the walk is a lack of faith that Petit will be able to safely pull it off. And although Petit himself remains confident throughout his training, the pages that profile him do in fact imply a certain kind of doubt: the harder he trains—the harder he dedicates himself to this crazy stunt—the more the book seems to acknowledge the catastrophic possibilities inherent in the act. Every character in the novel experiences doubt in some form or another, though the gravity of this doubt varies. Nonetheless, the lives in Let the Great World Spin often take shape in ways that are informed by second-guessing or fear; in some cases a character's life changes for the better because he or she acts so as to confront his or her own doubt or fear. In other cases, a character is immobilized by strong misgivings that he or she finds himself unable to eradicate. Regardless, doubt is upheld as something that can strongly influence a person's life. The fact that the book's most unifying event—the tightrope walk—has such a large margin for error strangely forges something close to the "fully believable God" that Corrigan yearns for; he believes that there is "no better faith than a wounded faith." Of course, the walk is not godlike in the literal sense, but it does draw upon belief (much like religion). The fact that the characters doubt Petit's ability to walk the tightrope unharmed gives rise—by negation—to a faith of sorts. To be sure, when Marcia tells Claire and the other women about seeing the tightrope walker, Gloria asks if the man was like an angel. Eventually Marcia says, "And all I could think of, was, Maybe that's my boy and he's come to say hello." In this way McCann places his characters into a discourse of faith by way of doubt, even if for some of the characters (like Jaslyn, for example) this is a purely secular kind of faith. Faith is also involved in the various interpersonal relationships in Let the Great World Spin. The strongest bonds between characters seem to arise out of those relationships in which both parties trust one another. We see this in Corrigan and Adelita's relationship, in which Adelita must, after Corrigan's death, allow herself to have faith in the fact that he would have chosen her over his religion if he had lived. Faith is also present in the way Corrigan treats the prostitutes like Jazzlyn and Tillie: he is sure that they—like anybody else—deserve love and good treatment despite their occasional immoral actions. He has faith in them. Thus it seems that even secular kinds of faith can strengthen bonds, enlivening a person's empathetic faculties. - Climax: Because there are so many different stories in the novel, there is not simply one traditional climax. But there are two events in particular that are especially significant to the book's shape: the first is the tightrope walk and its eventual completion, and the second is the car accident that kills both Corrigan and Jazzlyn. Both of these moments greatly influence many of the book's storylines, either directly or indirectly, ultimately serving as plot points around which everything else is organized. - Summary: Let the Great World Spin is a polyphonic novel, which means that it is written from multiple different perspectives, ultimately following a large cast of characters. Unconcerned with forging a linear storyline, the book loosely centers itself around Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the Twin Towers on August 7, 1974, though not all of the stories directly relate to this event. Rather, they often simply overlap with it, even if just for a moment, creating something of a mosaic held together by the unifying event. At the same time, some of the stories, however disparate, actually do link up with one another. This is often brought to bear through the use of several key characters whose stories frequently stand out and resurface in the many others. Corrigan, an Irishman who becomes a Catholic monk working in the Bronx, is an example of this. He occupies a great deal of the novel, whether directly or indirectly, and the majority of the stories engage with either his life working with and befriending prostitutes in the Bronx or with his eventual death in a car crash. The other narratives—the stories that have nothing to do with Corrigan—are held together by the tightrope walk. In this way, Let the Great World Spin is a deeply thematic novel that presents a wide range of characters and stories without forcing them into chronological or situational uniformity. As a result, the book mimics one of the beautiful facts of human existence, as stated by its epigraph: "All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is" (Aleksander Hemon, The Lazarus Project). Ciaran and John Andrew Corrigan are brothers from Dublin, Ireland. Ciaran tells the story of their upbringing, detailing his brother's—whom everyone just calls "Corrigan"—early interest in religion. Raised by a single mother, the two boys share a room, where Ciaran hears his little brother reciting prayers every night until morning. The prayers are fervent and often improvised, and it becomes clear that Corrigan has established a meaningful and unique relationship with religion, one that is entirely his own despite its foundation in Catholicism. Before long, Corrigan begins offering charity to the various drunks and homeless people of Dublin. He gives away his own blankets and eventually begins visiting the dingy pubs in order to get drunk, though he is still only twelve. After a while—and after his mother catches him and makes him promise to stop—it becomes clear that Corrigan drinks for a very particular and unique reason; he is not interested so much in getting drunk, but rather preoccupied with the idea that in drinking he can suffer through the common alcoholic's pain, thereby taking on the burdens of the people around him. He sits in the pub and listens to the long difficult stories told by drunks and unfortunate souls thrown into poverty. Even as he slowly stops drinking with them, he continues frequenting the local spots, thinking himself helpful in a spiritual way. Later, when the boys' mother dies, their father appears in the hospital. Corrigan refuses to embrace him, angry that he abandoned the family. The night before their mother's funeral, Corrigan gives away a closet-full of his father's old suits to Dublin's homeless people. After selling the house, Corrigan begins studying the teachings of Saint Francis of Assisi, a thirteenth-century Italian friar and preacher. As he ages he becomes more and more devoted to religion, and upon turning nineteen, Corrigan attends religious school at Emo College, where he pours himself into theological study. Before finishing, however, he moves to Brussels and joins a group of monks, referred to as the Order, and vows to live a life of chastity, poverty, and obedience. This eventually leads him to the Bronx in New York City, where the Order assigns him to live as something like a missionary. Not long thereafter, Ciaran also decides to emigrate to America after the Northern Ireland Conflict moves south and violence enters Dublin. He moves into Corrigan's very small apartment in the heart of government housing projects in the Bronx, where prostitution, drug abuse, and violence is seemingly ever-present. Corrigan, he finds, has established close relationships with a number of prostitutes, especially a woman named Tillie and her teenage daughter Jazzlyn (a mother herself). The women stream in and out of his apartment in order to use the bathroom between clients; much to Ciaran's dismay, Corrigan leaves the door unlocked so that the women can easily access the facilities. This lenience has not made him popular with the community's pimps, and he is often beaten up or threatened. During the day Corrigan drives a van full of elderly people to and from their nursing home, allowing them some recreational time outside the establishment. In doing so, he meets Adelita, a nurse at the home who, to his own horror, he falls in love with. They start a tentative but close romantic relationship as Corrigan struggles with his fidelity to God and his original vows of celibacy. One day while the prostitutes are working underneath the expressway there is a large police sting in which the women are rounded up and taken to jail. Tillie and Jazzlyn, it turns out, have a separate outstanding warrant for theft and are thus held longer than normal. Incensed, Corrigan drives his van downtown to the courthouse to advocate for them. Eventually Jazzlyn is released, but on the drive home she and Corrigan are rear-ended on FDR, the parkway leading to the Bronx. Jazzlyn is killed when she is jettisoned through the windshield; Corrigan is rushed to the hospital, where he soon dies in the company of Adelita and Ciaran. At this point, Let the Great World Spin pivots to focus on a group of women who meet frequently as a support group, as they are all mourning the loss of their sons to the Vietnam War. Claire, a wealthy woman living on the Upper East Side, hosts them in her extravagant apartment for the first time. She is worried about the impression her wealth will have on the rest of the group; one of the previous meetings was, after all, at a woman named Gloria's apartment in the Bronx, in the same government housing project where Corrigan lived. However, the women dwell on the markers of Claire's wealth as they usher themselves into her apartment because one of them, Marcia, is in the middle of telling a story about seeing the tightrope walker. On the ferry into Manhattan from Staten Island she spotted him, and now the conversation overtakes the meeting, distracting everyone from the immediate particulars of their surroundings. Eventually this bothers Claire because she isn't given the chance to tell the women about her son Joshua, which is one of the purposes of their visit. Soon enough the conversation turns toward Joshua, though, and Claire is able to show them his room. Back on the FDR, we find ourselves inside Lara Liveman's head as she relives riding in the passenger seat of the car that hit Corrigan's van. She relates the crash: she and her husband, Blaine, are on their way out of the city after several days of intense partying. Smoking marijuana as he drives, Blaine clips the backside of Corrigan's van. They remain unharmed as the van spins out of control. They drive on for a moment before stopping up ahead to survey the crash from afar. Afraid of the consequences, they flee, although Lara has major misgivings and cannot seem to banish the image of Corrigan's facial expression during the crash from her head. Blaine, on the other hand, is confident that it was not his fault, and urges Lara to move on. This proves impossible, ultimately driving Lara back to the city several days later, where she goes to the hospital in search of information about the car crash. Thinking she is Corrigan's relative, a hospital worker gives her his possessions, including his license. She then finds herself at his apartment in the Bronx, claiming that she's come from the hospital to return Corrigan's belongings. She meets Ciaran as he is about to leave to attend Jazzlyn's funeral. She accompanies him and, afterward, Ciaran finds out that Lara was in the car that took his brother's life. Confused and grief-stricken, they go to a bar together. In the wake of Jazzlyn's death, Tillie worries over her grandchildren who have been suddenly orphaned. Because she took complete blame for the robbery she and Jazzlyn committed—a plea that got Jazzlyn out of jail and, by chance, sent her on the path toward her death—Tillie is sentenced to eight months in prison. She desperately wants to know who is caring for her granddaughters, wanting them to come visit her. In self-defense she brutally injures another inmate, an action that adds eighteen months to her sentence. She stops eating, becomes increasingly depressed, and decides that she will hang herself from a pipe in the bathrooms. Some days before she does this, though, her grandchildren are brought in by their new caretaker to visit her. Tillie vaguely recognizes the caretaker as someone from the Bronx. Tillie is briefly happy, but when the visitation session comes to an abrupt end, she feels even more desperate than before. Reflecting on her wrongs and the great many injustices in her life, she says goodbye to the world, resolving once and for all to end her stay on earth. Once again, Let the Great World Spin returns to the fateful day of August 7, 1974, the day that Corrigan and Jazzlyn died and Philippe Petit walked the tightrope between the Twin Towers. This time we are afforded the perspective of Claire's husband, Judge Soderberg, as he sentences Tillie and then immediately after hears Petit's case. This brings multiple narratives together, vicariously connecting Claire's story with Tillie's—and therefore Corrigan's and Jazzlyn's, too—and, of course, finally bringing these lives into close contact with Philippe Petit. Beyond these principle events, the book is also pervaded by small set pieces in which Petit's walk—or his preparation for it—briefly takes center stage. McCann also weaves his way through various backstories and often doubles back on the same moment in order to provide a different perspective. In the book's last section, for example, Corrigan's lover, Adelita, reminisces about the morning after he first spent the night at her house. Another chapter in this section takes us through Gloria's upbringing in the South and what led her to New York City; we also return to Claire's apartment—this time from Gloria's perspective—to witness the tense moments in which Claire begs Gloria to stay with her after the other women leave, offering to pay her and thereby making an unfortunate implication about how she views their friendship in terms of race. In the end, Claire accompanies Gloria to the Bronx just as Tillie's grandchildren (Jazzlyn's children) are being taken away by social services; in a moment of clarity, Gloria declares that she will adopt the two little girls. The novel concludes by moving forward in time to when Jaslyn—one of the two little girls adopted by Gloria—is an adult visiting New York. Gloria has passed away, and Jaslyn is visiting Claire—who became Gloria's lifelong friend—on her deathbed. She keeps a photograph of Petit on the high wire. She looks at it often, slipping it from the tissue paper it's wrapped in and thinking about the fact that such an act of beauty happened on the same day her mother died.

- Genre: Novel, Epistolary Novel, Travel Narrative - Title: Letters from an American Farmer - Point of view: First Person - Setting: The American colonies in the 1770s and 1780s - Character: James. Description: James is the fictional "author" of Letters from an American Farmer. He is a Pennsylvanian in the late 1700s who inherited his farm from his father and has little formal education, but has come to cherish the simple life of the American farmer as the happiest in the world. In the letters he writes to his friend Mr. F.B., he describes what he thinks makes Americans' lives so uniquely happy. In particular, he believes that the freedom to own and farm one's own land and make one's own living, without intervention from a meddling government, contributes greatly to American happiness, making farmers especially productive, virtuous citizens. James is a loving family man and often mentions the joy and motivation that his wife and children bring to his life. Even more than that, James loves to write about his observations and reflections on nature and wildlife, such as bees, hummingbirds, and snakes. James apparently traveled widely before getting married and writes of his impressions of places like Nantucket and Charleston, South Carolina. Some of James's attitudes reflect a relatively advanced outlook for his time, while also betraying a certain apathy and self-justification. On several occasions, he writes with deep feeling against cruel treatment of enslaved people and even hopes for the eradication of the practice of slavery in America, but at the same time, he continues to justify being a slaveholder himself. In a similar way, he expresses respect and sympathy for Indian neighbors and even plans to take refuge among them when Revolutionary fighting breaks out, yet he maintains that European and Indian people ideally live separately and do not mingle too much. At the end of the Letters, as war shatters his hitherto peaceful life, James doubts whether his farm—and indeed America as a whole—will survive the Revolution's upheaval. - Character: J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur. Description: Crèvecoeur is the author of Letters from an American Farmer. He writes most of the Letters from the perspective of a character named James (with the exception of one letter written by Iwan). The historical Crèvecoeur was born and educated in France, served in the French army in Canada, and emigrated to America in 1759, becoming an American citizen in 1765 and establishing a farm in upstate New York. Though the Letters reflect Crèvecoeur's extensive travels, Crèvecoeur himself mainly shows up in the book's opening Advertisements, where he comments on his antislavery views and his regret over the conflict between England and the American colonies. - Character: Mr. F.B.. Description: F.B. is James's friend, recent guest, and the recipient of his letters. Though F.B. doesn't appear directly in the book, James portrays him as an educated Englishman who's much more cultured, well-read, and widely traveled than James himself. After visiting James in America, F.B. apparently requested that James write him letters in England, which form the premise for the book. - Character: James's Wife. Description: James's wife doesn't play a direct role in the Letters, but James often mentions her (though he never names her directly) when writing about life on his farm. James expresses deep affection for his wife, consults her before making decisions, and claims, with tongue in cheek, that she is always right. He portrays her as having a mind and opinions of her own, like when she initially tries to dissuade him from spending time writing to F.B. for fear that he'll gain a reputation as the "scribbling farmer." He also credits his wife for motivating him to become a successful farmer and feels joy when she and their children keep him company while he works. He also praises his wife's hard work and skill, especially at weaving, brewing, and home remedies. - Character: Andrew the Hebridean. Description: Andrew the Hebridean is a friend of James's who emigrated from the remote island of Barra, Scotland, in 1774. James gives Andrew's story as an illustration of how a virtuous, hardworking man of humble origins can do well for himself in America. James met Andrew and his family while visiting a friend in Philadelphia and offered to lodge the newcomers until they got on their feet. Over the course of a few years, with the help of James and other neighbors, Andrew becomes a proficient farmer and saves enough money to buy and develop his own small farm. - Character: Iwan. Description: Iwan is a Russian gentleman and friend of James's and the author of Letter XI. On James's encouragement, Iwan visits botanist John Bertram to learn about American farming practices. Iwan is struck by the freedom American farmers enjoy and predicts that America will surpass Europe in prosperity. He tells Bertram how Russia's progress is hindered by poverty and particularly by the inhumane practice of serfdom. - Character: John Bertram. Description: John Bertram is a friend of James's, a Pennsylvania farmer, Quaker, and celebrated botanist whom Iwan visits in Letter XI. Bertram has little formal education but became a self-taught botanist after he began noticing beautiful plants on his farm. His knowledge and specimen collection have even gained him a reputation in Europe. - Theme: Freedom and Government. Description: J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur writes Letters from an American Farmer mostly in the voice of James, a fictional Pennsylvanian in the 1770s. Repeatedly in the letters, James asserts that America offers more freedom than anywhere else on Earth, and that the life of the American farmer exhibits that freedom in a unique way. (It's important to note that James speaks for the European, property-owning majority and not for enslaved people or the very poor.) The freedom of the farmer's life, James proposes, is made possible by the American colonies' minimal government. In Letter II, James attributes much of his happiness to the fact that he owes "nothing but a peppercorn to my country," letting him focus on his family and neighbors instead of a distant government. Farmed land is the foundation of American "rights; […] our freedom, our power as citizens," he adds. Essentially, James insists that because farmers work for themselves and their families instead of to enrich a feudal lord, they are motivated to succeed, they have a stake in their community's and country's success, and they are much happier than people in other countries who own little or nothing and lack a voice. Because Americans have the opportunity to become citizens and have a say in their own government, countless downtrodden Europeans risk their lives to settle in America. At the same time, James doesn't believe in unbridled freedom. He claims that people who live on America's frontiers, because they're so distant from seats of government, tend to be too idle and conflict-driven. And because they hunt to survive instead of becoming disciplined farmers, they suffer from weaker character. This suggests that there's such a thing as too much freedom, and that virtue is necessary to maintain freedom in the long run. It's also worth noting that, at the end of the Letters, James is in doubt about the ultimate fate of the American experiment. Ironically, James fears that when American colonists assert their freedom by fighting their British rulers, his cherished freedom is threatened, and he considers joining an Indian community to maintain some semblance of that freedom. He believes that anything more than a mild, hands-off government—whether British or American—will impede the freedoms, success, and happiness of ordinary citizens. The Letters' overall impression, though, is that such a government is hard to maintain, and thus freedom is a fragile balance. - Theme: Farming, Land, and Love of Nature. Description: In one sense, land has a very practical purpose in Letters from an American Farmer. It's the basis for "the true and the only philosophy of an American farmer"—that is, owning and cultivating land gives someone standing and a voice in the world. This status contrasts starkly with the oppression of serfs in Russia, which Crèvecoeur describes in the voice of Iwan, a Russian traveler, in Letter XI. Because serfs are bought and sold along with their land, Iwan explains, they can take no joy in the land they work and, unlike resourceful American farmers, aren't invested in creatively making it better. The American ideal, then, is a mutually beneficial relationship between free farmers and their land. But owning land doesn't mean that Crèvecoeur views it only as a means to an end. James's special relationship with his own land affords him the leisure to study and enjoy it—a form of "contemplation" that, he implies, is unique to the American farmer. Such contemplation is the subject of many of James's reflections, especially in Letter II, where he admires the industriousness of the bees he tracks down to harvest honey, the humorous behaviors of greedy cows and songbirds, and the ingenious nests of hornets. He even spends most of Letter X describing the strange beauty of two snakes wrestling to the death. Though James maintains the superiority of human reason and sometimes kills prey or pests, he also asserts that animals deserve humane treatment. Though it isn't argued outright, the Letters' overall impression is that land and nature should be lovingly stewarded, not exploited, and that any American farmer would come to this conclusion by the nature of his daily work on the land. - Theme: Emigration, Hard Work, and Success. Description: For Crèvecoeur, as conveyed through James, America is unique in the world of his day. Because America is such a new country, novelties can be found there that can't be found elsewhere in the world. One of James's favorite points is the colonies' curious blend of nationalities—people emigrate to America from many different European countries, so the average American has a "strange mixture of blood." What these diverse people have in common, according to James, is a determination to seize opportunity and improve their lives in a new land. A century before he wrote in the late 1700s, America was mostly a wilderness, but now it is filled with farms, villages, and cities. Because of emigrants' virtuous hard work and industry, James suggests, America has become an incredible success story. James doesn't claim that everyone can become rich in America. Rather, he proposes that Americans have avenues to try to succeed that were closed to them in Europe; and even if they don't become wealthy, most people who work hard should be able to achieve a stable, comfortable life. James argues that Americans work hard because they work for themselves. They don't have to labor for a nobleman or prince under an oppressive feudal system. Because Americans are landowners instead of tenants, they have the chance to become productive and self-sufficient in a way they could never be in Europe. As they become landowners, they also gain self-respect, their ambition grows, and they work even harder for themselves and their children. James offers the story of Andrew the Hebridean to illustrate how emigrants hailing from humble origins can become successful, not through any remarkable means, but simply by setting goals, working hard, and integrating into a community. Unimpeded by greedy landlords or oppressive laws, Andrew is able to start a farm and support his family within a few years of landing at Philadelphia. James also spends several letters describing the colonization of Nantucket in detail to show how even a barren, sandy island can yield success through emigrants' ingenuity and effort. Through his choice of examples, Crèvecoeur argues that America is truly a land of opportunity for those willing to be industrious. - Theme: Religion in America. Description: Crèvecoeur was a deist (a philosophy that emphasized human reason and observation of nature and downplayed divine revelation), and that perspective is clear in James's remarks on religion throughout the Letters. In particular, James sees religious indifference as characteristic of Americans. He explains that when emigrants arrive in America, they're often fervent members of a specific Christian denomination, but that the more they intermingle with neighbors from different sects, the less religiously distinctive they become. While newcomers might try to settle near others of like beliefs, most don't succeed in staying isolated from other groups—and anyway, farming is such a demanding life that most people don't have time to proselytize or persecute others who believe differently. Many continue to attend church, but the more denominational identities weaken, the less they are passed down through subsequent generations. In fact, when James faces the possibility that his family will escape the war by living among the Indians, he takes comfort in the fact that they don't need a specific church or set of doctrines in order to worship—they just need to believe that God is "the Father of all men" no matter what he is called. This attitude takes James's admiration for religious indifference to a surprising extreme. Readers should notice that the author's deist outlook shapes his opinions about who is a good or bad Christian, and even which details he chooses to emphasize in his religious survey of the American colonies. It wouldn't be hard to find examples of colonial Americans who weren't religiously indifferent, and plenty of Christians valued their distinctive teachings much more highly than Crèvecoeur would think appropriate or choose to highlight. Still, the Letters' overwhelming view is that when religious identities and theologies weaken and fade in the American melting pot, the country benefits in the long run. - Theme: Colonization, Atrocity, and Apathy. Description: The Letters' attitude toward oppressed and colonized peoples is complex. James takes the existence of slavery in America somewhat for granted. That is, he calls slavery a great evil that should be eradicated eventually, yet in the meantime, he finds it acceptable to enslave people himself, as long as he treats them humanely. In his Letter IX on Charleston, South Carolina, James laments that colonial planters have become wealthy due to the labor of enslaved people, while remaining numb to the sufferings of those very people. As an example, he tells a horrible story of a Carolina planter who left an enslaved man in a cage to die because the man had killed his overseer. James describes the dying man's sufferings in affecting detail, and he refuses to even relate the plantation owner's words in his own defense. And yet, he apparently doesn't do anything to dissuade the slave owner or help the tortured man himself. James also doesn't shy away from acknowledging that many native people suffered violence or were defrauded of their lands when they first came into contact with colonists. Even when those encounters were friendly, like when Quakers settled on the island of Nantucket, huge numbers of Native Americans succumbed to new scourges like smallpox or alcoholism; therefore they face growing obscurity and probable extinction. Still, James generally presents a favorable view of Native Americans. In the book's final letter, James even plans to flee the American Revolution by taking refuge with his family in an Indian village, trusting that the villagers will be more hospitable and peaceful than most Europeans. Yet his attitude is complicated; on one hand, he holds an admiring, even romanticized view of Native American life (it's perfectly apolitical and peaceful), but on the other hand, he dreads his young children becoming fully "Indian" in their habits and would never allow his daughter to marry a non-European. In both his attitudes about the evil of slavery and oppression of Native Americans, then, James acknowledges atrocities while not showing much willingness to confront them, and often betraying his own racist beliefs in the process. - Climax: - Summary: French immigrant J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur writes a series of letters in the fictional persona of James, a Pennsylvania farmer during the Revolutionary War period. James addresses his letters to a friend named F.B., a European who recently visited him in America. In the first letter, James, who has little formal schooling, demurs from writing the letters F.B. has requested, insisting that he isn't educated enough to write informative, engaging letters. But his minister friend encourages him to try anyway, arguing that a cultured Englishman like F.B. would learn much from James's account of what makes Americans' lives so happy. Finally, James agrees, though he urges F.B. not to think his efforts presumptuous; he's knows he's just a farmer, after all. In Letter II, James writes of the joys of being an American farmer. He inherited his farm from his father. He believes that there's no lifestyle in the world that affords as much freedom as that of a farmer; he's not beholden to a landlord or a demanding government, and the land supplies everything that he, his wife, and his children need. Being a landowner is the basis of James's rights, freedom, and power as a citizen. It also gives him plenty of opportunity to observe and reflect on both wild and domestic animals that live on his land. He has a special fondness for hardworking bees and loves to track them into the woods to gather honey from their hives. Though it might not seem like much to a well-traveled European, James thinks his life is rich and satisfying, and he desires no other kind of happiness for his children. In Letter III, James explores the nature of American identity. Lacking aristocracy and established religion, America is very different from Europe. Except for town-dwellers, most Americans farm, and there isn't a stark disparity between rich and poor. Also, many Americans descend from a blend of European nationalities, emigrants who rose from humble origins. In Europe, their ancestors had nothing except family ties; in America, by contrast, they have land, the ability to earn their own food, and the privileges of citizenship. America has diverse landscapes—the seacoast, the mid-Atlantic farm country, and the western frontier—which shape the people who live there. (James does think that frontiersmen tend to be "barbarous" and not as enterprising as seafarers or farmers.) America's religious mixture is also novel in its diversity; James says that Americans are too busy farming to be overzealous about their adherence to denominations, and they readily intermarry with Christians of differing beliefs. But the most important thing about Americans is their willingness to work hard to establish a life for themselves and their children. While not every emigrant will become wealthy, the hardworking can expect modest success and a comfortable life. James tells the story of Andrew, an emigrant from the Scottish Hebrides, to illustrate how an emigrant's success is not necessarily something remarkable, but the result of simple virtue and determination. Next, James devotes Letters IV through VIII to describing a more specific part of America: namely, the island of Nantucket and its people's customs. He chooses Nantucket because it's a rocky, barren environment, yet its inhabitants have nevertheless made a prosperous life for themselves. There was nothing special about Nantucket's pioneers, he says, except that they worked hard, and their government didn't interfere with their lives. Instead of trying to farm the island's sandy, swampy land, Nantucket's settlers planned to become fishermen. Because the soil is so poor, they were motivated to become excellent seafarers and to gradually develop a better and better whaling industry, whose practices James discusses in detail. Chasing and harpooning whales on the open ocean is a very dangerous business, which both Nantucket's white and native fishermen have mastered; out of it they've built a booming industry in whale oil. While not everyone in the whaling business gets rich, most people manage to live a modestly comfortable life, as long as they persevere and work hard. To this day, most islanders live simple, industrious lives and scorn luxury. James believes the example of Nantucket conveys the "one diffusive scene of happiness" that prevails across America. In Letter IX, James moves to a description of Charleston, South Carolina, which James esteems less highly than Pennsylvania or Nantucket. He is especially critical of wealthy planters' obliviousness to the sufferings of their enslaved people. While he acknowledges that some northerners practice slavery, too, he claims that they generally treat their enslaved people more humanely than southerners do. As an illustration, James tells the story of visiting a Carolina plantation and discovering an enslaved man dying in a cage in the woods; the man had been trapped there in retaliation for killing an overseer on the plantation. As much as he claims to be horrified by this barbarous act and to reject the planter's self-defense for his actions, James doesn't claim to have done anything to help the enslaved man at the time. The following Letter X contains James's further reflections on wildlife, particularly hummingbirds and snakes he's seen around his farm. He recalls an especially vivid memory of watching two snakes chase and wrestle each another in his field until one of the snakes drowned the other; he found the sight of their coiled bodies strangely beautiful. In a departure from the rest of the book, Letter XI is written not by James's character, but in the persona of a Russian traveler and friend of James's named Iwan. Iwan is visiting America because he believes it's the country of the future. James sends Iwan to visit his friend John Bertram, a celebrated botanist. Iwan is fascinated by Bertram's meticulously tended fields and husbandry methods, explaining that in Russia, much land is farmed by serfs who are sold like property and who lack the freedom to improve and enjoy the land like American farmers do. The final Letter XII, "Distresses of a Frontier Man," differs sharply in tone from most of the others. The Revolution has broken out, and James fears that British and American fighting along the frontier threatens his home and family. As a peace-loving man who feels loyalty to both England and America, he also dreads aligning himself with one side or the other—it seems that no matter what he chooses, he will be condemned for it, so he might as well protect his family before all else. After pouring 20 years of labor into his farm, he decides that his family must flee to a remote Indian village where the chief has promised him land and protection. He is familiar with native customs and finds Indians to be more peaceful and hospitable than most Europeans, so he isn't afraid of living among them. However, he is determined to teach his sons farming so that Indian culture doesn't make them too "wild," and he won't let his daughter marry an Indian man. He closes his letter with a prayer to God to protect his family and America as a whole, and an appeal to F.B. to sympathize with his sufferings.

- Genre: Epistolary Novel - Title: Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen - Point of view: First person - Setting: Australia, Singapore, and England - Character: Aunt Fay. Description: The book's narrator, Fay, is eighteen-year-old Alice's aunt. Fay is a successful novelist who travels the world writing and publicizing her books. She considers herself a feminist and also believes strongly in the power of fiction, creating the metaphor of the City of Invention to express the beauty and value of reading. Much of her letters to Alice center on Jane Austen's life and novels. Although she reveals few of her own biographical details, the reader learns that Fay's parents separated when she was a child, and that Fay left her childhood home with her father, while her sister Enid stayed behind with their mother. She has not seen her niece Alice, Enid's daughter, for sixteen years, indicating that Fay is largely estranged from her family. Fay also appears to be single and without children of her own, though these facts are not explicitly stated. Fay's reliability as a narrator is ultimately uncertain, as she sometimes contradicts herself and even tells Alice not to listen to everything she says. At the novel's conclusion, Fay seems to be hoping for a reconciliation with Enid and her husband, Edward, even though their values differ greatly from her own. - Character: Alice. Description: Alice is Fay's eighteen-year-old niece. She is in her first year of a university literature course in England, and although she aspires to write a novel herself, she is not convinced of the value of studying literature, in particular the works of Jane Austen. Alice dyes her hair black and green and seems to rebel against her parents, Enid and Edward, by initiating a correspondence with Fay, who is estranged from the family. Through Fay's letters, the reader learns that Alice enters into a series of seemingly melodramatic affairs involving her boyfriend and one of her professors. Alice bases her novel on these affairs and, although Fay initially cautions her to avoid writing about her own life, the novel turns out to be an immediate bestseller. Despite her success as a writer, Alice fails her exams and at the novel's conclusion, she is considering whether to continue studying literature at a different college in the United States. Aside from her relationship with her parents, Fay reveals little about Alice's life, mentioning only that she has a younger sister whom she once tried to drown when the two were children. - Character: Jane Austen. Description: The British novelist Jane Austen is such a central part of the correspondence between Fay and Alice that she becomes a fully realized character herself. The reader knows much more about Austen's life than those of either Fay or Alice, and Fay describes Austen as the lively, intellectual daughter of a pastor of a village in Georgian England. Though Austen's family was cultured and relatively well-off, the surrounding world was full of suffering, danger, and misogyny. Fay argues that Austen's fiction, though seemingly inane at times, is in fact a thoughtful and meaningful reaction to that context and especially to the rigid social roles imposed on women. Austen and her sister Cassandra were sent to a series of boarding schools in their childhood, where they may or may not have been happy. After her father died at a relatively young age, Austen spent the rest of her life living with her mother and never married. Austen died at the age of 41 from Addison's disease, which the medicine of her era could not diagnose or treat. Although Fay admits that ascribing specific intentions and emotions to historical figures like Austen is somewhat futile, she imagines that Austen may have ultimately preferred to live on through her novels rather than continuing to live a life in which she could never fully express her intellect and creativity. - Character: Enid. Description: Enid is Fay's sister and Alice's mother. Little is known about her life, except that she stayed with her mother when the sisters' parents separated. Enid is married to Edward and is worried about their daughter, Alice, whom she feels does not take school seriously. Enid holds a grudge against Fay for encouraging Alice's rebelliousness and also for writing in one of her novels about the fact that Enid makes bread rolls for Edward, although Fay insists that the character who makes the bread rolls is not based on Enid. Despite the conflict between them, Enid seems to be interested in reconciling with Fay and invites her to tea at the end of the book. - Character: Edward. Description: Edward is Enid's husband and Alice's father. Fay does not reveal much of his character throughout the book, indicating only that he is against feminism and worries about Fay's corrupting influence on Alice. It is unclear whether he is interested in reconciling with Fay, but at the end of the book he is nonetheless planning to attend tea with her and Enid as long as Fay does not talk about "novels, writing, feminism, or allied subjects." - Character: Grace D'Albier. Description: Grace D'Albier is the fictional protagonist of the short story that Fay sends Alice in Letter 11. She is first-time novelist on tour for her new book, which is about incest. Grace bemoans the fact that everyone, including members of her own family, assumes that her book is autobiographical when it is actually entirely fictional. She even reveals that her husband left her because of it. Fay does not finish her draft of Grace's story, telling Alice that it was pointless and without direction. - Theme: The Purpose of Fiction. Description: The narrator, Aunt Fay, begins writing to Alice, her eighteen-year-old niece, because she has heard from her sister Enid (Alice's mother) that Alice finds reading Jane Austen in her college literature courses to be "boring, petty, and irrelevant." Though Fay concedes that reading serious literature can sometimes be arduous, she implores Alice to continue her studies anyway, arguing over the course of the epistolary novel for the value of fiction as a means of exploration, self-improvement, and enhanced engagement with the world. Particularly because Alice herself wishes to write a novel, Fay feels that reading them must be an essential part of Alice's self-actualization. However, Fay does not argue for fiction as a simple doorway into straightforward truth; rather, she builds a case for reading fiction as a means of grasping that there are, in fact, many different truths that can all exist at the same time. For Fay—a novelist herself—countless realities exist simultaneously, and her letters to Alice seek to demonstrate how fiction can reveal that multitude of realities. Fay's argument begins with an examination of the ways fiction can change its readers for the better. Depicting the act of reading as a process of exploration and exposure to new ideas, Fay focuses at first on the moral and instructional power of fiction. Throughout the book, Aunt Fay illustrates her points with the metaphorical City of Invention, where books are houses, authors are their architects, and readers are curious visitors who explore the neighborhoods. Her vivid descriptions of the City evoke the wealth to be found within books, depicting readers as explorers of a hidden geography, lit "by day by the sun of enthusiasm and by night by the moon of inspiration." She tells Alice that the City is where "we understand ourselves and one another, and our pasts and our futures." With such strong language and rich imagery, Fay makes it clear that she considers fiction a destination for new and essential learning. Fay also sets literature apart as a more effective form of learning than any other; she describes how reading brings the reader into a reflective space created by the author, where the reader is challenged to expand their thinking while still remaining physically safe. Fay notes that exploring the City of Invention is "all, really, education is about, should be about." According to Fay, fiction improves the world as a whole, beyond just the individuals who actually read. She notes that  "if society is to advance then those that hath must empathize with those that hath not," recommending that people in positions of power should read more novels in order to use that power in a more humane way. Then, Fay argues, additional lives will be bettered, rather than just the reader's. However, as Fay's letters to Alice continue, it becomes clear that Fay is not arguing that readers of fiction are any closer to understanding some absolute truth. They are instead learning to accept the notion that truth is not fixed, but rather infinite and constantly changing. For Fay, only the vast and varied works that make up literature as a whole can fully reflect this complex, sometimes paradoxical reality. Several times throughout the book, Fay points out to Alice that failing to question assumed truths is one of the biggest mistakes a person can make. She guesses at the so-called truths that Alice may not have examined and advises her that "the real Secret of Life lies in Constant Rule Revision." This repeated insistence on reevaluating truth underscores Fay's core argument that no absolute truth exists. Fay's analysis of Jane Austen's many novels also provides a detailed example of exactly what it looks like to use multiple texts as a window into simultaneous and even conflicting truths. Fay finds different insights into Austen's inner life from every one of her books, building a portrait of the author that is both happy and unhappy, kind and cruel, obedient and revolutionary. There is no one correct or accurate interpretation of Jane Austen, an implication which seems to drive Fay's preoccupation with discussing her. At the novel's conclusion, Fay reflects on the surprisingly successful novel that Alice has written and contemplates writing a new one of her own. Thinking about all the many books that she and Alice have yet to read and write, Fay says that "the exhilaration of all this being…is enough to make us immortal." Here, the immense variety of fiction is more than just valuable; it actually transcends human life. Again, the very notion of truth depends on the combination of countless simultaneous truths. While the character of Aunt Fay argues for the use of fiction in understanding the multifaceted nature of reality, the book itself also backs up that claim. The book includes multiple fictions within fictions and blurs the line between these different levels of reality, starting with the name shared by Aunt Fay and the author, Fay Weldon. Reading the book requires accepting all of these layered fictions at once, putting the real-life reader through a lived example of Aunt Fay's idea of simultaneous truths. The novel overlaps with literal reality in a number of ways: in addition to sharing a name with her main character, Weldon bases the exchanges between Aunt Fay and Alice on a real-life exchange between Jane Austen and one of her nieces. The real and fictitious elements are almost interchangeable throughout, illustrating the idea that imagined realities are every bit as real as lived experience. The characters of both Fay and Alice write novels that may or may not be based on their "real" lives. The protagonist of the short story draft that Fay sends Alice is also a novelist, but in contrast, she insists that her novel is not based on her life, even though her audience believes that it is. With so many layers of fiction and reality even within the lives of the characters, it becomes necessary for the reader to accept all of these intertwined realities as one coherent whole, even though the details remain uncertain and conflicting. At the novel's end, Fay's feud with her sister and brother-in-law seems to be ending, but Fay's statement that she will "be very happy" to avoid talking about novels, writing, and feminism rings false given Fay's outspoken character throughout the rest of the book. The reader is left wondering whether this happy ending is genuine or if, like the happy endings of some of the Austen novels that Fay analyzes, it is intended instead to make a point to the reader. By leaving the book's readers without a tidy ending and forcing them to accept multiple possible interpretations, Weldon again reiterates fiction's unique power to illustrate the complexity of reality. - Theme: The Author and the Reader. Description: In addition to convincing Alice of the value of reading, Fay also seeks to illustrate the challenges and responsibilities of the author's life, using her own writing life and that of Jane Austen to support her argument. However, it quickly becomes clear that Fay views the burden of interpreting fiction as falling at least as much on the reader as on the author. Readers learn and grow in response to books, but their role is not a passive one; for Fay, readers must work together with authors in order to create shared meaning, and a work of literature is not complete until its audience has engaged with it. Fay touches on a number of challenges in the life of a writer, from the anxiety of traveling for a book tour to the lack of rest and vacation. But perhaps the greatest challenge she describes is the pressure of writing while keeping in mind all the different sets of expectations and opinions that the writer is subject to. From the outset, Fay situates the writer in a context that is defined by the influence of others. At one point, Fay reflects on the power of writers to influence readers and wonders whether a successful writer should "bow his head beneath the weight of so much terrifying responsibility." However, that frightening pressure is balanced out by her belief that connections to others are what fosters the writing process in the first place. Contemplating the idea that Jane Austen might have been frequently interrupted because she wrote in the middle of a busy home, Fay notes that such interruptions would likely have been an asset rather than a burden. "Take away life," she tells Alice, "and you take away writing." In both positive and negative ways, the living world around an author profoundly affects that author's books, even before the books are written. For Alice, Fay herself seems to serve as an example of the whole range of influences that an outside party might have on an author. Sometimes she tells Alice to continue on with her writing; other times she cautions her away from it. By placing Aunt Fay in the role of critic and guide as well as author, Weldon allows her to embody all of the pressures that a young writer like Alice is subject to. As the novel continues, the role of the reader takes on more and more power in the creative process. At certain points, Fay even seems to say that the reader has more responsibility than the author when it comes to gleaning meaning from literature. Despite her ideas about the moral responsibilities of authors, Fay also implies that works of fiction are in some way predetermined, able to exist only in the exact way that the author has created them. Of authors, she says: "They write what they write and if it was different, it would be a different book and have a different title, so fault-finding is self-defeating." With the author's work so clearly delineated, it seems then to fall to the reader to accept what the author has written and value it for what it is. Fay also suggests that the attention of readers can actually transform a written work into more than it was before. She tells Alice that widely read books come to contain "the concentrated magic of the attention of millions," which makes it a better book than one that lacks that magic. This somewhat far-fetched claim (which Fay herself expects Alice to disbelieve) underscores the immense, even supernatural power that Fay ascribes to the audience of a work of fiction. This emphasis on the reader as the true actor in a work of literature even extends to the relationship between Fay and Alice. Though Fay offers endless advice, she cautions Alice against listening to her without question. She instructs Alice to view the letters as "a sack of rather dusty brown rice" that should be used as an ingredient, rather than a complete meal. As the reader, Alice ultimately has more power over the use of Fay's words than Fay herself does. By detailing her own close reading of Jane Austen's works, Aunt Fay also models the way that a reader can actively create meaning. Fay puts her own advice into action, showing both Alice and the reader of Letters to Alice how a reader can join with the author to bring literature to life. Each of Fay's attempts to convince Alice of the worth of Austen's novels relies on Fay's own reactions to the work. For Fay, Austen's novels are worthwhile because of the reader's lived responses to them. Of Austen's work Emma in particular, Fay dwells on "the amazing phenomenon of shared fantasy," in which countless thousands of people all imagine the character Emma and feel a range of genuine emotions in response to her behavior. Fay concludes from this phenomenon that "Emma lives!" indicating that the audience, not the author, is ultimately responsible for bridging the gap between fiction and reality. Throughout the novel, Aunt Fay, Alice, Jane Austen, and Weldon herself all hold dual identities as both authors and readers. This constant blending of roles highlights the idea that the union of author and reader is the crucial mechanism for creating meaningful literature. - Theme: The Influence of History. Description: Just as the audience collaborates with the author to bring life to written works, so too does historical context shape literature and its meanings. Aunt Fay presents Alice with an in-depth analysis of the pressures of history on Jane Austen's work, while also hinting at how external context has shaped Fay's own novels. However, Fay also makes it clear that history is not a straightforward oppressive force on literature. Rather, it is a lens for understanding an author's works and bringing them into conversation with the present. Through Fay's argument to Alice, Weldon suggests that readers and writers have a duty to examine history's influence on literature, as well as the reciprocal influence that literature may also have on history. Throughout the novel, Aunt Fay cautions Alice against judging Jane Austen by modern standards and implores her to consider the many effects that Austen's context might have had on her work. What's more, Fay also suggests that Austen's novels played their own role in shaping history. The push and pull between literature and history in the case of Jane Austen illustrates the idea of a dynamic bond in which each shapes the other. Of Austen and her family, Fay tells Alice: "They may have lived in the past but they were just as real to themselves as we are to ourselves, and as complex." With these words, Fay rejects simplistic interpretations of the past. She argues that each moment in history was as multifaceted as the present, with countless—sometimes mysterious—ways of shaping those who lived through it. Through her detailed descriptions of life in Georgian England, Fay demonstrates how the customs of the era—in particular, the social roles available to women—would have influenced how Austen wrote about her heroines and their adventures. Even though the plots and characters may seem inconsequential to Alice, Fay notes: "Jane Austen's lifestyle (as they call it now) was very different, and her call to moral arms more muted; but it was there." By considering Austen's works from the perspective of their historical context, Fay seeks to uncover their continued relevance for modern readers. Fay also notes the innumerable smalls ways in which Austen's works subverted the values of their time. Of Northanger Abbey, for example, Fay suggests that the gothic plot parodies popular novels of that genre, throwing their values into question and hinting that Austen possesses "something capable of taking the world by its heels, and shaking it." Though Fay acknowledges that tracing the exact influence of works of literature through history is impossible, she maintains that books like Austen's do have the power to shape society slowly over time. Weldon also uses the life of Aunt Fay herself to illustrate the effect of context on a writer's work. Even as she analyzes Austen's work and the history surrounding it, Fay's own letters show how she is influenced by the world around her, and vice versa. Several times, Fay notes how the local traditions and literary communities of the places she visits affect her work. The "slow, blank, powerful unconscious" of Australia intrigues her, while the idea of contemplating "the group soul" in Singapore terrifies her. Fay's own travels underscore the idea that specific places and times carry unique modes of being that have the power to influence writers. On a more personal level, Fay's writing also shifts the context of her own life in both positive and negative ways. In particular, Fay's sister Enid is angry at her for using details of Enid's life in one of her novels—that is, the fact that Enid makes bread rolls for her husband, Edward—which causes a falling out between the two sisters. However, it is also Fay's writing that seems to bring the women back together, as Fay's correspondence with Alice builds a bridge to communicating with Enid. The causes and effects of Fay's own writing enact a small-scale version of the historical dynamic that Fay perceives in Austen's work, providing the reader with a relatable modern example of how books and the outside world can shape each other. Ultimately, Fay seems to conclude that the interplay of history and literature is neither something to celebrate nor something to bemoan. It is simply something to understand and, crucially, bring to one's interpretation of the present. Writing of Austen's tragically young death, Fay calls for perspective, noting that death is only a natural component of a complete life, "part of the whole and not the definition of the whole." She implies that while readers should not ignore the darker truths of an author's history, neither should they exaggerate their significance. Of her bleak descriptions of childbirth in Georgian England, Fay writes to Alice: "I tell you all this so you don't forget to be thankful that you live now." By learning about the history surrounding Jane Austen's works, Fay believes, Alice will be better equipped to understand and appreciate the unique context that affects her own life and writing. - Theme: Feminism. Description: The unique experience of being a woman in both the personal and professional spheres recurs throughout Aunt Fay's letters in Letters to Alice. At times, female identity is depicted as a liability, while it is an asset in other instances. Through the examples of Fay, Alice, and Jane Austen, Weldon builds an argument for reading and writing as feminist pursuits, through which individual women can reconcile conflicting sets of societal expectations and construct their own identities. Fay notes that Jane Austen herself sometimes seems to reproduce the misogynist attitudes of her society. Fay speculates that Austen's novels reflect both the oppressive gender roles of her society and her own efforts to forge an identity within them. In her very first letter to Alice, Fay writes that Austen's novels generally reflect the realities of gender roles, rather than criticizing them: "She chides women […] men, on the whole, she simply accepts." Fay also invokes Virginia Woolf's concept of the "Angel of the House," who whispers in the ear of young women and reminds them to be sympathetic and charming rather than confrontational. Austen's genteel works, in Fay's opinion, demonstrate the persistent presence of that oppressive figure. In her discussion of Mansfield Park, Fay suggests that the presence of two completely opposite female characters—sweet Fanny and disrespectful Miss Crawford—might point to Austen's struggle to accept her own identity as both a "good woman" and a "bad" one. Fay notes that the real Austen was both intellectually rebellious and loyal to her family, and wonders whether "the split between good and bad never, in Jane Austen, quite reconciled." In this case, even where Austen's work reproduces oppressive gender roles, it may also give its author a chance to come to terms with them. However, Aunt Fay also identifies countless examples of writing working to counter sexism and misogyny, in both Jane Austen's time and in the 1980s, when Letters to Alice is set. In each case, the act of writing serves as a form of rebellion, in which a female author is able to use her work to shape her own reality rather than accepting the oppressive rules of her society. The immediate physical danger that women faced in Jane Austen's era, especially from childbirth, is perhaps the most striking example of the oppression that Fay describes throughout her letters. She notes that Austen is often criticized for seeming to ignore these dire circumstances, but Fay argues that by creating thoughtful heroines and happy endings, Austen was successfully imagining a different, less dangerous model of womanhood. In Pride and Prejudice especially, Austen turns the stark reality of a woman's practical need to marry into a pleasant, often comical romance. Living in a world that limited her agency as a woman, Austen seems to use her novels as a way to regain the power of self-determination. Although Fay does not face the same kind of peril that women of Austen's day did, she is still burdened by expectations tied to her identity as a female writer. She hints at the danger she faces when traveling alone for her work, and at the idea that readers take issue with her unflattering descriptions of men and boys. Fay also tells Alice that Alice's father, Edward, views Fay as "dangerous to the structure of society" because she is a feminist. Nonetheless, Weldon shows Fay continuing to write her way toward an improved society, in this case by directly rebelling against Alice's father and advising his daughter to become a feminist writer herself. Although Fay does not claim that literature has the capacity to erase oppressive gender roles, she nonetheless concludes that it is a meaningful way for women to gain power and live out feminist ideals. Discussing Austen's novel Northanger Abbey, Fay describes the protagonist's love of reading novels and quotes a section in which Austen writes: "If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?" The inclusion of this text hints at the literary bonds between Fay, Alice, Austen, and even Weldon herself, underscoring how works of literature can bring women together and help them find shared strength in their creative powers. At the novel's conclusion, Fay tells Alice that she expects her reconciliation with Alice's parents to go well as long as she does not talk about writing or feminism, among other subjects. Clearly, the world in which Fay lives continues to challenge her attempts to define her own identity as a woman. But again, Fay nonetheless insists that "the City of Invention will stand," finding joy and selfhood in the continued process of creation and exploration that literature affords her. - Climax: Fay finds out that Alice has secured a publishing deal for her novel. - Summary: The novel opens with an unnamed narrator writing a letter from Cairns, Australia to her eighteen-year-old niece, Alice. The narrator, who the reader learns at the end of the letter is named Fay, has not seen Alice in sixteen years but has heard from her mother—Fay's sister Enid—that Alice has dyed her hair black and green. Alice has told Fay that although she is studying literature in college, she does not see the point of much of her reading, in particular the works of Jane Austen. Fay wonders how she can possibly explain literature to Alice, but nonetheless she sets out to try. Fay acknowledges the difficulty of appreciating serious literature in a world filled with distractions like television and popular novels, but she implores Alice to try and understand "the pleasures of a good book." In order to illustrate the value of literature for Alice, Fay describes a metaphorical place she calls the City of Invention. In the City of Invention, Fay tells Alice, all the architects are writers and the visitors are readers, coming to explore and enjoy the excitement and beauty of the vast array of houses. Fay tours Alice through the City, noting how the neighborhoods differ, how some buildings withstand the test of time while others fall, and how some places are always the most popular with visitors. In her description, Fay also hints that she has been visiting the City since childhood, when her parents separated and she left home with her father while Enid stayed behind with their mother. To appreciate Jane Austen, Fay says, Alice must travel more widely in the City of Invention. She also notes that Alice intends to write a novel of her own, but tells her that she should not do so until she is older and better acquainted with the City. Fay continues to write to Alice, detailing different aspects of literature and especially Jane Austen's works in each letter. She also hints at the events of her own life and Alice's. In the next letter, she expresses excitement at having just finished a novel and notes how much she always loves that sensation. Fay goes on to describe the various internal and external pressures that constrain writers as they work, such as the idea of the Muse, the opinions and needs of friends and family, and the social pressures on women to be charming even in their creative work. She notes that although the pressures of life can be exhausting, they can also provide the necessary fuel for creative work. Fay is interested in the ways that historical context can shape a writer's work, and she gives Alice a detailed overview of the times in which Jane Austen lived. Far from being boring or timid, Fay argues, Austen's novels are actually a thoughtful and in some ways rebellious reaction to world around her. Fay focuses in particular on the many hardships of Georgian England, especially for women, and tells Alice how lucky she is to live in the modern day. Fay also notes that times changed considerably during Austen's short lifetime, and wonders about the role that novels might have played in that and other long-term societal changes. The reader also learns that Enid has written a letter to Fay, expressing concern about Fay's feminist influence on Alice. After establishing Jane Austen's historical context, Fay goes on to detail Austen's life, from her childhood as the daughter of a clergyman, to her education at boarding schools, to her adulthood living in her mother's home following her father's death. Fay speculates that although Austen's family was cultured, loving, and relatively wealthy, Austen felt constrained by the need to always be well-behaved. Her novels, Fay thinks, draw from her challenging reality while simultaneously creating a more tolerable one for herself and her readers. Reflecting on the overwhelming desire that writers feel to pursue their work, Fay notes that Austen began writing at a young age and must have found a sense of mastery and excitement in her work. Fay goes into further detail about the perils facing women in Georgian England, especially childbirth, and notes that Austen's decision not to marry or have children was a perfectly rational one. Fay analyzes Austen's early letters and writings to show Alice how Austen valued herself as a writer and understood the power of fiction, "raising invention above description." However, Fay also acknowledges the futility of trying to extrapolate meaning from old documents, saying of the available information about Austen, "You can deduce pretty much what you wish." Fay promises Alice further analysis later, but ends the letter saying she must pack for her return trip to England. In her next letter, Fay reflects on her life as a professional writer, in particular the demands and exhaustions of having to travel and interact with her readers in person. She wonders about how Jane Austen's life would have been different, as she read to her family and friends at home and noted their reactions to her work. Fay tells Alice that this attention to audience is crucial for every writer of fiction, and advises Alice to always write for the real people who will read her books. She imagines Austen's writing table in her family's home, where she was often interrupted, and speculates that such a connection to the life of those around her might have made for ideal writing conditions. Furthermore, Fay feels that the writer's responsibility to readers can even be seen as a moral one, as novels demonstrate how people should and should not behave. In the City of Invention, effects clearly follow causes and give readers valuable perspectives on how best to life. Fay writes one letter to her sister Enid, reassuring her that she is not corrupting Alice. Fay also asks Enid to consider reconciling with her, insisting that she did not base a fictional character in her novel on Enid, even though one character prepares her husband bread rolls in the same way that Enid does for her husband, Edward. Fay tells Enid that she misses her and hopes they can have a closer relationship. Fay continues to write to Alice as she makes her way back to England and eventually arrives in London. She goes into more detail about the relationship between Austen's novels and the politics of Georgian England, arguing that the powerful individuals in any society need to read good novels like Austen's in order to gain empathy and understand the live of those who have less power. In particular, Fay focuses on Austen's novel Emma and its commentary on the division—or lack thereof—between classes. Midway through their correspondence, Fay abruptly reverses her position on Alice's novel, telling her that she should try and write it after all. From that point on, she intersperses her analysis of Austen with advice for Alice. She tells Alice to be aware of the challenge of finishing a novel, and how frightening it can be to expose it to the world even once it is finished. Fay refers to the particular difficulty of those close to the writer seeing themselves within the writer's fiction, as Enid sees herself and Edward in Fay's work. At one point, she sends Alice a partial draft of a short story on this theme, in which a young novelist named Grace D'Albier finds that publishing a successful novel interferes with all of the close relationships in her life. Fay advises Alice to avoid writing about her own love life as well, simply because it will be boring, although Alice persists in writing about a dramatic series of affairs involving her college boyfriend and a married English professor. Fay also returns to the idea of the City of Invention and to describe critics as bus drivers, urging Alice to take note of them but to pay more attention to the reactions of those who visit the house she builds. However, Fay also tells Alice not to believe everything she says, but rather to pick through the letters and only use what seems helpful to her. Fay returns to analyzing Jane Austen's works, in particular Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey. In the latter, Fay explores the contrast between the virtuous main character and her wicked—but witty—nemesis and speculates that the two characters might represent the conflict within Austen herself, who was sweet and dutiful on the outside while hiding her "rebellious spirit." Fay even wonders if this intense conflict contributed to Austen's early death, which she finds upsetting to contemplate. Fay tells Alice how Austen died at age 41 of a degenerative condition called Addison's disease, which could not be treated or even diagnosed at the time. Despite the tragic nature of Austen's death, Fay urges Alice to consider death as only a part of life, and to let its reality encourage her toward greater accomplishments while she is alive. In the novel's final letters, the reader learns that Alice has failed her college exams and is contemplating attending a different school in America, which Fay has offered to pay for. Enid and Edward seem to blame Fay for Alice's failure. However, Alice is unexpectedly offered a publishing deal for her novel, which delights Fay. Fay encourages her to continue studying literature anyway, so that she can balance her life between analysis and creation. At the novel's conclusion, Alice's novel has become a huge success, outselling all of Fay's novels. Fay is happy for Alice's success and begins contemplating a new novel of her own, telling Alice that "the exhilaration of all this" makes her think that literature might truly lead to immortality. Finally, Fay announces that she will be attending tea with Enid and Edward, with whom she hopes to have a pleasant time by avoiding discussion of writing and feminism.

- Genre: Science Fiction / Post-apocalyptic, Young Adult fiction - Title: Life as We Knew It - Point of view: First person, written in epistolary form of Miranda's journal entries - Setting: Howell, Pennsylvania - Character: Miranda Evans. Description: The sixteen-year-old narrator of the novel, which is told in the format of her diary entries. Prior to the asteroid's impact with the moon, Miranda was concerned with grades, friendships, boys, and ice skating, but in the fallout of the asteroid's strike, her life becomes centered on her own survival and helping her immediate family, which consists of her mother (Laura), and brothers, (Matt and Jonny). Sprinkled throughout the bleak entries of Miranda's journal are glimpses of how her age and perspective inform the way she interprets and reacts to the increasing threats in her life. While she realizes the inherent danger of her day-to-day life, she also reminisces about typical teenage priorities like school, dating, college, and prom. Miranda mourns the life that she lost, while simultaneously doing her best to record and endure life as she now knows it. - Character: Matt Evans. Description: The older brother of Miranda and Jonny. He is away at college when the lunar impact occurs but makes his way home from Ithaca, New York to Howell, Pennsylvania to be with his family. Miranda idealizes Matt and looks to him as a source of wisdom and strength. He acts as the peacekeeper in the family, often mediating disagreements between Miranda and Laura. He believes in treating Miranda like an adult and keeps her informed of new dangers, but agrees to shelter Jonny for as long as possible. While he is the most physically fit at the beginning of the novel, he strains his heart moving Laura and Jonny out of the sunroom to save them from smoke inhalation and never fully recovers. - Character: Jonny Evans. Description: The younger brother of Miranda and Matt. Jonny is thirteen years old and hopes to be a professional baseball player when he grows up. Prior to the asteroid's strike, Jonny had planned to spend the summer at baseball camp. Laura decides that he should still attend, despite the new dangers and lack of consistent electricity or phone lines, because the camp promises to provide better food than she can give him at home. While he is gone, Miranda, Laura, and Matt come to an agreement that while they will cut down on the number of meals they're eating, they don't want Jonny to fast. This is part of their unspoken agreement that if only one member of their family survives, it should be Jonny. - Character: Laura Evans. Description: The mother of Miranda, Matt, and Jonny, and ex-wife to Hal. Laura is an author prior to the moon incident. In the aftermath, her sole focus is keeping her family alive despite all of food shortages and dangers. Laura shows keen survival instincts, such as the foresight to stockpile food and wood, planting a garden, and moving her family from the main part of their house into the sunroom with a wood stove. Her fear throughout the novel is that she will fail in her task and have to witness her children's deaths. - Character: Mrs. Nesbitt. Description: The elderly neighbor of Laura, Miranda, Matt, and Jonny. Mrs. Nesbitt grew up with Laura's parents and is considered to be part of their family. When preparing their home in the aftermath of the natural disasters, they also make sure that Mrs. Nesbitt's home is stocked, and they check on her frequently in the months that follow. Before Mrs. Nesbitt passes away, she tells Miranda to take anything that is useable from her house. - Character: Hal. Description: Miranda, Jonny, and Matt's father, Hal is divorced from Laura and married to Lisa, who is pregnant with their first child together. He is a professor and lives in Springfield, but leaves to attempt to travel to Colorado where Lisa's parents live. The last update that Miranda and her siblings receive is that Dad and Lisa had made it to the Kansas border, but weren't being allowed into the state. - Character: "Rachel". Description: The imaginary name that Miranda gives to her stepsister once she realizes Lisa's due date has passed and she's likely given birth. Miranda daydreams of conversations with her stepsister and a future in which they are together, healthy, and happy. Since they are cut off from phone communication and mail is no longer being delivered, Miranda has no way of confirming whether or not the baby has been born or what she was actually named. - Character: Horton. Description: The Evans' family cat. He has the strongest bond with Jonny, and when Miranda accidentally leaves the door open and allows him to escape during the time while Jonny is away at camp, she agonizes over how to tell him that Horton is gone. Luckily Horton makes a surprise reappearance after being missing for eight days. - Character: Brandon Erlich. Description: A famous ice skater whom Miranda idolizes. Before turning pro, he trained with Mrs. Daley, the ice skating coach Miranda had until she was sidelined by an injury. Miranda is very active in Brandon's message boards before the moon incident. Afterward she worries about his safety and well being. At one point in the narrative she recounts a day where she meets Brandon and skates with him on Miller's Pond, but later she doubts whether this actually occurred or was just a hallucination. - Character: Mr. Mortensen. Description: One of Miranda's neighbors. After the asteroid collision the Evans family see him twice—once when there is neighborhood caroling on Christmas Eve, and once when he knocks on their door, desperate for medicine for his sick wife. This is the first indication the Evans family has of the deadly flu that decimates the population. - Theme: Survival and Death. Description: At its core, Life As We Knew It is a story about what it takes to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. After an asteroid collision alters the rotational path of the moon, the world is faced with tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, drastic climate change, and other catastrophes. The main characters: Miranda, her mother, Laura, and two brothers, Jonny and Matt, face immense and ever-changing dangers as they struggle to adapt to an unstable and unpredictable world and to accept that "life as they knew it" is forever altered. In the days, then weeks, and months after the catastrophe, the hardships that the characters must face intensify. Slowly but surely they must endure and figure out how to live through the loss of, first, the basic physical comforts that they had always known, and then even more fundamental needs like heat and food. But the family's trials are not only physical. In fact, it is just as hard, if not harder, to endure the spiritual and emotional trials of the catastrophe. Miranda and her brothers all had hopes, dreams, and ambitions before the asteroid strike. In the world afterwards, they must deal with the fact that those dreams are gone. Their new goals aren't professional teams or college degrees, but making it through another week or month. The characters must also endure the way that their struggle to survive changes their values, their basic selves. In this new world where resources are limited, acts of altruism, such as contributing to a blanket drive or helping a sick neighbor or friend are revealed to be dangerous, as acts that can endanger one's self or family. Meanwhile, the character's begin to feel both cut off from their own humanity—they can't process or feel connected to the millions of people dying across the world, even as they know it is a tragedy of vast proportions. At the same time, the family must also watch as people around them, such as their beloved neighbor Mrs. Nesbitt, die. Such deaths fill those who live with both terrible grief and a sense of inevitability about their own deaths which can be terrible to endure. All this leads Miranda and her family to debate the cost of their survival, whether it's "worth it" to survive or if they even want to continue to live during such unrelentingly bleak times. As the book demonstrates, in such dire situations, people live on not for themselves but for others, such as the way Miranda struggles with how much it would pain her mother and brothers to watch her die. And yet, even such loving thoughts are complicated in a catastrophe, For example, Miranda also realizes that if she does die, there will be more food to feed her family. Her death could be a kind of gift that aids the survival of the rest of her family. As Miranda spends her diary entries grappling with the decision to endure in a world that feels inhospitable to survival, Pfeffer is asking larger questions about what makes life worth living. Each character has to grapple with determining what would be unendurable. For Miranda's friend Megan's mom, the death of her daughter drives her to suicide. Similarly, Miranda worries about her own mother's ability to endure the death of her or her siblings. Through Miranda's own conflicts and struggles, the reader is led to question their own ability to survive in extreme conditions—not only what skills are necessary, but also what would we be willing to sacrifice in order to survive? And, at what point does the cost of survival become unendurable? - Theme: Currency, Commodities, and Value. Description: The start of the book, which occurs before the asteroid strike, portrays "life as we knew it," and what is seen as valuable seems familiar and normal to the average American reader. Most obviously, money is used as currency—and even in the days just after the disaster, cash is the only thing people will accept. Meanwhile, Miranda, the teenage girl protagonist, values school, grades, friends, boys, and ice skating. After the disaster, however, things change drastically, and what is seen as valuable and viewed as a commodity shifts as well. Cash quickly becomes useless, and people start to trade, steal, or hoard wood, gasoline, and food. Schooling becomes less important—districts are consolidated and very few students or teachers show up—while other kinds of knowledge become more valuable. With radio, TV, and the internet becoming unreliable and then failing entirely, new of the outside world becomes precious. Practice knowledge, such as Peter's medical knowledge but also Laura's gardening hobby, ability to cook, and the family's skiing skills, all become suddenly lifesaving. In comparison, the intellectual professions that Laura and Miranda's father Hal had pursued before the disaster—as an author and college professor—are no longer as useful. As the impact of the disaster continues and deepens, it's not only the value of skills and goods that are reassessed, but also relationships and, even more fundamentally, the basic value of other people. In the beginning of the book, Miranda is focused on friendships and prom dates, but as the book progresses her social circle constricts dramatically. When she does enter into a brief romantic relationship, both she and the boy, Dan, realize that they cannot have a future—as feelings for each other would endanger their own survival. For instance, at one point Miranda leaves a food distribution line to try to find Dan to tell him him about the food being provided, and almost misses out on getting food for her family. In the evaluation of family vs. friends vs. neighbors, then, it quickly becomes clear that the key to survival for the characters is to only focus on immediate family. Every other relationship becomes devalued and a potential liability. Miranda's friend Sammi, meanwhile, gives up on her typical teenage values and begins a relationship with a forty-year-old man who has the connections to ensure her survival and comfort in the changed world. As the dire situation worsens and the chances of survival begin to be a zero sum game in which one person getting resources means another person not getting them, characters start to constantly assess other character's worthiness of receiving resources and, by extension, of continuing to live. Essentially, the arc of the novel is about stripping things down to what is truly valuable—and to reveal that what is valuable is very dependent on the nature of one's situation. Pfeffer's exploration of what becomes valuable or is considered a "commodity" in different situations, then, encourages readers to consider what is truly valuable in their own lives, what is truly valuable in the civilization that we take for granted but is in fact just "life as we know it," and how those priorities might change in a disaster situation. - Theme: Faith. Description: As the world around them becomes increasingly unpredictable and unstable, the beliefs of the survivors are constantly challenged. With the escalating uncertainty and corrosion of fundamental beliefs, the characters search for other answers to fill the voids and answer their questions. Several characters, most notably Miranda's friend Megan, turn to religion to give them stability in the face of their anxieties. They express deep conviction that the moon strike and resulting damages are the result of a Judeo-Christian God's intervention; that the catastrophe happened because it was meant to happen. This belief gives the catastrophe and the subsequent suffering it causes meaningful, as opposed to meaningless, and leads these characters to a fervent need to prove they are worthy of salvation. Megan becomes so devoted to proving her worth that she starves herself to death. Miranda, while rejecting an idea of a vengeful God, is also impacted by the faith of those around her, and she dreams that she's being blocked from Heaven. However, while some characters do find comfort in their religious faith, prayer, supplication, and repentance are not presented as solutions to the problems of the novel, and the novel shows how some "religious" people take advantage of the religious sentiment of others: the reverend at Megan's church remains overweight throughout the catastrophe—fed by the food offerings of his congregants. On a more personal level, the weight of the characters' faith in others also changes when the people they've always looked up to can no longer provide the answers that they need. Miranda struggles with how the disaster has redefined her mother's role, in that her mother doesn't have the answers or guidance Miranda has always expected adults to provide, and she cannot shield her children from the cruel realities of the world. While there are many aspects of their everyday life that Miranda and her family take for granted (or have "faith" in) at the beginning of the novel, these are called into question as the narrative progresses. The family members experience a loss or change in their expectation or dependence upon things like: electricity, running water, heat, food, medicine, Internet, phones, and radio. On a much larger scale, even the rules of nature are rewritten by the asteroid's collision, and the characters cannot depend on the fundamental "facts" that govern the natural world. For example, after Miranda's watch battery dies, she is no longer able to tell the time of day because the ashy sky prevents daylight from penetrating. Despite having no real need for time, this disorientation is continually disconcerting and reflects the shift Miranda needs to make from faith in externalized elements, to internalized beliefs about her own capabilities. Throughout Life As We Knew It, Miranda struggles to find a point of stability she can cling to. While others turn to religion or science, Miranda doesn't find comfort in these, especially not in a world that feels deceptive and fickle. Denied the ability to lean on her core beliefs about the nature of life and the world, Miranda often repeats the few fundamental things she does know – that she loves her family; that they are doing their best to get through this together. The narrative privileges hope, family, self-determination, and the willingness to sacrifice. It makes it clear that even when the characters don't have faith that they'll live to see the sunrise—or even if the sun will rise—they can look to an internalized center of control and draw their strength from that. - Theme: Legacy. Description: As Miranda and the others come to grips with their own mortality and the very real chance they might not survive, they grapple with the idea of legacy, what is or is not left behind to represent their lives. A number of characters in the novel seek to create a kind of artistic legacy, a record to capture what they think and experience in the catastrophe, from Mrs. Nesbitt's photographs, to Matt's sketches, to Miranda's diary entries. Miranda's mother, however, creates a different sort of legacy. She'd spent her career as an author prior to these disasters, yet the legacy she seeks to create has nothing to do with art. Knowing the unlikelihood of her whole family surviving, she chooses to make sure her children have a greater chance of living by eating less food. She sees her children as the legacy that will stay behind in the world, and sacrifices herself for that cause. Actively choosing not to leave a legacy is another possibility in the story. Mrs. Nesbitt burns her journals and letters before she dies so that no one is tempted to read them – in destroying her legacy she erases her pain and suffering from the world. Mrs. Nesbitt's action leads Miranda to question her own purpose for writing her journal. Is it boredom? Is she writing for a future reader? Does she believe that there will be a future with readers who could learn from her experiences? Ultimately Miranda decides that she's writing the journal for herself, to document what's she's endured so that she can look back. This decision comes from a place of hope, because it's based on Miranda's belief that she will survive. As characters are stripped of their opportunities to create futures, the records they leave behind become increasingly personally important. But, with the uncertainty of the times in which they live, it is also clear that there's no way to ensure that what they leave behind will ever be considered, and no way to govern the way in which it is interpreted. Thus the act of leaving a legacy, as presented by the novel, is less about creating a record for those who follow, and more of a way of creating a personal record for the present, as a way of processing experiences as they occur. - Theme: Perspective. Description: Life as We Knew It is told in "epistolary" form, through the entries of Miranda's diary. This format is often used in novels featuring teen protagonists like I Capture the Castle, Go Ask Alice, The Princess Diaries, and Absolutely Normal Chaos. It's chosen as a way to enhance the realism of the narrative—to create a stronger connection with the character's thoughts and feelings, though it also presents a unique set of limitations as well. Since the story is told through Miranda's journal, many of her thoughts and beliefs are recorded, but never verified or challenged, and are unreliable because of the things she does not know and the things she is too scared to ask. For example, Miranda frequently posits that her mother is 'betting on' Jonny and Matt's survival more than her own. Miranda offers evidence of this via her observations and personal choices, but never directly affirms this with her mother, Laura. Emotion also often clouds Miranda's thoughts, and her descriptions of fights with her mother or kissing Dan by Miller's Pond impact the tone and mood of the narrative. Furthermore, as her food supply and energy dwindle, Miranda begins to second-guess her own thoughts: Did she really see figure skater Brandon Erlich at the pond, or did she fantasize it? Because Miranda is recording the events of her life as they occur—without the distance of time or a wider perspective—her newest entries constantly redefine those that came before. She often retrospectively realizes that her evaluation of previous situations was inaccurate based on what she now knows in her current reality. For instance, when her mother sprains her ankle for the first time, Miranda assumes that this is the worst thing that could occur (and in general she uses the words "best" and "worst" quite liberally), yet when her mother re-sprains her ankle at a time when their situation is more dire, she reflects back on her previous thoughts and reevaluates them. In addition, with limited news reaching their family, Miranda often loses perspective of the larger world. Her concerns must focus on the immediacy of her own needs and those around her. As she says, "[W]ithout hearing what's going on in the real world, it's easy to think there is no real world anymore, that Howell, PA, is the only place left on earth." The lack of reliable sources of news, compounded by Miranda's own needs not being met, means that she often lacks the energy to care or consider the well-being of those outside her immediate sphere. As the struggle for survival overtakes both Miranda and the rest of the world, her perspective is forced to narrow. The appearance of truth created through Miranda's diary entries is counterbalanced by the insular nature of her experiences following the asteroid crash. The realism and intimacy of her writing can also create a false sense of security, lulling the reader into forgetting how influenced this story is by Pfeffer's choice of narrator and method of narration. It is important to consider that Life As We Knew It is really the story of life as Miranda knew it, and not a global or objective perspective at all. - Climax: Miranda walks into town, knowing she doesn't have the strength to return, and finds the flyer for food distribution. - Summary: In her journal, sixteen-year-old Miranda Evans is counting down until her sophomore year of high school ends and summer vacation begins, but in the meantime she has tests, fights with her mom, and friendship drama. She first hears that a large asteroid is going to hit the moon from her mom's boyfriend, Peter, but soon it's all the newscasters talk about, and her teachers too—they use it as an excuse to assign moon-themed projects. Despite the extra schoolwork, the mood is festive on the night the asteroid is supposed to hit. People in New York are having rooftop viewing parties, and even on Miranda's rural Pennsylvania street, all the neighbors are out in an impromptu block party. Despite her older brother Matt's misgivings about the event—which he had called home from college the night before to share—Miranda joins in the excitement with her mom Laura and younger brother Jonny. When the asteroid first appears in the sky, however, the mood quickly changes to one of panic. The asteroid is denser than scientists had predicted and the collision knocks the moon off kilter, forcing it closer to Earth. The impacts are immediate, even if Miranda doesn't know the full extent of them because cell service and cable channels stop working. By the next morning Miranda has ascertained that her father Hal and pregnant stepmother Lisa, as well as her Grandma and Matt, are all okay. The world as a whole, however, is not. Due to sudden unpredictable tides and tsunamis, there were massive casualties on both coasts of the United States. Countries around the world with coastlines are devastated by the impact of the moon's increased gravitational pull on their tides. Millions are dead. Laura reacts to this news and the powerful electrical storms of the next day by pulling Miranda and Jonny from school and having them join her and their elderly neighbor Mrs. Nesbitt on a high-stakes shopping spree, where they buy nonperishable items and plants for a vegetable garden. Looking at their full pantry, Miranda tells herself that these precautions are ludicrous and unnecessary. But in the weeks that follow, electricity continues to be unreliable, gas prices skyrocket, and the grocery stores remain bare. By the time Matt returns home from college and the school year ends, food shortages have become severe enough that classmates squabble over who will get Miranda's friend Megan's lunchtime peanut butter sandwich. Megan, like other congregants at the local Reverend Marshall's church, has decided to fast and pray in response to the disasters. Instead of things going back to normal, the outages escalate—as do the temperatures and the incidents of rare illness. The tides and tsunamis also haven't stopped, and one morning Miranda wakes up to a grim, gray sky—the result of the ash cloud from dramatic worldwide volcanic eruptions. Within days the temperatures plummet, and the vegetables in Laura's garden begin to wither from lack of sunlight. Miranda had been making trips to swim at Miller's Pond and meet up with Dan, a boy she's started to see, but it's soon too cold. By early August there is frost, and many people—including Hal, the pregnant Lisa, Dan, and Miranda's friend Sammi, who is dating a forty-year-old man with resources and connections—leave their homes in the hopes of finding better conditions elsewhere in the country. Miranda, Matt, and Laura all cut back to two meals a day, then decide to skip an additional meal every other day. They don't share this plan with Jonny, however, because at thirteen years old, they think he's too young to cut back more on meals. And, Miranda realizes, he is the one her mother is betting on to survive if they can't all make it. She resents her mother for this, despite the fact that Laura is eating even less than the amount they agreed upon. When their heating oil runs out the Evanses move into their sunroom, which has a wood stove. Miranda chafes under the lack of privacy and continued lack of food. A pair of old cross country skis is found in the attic and Matt, Jonny, and Miranda all take turns training on them. Laura, who has limited mobility due to a twice-sprained ankle, does not. Matt and Miranda discuss how the last person alive will use them to leave. When Jonny, Laura, and Matt all begin to run fevers and are too weak to leave their mattresses, Miranda skis to the hospital for help. The building is deserted except for two nurses who explain that everyone else is dead—including Peter, Laura's boyfriend. Miranda adds him to the list of deaths she's endured, which now includes Mrs. Nesbitt and her friend Megan, who chose to starve to death as a sign of her religious faith. Slowly, under Miranda's care, Jonny and Laura recover. Matt does too, but he seems permanently weakened, and they fear that he strained his heart helping Miranda care for the other two while still sick. In late February electricity begins to reappear sporadically for a few minutes at a time. The news reports are still much the same: lists of the dead, natural disasters, famines, droughts, and illnesses. In mid-March, with food supplies dangerously low, Miranda realizes that her whole family is not going to survive, and they can all starve to death slowly, or she can give Matt and Jonny a fighting chance. In order to spare her mother from having to witness her death, Miranda walks into town—knowing that she does not have the strength to make the return trip. However, when she sits down on one of the deserted streets, she glimpses a yellow flyer. She hasn't seen anything bright-colored in so long that she musters the energy to get up and capture it. The flyer directs her to City Hall, where food distribution had begun a few weeks ago. Miranda is driven home with four bags of groceries, and with the promise of more bags to come every week. The novel ends on Miranda's birthday, with her celebrating the fact that there's food in the pantry, her family is alive and together, and with the hopeful assertion that she's writing this journal not to chronicle her life for those who outlive her, but for herself, for a time when things look better than they are now.

- Genre: Literary Realism - Title: Life in the Iron Mills - Point of view: First person and third person omniscient - Setting: An unnamed industrialized city in the American South that is based off of Davis' hometown of Wheeling, Virginia - Character: Hugh. Description: Hugh Wolfe, one of the novella's protagonists, is a 32-year-old furnace-tender in an iron mill in the American South. Hugh leads a dismal life of constant labor and terrible living conditions, and he has an overwhelming feeling of being stuck. Despite his sad and unsatisfying life, Hugh possesses an intense craving for beauty and art, which he satisfies somewhat through carving statues out of korl (a byproduct of making iron), as well as through his affections for Janey, a young Irish girl who frequently leans on Hugh for comfort and friendship. Hugh's admiration for beauty prevents him from returning the affections of his cousin, Deborah, whose devotion to him leads her to steal money so that he might have a better life. Hugh's desire to live a more beautiful life leads him to keep the stolen money, but this ultimately leads to Hugh's downfall when he's sentenced to nineteen years in jail for theft. Hugh quickly goes mad in prison, eventually committing suicide with a piece of tin that he sharpens on the barred windows. - Character: Deborah. Description: Deborah, a protagonist of the novella, is a cotton picker in an unnamed industrial city in the American South. Deborah lives with her cousin Hugh, his alcoholic father, and six other families in a cramped house. Like Hugh's life, Deborah's life is full of pain and suffering. Despite this, Deborah consistently acts with love and selflessness, since her unrequited love for Hugh propels her existence, much as Hugh's love of beauty propels his. Deborah is self-conscious about her physical deformity (she has a slight hunchback) and she knows it is one of the reasons why Hugh doesn't love her. Out of love, she struggles to bring Hugh meals at work and, ultimately, steals money from Mitchell on Hugh's behalf, which leads both her and Hugh to go to prison. After Hugh dies in prison, Deborah's life is transformed by the Quaker woman, who helps Deborah escape from industrialized city life and shows her the healing power of nature and Christian love. Away from the vice and hardship of the city, Deborah becomes happy, calm, loving, and humble. - Character: Narrator. Description: The unnamed narrator, who tells the novella's central story from thirty years in the future, lives in the same house that Hugh, Deborah, and Hugh's father lived in (although the narrator lives in the whole house, while the Wolfes only inhabited two of the cellar rooms). Living in the Wolfes' old house means that the narrator possesses the statue of the hungry woman that Hugh carved, which is the catalyst for the narrator telling Hugh and Deborah's story. The narrator positions him- or herself as an expert on factory workers, even though the narrator doesn't seem to be one. As the house suggests, the narrator seems somewhat privileged, and his or her nuanced and articulate observations about industrial life position him or her to reach an equally privileged middle-class audience to warn them about the dangers of industrialization. The narrator holds firm moral positions about industrial cities being inhuman and believes that high- and low-class people all have the same desires and emotions, they just relate to different experiences. The narrator is nonjudgmental and wants the reader to be, as well. - Character: Quaker woman. Description: The Quaker woman is the gentle and kindly older woman who visits the prison to tend to Hugh's body after his death. During this time, she meets Deborah and promises to return in three years once Deborah is released from prison. The Quaker woman is true to her word—three years later, she brings Deborah to the Quaker community in the countryside to experience the healing effects of nature and Christian love. - Character: Doctor May. Description: Doctor John May, known as Doctor May, is the local physician who visits the mill with Kirby, Mitchell, and the reporter. He is unable to step out of his mindset as an upper-class doctor. He can't find a deeper meaning in Hugh's statue, as he is preoccupied by the statue's accurate musculature. Doctor May thinks highly of himself and considers speaking kindly to Hugh to be a great act of charity. When Hugh asks Doctor May to help him, Doctor May is ultimately unwilling to put his encouraging words into action, revealing the novella's sharp critique of positive words that are not backed by positive actions. Although he outwardly scoffs at Mitchell's assertion that the workers need to rise up on their own accord without outside help, he inwardly accepts this idea and does nothing to help the workers except pray that they have the strength to revolt on their own. - Character: Mitchell. Description: Mitchell is Kirby's brother in law, who is in town to study the institutions of a Slave State. He is one of the men who visits the mill with Kirby, Doctor May, and the reporter, and is the man Deborah steals money from. Upon their meeting, Hugh is immediately fascinated by Mitchell, as he appears to be the kind of wealthy, intellectual gentleman that Hugh has always dreamed of being—even Mitchell's voice seems to exude elegance. Hugh's interactions with Mitchell make Hugh more painfully aware of his unsatisfying life and wasted potential. In addition, Mitchell is the only person in the group of visitors who understands the meaning behind Hugh's statue, recognizing that the statue is hungry for life and for answers from God. Despite his artistic eye, Mitchell reveals himself to be cold, emotionally detached, and arrogant. Mitchell only interacts with Hugh for the sake of amusement, both at the mill and when visiting Hugh in prison. Although he is critical of Doctor May's hesitance to help Hugh, Mitchell's remarks seem to be said in jest. He ultimately distances himself from social issues, firmly asserting that the workers must rise up on their own without outside help. - Character: Kirby. Description: Clarke Kirby, known just as Kirby, is the overseer and the son of one of the mill owners. He only cares about his mill's profits and is blatantly uninterested in the workers who make his mill function smoothly. To him, the mill workers aren't even people, they're just "hands" or "wretches" who do the dirty work. Like Mitchell, Kirby is cold and emotionally detached. - Character: Preacher. Description: The preacher gives a sermon on the night that Hugh stumbles into a church and decides to keep the money that Deborah stole from Mitchell. Hugh thinks the preacher's words are beautiful and emotionally charged but ultimately irrelevant. Hugh feels that the preacher's sermon is empty and meant for privileged people, since the preacher hasn't experienced hunger, alcoholism, or poverty. - Character: Janey. Description: Janey is a young Irish girl who frequently stays with Deborah and Hugh when her father is in jail. Helpless, young, and pretty, Janey is the object of Hugh's affections and Deborah's jealousy. Janey is primarily described through the lens of Hugh's desire and only speaks when she sleepily mumbles to Deborah that her father is in jail and that Hugh is working the night shift. - Theme: The City vs. The Country. Description: Life in the Iron Mills mainly takes place within the city limits of an unnamed Southern mill town that is based on Rebecca Harding Davis' hometown of Wheeling, Virginia. In this town, which is meant to stand in for industrial cities in general, immigrant workers live brutal lives, as shown through a cotton-picker named Deborah and her cousin, an iron worker ("puddler") named Hugh. Ultimately, the novella is highly critical of the city (and industrialized cities as a whole), painting it as a toxic and dangerous place that destroys its inhabitants' physical and mental wellbeing. Davis asserts that true healing of the body and mind can be found only in the countryside, where nature remains untouched by industrialization. The city is characterized by the frantic hustle and bustle of its people and the stagnancy of its nature, both of which drain residents of their vitality. In the city, people are constantly at work; laborers are assigned to night or day shifts, mirroring the way "sentinels of an army" relieve one another so that someone is always on duty keeping watch. However, all of the workers are sickly from such constant, consuming labor. Even the machinery seems tired from the never-ending work: "the unsleeping engines groan and shriek," as if they, too, are crying out in exhaustion. The unnamed narrator illustrates how the muddy brown river that cuts through the city "drags itself sluggishly along, tired of the heavy weight of boats and coal-barges," "slavishly bearing its burden day after day." Like the workers and the machinery, the river is in constant motion and is subjected to nonstop labor. As a result, the river looks dull and sickly. Even the air that blankets the entire city is "muddy, flat, immovable" and heavy with smoke. The narrator, who resides in the same house that protagonists Hugh and Deborah lived in thirty years prior, says nothing much has changed in the city in the past few decades. The city itself is still dirty, and the workers are still subjected to constant work in the mills. Beyond simply draining workers of their vitality, the city is a dangerous place in terms of health and safety, and it's riddled with social ills. The narrator notes that the mills look more like a "scene of hopeless discomfort and veiled crime" than a workplace, which suggests that the mills are disguised as productive businesses but are actually evil, corrupt places. On her nightly walk to bring Hugh his dinner, Deborah similarly notes that a walk through the mills is like traversing "a street in Hell." In the opening, the narrator notes how the city's residents are "breathing from infancy to death an air saturated with fog and grease and soot, vileness for soul and body," meaning that the city's environment is poisonous to its inhabitants' physical and mental health. In addition, the city brims with alcoholism, physical fights, jeering, and crowded prisons. The workers are sent to prison so frequently that they refer to it as "the stone house," as if it were their second home. As a sharp contrast from the dirty, sluggish, dangerous city, the countryside remains untouched by industrialization, consequently making it a place of health, wellness, and healing. The narrator notes that "Man cannot live by work alone," a parody of Matthew 4:4, "Man cannot live by bread alone," when Jesus says that people need spiritual food in addition to physical food. Like Jesus urging people to look to deeper things to fill them up, the narrator suggests that people need to be filled by means outside of the city. The narrator contrasts the sluggish city and beautiful, restorative countryside by explaining the river's course: "What if it be stagnant and slimy here? It knows that beyond there waits for it odorous sunlight,—quaint, old gardens, dusky with soft, green foliage of apple-trees, and flushing crimson with roses,—air, and fields, and mountains." The river is radically transformed as it exits city limits and enters the country, healed by the beauty and purity of nature. Furthermore, the Quaker woman who tends to Hugh's body—a country-dweller and the human embodiment of the virtues of rural life—is the story's most peaceful, compassionate character. She tells Deborah of where she lives, saying, "Thee sees the hills, friend, over the river? Thee sees how the light lies warm there, and the winds of God blow all day?" I live there." The Quaker woman's own light and warmth seems a result of her life in the countryside. Similarly, the "sunshine, and fresh air, and slow, patient, Christ-love" that Deborah experiences in the countryside while living amongst the Quakers are what "make healthy and hopeful" her "impure body and soul." She undergoes physical, mental, and emotional healing in the countryside, eventually shaping her into the most, calm, humble, and caring person in the entire Quaker community. Life in the Iron Mills forges a sharp contrast between the city, which is blanketed by heavy smoke, exhaustion, disease, and corruption, and the countryside, which is marked by fresh air, nature, community, and wholesomeness. In making this contrast, Rebecca Harding Davis highlights to her middle-class readership that industrialization doesn't necessarily mean progress, a better quality of life, and more money. In fact, for workers like Hugh and Deborah, industrialization means rapidly deteriorating physical and mental health, deep poverty, and overwhelming sense of feeling stuck. Davis urges her privileged readers to see industrialization more clearly and to look to nature to restore the wholesomeness and health that industrialization has smothered. - Theme: Coping and Relief. Description: Life in the Iron Mills details the horrible working and living conditions that pervade industrialized cities, like the unnamed city that protagonists Hugh and Deborah reside in. To cope with such hardships, residents of industrialized cities turn to substance abuse or crime to ease their pain. However, the novella asserts that such coping mechanisms don't actually lead to relief—they only cover up the problem temporarily. Instead, relief from city life can only be found when one makes both a physical and spiritual change, moving to the countryside and turning to religion. True relief from the horrors of industrialized city life cannot be found through temporary coping mechanisms. Such solutions provide only momentary escapes and usually make one's problems much worse. For example, many of the workers turn to alcohol to dull the pain. The way Hugh talks about the statue of a worker that he makes reveals how central alcohol is to their lives, as he believes that the statue wants something to make her live, which could be whiskey. Although Hugh drinks infrequently, the narrator points out that when he does, he drinks "desperately," frantically trying to cover up his problems. The narrator notes that Deborah's love for Hugh is her coping mechanism of choice, and "When that stimulant was gone, she would take to Whiskey." Although Deborah does not currently indulge in alcohol like her peers, the narrator notes how she is likely to do so in the future, simply changing her means for dealing with her difficult life from one temporary solution to another. In addition, Deborah tries to find relief from city life for herself and Hugh by stealing money from Mitchell. Deborah's theft only momentarily alleviates Hugh's pain—he only has the money for one night, during which he dreams about how much better his life is about to be. The plan quickly backfires, leading to Deborah and Hugh's imprisonment, revealing that stealing was not a lasting solution. Taking refuge in the purity of nature is the first step to finding true relief. The novella argues that relief from the evils of industrialization can only begin to happen if a person physically removes himself or herself from the city. Deborah begs the Quaker woman to bury Hugh outside of city bounds, claiming that that being buried in the city under thick layers of "mud and ash" will "smother" him, even in death. When Deborah leaves the city to live with the Quakers, her mental and physical health is transformed, and she finally finds relief from her suffering. The narrator specifically notes that such transformation is partially due to "long years of sunshine, and fresh air…where the light is the warmest, the air freest"—all elements "needed to make healthy and hopeful this impure body and soul." None of these elements are found in the smoke-clogged, disease-ridden city. While leaving the industrialized city for the countryside is necessary for finding relief, the novella highlights that ultimate relief is found when one turns to religion and spirituality. Once in the countryside, the other part of Deborah's relief stems from the "slow, patient Christ-love" she is shown by the Quakers. Her time with the "silent, restful," and loving Quakers transforms her into the most loving, calm, and modest person in the community. This is a dramatic contrast from how exhausted and sickly Deborah was before her time spent immersed in a religious community. The narrator closes the novella by talking about the sunrise "to the far East, where, in the flickering, nebulous crimson, God has set the promise of the Dawn." The narrator underscores the way that sunrises, like new beginnings, come from God. By closing the inner narrative with Deborah's newfound peace from being a Quaker and closing the outer narrative with the narrator's attribution of sunrises to god, the novella draws attention to the way spirituality brings relief. - Theme: The Power of Art. Description: While most of Life in the Iron Mills is about the dismal, heartbreaking lives of immigrants who work in the iron mills in the American South, the novella is also about the power of art. Throughout the pages of Life in the Iron Mills, art appears in many forms and is a powerful means for telling and preserving stories, as well as for expressing and eliciting emotions. Art is also a means for illustrating ideas that language falls short of describing accurately, or ideas that are too dangerous to convey straightforwardly. As a frame narrative, Life in the Iron Mills is a story within a story. The outer story—that of the narrator—is the means for telling the inner story of Hugh and Deborah. In this case, art in the form of literature functions as a way for stories to spread and endure. Both the outer story of the narrator and the inner story of Hugh and Deborah center on a physical piece of art: the sculpture that Hugh carves out of korl. This sculpture endures long after Hugh commits suicide and is the only sign that he ever lived, thus preserving his life story. The figure is also the catalyst for the narrator's retelling of Hugh and Deborah's story through literature—another level of storytelling and preservation. Art is closely tied to emotions. In its many forms, art is a vehicle for emotional expression and a way to elicit emotions from others. For example, Hugh pours his pain and experiences into his korl figures. Although readers only gain insight into one of his sculptures (the "hungry" woman), Hugh is known for his penchant for making art out of korl, with final products that are clearly emotionally charged—"hideous, fantastic enough, but sometimes strangely beautiful." Even the other mill workers ("puddlers") secretly are moved by Hugh's art. When visitors to the mill (Kirby, Doctor May, and Mitchell) stumble upon Hugh's korl figure of the woman, they experience a variety of emotions in tandem. At first, they are startled and even scared. Then, awe sets in, as the men admire the statue's attention to detail. The statue also elicits different emotions from each of the men: Kirby, the son of one of the mill owners, is flippant about the statue, caring more about his workers' productivity than their artistic pursuits, Doctor May is confused by the statue, and Mitchell is moved by it. Art's power also lies in its ability to illustrate what can't be described using language, as the korl figure evokes emotions that Hugh doesn't quite have the words for. He is "bewildered" when the visitors to the mill ask him to describe what the sculpture means. "She be hungry…I dunno…It mebbe. Summat to make her live, I think,—like you. Whiskey ull do it, in a way." Hugh's struggle to find the words to describe the feelings that underpin his statue are reflective of his poor education but they also point to the way art is capable of describing what language falls short of. Similarly, when Hugh stumbles into a church while deciding what to do with the stolen money, the church's artistic elements elicit from him a confusing range of emotions that words can't capture. The architecture, stained glass, and marble figures "lifted his soul with a wonderful pain," which feels confusing and paradoxical when put into words. When Hugh realizes that keeping the stolen money can give him a better life, he sees the world like an artist's palette, bursting with rich colors. Seeing the world in this way "had somehow given him a glimpse of another world than this—of an infinite depth of beauty and of quiet somewhere,—somewhere,—a depth of quiet and rest and love." The repetition of the words "somehow" and "somewhere" show Hugh's inability to use language to accurately describe the strong feelings brought on by his artistic view of his surroundings. Similarly, art also has the capacity to illustrate what shouldn't be described—ideas that are too dangerous, radical, or risky to be conveyed by more direct means. The men touring the mill compare the mill to Dante's Inferno, referencing a work of literature to allude to the conditions of the mill rather than explicitly stating that the mill looks dangerous, inhumane, and hellish. It would be incredibly polarizing were one of these privileged men to voice their discomfort with the puddlers' working conditions outright (instead of through the lens of literature), considering they are in the presence of Kirby, the son of one of the mill owners. Similarly, the inner story is meant to pose a question that the narrator can't straightforwardly ask. The narrator prefaces the story of Hugh and Deborah by asserting, "I dare make my meaning no clearer, but will only tell my story." The inner narrative as a whole is a work of art that brings to life things that are too risky for the privileged narrator to articulate outright, namely the horrors of industrialization. Life in the Iron Mills emphasizes that art comes in many forms and is a powerful means for storytelling, expressing emotion, and communicating ideas. Besides all of the different forms of art that appear throughout the novella, Life in the Iron Mills as a whole is also a work of art. Through her novella, Rebecca Harding Davis tells the story of two working-class immigrants whose lives are governed and destroyed (or nearly destroyed) by industrialization. Underpinning the novella is Davis' desire to elicit empathy from her middle-class readership who are likely ignorant of what industrialization actually looks like. Davis is one of the first writers to partake in literary realism, as her novella's realistic setting and characters were nontraditional subjects for literature at the time. As a whole, Life in the Iron Mills artistically criticizes American industrialization, an idea that may have been too risky for Davis to articulate through other means. - Theme: Words vs. Actions. Description: Life in the Iron Mills considers the power of positive words and actions to fix bad situations and change lives for the better. Ultimately, the novella asserts that words alone are an ineffective means for creating positive change—only the combination of positive words with positive actions has true power and authenticity. Davis suggests that positive, encouraging words that aren't backed by actions are empty and meaningless. Using Doctor May and the preacher as examples, the novella illustrates the way that words alone do little to fix negative situations. For example, Doctor May thinks highly of himself for speaking politely to Hugh—something he considers to be a powerful act of kindness. However, when Hugh accepts Doctor May's encouraging words and asks Doctor May to help him, Doctor May quickly recoils, asserting that he doesn't "have the means," and that there is no point in him helping one person since he can't help everyone. Doctor May's kind words don't change Hugh's circumstances, they just make Doctor May feel good about himself. Likewise, when Hugh stumbles into a church, he finds the preacher's words powerful yet foreign. Because the preacher has not experienced poverty, hunger, disease, or substance abuse, his sermon feels empty: "His words passed far over the furnace-tender's grasp, toned to suit another class of culture; they sounded in his ears a very pleasant song in an unknown tongue." The preacher's words have "failed," because they are not coupled with any sort of action or experience—they're just hollow, pretty words. In contrast, the novella praises those whose altruistic words and actions align—namely those who act on their convictions rather than just talk about them, like Deborah and the Quaker woman. Deborah cares for Hugh deeply and shows it both through her words and her actions; throughout the novella, she showers him with kind words and takes actions to support him, such as walking in the blistering cold every night to bring him dinner, stealing Mitchell's pocketbook not just for herself but for Hugh as well, begging the jailer every day to be able to see Hugh, and convincing the Quaker woman to bury Hugh in the countryside rather than let him be "smothered" by the city. Deborah consistently acts on her love for Hugh, rather than just talking about it. Likewise, when Deborah pleads with the Quaker woman to bury Hugh in the countryside, the Quaker woman "put her strong arm around Deborah and led her to the window." By putting her arm around Deborah, the Quaker woman acts, rather than just speaks, with love and kindness. The Quaker woman promises to help Deborah when she is released from prison in three years: "'When thee comes back,' she said, in a low, sorrowful tone, like one who speaks from a strong heart deeply moved with remorse or pity, 'thee shall begin thy life again,—there on the hills. I came too late; but not for thee…'" When three years have passed, the Quaker woman acts on her promise by returning to get Deborah, showing her authenticity and commitment to altruism. Life in the Iron Mills gives the spoken word very little power, asserting that positive words by themselves are insignificant if not paired with positive actions. Perhaps, this is partially because the novella centers on two inarticulate, uneducated protagonists—naturally, actions would have more clout than words. More importantly, the novella's critique of empty words, and praise for words coupled with action, point to how social and political ills, like those detailed throughout the pages of Life in the Iron Mills, cannot be fixed by encouraging words, like those of Doctor May, or poetic sermons, like that of the preacher. Davis urges her privileged audience to actually take action in order to undo the evils of industrialization. Furthermore, Davis urges her audience to be like the Quaker woman and help heal those trapped in industrialization's grasp. - Climax: When Hugh commits suicide - Summary: Life in the Iron Mills opens with a description of an unnamed industrialized town in the American South, which primarily produces iron. The account is given by an unnamed narrator, who is a resident of the town. Perched at his or her window, the narrator looks out over the town, noticing the drunken workers smoking tobacco, the muddy river flowing sluggishly along its course, and the workers trudging to or from work in the mills. Watching the world inch by out the window, the narrator is reminded of a story that took place in this very town. The narrator knows the reader may be skeptical of the importance of a story of one worker who led a dreary existence just like thousands of other workers. However, there is a dangerous secret hidden in this particular story that has driven people to insanity or even death. This secret can only be uncovered if the reader listens to the narrator's story with an open mind, putting aside all preconceptions of what kinds of people and places are acceptable subjects for literature. The reader must follow the narrator down into the grimy, dirty city to meet a Welsh immigrant named Hugh Wolfe, a furnace tender at Kirby & John's iron mill. Thirty years prior, Hugh lived in what is now the narrator's house. Back then, the single house was rented out to six families, but the two cellar rooms were rented out to Hugh, Hugh's father, and their cousin, Deborah. Narration shifts from first person to third person, and the story of the Wolfes begins. On a stormy night after work, a cotton-picker named Deborah returns to her home, which is a small, dark cellar room coated with moss. Hugh's father, a small, frail man, is asleep in the corner on some straw, so Deborah quietly fixes her dinner. Deborah is pale and little sickly with a slight hunchback. Unlike her peers, she does not drink alcohol. The narrator speculates that she must have something else in her life keeping her afloat—perhaps a far-flung hope or love. When that thing is gone, the narrator speculates, she will likely indulge in whiskey like everyone else. As she eats, she hears a faint noise and realizes that hidden within the old coats on the floor is Janey, a young Irish girl from the neighborhood. Janey says she is sleeping the night at the Wolfe's home because her father is in prison. She mentions that Hugh is working the night shift at the mill. Immediately, Deborah jumps up and begins throwing together a meal to bring to Hugh (including her own portion of ale). Although it is pitch black, pouring rain, and nearing midnight, Deborah makes her way to the mill with Hugh's dinner, just like she does almost every night, usually with little thanks from Hugh. She thinks about how the mill looks like it belongs in Hell, with its roaring fires and shadowy figures of half-clothed men. Once at the mill, Hugh eats his meal and tells Deborah to rest and warm up by lying on the pile of ash. The narrator lingers on the image of Deborah, overwhelmed by pain, exhaustion, and cold, lying in the bed of ash. The narrator asks the reader to take a closer look at Deborah and see not just her filth and dismal state, but to recognize her selflessness, envy, and consuming love for Hugh. The narrator points out how her face looks lifeless—an expression carved out from years of unrequited love for Hugh and knowing that he is kind to her because he is kind to everyone (even the cellar rats). Deborah recognizes in Hugh a longing for beauty, which she thinks makes him repulsed by her physical deformity and drawn to little Janey. The narrator reminds the reader to have empathy, since these feelings of heartbreak and envy are universal. The narrator briefly describes Hugh, noting that the other iron workers have deemed him effeminate and strange. Sick with tuberculosis, Hugh has yellow skin and weak muscles. He does not regularly drink or fight like the other men—when he does, he gets beaten up badly. In addition, he has an odd hobby of carving statues into korl, a byproduct of making iron. He works on each statue for months at a time only to destroy the figure upon its completion. The narrator implores the reader to not be quick to judge Hugh as the story unfolds, since his personality and choices are the result of a lifetime of hard labor, years of disease, and overwhelming feelings of hopelessness, dissatisfaction, and pain. Back in the mill, a small group of visitors enter the mill. Hugh recognizes a few of the men: the overseer named Kirby, the son of one of the mill owners; and the local physician, Doctor May. Among them is a newspaper reporter and another gentleman. The men talk of profits and politics and make passing remarks about the mill's striking resemblance to Dante's Inferno. After the reporter leaves, Kirby, Doctor May, and the other stranger (named Mitchell) remain to wait out the rain. When the men finally depart, they are startled to come across a giant, lifelike statue of a woman carved out of korl. Mitchell guesses that Hugh is the artist, and Doctor May asks what Hugh meant by the statue. Hugh says the woman is "hungry" for life. Doctor May is confused by this answer, but Mitchell seems to understand. Kirby is flippant about the statue, asserting that he has no interest in nurturing his workers' artistry. In fact, no social problems are his problems—he is only responsible for is paying his workers on time. Doctor May decides to encourage Hugh and tells him that he has extraordinary potential. When Hugh asks Doctor May to help him, Doctor May quickly recoils and says he does not have the money to do so and that there is no point in helping one person if he can't help everyone. Kirby, Doctor May, and Mitchell wait for the coach, as Mitchell asserts that reform needs to happen from within, rather than being spurred by outside help. Once the three men leave, Hugh is overcome by feelings of inadequacy and anger. When they return home, Deborah reminds Hugh about what the visitors said back at the mill about money being what could save them. Growing increasingly hysterical, Deborah thrusts a large wad of money into his hands that she has stolen from Mitchell. Hugh simply asks if life has come to this. The following day, Deborah reminds Hugh that he has the right to keep the money. He debates this for an entire day but eventually decides to keep the money. He walks through the town saying a mental goodbye to all its sights, knowing that a new life is before him. He stumbles into a church and appreciates the preacher's rich language but deems the sermon irrelevant to him and meant for privileged people. The narrator suddenly interjects, revealing that Hugh was found guilty of theft by the morning. When Doctor May sees Hugh's conviction in the paper, he angrily mutters to his wife about how ungrateful Hugh was for all of the kindness Doctor May showed him. The jailer, Haley, notes that Hugh's nineteen-year sentence is the harshest punishment the law allows. Haley also says that the man Hugh stole from, Mitchell, visited Hugh in jail out of "curiosity" the following day. Since then, Hugh has been quiet and growing increasingly sick but he still tries to escape whenever he can. Hugh's accomplice, Deborah, only has a three-year sentence. Haley says she begs him every day to see Hugh, and Haley finally complies. When Haley lets Deborah into Hugh's cell, Deborah immediately realizes that Hugh is dangerously sick and losing his mind. Crying, Deborah confesses her love for Hugh. He ignores her, instead captivated by scraping a piece of tin across the bars. Deborah can see on Hugh's face that he is dying. Meanwhile, the sounds of the market outside the window make Hugh realize that his time on earth has come to a close. When Haley comes to return Deborah to her cell, Deborah tells Hugh that she knows he will never see her again. Hugh agrees and tells her to say goodbye to his father and Janey for him. Later that night, Hugh uses his now-sharpened piece of tin to cut his arms and commit suicide. From her cell, Deborah can sense what is happening and repeats to herself that Hugh "knows best." The next day, a crowd gathers at Hugh's cell, including a coroner, reporters, and Kirby. Later, a Quaker woman arrives to tend to Hugh's body. Deborah begs the woman to bury Hugh out in the countryside so that he doesn't have to remain trapped in the city, buried under thick layers of mud and ash. The Quaker woman says she lives out in the countryside and will bury Hugh there the following day. She also promises to return to fetch Deborah and take her to the countryside after Deborah has served her three-year sentence. The narrator affirms that that thee years later, the Quaker woman was true to her word, and that the combination of nature and Christian love transforms Deborah into the most calm, humble, loving person among all of the Quakers. The narrator also notes that Deborah's love for Hugh still endures. The narrator says that the only sign that Hugh ever lived is the korl statue, which the narrator now keeps in his or her library behind a curtain. The statue asks questions like, "Is this the end?...nothing beyond?—no more?" A glimmer of light breaks through the room and shines on the statue. The narrator notes that the statue's arm seems to point to the east, where God will make the sun rise once more.

- Genre: Fiction, Magical Realism - Title: Life of Pi - Point of view: First person limited from both the "author" and the adult Pi - Setting: Pondicherry, India, the Pacific Ocean, Mexico, and Toronto, Canada - Character: Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi). Description: The novel's protagonist, Pi is born in Pondicherry, India and raised among wild animals, as his father is a zookeeper. Pi gets his unusual name from a famous swimming pool in Paris. He has a deep affinity with religion from a young age, and practices Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. Pi is the narrator for most of the novel, as he tells the story of his 227 days stranded in the Pacific Ocean. During his ordeal Pi finds an incredible resourcefulness and survival instinct within himself, but he also stoops to gruesome acts in his desperation. After his rescue in Mexico, Pi attends the University of Toronto, where he studies zoology and religion. He marries and has two children, and the author declares that Pi's story "has a happy ending." - Character: Richard Parker. Description: A three-year-old male royal Bengal tiger who is Pi's companion on the lifeboat. Richard Parker was captured as a cub by a hunter named Richard Parker, but in the accompanying paperwork the tiger's name was switched with the hunter's. The tiger is the epitome of beauty, power, and danger, and he and Pi live in respective territories on the lifeboat. When they reach Mexico, Richard Parker disappears into the jungle without looking back. This "botched goodbye" pains Pi for the rest of his life. In Pi's second account of his ordeal Richard Parker is actually a part of Pi himself, and a representation of the violent things Pi had to do in order to survive. - Character: The Author. Description: A fictional Canadian author who resembles Yann Martel, the novel's real author. Like Martel, the "author" has also published two books and was inspired to write Pi's story while traveling in India. The author tracks down Pi and interviews him, and interrupts the narrative with "Author's Notes" explaining his sources and describing his interactions with the adult Pi. - Character: Gita Patel. Description: Pi's mother. Gita is raised a Hindu and had a Baptist education, but she is nonreligious as an adult and questions Pi's faith. Gita encourages Pi to read books as a youth. In Pi's first story Gita dies when the Tsimtsum sinks, but in his second story she takes the place of Orange Juice the orangutan. She protects Pi from the French cook for as long as she can, but she is eventually murdered, decapitated, and eaten by the cook. - Character: Santosh Patel. Description: Pi's father and the head of the Pondicherry Zoo. He once ran a hotel but then switched to zookeeping because of his love of animals. Santosh teaches Pi and Ravi his knowledge about zookeeping, but also to respect and fear wild animals. Santosh was raised a Hindu but is not religious, and he questions Pi's religious devotion. - Character: Francis Adirubasamy. Description: A friend of the Patel family who was a champion swimmer in his youth. Pi calls him Mamaji, which means "respected uncle," and Mamaji teaches Pi to swim and to love the water. He is also responsible for Pi's unusual name. Francis is the man who first tells Pi's story to the author in India, promising that the tale is one to "make you believe in God." - Character: Satish Kumar (1). Description: Pi's biology teacher at Petit Séminaire, his school in Pondicherry. Mr. Kumar is a polio survivor with a triangle-shaped body. He is a staunch atheist, and enjoys going to the Pondicherry Zoo to admire the wonders of nature. Mr. Kumar is an important influence on Pi and inspires him to study zoology later. - Character: Tomohiro Okamoto. Description: An official from the Maritime Department of the Japanese Ministry of Transport, Okamoto is sent to interview Pi in Mexico and investigate the sinking of the Tsimtsum. He is skeptical of Pi's first (animal) story, but agrees that it is more compelling than the second story, and in his official report Okamoto praises Pi for surviving with a tiger. - Theme: Survival. Description: Much of the action of Life of Pi consists of the struggle for survival against seemingly impossible odds. Pi is stranded on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific for 227 days, with only an adult Bengal tiger for company, so his ordeal involves not just avoiding starvation but also protecting himself from Richard Parker. Pi is soon forced to give up his lifelong pacifism and vegetarianism, as he has to kill and eat fish and turtles. In a similar vein Orange Juice, the peaceful orangutan, becomes violent when facing the hyena, and Richard Parker submits to being tamed because Pi gives him food. In this way Martel shows the extremes that living things will go to in order to survive, sometimes fundamentally changing their natures.The struggle to survive also leads the characters to commit deeds of both great heroism and horrible gruesomeness. Pi finds an amazing resourcefulness and will to live within himself, and he resolves to live peacefully alongside Richard Parker instead of trying to kill the tiger. When he leaves the algae island Pi even waits for Richard Parker to return to the lifeboat before pushing off. The French cook, on the other hand, (who is either the hyena or the blind castaway Pi encounters later) sinks to murder and cannibalism in his attempts to survive. In Pi's second version of the story, Richard Parker is an aspect of Pi's own personality, which means that the tiger's violence is actually a manifestation of a side of Pi's soul that will do anything to keep living. From the start we know that Pi will survive his ordeal, as he is telling the tale as a happy adult, but his constant struggle to stay alive and sane keeps up the tension throughout the book. - Theme: Religion and Faith. Description: Francis Adirubasamy first presents Pi's tale to the fictional author as "a story to make you believe in God," immediately introducing religion as a crucial theme. Pi is raised in a secular, culturally Hindu family, but as a boy he becomes more devoutly Hindu and then also converts to Christianity and Islam. He practices all of these religions at once despite the protests of his three religious leaders, who each assert that their religion contains the whole and exclusive truth. Instead of dwelling on divisive dogma, Pi focuses on the stories of his different faiths and their different pathways to God, and he reads a story of universal love in all three religions. In fact, it seems that faith and belief is more important to Pi than religious truth, as he also admires atheists for taking a stand in believing that the universe is a certain way. It is only agnostics that Pi dislikes, as they choose doubt as a way of life and never choose a "better story."When he is stranded at sea, Pi's faith is tested by his extreme struggles, but he also experiences the sublime in the grandiosity of his surroundings. All external obstacles are stripped away, leaving only an endless circle of sea and sky, and one day he rejoices over a powerful lightning storm as a "miracle." After his rescue Pi returns to the concept of faith again. He tells his interviewers two versions of his survival story (one with animals and one without) and then asks which one they prefer. The officials disbelieve the animal story, but they agree that it is the more compelling and memorable of the two. Pi responds with "so it goes with God," basically saying that he chooses to have religious faith because he finds a religious worldview more beautiful. The "facts" are unknowable concerning God's existence, so Pi chooses the story he likes better, which is the one involving God. - Theme: Storytelling. Description: The nature of storytelling itself is threaded throughout Life of Pi, as the book is told in a complex way through several layers of narration. The real author writes in the first person as a fictional author similar to Yann Martel himself, and this author retells the story he heard from the adult Pi about Pi's younger self. At the end, in a transcript of an interview which the author provides, the young Pi then retells an alternate story of how he survived his days at sea, giving a version of events with only human survivors instead of animals. The larger question raised by the novel's framework is then about the nature of truth in storytelling. Pi values atheism as much as religion, but he chooses to subscribe to three religions because of the truth and beauty he finds in their stories. He also possibly invents the animal version of his story as a way of finding more truth in his ordeal – as well as staying sane by retelling his gruesome experience in a more beautiful way. The Japanese officials think Pi's human story is the "true" one, but they both admit that the animal story is much more compelling and memorable. In the end Martel comes down clearly on the side of storytelling as its own truth. When actual events and realities are unknowable – like the existence of God, the reason the Tsimtsum sank, or just how Pi survived the Pacific for 227 days – we must choose the stories that seem the most true, beautiful, and moving, and make them our own. - Theme: Boundaries. Description: The situation of much of the novel is a contradiction between boundaries and freedom. Pi is surrounded by the boundless ocean and sky but is trapped in a tiny lifeboat, and within that lifeboat he has his own clear territory separate from Richard Parker. Pi marks his territory – the raft and the top of the tarpaulin – with his urine and "training whistle," and Richard Parker has his territory on the floor of the lifeboat. From the very start of his tale Pi muses on the nature of animal territories, especially regarding zoos, as his father is a zookeeper. Pi explains that animals love rituals and boundaries, and they don't mind being in a zoo as long as they accept that their enclosure is their territory. As a castaway at sea, Pi then uses his zoological knowledge to "tame" Richard Parker, presenting himself as the "alpha" of the lifeboat and keeping himself safe.This idea of boundaries moves into the psychological realm with Pi himself, as he (possibly) creates the character of Richard Parker as a way of dealing with the darkness and bestiality within himself. By making his brutal actions belong to a totally different being, and not even a human being, Pi sets a clear boundary in his mind. Richard Parker disappears when Pi first crawls ashore, showing that the tiger (if he is fictional) was a part of Pi that existed only on the lifeboat, where he needed to do terrible things to survive. Pi is then able to move on with his life – he goes to school, gets married, and has children – because of that boundary between himself and Richard Parker. He kept himself sane and human by symbolically cutting off the animal part of his nature. - Climax: Pi finds land - Summary: A fictional author travels to India, and there he hears an extraordinary story from a man named Francis Adirubasamy. The author tracks down and interviews the story's subject, Piscine Molitor Patel, usually called Pi, in Canada. The author writes the rest of the narrative from Pi's point of view, occasionally interrupting to describe his interviews with the adult Pi. Pi grows up in Pondicherry, India in the 1970s. He is named after a famous swimming pool in Paris. Pi's father is a zookeeper, and Pi and his brother Ravi are raised among exotic wild animals. Pi's tale frequently digresses to explain about zookeeping, animal territories, and boundaries. His father warns him of the danger of wild animals by making Pi watch a tiger eat a goat, but Pi also learns that "the most dangerous animal at a zoo is Man." Pi is raised culturally Hindu, but his family is generally unreligious. As a youth Pi becomes devoutly Hindu and then converts to Christianity and Islam. He practices all three religions at once, despite the protests of his parents and the religious leaders. The "Emergency" brings political turmoil to India and Pi's parents decide to sell the zoo and move the family to Canada. They board a Japanese cargo ship called the Tsimtsum, traveling with many of the zoo animals. There is an explosion one night and the Tsimtsum starts sinking. Pi is awake at the time, and some sailors throw him into a lifeboat. The ship sinks, leaving no human survivors except for Pi. Pi sees a tiger, Richard Parker, and encourages him to climb aboard. Pi eventually finds himself on the lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, and Orange Juice the orangutan. The hyena kills the zebra and eats it. The hyena then fights and kills Orange Juice. Pi notices that Richard Parker is still in the boat, hiding under a tarpaulin. Richard Parker kills the hyena, leaving Pi alone with the tiger. Pi makes a raft for himself and finds supplies in the lifeboat, and he sets about marking his territory and "taming" Richard Parker using a whistle. Pi kills and eats fish and turtles, filters seawater, and collects rainwater. Pi and Richard Parker each occupy their own territory in the lifeboat and live peacefully, though they are constantly starving. Pi loses track of time as months pass. He remembers episodes like seeing a whale, experiencing a lightning storm, and watching a ship pass by. Pi goes temporarily blind and hears a voice talking to him. At first he thinks it is Richard Parker, but then he realizes it is another castaway who is also blind. The two discuss food and then bring their boats together. The castaway attacks Pi, intending to kill and eat him. Richard Parker kills the castaway. Later the boat comes to a mysterious island made entirely of algae and inhabited by thousands of meerkats. Pi and Richard Parker stay there for a while and recover their health. One day Pi finds a tree with human teeth as its fruit, and he realizes that the island is carnivorous. Pi decides to leave with Richard Parker. Finally the lifeboat washes up on a beach in Mexico. Richard Parker disappears into the jungle without looking back, and Pi is rescued by some villagers. The last section is a transcript of an interview between Pi and two Japanese officials who are trying to figure out why the Tsimtsum sank. Pi tells them his story, but they don't believe him. He then tells them a second story, replacing the animals with humans – in this version Pi is on the lifeboat with a French cook, a Chinese sailor, and his own mother. The sailor dies and the cook eats his flesh. The cook later kills Pi's mother, and then Pi kills the cook. The officials are horrified, but they believe this story. They note that the hyena is the cook, the zebra is the sailor, Orange Juice is Pi's mother, and Richard Parker is Pi himself. Pi asks the officials which story they prefer, and they say the one with animals. In their final report they commend Pi for surviving at sea with a tiger.

- Genre: Literary fiction, short story - Title: Like a House on Fire - Point of view: First person - Setting: Probably Victoria, Australia - Character: The narrator. Description: The unnamed narrator is a husband, the father of three children, and the story's protagonist. After an accident at work almost sixteen weeks ago, he is still recovering from a serious back injury. He is running out of sick pay and as a result, his wife Claire has been working extra shifts at the hospital, where she is a nurse. In Claire's absence, the narrator has assumed the childcare responsibilities at home. His inability to provide financial stability for his family and his perception that he's failing to adequately care for his children Ben, Sam, and Evie, cause him to feel insecure and ashamed. Accustomed to maintaining careful order in every element of his life—managing his team at work and dutifully completing domestic tasks at home—the injury has thrown the narrator into an unfamiliar state of chaos. As he struggles to accept his new role in family life—or adapt to his messy household surroundings—the narrator charts the growing tension between him and his wife. - Character: Claire. Description: Claire is a foil to the narrator, her husband. While he requires neatness, order, and control, Claire prefers to embrace the messy and unpredictable side of life. Claire is exhausted from working extra shifts at the hospital to make ends meet, on top of tending to her husband once she's home. Increasingly frustrated with her husband's slow recovery, she resents his complaints about the household mess and clutter. The narrator observes a new side to Claire throughout the course of his injury; when she is caring for him, she assumes a strict, professional persona, which he feels creates further distance between them. - Character: Ben. Description: At eight-years-old, Ben is the narrator's eldest son. He has reached the age where he is skeptical of almost everything, is disinterested in family activities, and no longer believes in Santa or flying reindeer. His younger brother, Sam, looks up to Ben as a gauge of how to behave, and his sister, Evie, is frequently perplexed by Ben's "changeable" behavior, which she is too young to understand. The narrator describes Ben's attitude as a "grating delinquent surliness" and is saddened by how quickly he is growing up. Just last year Ben was writing innocent notes to Santa, and now he doesn't even want to decorate the Christmas tree with his siblings. - Character: Sam. Description: Sam is the narrator's middle child. He is interested in watching the television and impressing his older brother, Ben, who he looks to for affirmation. The narrator remembers nostalgically how, the Christmas before, Sam had been "worried about wetting the bed on Christmas Eve in case Santa saw." This year—taking the lead from his brother—Sam seems indifferent to the festivities or the excitement of Christmas. - Character: Evie. Description: Four-year-old Evie is the narrator's youngest child and only daughter. She is still enchanted by the magic of the Christmas season and can't wait to decorate the tree, prepare the nativity scene, or toast marshmallows with her brothers. When the narrator drops and breaks the box of decorations, Evie improvises by creating a nativity scene with all her plastic toys—"Christmas designed by Disney and Mattel." - Theme: Humiliation and Masculinity. Description: "Like a House on Fire" is the story of an unnamed man suffering from severe back pain after an accident at work. After nearly sixteen weeks recovering at home, the narrator feels humiliated by his inability to work or provide for his family. Author Cate Kennedy reveals how the protagonist's humiliation is inherently linked to a sense of inadequate masculinity. Although his physical frailness, his inability to play with his children, and his failure to support his wife, Claire, all cause the narrator pain, it is ultimately his narrow definition of masculinity that makes his situation truly humiliating, rather than merely unfortunate. Through the example of the narrator, Kennedy suggests that conventional expectations of manhood can cause more harm than good in situations like these. The narrator perceives his own physical weakness as unmanly. To the narrator, being a man requires physical strength, and that perception makes him feel useless within his family. As the narrator's wife and son drag their new Christmas tree towards the car, the man selling them the tree looks towards the narrator with the disdain and judgment "he reserves for […] those destroying the social fabric by refusing to pull their weight." In other words, the narrator interprets his own inability to carry the Christmas tree as a sign that he is essentially worthless. In contrast, the narrator's wife, Claire, is physically strong. She drags and "lugs" the Christmas tree in a way that suggests to the narrator that she is taking over the conventionally masculine role in the family, leaving the narrator without purpose. When the narrator does try to help physically by carrying boxes of Christmas decorations, his efforts backfire: his back flares up and he drops the nativity scene, shattering it. The accident shows how clinging to an idea of what masculinity should be can end in destruction; the family and the narrator himself would probably have been better off if the narrator had simply accepted his own physical limitations. The narrator also feels worthless and emasculated by the change in his financial situation. He feels that he should provide for the family, and when he can't, he suspects that he's not a real man. The narrator's injury prevents him from working, so Claire takes on more shifts at the hospital where she works. Just as she took on the physical burden of moving the Christmas tree, Claire also shoulders the financial burden that should fall to a man, according to traditional gender roles. As he watches Claire prepare for her night shift on Christmas Eve, the narrator feels "the humiliation of helplessness, the hands-down winner of all humiliations." Even though the family is still provided for, the narrator's narrow definition of what his role as a man should be makes him interpret the situation as shameful. As the narrator cannot contribute physically or financially to buying presents, Claire asks him to wrap them. Completing the task gives the narrator a sense of purpose and pride such as he has not felt in weeks: "It's like I've been in the army for years, drilling myself on just this thing." The allusion to the army evokes ideas of traditional masculinity, revealing how the narrator can restore his self-worth only by framing a satisfying domestic task as a conventionally masculine pursuit. The narrator's relationship with his children is perhaps the story's most piercing examination of how expectations of manhood can spoil otherwise positive parts of life. Unable to provide for his family financially, the narrator is given the task of looking after the children at home. The narrator thinks little of his own parenting skills, noting, for example, how "the three kids are all glued to the TV, something that's been happening a lot since I've been the chief childcare provider." Spending time with the children also reminds the narrator of the perceived humiliations of his physical condition. He and the children are supposed to spend the afternoon decorating the Christmas tree, but the task turns out to be very physically painful for the narrator and he quickly ends up yelling at his children. It seems that this gesture toward controlling the children is an anxious attempt to maintain some degree of masculine authority, but all it does is make everyone unhappy. The narrator knows that if his wife were home, she would lift their daughter Evie up to place the angel on top of the tree, but he is incapable of picking her up. When Evie hands him a cushion and orders him to lie down, he feels defeated and ashamed, "like a beaten dog." The narrator self-deprecatingly grumbles "Oh, Merry Christmas, father of the year" to himself, revealing how inadequate and incompetent he feels. Evie's gesture is an affectionate one, but because it challenges his ideas of what fatherhood should be, the narrator feels only misery in response. However, Kennedy also illustrates how the narrator's bond with his children has the potential to bring him joy and purpose. For instance, he shares a tender moment with his son, Ben, despite his intense pain. Afterwards, the narrator makes his way painfully upstairs "just to get another look at each of them asleep, sprawled in their beds without a worry in the world." Kennedy demonstrates, then, that beneath the narrator's fixation on his masculine failings, his family is actually strong and loving. It's only the narrator's narrow idea of what his manly role should be that makes the situation seem negative. Throughout, Kennedy indicates that the narrator's feelings of shame and humiliation are rooted in his narrow perceptions of masculinity. His situation is a painful one, but it is only the narrator's own ideas about conventional masculinity that make it humiliating. - Theme: Chaos vs. Order. Description: In "Like a House on Fire," a perfectionistic man's life is thrown into chaos when he sustains a serious back injury at work and is forced to take extensive sick leave. The story's two central characters—the unnamed narrator and his wife, Claire—embody order and chaos, respectively, and the conflict between the two illustrates how insisting on complete order can actually lead to increased chaos. Some chaos, Kennedy suggests, is inevitable, and denying that fact only makes it truer. The narrator embodies order throughout, and Kennedy depicts his need for control as overbearing and unhealthy. The story's narrator and central character is a perfectionist. He owes much of his professional success to his careful precision, but it is also to blame for the back injury that now prevents him from working at all. Describing his work overseeing the maintenance of some trees, he says: "I saw […] an errant bit of cypress bough just at head height, offending my perfectionist streak." It is while trying to cut down that bit of tree that the narrator is injured. The narrator now spends his days confined at home in agony, "driven mad" by the "toys and mess [he] can't pick up." For the narrator, the domestic setting represents disorder and chaos. Unlike in his job, at home he has little control over any mess that offends his "perfectionist streak," and his general inability to manage his environment is only intensified by his specific physical disability. Claire resents the fact that her husband's presence at home brings his "control freakery" into daily family life. Claire demands to know why he has chosen to lie down in the busiest room of the house, saying: "Why there? Just where you can keep your eye on everything, like Central Control?" Arguably, the narrator has chosen to position himself "in the middle of a busy family room" because he wants to continue participating in family life, despite his illness. Claire highlights, however, that when the narrator complains about the household mess "it morphs pretty quickly into orders." The narrator inadvertently creates more chaos at home—through the tension between him and Claire—when she perceives his need for order as bossy and overbearing. In contrast to the narrator, Claire's preference for chaos facilitates her more relaxed approach to life and its challenges. While the narrator represents order and control, his wife Claire has always been "the slapdash one." The narrator remembers how Claire "was as messy as the kids," and how she would implore him to be more relaxed with the children, saying: "Don't inflict your perfectionism on them, for God's sake. Leave it for your job." However, Claire is a nurse and has spent the past weeks caring for her husband as if he were one of her patients. The narrator describes how he has witnessed a new "side to her […] for the first time." Tending to him with a "professional, acquired distance," Claire touches him with "hands that were anything except neutral and businesslike." Kennedy demonstrates how Claire is able to strike a balance between order and disorder, an approach that Kennedy suggests is much more healthy than the narrator's fixation on total order. The narrator's refusal to embrace a little chaos ultimately causes him more pain, both physical and emotional. Kennedy demonstrates how the narrator literally impedes his own recovery through his pursuit of order: "I get down on my hands and knees in dogged slow motion, like an old-age pensioner who's dropped something." Here, the narrator strains his back to retrieve a forgotten shoe from under the couch, desperate to create order around him even when pursuing it makes his injuries worse. In addition, the narrator's inability to relinquish his need for control causes him more internal misery and stress. "I just can't stand all this...chaos I can't do anything about." Kennedy implies that his new environment exacerbates the narrator's need for order, making him feel powerless and helpless when he is unable to exert the control he is accustomed to. Furthermore, the narrator frequently likens emotional pain to the physical pain he is suffering due to his injury. The narrator worries, for example, about his second son, Sam, maturing too fast. He remembers "with a sudden aching spasm, of the year before, when Claire and I had read his note to Santa." The narrator's grief surrounding his son is inherently tied to the lack of control he has over Sam's growing up. Thus the narrator's refusal to accept what he cannot control causes him intense emotional pain that mirrors his physical pain. Kennedy even goes so far as to suggest that the narrator's back pain is so entwined with his emotional suffering that he is unable to recover from his injury at all. After sixteen weeks of unsuccessful rehabilitation, he considers whether his pain might originate "in the mind or the emotions rather than through a physical cause." Kennedy draws attention to the psychosomatic aspect of the narrator's illness, not to dismiss the very real pain that he is suffering, but to draw attention to how the narrator's recovery is thwarted by deep emotional stress, which seems closely linked to his inability to accept chaos in his life. By outlining the ways in which the narrator's fixation on order has only led to increased pain for himself and his family (by depicting the more chaotic Claire as a healthier contrast) Kennedy seems to argue that a sustainable worldview has to allow for a certain degree of chaos—especially since denying it will only make its effects more powerful. - Theme: Intimacy, Communication, and Humor. Description: "Like a House on Fire" is the story of a couple navigating the challenges of love, pain, and family. When the unnamed narrator's workplace injury puts a serious strain on his marriage, Kennedy portrays how he and his wife, Claire, rely on humor to keep their relationship alive, and to communicate with one another about things that would otherwise go unsaid. Through the example of the narrator and Claire, Kennedy candidly depicts the nature of close relationships and suggests that stress and tension are sometimes inevitable. The narrator admits, for example, that he and Claire share "very little eye contact these days." The stress in their daily lives—caused by the narrator's ill health and their precarious financial situation—is evident in the way they now communicate with one another: "It gets so you can almost hear a head shaking in pained disbelief, or distant teeth grinding in the silence." Indeed, lamenting the growing friction in their marriage, the narrator remembers how they "used to get on like a house on fire." This is a significant symbol throughout the story, and the narrator initially uses the simile to evoke ideas of love and passion. Now, however, he acknowledges that the expression is misleading, and that it actually connotes danger and destruction rather than affection and intimacy. He concedes that "a house on fire is a perfect description for what seems to be happening now" because he feels that his marriage is at risk of being ruined. Presumably this isn't the first time that the narrator and his wife have experienced stress together—they have three children, after all—but Kennedy suggests that the reason their marriage is particularly vulnerable at the moment is because they seem unable to communicate with one another effectively, and this impairs their ability to face challenges as a united team. However, the interactions between the narrator and Claire also demonstrate how humor can stand in as a powerful language to overcome stress and lack of communication in intimate relationships. In the absence of effective communication, jokes and humor act as a barometer with which the narrator can evaluate the health of his marriage. He recalls how he and Claire had laughed about his diagnosis at the beginning, approaching the calamity with positivity and unity. Now, he accepts that it's been a while since the two of them joked together, indicating the distance between him and his wife. But despite this diminished sense of fun in their relationship, Claire and the narrator still use humor as a coping mechanism. Among the unspoken resentments, they share fleeting happy moments when they are able to laugh together. When the narrator breaks the entire box of Claire's childhood nativity figurines, she laughs, saying: "That's OK. It was made in the Philippines. Funny how everything except the Jesus broke." Here, Kennedy provides a nuanced and realistic portrayal of married life, revealing how the couple uses laughter as a language of its own, expressing the feelings that might otherwise go unsaid. In the place of apologies or forgiveness, the couple is able to communicate their love for one another through humor, utilizing it as a form of relief from the daily stresses they are experiencing. Through the narrator and his wife—who ultimately manage to rekindle their connection—Kennedy suggests that humor is essential for the long-term survival of close relationships. When Claire returns from her Christmas Eve shift, the narrator asks her to stand on his back to try and relieve some of the pain. Claire reluctantly agrees, saying "Well, maybe this isn't doing you much good, but it's working for me." Her faux cruelty brings the narrator joy: "I smile into the floor, in spite of myself, feeling my sternum take the pressure." The narrator is literally vulnerable in this moment—lying on the floor in pain, with his wife standing precariously on his injured back—as well as emotionally vulnerable—admitting that he is struggling and requires her help. Through humor, however, for the first time in the story the narrator is able to accept his weakness and embrace a moment of vulnerable intimacy with his wife.  At the story's close, Kennedy returns to the fire imagery in order to reveal how their shared humor has allowed them to reclaim the love that still exists in their marriage: "I look at her, feeling that small heat build between us […] This is how you do it, I think, stick by careful stick over the ashes, oxygen and fuel, a controlled burn." In "Like a House on Fire," Kennedy explores the power of humor to bridge gaps and bring people together in the face of adversity. Ultimately, the narrator and his wife are able to reclaim their relationship's intimacy through humor, and through their example Kennedy suggests that real-life intimate relationships might benefit from the same approach. - Climax: The narrator and his wife have an argument about his overbearing need for control, and he realizes the extent to which his back injury is destroying his marriage. - Summary: In "Like a House on Fire," Cate Kennedy tells the story of an ordinary man whose whole life is turned upside down when he has an accident at work. Suffering daily from the excruciating pain of his back injury, the unnamed narrator is unable to work and can barely move. After nearly sixteen weeks confined at home, he spends his days watching his family from the living room floor where he lies to rest his back. The story begins with a description of the humiliation the narrator experiences as he watches his wife and children drag their newly purchased Christmas tree to the car. The narrator is unable to help but be embarrassed by his own uselessness. When they return home, his wife Claire rushes off to the hospital—where she works as nurse—while the narrator is left to care for his three children, Ben, Sam, and Evie. Again, he is reminded and ashamed of his ineptitude when acknowledging that Claire has had to take extra shifts at her job because he is unable to provide for the family financially. Unable to dissuade his three children from watching television, the narrator climbs the stairs to the attic to find the Christmas tree decorations. His doctor has warned him against any physical exertion, and as the narrator pulls the nativity scene towards him, pain soars through his body, causing him to drop and break the contents of the box. Determined to salvage what is left of their family Christmas traditions—but miserable from pain and humiliation—the narrator orders his children to turn the television off and help him decorate the tree. When his youngest child, Evie, notices how much pain he's in, she hands the narrator a cushion and tells him to lie down. Once Claire is home, the narrator shares a brief moment of laughter with his wife about the nativity set, but it is obvious that she is tired and frustrated. When the narrator complains to her about the mess in the house, she snaps, telling him to get over his obsessive need for control, and reminding him that he should have recovered by now. The narrator bemoans the distance and tension growing between him and his wife, as he remembers how happy they were before his injury. He reflects on how their marriage is "like a house on fire"—in danger of going up in flames at any minute. On the night of Christmas Eve, while Claire is working at the hospital, the narrator looks up his symptoms on her laptop and notices that her previous Internet searches include "back pain psychosomatic." Over dinner with the children, the narrator laments how quickly they are growing up, and likens this painful fatherly experience to the physical agony he is experiencing with his back. Later, while carefully climbing the stairs to deliver the Christmas stockings to his children's bedrooms, he considers whether his injury could be somewhat psychological. Once upstairs, he shares a tender interaction with his son, Ben, who sees him bringing in the presents. The narrator feels an excruciating soreness in his back, but ignores the pain so as not to spoil the moment. When Claire arrives home from work, the narrator asks her to stand on his back to relieve some of the tension. Although reluctant at first, she cracks a joke and obliges. Laughing together and in close physical proximity, Claire and the narrator share a rare and intimate moment of affection. The story closes when Claire laughs gently at her husband and in return, he lovingly removes her hair clips.

- Genre: Short Story, African American Fiction, Protest Fiction - Title: Like a Winding Sheet - Point of view: Third-person limited omniscient - Setting: The story is set in New York City in the 1940s. - Character: Johnson. Description: Johnson is the story's protagonist. A working-class African American man, he works nightshifts at an unspecified "plant" and is married to Mae. He begins the story as a loving husband who wouldn't dream of threatening his wife with violence, but as the narrative unfolds, Johnson feels increasingly emasculated by the white women with whom he interacts. For instance, when he arrives late for work, the forewoman Mrs. Scott verbally abuses him, pelting him with racial slurs. Later on, he attempts to buy a cup of coffee but believes the white waitress is discriminating against him because of his race, which fuels his sense of frustration even more. When Johnson finally arrives home, his rage spills over as Mae unconsciously mimics the speech and gestures of Mrs. Scott and the waitress. He succumbs to his anger, beating Mae severely and quite possibly to death. But Petry emphasizes that Johnson doesn't simply do this voluntarily; it is the powerlessness of his socially-ordained position as an African American that makes him feel as if he no longer has control over his own limbs, as if he is tied up in the titular winding sheet. The tragedy of Johnson's fate is that he evidently truly cares for Mae; he wishes at the start of the story that he'd made her breakfast, for example. He also appears to want to innovate, imagining more efficient ways for his workplace to operate, but he simply is not afforded the authority to make the changes he imagines. Instead, as he suppresses the desire to lash out at the perpetrators of racial discrimination, the reader watches Johnson's character deteriorate under the intense social pressures of his day. By the end of the story his "nature" has all but vanished, and he has become little more than a vessel for hatred. - Character: Mae. Description: Mae is a working-class African American woman and is married to Johnson. She works at a different "plant," also on the night shift, but is apparently less bothered by the work than her husband is. Mae is characterized as a playful and affectionate woman with a sincere love for Johnson. She is, however, perhaps overly superstitious, refusing to leave the house because it is Friday the thirteenth. Ironically, the house proves to be the most dangerous place for her by the story's conclusion, as in the privacy of their own home Johnson is able to unleash his deep frustration on her. When she inadvertently reminds him of the racism he experienced during the day, he suddenly begins beating her viciously, likely to death. In this way Mae is the real victim of the story, driving home Petry's suggestion that the most victimized figures in such a racist and sexist system are black women, who often suffer abuse at the hands of their partners. - Character: Mrs. Scott. Description: Mrs. Scott is the white forewoman at the plant at which Johnson works. When he arrives late she verbally attacks him, using racial slurs and suggesting that African American workers are the problem with the plant, even though she also says that "half this shift comes in late." This renders her an unsympathetic character, but there is some suggestion that she is also struggling with social pressures as a woman in a male-dominated workplace. Johnson himself reveals some hostility to the idea of a woman doing her job and responds to her racial antagonism with physical intimidation. Mrs. Scott reacts fearfully to Johnson's intimidation and leaves him alone for the rest of his shift. - Character: The Waitress. Description: Johnson encounters an unnamed white waitress when he goes into a restaurant after work to get a cup of coffee. When he reaches the front of the line, she tells him that there's no more coffee at the moment, which he interprets as a sign of her racism. She also flips her long blond hair in a way that he interprets as contemptuous. However, the narration makes it clear that if Johnson had looked back before walking away, he would have seen that the restaurant really was out of coffee and that the waitress was telling the truth. This interaction represents how discrimination has warped Johnson's perception of the world around him, leading him to assume he is facing racial prejudice at every turn even when it is not present. - Theme: Racial Inequality. Description: "Like a Winding Sheet" follows a single day in the life of Johnson, a working-class African American man. As Johnson arrives late for his night shift at an unspecified "plant," the forewoman immediately disciplines him and pelts him with verbal abuse and racial slurs. After his shift is over, Johnson follows his co-workers into a restaurant, but a white waitress casually tells him they're out of coffee, and Johnson believes this is on account of his race. These events trigger a deep and ultimately uncontrollable anger in Johnson, which erupts at the story's climax, when he returns home and violently beats his wife, Mae, quite possibly to death. But crucially, Petry seeks to present Johnson to the reader as a character worthy of sympathy, or at least pity. While Mae is easily identifiable as the greatest victim of the story, Petry is also interested in depicting the psychological trauma of systemic racism that Johnson must endure. Through "Like a Winding Sheet," Petry illustrates just how ever-present discrimination is in even the most ordinary aspects of Johnson's life, and suggests how damaging this kind of experience can be. Throughout the story, Johnson experiences racial alienation in even the most intimate corners of his life. One of the most poignant moments showing the pervasiveness of racism comes as Johnson lies in bed, noticing the contrast of his skin with the whiteness of the bedsheet. Throughout the story Petry refers to Johnson's exhaustion: "He had to force himself to struggle past the outgoing workers, punch the time clock, and get the little cart he pushed around all night, because he kept toying with the idea of going home and getting back in bed." The bed is in many ways Johnson's place of sanctuary, representing a space in which to escape the drudgery and physical exertions associated with his job. But perhaps more importantly, this is an intimate space, shared only between himself and Mae. The bed in this sense should offer Johnson the opportunity to shut out the outside world and feel loved and accepted, in sharp contrast with the public spaces explored in the rest of the story, such as the plant and the restaurant, in which Johnson is continually the object of scrutiny. Instead, lying in bed, "[Johnson] looked at his arms silhouetted against the white of the sheets. They were inky black by contrast." Petry's interplay of color here suggests that Johnson's experience of social alienation because of his race permeates even this most intimate and everyday space. The interaction between Johnson and the forewoman at the plant also highlights how racism seeps into every aspect of Johnson's life, as the forewoman turns the mundane instance of an employee arriving late to work into a racially charged confrontation. The forewoman uses this opportunity to attempt to degrade Johnson, using racial slurs and grouping Johnson with the other African American employees, spitting out: "And the niggers is the worse. I don't care what's wrong with your legs. You get in here on time. I'm sick of you niggers—" Prior to this, however, she notes: "Half this shift comes in late." Evidently this is a larger problem at the plant that involves many employees, but the forewoman chooses to focus on the African American workers, alienating Johnson from the rest of his co-workers and suggesting that his race is connected to his performance at work. The banality of Johnson's offence thus is far out of proportion to the lengths to which he is forced to defend himself. "You got the right to cuss me four ways to Sunday but I ain't letting nobody call me a nigger," he says, scornfully repeating the same slur the forewoman used. He is driven to defending his fundamental racial identity over such a minor issue, suggesting again how completely his social alienation has permeated every aspect of his life. But Petry isn't straightforwardly suggesting that the whole of white society is seeking to punish Johnson for being African American in the same way that the forewoman is. Instead, Johnson's experience of finding discrimination in seemingly every aspect of his life motivates him to assume the influence of racism, even when it is not present. When Johnson goes to a restaurant to order coffee and the white waitress insists that there isn't any more coffee, he assumes that her behavior is simply racist. However, as Johnson walks away, seething, Petry makes it clear that the waitress was instead being truthful: "When he went out the door he didn't look back. If he had he would have seen the flickering blue flame under the shiny coffee urn being extinguished." At this point in the narrative, Johnson has internalized his racial struggle to such a degree that Petry suggests he is almost blind to reality; it has permeated his existence so deeply that he can no longer identify what is discrimination and what isn't. Petry's point here is tragic in its irony. She is essentially pointing out that the trauma of racism is self-perpetuating. No matter how desperately someone wants to escape it, once they've internalized the idea that everywhere they turn they will be met with hatred, it's hard not to feel that that hatred is ever-present, whether it is or not. Johnson's frequent experiences of genuine racism consume him and lead him to feel that every part of his experience, no matter how small, is dominated by his race. - Theme: Racism, Alienation, and Abuse. Description: One of the questions Petry is most interested in asking over the course of "Like a Winding Sheet" is that of what causes people behave the way they do. The story's shocking conclusion, in which the protagonist, Johnson, beats his wife, Mae, very likely to death, is in direct contrast to the story's opening. The reader is introduced to Johnson through his loving thoughts of Mae, and when she later annoys him through her reluctance to leave the house, Johnson notes that other men in his position might threaten violence, but that he has no desire to do so. After a day of racial antagonism, however, Johnson returns home exhausted and frustrated. When Mae unwittingly echoes the words and gestures of the abusive forewoman at Johnson's work and a waitress whom he believes discriminated against him, Johnson's anger overwhelms him. In the course of one day, Johnson's character thus evolves dramatically. His transformation suggests that being racially alienated and dehumanized has detrimental effects on the individual, depriving them of their identity and leading them to commit similar (or worse) abuse against others. The wording of Johnson's thoughts at the opening of the story is crucial to understanding how deep his discomfort with the idea of violence toward Mae runs. Nonviolence is established not just as a shallow belief, but as Johnson's intrinsic nature. It is not merely that Johnson doesn't want to beat Mae—Petry makes it clear that "He wasn't made that way." The use of the word "made" suggests that there is something fundamental to person's a character which isn't derived from their environment, but is instead entirely innate and instinctual. The word choice could even be interpreted as evoking the divine, implying that Johnson's moral fabric has been created by a higher force (presumably God) in a certain manner. His disinterest in violence is not arbitrary and is unchanging. In other words, it is not a choice; he simply could not act any differently than his nature dictates. The significance of this element of his character is further highlighted by Johnson's noting that "a lot of men might have" handled the situation in a more aggressive manner. Johnson is unconcerned with living up to external, socially-conditioned standards of masculinity—instead, he resolves to follow what he intrinsically feels is right and is content in his individuality. However, Johnson's secure sense of identity begins to collapse when social interactions devalue him and challenge his individuality. This results in a breakdown of the intrinsic nature that has been established thus far in the story, demonstrating the power of a toxic social environment to break down the individual. One of the functions of the forewoman's racist tirade directed at Johnson is to humiliate him, but another is to lump him in with other African Americans, as she spits out, "I'm sick of you niggers." The use of this racial slur is a visceral contrast to Johnson's nonviolent attitude and it completely dehumanizes him as an individual, hinting at just how powerfully the forewoman's words will affect him. Whereas Johnson previously "wasn't made" to beat a woman, his interaction with the forewoman makes it so he merely "could not bring himself to do so." This subtle shift in word choice implies that his nature has been challenged by the forewoman's verbal abuse, demonstrating the swift, demoralizing influence that racial discrimination can have on an otherwise peaceful individual. Petry thus suggests that social pressures, specifically racial alienation, have the ability to deprive an individual of even the most fundamental (and positive) parts of their identity. All it takes is for Mae, the person Johnson loves most, to echo the racist comment made by the forewoman to tip him over the edge and make him feel completely deprived of his individuality. The result of his interactions with the forewoman and Mae is that he falls into pattern of socially-ingrained violence (what he previously referred to as the behavior of "a lot of men"). Being racially alienated and lumped into a defamatory category (rather than viewed as an individual with a unique identity) has the power to change Johnson fundamentally and perpetuate abuse of his own, highlighting the destructive and cyclical nature of racially-charged violence. Through Johnson's collapse of identity, Petry suggests that societal pressures like systemic racism have the power to erase individuality, which in turn leads to alienation and can ultimately perpetuate more abuse. In Petry's view, the devaluation and dehumanization of the individual can effectively destroy them, and even lead them to harm other people. - Theme: Gender and Race. Description: In "Like a Winding Sheet," Petry demonstrates just how closely entangled issues of race and gender can be. As the narrative unfolds, Johnson, the protagonist, endures a racially antagonistic encounter with his plant's white forewoman, and believes he is denied coffee by a white waitress on account of his race. He ultimately beats his wife, Mae, (possibly to death) for playfully echoing these same racist sentiments. Both of Johnson's interactions with white women produce fantasies of violence that play out in his mind, but which he knows he can never enact. Instead, he takes out his intense frustration on his own African American wife, despite beginning the story as a man who adored Mae and was "not made" to threaten or strike a woman. This desire to exercise his power creates an increasingly fraught scenario revolving around the intersection of gender and race. Petry shows that although Johnson is the victim of racial violence, he himself perpetuates gendered violence. The dissonance between his struggle against abuse from white women and his subsequent violence toward Mae thus suggests that black women like Mae are ultimately the foremost victims of both racism and sexism. Though Johnson is clearly racially oppressed throughout the story, he also holds sexist ideals and wants to exert power over women. At the beginning of the story, Johnson knows that "a lot of men might have" resorted to threats of violence when dealing with Mae's reluctance to leave the house, but doesn't feel the need to subscribe to this socially-mandated version of masculinity. Yet Johnson does feel secure in the knowledge that, as a man, he has the physical strength to beat his wife if he wanted to. He seems to feel a sense of superiority in choosing not to act abusively, and despite not feeling able to do so, he still defines his masculinity by this latent power. He acknowledges that his position as a man means he has the opportunity to act either way, even if his own character dictates that he refrain from threats of violence. This need to feel power over women extends outside the home, as exemplified by his evident distaste at having a female superior at work: "He could never remember to refer to her as the forelady even in his mind. It was funny to have a white woman for a boss in a plant like this one." The fact that he struggles with this "even in his mind" suggests a profound intellectual discomfort with the idea of ceding power to a woman. This need to feel power over women creates tension in Johnson's interactions with white women, as his position as an African American means that these women can claim power over him on account of his race. The forewoman pelts Johnson with racial abuse in an effort to humiliate him and establish a sense of authority over him, stating, "Every guy comes in here late always has an excuse. [...] And the niggers is the worse."  Not only does this racial slur antagonize Johnson, but it also emasculates him since she is a woman, prompting him to resort to the threat of violence by "[stepping] closer to her" with clenched fists. This can be interpreted as an unconscious move to remind the forewoman of the physical power associated with his masculinity. Later on, Johnson explicitly takes comfort and even pleasure from imagining the sensation of beating the forewoman, making specific reference to her femininity by mentally conjuring up "the soft flesh of her face […] under the hardness of his hands." Petry creates an echo of this interaction in Johnson's later interaction with the waitress. Johnson fixates on the casual way in which she tosses "the length of her blond hair from the back of her neck as expressive of her contempt for him," with the long blond hair epitomizing both her whiteness and her femininity. Once again feeling emasculated, this time Johnson mentally takes even more explicit pleasure at the thought of enacting violent revenge on her femininity: "What he wanted to do was hit her so hard that the scarlet lipstick on her mouth would smear and spread over her nose, her chin, out toward her cheeks." Here, Petry blurs the images of lipstick and blood, creating a fetishized picture of female pain which Johnson relishes as a means of combating his feelings of humiliation and emasculation. Each of these examples shows how Johnson channels his experience of racism into violent, sexist frustration, which he ultimately unleashes and directs at Mae. Through this chain reaction, Petry emphasizes the heightened misogyny that black women are often forced to endure. While both the forewoman's and the waitress's racial privilege protects them from Johnson's rage in public spaces, as a black woman in the privacy of her own home Mae is afforded no such protection, as Johnson takes out his rage by beating her instead. Mae is effectively used as a safer stand-in for the forewoman and the waitress. As a black woman and in private rather than in public, Mae is vulnerable to Johnson's attack as there are fewer consequences for him abusing her. Since the racism that Johnson experiences throughout the story is presented as socially acceptable, the reader can infer that society would be less sympathetic toward Mae as a black woman than toward the white women whom Johnson really wanted to abuse. By showing how Mae suffers immense violence (and possibly even loses her life) for something as minor as a playful comment, Petry suggests that black women experience both racism and sexism on a level far more severe than black men or white women, respectively. Through the unjust beating of Mae, Petry illustrates how damaging discrimination can be—particularly when the realms of racism and sexism intersect. The combination of violent masculinity along with racial discrimination creates a completely toxic environment, in which black women have to bear the brunt of a socially-ingrained cycle of violence. - Climax: Johnson returns home and in a fit of blind rage beats his wife, Mae, likely to death. - Summary: Johnson, a working-class African American man, awakes from a bad night's sleep. Working night shifts doesn't agree him, so not only is he exhausted but he has slept through his opportunity to make breakfast for his wife Mae, who also works nights. The couple playfully banter for a time, and Mae says that seeing Johnson wrapped up in their bedsheet reminds her of "a huckleberry—in a winding sheet." As the two leave for work Mae realizes it is Friday the thirteenth and wants to stay home, as she believes the date is unlucky. Johnson lovingly persuades her, though he mentally notes that many men would have reacted more harshly. Despite his aching legs, Johnson finally arrives at work at the "plant" and meditates on how his workplace could be reorganized to make the work less tiring. As he is late, Johnson attracts the attention of the white forewoman. She verbally attacks him, spitting out racial slurs. In a moment of anger, he fantasizes about striking her. Instead, he physically intimidates her and insists that she no longer use such offensive language. She backs off uneasily and apologizes. The night wears on and Johnson becomes progressively more exhausted. As he is leaving work he wants to avoid the packed subway car and stops outside a restaurant. He sees a number of his coworkers in line for coffee, so he enters and waits in line. When it is his turn the white waitress casually tells him that there is no coffee left. Johnson interprets her gestures and tone of voice to indicate casual racism at his expense and has another violent fantasy about attacking her. He leaves in disgust and does not look back. If he had turned back, however, he would have seen that the waitress was genuinely out of coffee and that lots of white people were also turned away. Now incredibly tired and bitter, Johnson returns home. Here he finds Mae, and sits down on the overalls that she wears for work. She complains that he will wrinkle them and asks him to stand up, but he pays no attention. She begins to playfully needle him, and in doing so unwittingly echoes the forewoman's language and the waitress's gesture. Feeling himself losing control, Johnson violently beats her, hitting her over and over. He feels that he has lost all control of his hands and that he can't stop what he's doing, as if his body is tightly wrapped in "a winding sheet."

- Genre: Short Story - Title: Little Plastic Shipwreck - Point of view: Close 3rd person, tied to Roley's perspective - Setting: The story largely takes place at Oceanworld, a dilapidated marine park - Character: Roley. Description: The protagonist and narrator of the story, Roley works at Oceanworld where he cleans and cares for the animals. He is grieving on two accounts: first for his wife, Liz, whose recent brain injury has left her severely mentally impaired, and second for Oceanworld's dolphin, Samson, whose death he discovers at the beginning of the story. Roley, recognizing Samson's intelligence and affection, relates to the dolphin on a near-human level. This sets Roley apart from Declan, his boss and the lead dolphin trainer, who appears to value Samson only as a source of profit. Having lost both Samson and the person his wife used to be, Roley is an intensely lonely figure: there is only one other person in the story with whom he feels any affinity (Kaz, his co-worker), and even then, it is mentioned in passing as more a vague allyship than a friendship. The story reveals little about Roley before the accident, but the fact that his wife's accident occurred at a party suggests that perhaps his loneliness and isolation throughout the story is a direct effect of his grief. Much of the story is told through his internal monologue: he reflects on the decrepit state of Oceanworld and the animals that live there, and suffers flashbacks to traumatic moments in his wife's accident, operation, diagnosis, and rehabilitation. His reflections suggest a bleak and nihilistic view of the world, one perhaps shaped by loss. Though he defies Declan and quits his job over Declan's inhumane treatment of Samson's body, the sense of empowerment this grants him is short-lived. By the end of the story, Roley's thoughts imply that he has lost everything: his wife, his friend, his job, and all hope. - Character: Samson. Description: The only dolphin at Oceanworld, Samson is the star attraction of a marine park that is clearly past its prime. At twenty-five years old, he dies at the beginning of the story. Readers learn about Samson through Roley's reflections, remembering the dolphin fondly as a forgiving and intelligent creature with humanlike facial expressions. This distinguishes Samson from the other animals, who, according to Roley's characterizations, are devoid of emotional or intellectual complexity. The story is peppered with memories from the dolphin show, in which Declan recites rehearsed statistics about dolphin behaviour and anatomy, and claims to share a bond with Samson. This clashes with Declan's callous attitude to Samson's death, particularly his command to Declan to "cut it [the body] up." Roley refuses, and quits his job in what appears to be a final act of loyalty to Samson. - Character: Liz. Description: Liz is Roley's wife. Sometime before the timeframe of the story, she was handing around a tray of food at a friend's party, fell off the unfinished deck, and hit her head on a rock. Readers know very little about her before the accident, save Roley's description of her as his "lovely, witty wife." Similarly, the extent of her brain damage is revealed only through Roley's observations. He remarks that she appears to have lost all will or desire. She responds to his queries with empty, vague statements and cannot find the words for objects. Liz is also highly dependent: Roley quits his night-job when Liz's rehabilitation therapist informs him that it "makes her nervous" to wake up when he's not there. Without having Liz's own perspective in the story, the reader's perception of her hinges on other characters' observations, and she becomes an object of pity, but also of mystery: the lack of information that surrounds her creates a conspicuous absence in the story where her character should be. - Character: Declan. Description: Declan is Roley's boss who runs the dolphin show at Oceanworld. Unlike Roley, he expresses no sadness at Samson's death, instead looking at the body and ordering Roley to "cut it up." Declan behaves in an authoritarian way, and it is suggested that he has a tendency cut corners in terms of his responsibilities. He speaks to his employees without respect and harshly punishes any challenge to his authority: Roley recounts almost losing his job when he (deliberately) failed to reach for the fish on time in the dolphin show. Declan acts as the lead trainer and MC of the dolphin show, and puts on a completely different demeanour for this role. The story has excerpts from his script, full of rhetorical questions and recited in a "golly-gee" voice, which contrasts with the cold and callous man Roley knows him to be offstage. When Roley finally refuses to cut up Samson's body, Declan fires him unceremoniously. - Character: Kaz. Description: Kaz is Roley's colleague. Like Roley, she is affected by Samson's death. He reminisces with her about the time that he defied Declan in the dolphin show, suggesting that they are allies in the face of Declan's authoritarianism. When Roley leaves Oceanworld, he thinks distractedly that he'll write a card to Kaz. Nevertheless, he does not say goodbye, and it seems possible that he'll never see her again. - Theme: Humans, Animals, and Consciousness. Description: In "Little Plastic Shipwreck," Roley grieves for his wife, Liz, who has been left with brain damage after an accident at a friend's party. Simultaneously, while Roley is working at Oceanworld theme park, an elderly dolphin named Samson dies. Cate Kennedy draws parallels between Samson's humanlike intelligence and emotion and the "lovely, witty" person Liz was before the accident. Furthermore, Roley's descriptions of his wife post-accident resemble his descriptions of the other animals at Oceanworld—the fish, the turtles, and the old blind sea-lion—who lack discernible emotions. Through Roley's struggle to navigate the blurred lines between humans and animals, Kennedy suggests that so-called "human" consciousness may not be anything special—for humans and animals alike, what looks like a coherent personality may just be arbitrary, impermanent quirks of brain function. From the beginning of the story, Kennedy's descriptions of Samson blur the line between human and animal. The story opens with Roley going to "say hi to Samson." Without any context, readers assume that Samson is another human until Kennedy reveals in the second sentence that Samson is a dolphin. Roley continues to describe Samson in ways that give the dolphin human characteristics. In the first paragraph, for example, Roley calls Samson a "faithful old crowd-pleaser." He also hopes that the dolphin died in his sleep, suggesting that he considers Samson to be on the same emotional level, and therefore worthy of the same empathy, as a human being. Furthermore, when Roley's boss Declan refers coldly to Samson as "it," Roley responds by calling the dolphin "him," saying that he "wasn't going to call Samson an 'it.'" This, again, suggests that Samson is humanlike in Roley's eyes. Significantly, Roley theorizes that Samson resonated with the crowds at Oceanworld specifically because he was so humanlike: he was the "only creature at the aquarium who seemed to be able to create a facial expression." Facial expressions give insight into someone's inner thoughts and feelings, so Samson's expressive face gave audiences (and Roley) a sense that the dolphin had a complex, humanlike inner life. While Kennedy describes Samson as humanlike, she describes Roley's wife, Liz, as resembling an animal. Roley describes his wife as having an "emptied, passive face," much like the "vacant" turtles and the fish that had "no expression whatsoever." Her brain damage left her without discernible emotions or desires, and Roley has become more her caretaker than her companion—a relationship that echoes his work with the animals at Oceanworld. One of the animals Roley cares for is the old, blind sea-lion who has eyes "fogged over" with cataracts and who behaves in a repetitive, compulsive way. Roley describes Liz in a way that mirrors the sea-lion: he notes her mysterious tendency to repetitively run "her hand slowly over her face as if memorizing its shape." Even though Liz is human, her current existence doesn't seem so different from the sea-lion's. Kennedy's repeated ocean imagery also creates parallels between Liz and the other Oceanworld animals. Roley describes the aquarium's penguins as "Gimlet-eyed," a word that he vaguely associates with "something ice-cold…that twisted in the deep." Kennedy echoes this description later in the story when Roley comes home to his wife and "watches her stop and consider, slow as a tide turning." As he does with the penguins, Roley seems to intuit that his wife might still have an inner life, but it is buried deep, making it as mysterious as the ocean and inaccessible to him. The death of Samson, alongside Roley's obsession with the sudden randomness of his wife's accident, leads Roley to meditate on the fact that ultimately humans (like animals) are no more than bodies. Through Roley, Kennedy suggests that consciousness and so-called humanity come from nothing so enduring as a soul, but are instead haphazard combinations of neurology and physiology. Roley suffers as he remembers the moment of his wife's accident as being "like someone dropping a melon on concrete." The gory physicality of this image recurs later when he thinks of Declan describing to the audience the part of Samson's body that is responsible for echolocation: "A kind of big FOREHEAD like a melon!" In describing both human and animal minds as simple "melons," Kennedy highlights the total dependency of complex intelligence on physical, breakable, and ultimately unglamorous bodies. Looking at Samson's dead body, Roley notices its defining "nicks and cuts, marks and old scars." This leads him to think, "sick with grief," of his wife's body, specifically "the small secret place under her hair where there was still a tiny dent." Dead Samson, it seems, is equivalent to Liz after her accident: Roley sees both as bodies emptied of their once-vibrant personalities and consciousness. Roley also notes that outward expressions are no guarantee of inner life. Liz's new scar gives her "permanently quizzical expression, as if she was raising her eyebrows knowingly, ironically: a look long gone." That is, she looks thoughtful, which only makes her changed personality all the more painful for Roley. This moment echoes Roley's description of Samson's seemingly expressive face; he once took Samson's face of a sign of his unique personality, but it's no longer clear if that face reflected real consciousness or just masked blankness. Through this parallel, Kennedy draws attention to the often-arbitrary ways in which humans interpret expression and intelligence. At the end of the story, Roley brings his wife a snowdome from Oceanworld, which she holds passively instead of shaking. Despairingly, he thinks that "what they should put in them […] is a little brain, something to knock around uselessly in that bubble of fluid as snow swirled down ceaselessly and never stopped, while some big hand somewhere just kept on shaking." With this metaphor, Roley reduces the human brain to the importance of a cheap, mass-produced object. The final image of the big hand suggests not only that humans no more special than animals, but that the whole idea of intelligent, active participants in the world is a farce: like the animals trapped at Oceanworld, humans are no more than fragile lumps of flesh, subject to an overriding randomness. - Theme: Hierarchy, Authority, and Compassion. Description: "Little Plastic Shipwreck" is a story defined by the hierarchy of the protagonist's workplace, Oceanworld, in which Roley is positioned between his boss Declan at the top and the animals at the bottom. However, despite the apparent rigidity of this hierarchy, Roley succeeds in subverting it in subtle ways throughout the story through moments of compassion. By depicting the ways in which compassion can work as a counterforce to an oppressive hierarchy within the small-scale environment of Oceanworld, Kennedy is arguing in favor of compassion as a kind of antidote to broader systemic cruelty, though compassion can't transform these systems on its own. Oceanworld is a place dictated by an inflexible hierarchy, reflecting the ways in which hierarchies pervade every aspect of human existence. Both Roley and Samson the dolphin are shown to have little to no agency within the hierarchy of Oceanworld. The spectacle of the dolphin show epitomizes this: Declan flings a hand out to the pool, which signals to Roley that is supposed to make a move to retrieve a fish from the bucket, at which Samson jumps out of the water. The audience are supposed to believe that they are witnessing Samson's eagerness to meet them, but really, they are watching a command being passed down the chain, from Declan, to Roley, to Samson. By portraying this hidden structure beneath what is portrayed to the public as a genuine, spontaneous interaction, Kennedy thus suggests that authority and hierarchy are present everywhere, even when we might not detect them. There's even an implicit hierarchy among the animals at Oceanworld. Samson's proximity to human characteristics makes him the most popular animal at the zoo, and for this reason, the one who is able to generate the most money: "the reason visitors loved Samson so much was that he was the only creature at the aquarium who seemed to be able to create a facial expression". After Samson's death, Declan delegates the violent, messy task of cutting up Samson's body to Roley, his inferior. Roley's instant aversion to this command shows that he considers this objectifying act to be a betrayal of his friend, while Declan's insistence that Roley carry it out implies that he is perhaps aware of the deep bond that existed between Samson and Roley, and in particular, that he's aware of the threat it poses to his position in Oceanworld's hierarchy. Kennedy thus illustrates the toxic nature of hierarchies, and the way in which people are pitted against one another in order to maintain the status quo. Within a hierarchical structure, compassion and friendship are subversive forces. Samson's death causes Kaz and Roley to recall fond memories Samson. Kaz tearfully recalls a moment in a past dolphin show when Roley delayed reaching for the fish, causing Samson to miss his cue. Despite Roley nearly losing his job over this, he maintains that it was "the one day of work that he had actually enjoyed." This moment illustrates a closeness among Kaz, Roley, Samson and the other employees, showing that Roley's subtle moment of revolt had not only been for his own sake, but for the sake of everyone else at Oceanworld with whom he had a bond, including Samson. The closeness of Declan's subordinates is a direct threat to Declan's authority, as encapsulated in the image of Kaz and Lara "trying so hard not to laugh" at Roley's act of mischief. The stakes of Roley's revolt against authority are heightened at the end of the story, when Roley refuses to cut up the body of Samson, looking at Declan with "his hand on [Samson's] flank" and saying "you fucking do it." The affection with which he notices the "nicks and cuts, the marks and old scars" on Samson's body prior to this refusal shows that his love and compassion for Samson are what give him the courage to defy Declan's authority. As Roley leaves Oceanworld, he thinks of Samson's eye "holding Roley's own before moving to his hand in the bucket, full of such understanding, and such forgiveness." The fact that Kennedy mentions "forgiveness" here suggests that Roley perhaps even feels a little guilty for his participation in the dolphin show, in so far as it exploited Samson's charisma for profit. This deepens the reader's sense of their bond showing that it had a complexity that is surprising for a relationship between a human and an animal, suggesting that the hierarchy within which they are forced to operate at Oceanworld is artificial and able to be diminished through compassion and friendship. Despite the cruel, rigid hierarchical structure within which Roley and Samson work, they have managed to form a deep bond with one another that keeps the systemic cruelty of the system in check. Yet it is doubtful that Roley's final subversive act ultimately stimulates any real or lasting change to the culture of Oceanworld, since the way in which Declan eventually fires him makes him seem disposable. However, the fact that Roley's bond with Samson remains intact at the end of the story, despite Declan's forcefulness, shows that the presence of compassion can at least limit the way cruelty is passed on within a hierarchical system, allowing friendship to flourish within it. - Theme: Artifice vs. Reality. Description: In "Little Plastic Shipwreck," Cate Kennedy sets up an opposition between the way things really are and the people want to present things. The shining, glamorous, happy place that Oceanworld advertises sits in sharp contrast with the bleak and decrepit reality of the park. Furthermore, Declan's persona as the enthusiastic, knowledgeable and compassionate dolphin trainer poses a stark opposition to his shallow and rather cruel personality outside of this role. Through this series of oppositions, revealed through the point of view of Roley, the grieving protagonist, Cate Kennedy suggests that underneath the seductive artifices that humans construct, there is a bleak and cold reality that can't be escaped. Roley describes how Oceanworld, though decrepit, presents a glittering façade to draw in audiences. Kennedy describes "a sad cluster of concrete pools and enclosures surrounded on all sides by murals depicting a far bigger, shinier aquatic adventure park, like those billboards of sleek apartment blocks which were nailed up around the shabby prefab bunkers on building sites." This description suggests that the practice of advertising something far brighter than the truth is not specific to the marine park, but is instead widespread. Roley's duties also emphasize how gritty Oceanworld really is. Kennedy writes that Roley must "break shards of packed dead fish out of the freezer and get them into buckets, and wipe away the wriggling lines the catfish made as they sucked their way through algae on the insides of the big glass tanks." Through the urgency with which Declan commands Roley to deal with Samson the dolphin's dead body ("get it into the freezer room so nobody sees it when we open the gates,") and the horror of the implied image of visiting children stumbling across the body of a dead dolphin, Kennedy suggests that often, people may not even be aware of the darker truths that exist just beyond their perception. Kennedy epitomizes this disconnect between surface and reality through Declan's performance during the dolphin show, which goes against Roley's knowledge of his true character. Declan coldly refers to Samson the dolphin as "it," instructing Roley upon Samson's death to "cut it up." Meanwhile, during the show, he waxes lyrical about "the special bond between humans and dolphins, how he'd trained the dolphins here at Oceanworld, how they could divine his moods." This creates a sharp contrast between Declan's performed persona and his real character. Furthermore, Declan's language during the performance is characterized by all capitals, exclamation marks, and rhetorical questions, suggesting a false enthusiasm. Indeed, Roley calls this persona "that golly-gee voice he put on." But outside of the show, Declan's dialogue characterized by short, cold remarks that are "spat" rather than said. Even Roley is complicit in the construction of artifice: it is his job during the dolphin performance to put his hand to the bucket of fish, prompting Samson to jump out of the water. The audience is supposed to believe that Samson is responding instead to Declan gesturing towards the water "like a game-show host." The allusion to a well-known display of shallowness and artifice—the game show—further emphasizes how deceptive this moment is. Despite the story's emphasis on Declan's duplicity, Kennedy ultimately suggests that everyone engages in this kind of deception sometimes. Roley sees parents willfully deceive their children, who ask about the repeated actions of the old sea-lion: "'What's he doing?' kids would ask as they watched him, and their parents would look grimly for a few moments and then answer, 'Playing.'" Through this example, Kennedy suggests that glossing over unpleasant truths is intrinsic to human nature, not just a strategic business practice. Furthermore, Roley's recollection of a time when he heard "real laughter" from the audience at the popular dolphin show suggests there are many times when he's heard fake laughter. That is, the audience doesn't just consume the false joy of Oceanworld; it helps create it. Through the example of Oceanworld and its particularly duplicitous lead trainer, Declan, Kennedy presents the grim notion that creating artifice to disguise bleak realities is a pervasive part of human behavior. What's more, the story suggests that something dark is always lurking underneath happy surfaces, even when human don't actively try and hide it; after all, Liz's devastating injury occurs during a casual gathering of close friends. No matter how seemingly pleasant the situation, Kennedy seems to argue, the potential for horror is always close at hand. - Climax: Roley quits his job in a gesture of protest against his boss' cruel attitude towards the deceased star dolphin at Oceanworld - Summary: Roley, an employee at Oceanworld, arrives at work to find that Oceanworld's only remaining dolphin, Samson, has died (presumably of old age). This leads him to reflect on his wife Liz's recent accident, which has left her with severe brain damage. He recalls specific moments and speculates on the gruesome details of the operation. It appears that he is still in a state of shock and disbelief about what has happened. When Roley's boss, Declan, arrives at the pool and sees Samson's body, he orders Roley to haul it out using the chains, freeze it in the cool room, and "cut it up" when it is frozen. Roley silently vows not to do this. He recalls Declan's irritatingly chipper spiels about Samson during the popular dolphin show, in which Declan boasted about the "special bond" between dolphins and humans. This contrasts with Declan's cruel attitude towards the dead dolphin. Remembering the moments when Samson's "calm, loving eye" was "fixed on him alone," Roley speculates that the reason visitors loved Samson so much was that "he was the only creature at the aquarium who seemed to be able to create a facial expression." In contrast, he thinks of the blank expressions of the other creatures at the marine park: the fish, the sea-turtles, and the blind sea-lion. He recalls a conversation with his co-worker, Kaz, about the fact that goldfish have no-short term memory: "You put one in a fishbowl, and they start swimming around in circles, and every time it's like: Look, a little plastic shipwreck! Five seconds later: Look, a little plastic shipwreck!" There is an implicit connection between these thoughts and Roley's sense that his wife's brain is now a very different thing than what it once was. Roley's co-worker Kaz comes to help him wheel the body to the cool room, and together they think fondly on a particular dolphin show during the school holidays. Roley was supposed to reach for a fish from the bucket, cueing Samson to jump just as Declan gestured. He deliberately missed his cue, ruining the moment. He reflects that this was the only day of work at Oceanworld that he'd actually enjoyed, despite almost getting fired. Roley wonders where else he could find a job that would let him off at 3 in the afternoon each day, and he thinks back to a time when he worked well-paid night shifts at the munitions plant. He'd had to quit this job after Liz's rehab therapist said that it made her anxious waking up to find him gone. Following this train of thought, Roley finally recalls the moment of Liz's accident at a friend's party. Liz had been taking around a platter on the unfinished deck when she'd turned to answer a question, tripped, and fell off. The fall was only a metre and a half, but she'd hit her head on a rock below. Roley recalls the shocked moment of the accident, the arrival of the ambulance, and seeing his "lovely, witty wife" in a plastic body brace. He observes his ongoing failure to comprehend this moment: he has to "re-learn" it each time he remembers it. At this moment Declan walks into the cool room and orders Roley again to freeze Samson's body and cut it up. With his hand affectionately on Samson's flank, Roley refuses. Declan fires him on the spot. As he walks out of Oceanworld, Roley steals several plastic trinkets from the gift-shop, including a snowdome. When he arrives home, he presents the snowdome to his wife. Instead of shaking it she holds it passively. Grimly, Roley thinks that they should put tiny brains inside the snowdome instead, "something to knock around uselessly" while "some big hand somewhere just kept on shaking."

- Genre: Bildungsroman, Autobiographical Novel - Title: Little Women - Point of view: Third person omniscient - Setting: Concord, Massachusetts; New York, New York; Various European towns and cities. - Character: Josephine "Jo" March. Description: Daughter of Mr. and Mrs. March, sister of Meg, Beth, and Amy, and (eventually) Professor Bhaer's wife. She is also the first love of handsome, impetuous Laurie. Jo is the unlikely heroine of Little Women. Tomboyish, fiery, and outspoken, Jo has trouble fitting into the patriarchal gender roles prescribed by Victorian society. She is, however, a deeply sympathetic character. She harbors literary ambitions and manages to realize them as she grows older. Jo is fifteen when the story begins. - Character: Margaret "Meg" March. Description: Daughter of Mr. and Mrs. March, sister of Jo, Beth, and Amy, and (eventually) Mr. Brooke's wife. Meg is considered the beauty of the March clan – she is gentle, plump, delicate, and rosy. Fond of finery, Meg's greatest challenge is to humble herself to a life that isn't as grand as she might wish. Meg is sixteen when the story begins. - Character: Elizabeth "Beth" March. Description: Daughter of Mr. and Mrs. March, and sister of Jo, Meg, and Amy. Beth is sickly, shy, and utterly pious. Too anxious to attend school and too humble to attempt work outside of the home, Beth spends her days making herself useful around the March household. Beth seems to intuitively understand what is right and wrong (something Jo admires in her). Beth harbors musical ambitions, something that kindles a friendship between her and Mr. Laurence. Beth nearly dies of scarlet fever in Part I. Her health is weakened as a result, and she dies toward the end of Part II. Beth is thirteen when the story begins. - Character: Amy Curtis March. Description: Daughter of Mr. and Mrs. March, sister of Jo, Meg, and Beth, and (eventually) Laurie's wife. Amy is a "snow maiden" – pale, blonde, and blue-eyed – and she seems to instinctively understand social graces in a way that sets her apart from her sisters. She harbors artistic ambitions, which she eventually drops in lieu of getting married and becoming a society lady. Amy is twelve when the story begins. - Character: Theodore "Laurie" Laurence. Description: Grandson of Mr. Laurence and (eventually) Amy's husband. Laurie is the rich and handsome neighbor boy who befriends the March girls early on in the book. Orphaned at a young age, Laurie has been primarily raised by Mr. Laurence. Laurie is half Italian, which is often cited as the source of his passionate nature. Jo is his first love, but after she refuses to marry him he eventually falls in love with Amy, who suits him far better than Jo would have. - Character: Margaret "Marmee" March. Description: Mother of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, and wife of Mr. March. Mrs. March runs the household in the first half of the book, when Mr. March is away at war. She is calm and collected, deeply moral, and teaches her girls to see the proper way to behave and the value of their poverty. - Character: Robert March. Description: Father of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, and husband of Mrs. March. Mr. March is a minister. In Part I, Mr. March has volunteered to serve in the Civil War as a chaplain, leaving his wife and daughters to fend for themselves, and plunging them into a degree of poverty. After he returns he partners with Mrs. March to provide support and a moral example to his daughters. - Theme: The Role of Women. Description: In Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners (1895), a popular Gilded Age guide to health and sexuality, the authors caution male suitors to consider what they love in their brides-to-be: "Do you love her because she is a thoroughly womanly woman; for her tender sympathetic nature; for the jewels of her life, which are absolute purity of mind and heart; for the sweet sincerity of her disposition; for her loving, charitable thought; for her strength of character? because she is pitiful to the sinful, tender to the sorrowful, capable, self-reliant, modest, true-hearted? in brief, because she is the embodiment of all womanly virtues?" In describing what men should look for in a bride, the authors of Searchlights tidily sum up the ideals of femininity that were prevalent when Little Women was published. On top of this assumption that women were to embody these feminine virtues was the notion that women were naturally meant to belong in the home (this was often referred to as the "Cult of Domesticity"). Women in the late nineteenth century, and in particular feminists like Louisa May Alcott, questioned these popular notions regarding how women were supposed to behave and what role they were meant to occupy in society. The notion of what truly constitutes feminine behavior (and, by extension, feminine virtue) is addressed in Little Women primarily through the defiant and tomboyish antics of Jo. Not content to be strapped into a corset and full of writerly ambitions, Jo parades around the March household in a pair of dashing leather boots, penning romances and poems by the dozen. The fact that Jo is ultimately a sympathetic and triumphant character (and not, say, a cautionary tale of what might go wrong if young ladies don't act in feminine ways) underscores Little Women's quietly revolutionary idea that there are many ways to be female, and that no one way of being female is more valuable than any other. There's also the question of how important men are in the lives of women. Part 1 of Little Women finds the March family fatherless and left to their own devices while Mr. March is off at war. Although the March girls find a kind of surrogate father in the form of their wealthy neighbor, Mr. Laurence, the book seems to point out that women are able to get along with a greater degree of independence than the gender norms of the time might have people believe. The question of whether women belong solely in the home is also called into question, particularly through the many moneymaking exploits of the March girls. This isn't to say that the Marches are outright gender revolutionaries – Mrs. March is eager to see each of her daughters married well (though she does mention that it would be equally acceptable if they remained single), and the March sisters (perhaps with the exception of gender-bending Jo) nonetheless strive to embody feminine ideals of beauty and virtue. This is just to say that the book toys with gender norms of the 19th century, and strives to emphasize that women are human beings complete with thoughts, desires, creative genius, vices, and virtues, and that they are capable of accomplishing and embodying more than the patriarchal gender roles of the 19th century allow. - Theme: Christianity, Morality, and Goodness. Description: In the opening pages of Little Women, Mrs. March urges her daughters to take their cue from Christian, the main character in the allegorical tale The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. "Our burdens are here," she says, "our road is before us, and the longing for goodness and happiness is the guide that leads us through many troubles and mistakes to the peace which is a true Celestial City." And in many ways, the story arc of Little Women can be seen as a shadow of The Pilgrim's Progress – through their mishaps and misdeeds, and through their constant struggle to do what is good and right, the March sisters' progression from childhood to adolescence and young adulthood can be seen as a story of moral growth. How does one become a virtuous person? What constitutes virtuous behavior? - Theme: Work and Social Class. Description: Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women, was preoccupied with what constituted women's work, and how the Industrial Revolution spurred changes in a woman's power to earn a living – so much so that, following the success of Little Women, she would go on to publish a semi-autobiographical novel called Work: A Story of Experience. Work is central to the lives of the members of the March family, and it's part of the social experiment at the heart of Little Women. Are women happiest when they work where they've always traditionally worked, in the home? Are women who are forced (or who select) to find work outside of the home less happy than women whose husbands serve as the breadwinners? These questions and more are addressed through the various work experiences of the March sisters (Meg is a governess, Jo tends to crotchety Aunt March, etc.). The book pushes forward the idea that a woman's usefulness extends beyond the realm of hearth and home – and this is most evident when Jo goes on to create a name for herself as an author. Social class is also at stake in Little Women. Prior to Mr. March's departure, the March family is plunged into poverty due to shadowy circumstances. Throughout Little Women, the notion that poverty is valuable (and that material wealth, on the other hand, often leads to moral decay) is returned to again and again. "Wealth is certainly a most desirable thing," Alcott writes, "but poverty has its sunny side, and one of the sweet uses of adversity is the genuine satisfaction which comes from the hearty work of head or hand…" The notion (right or wrong) that the lower classes possess a kind of nobility and virtue that the upper classes lack is levied again and again in Little Women. - Theme: Genuineness, Simplicity, and Natural Beauty. Description: "I don't like fuss and feathers," Laurie remarks when he sees Meg dolled up in borrowed finery at a dance thrown by one of her wealthy friends. Simplicity and genuineness are touted as values of the highest order in Little Women, and they're often seen as an antidote to the difficulties of poverty. Similar to a number of other late 19th century thinkers (the doctor and cereal tycoon John Harvey Kellogg, for instance), Alcott is a proponent of natural beauty. The March girls discover that corsets and dainty slippers often cause fainting and sprained ankles, and they receive far more praise, pleasure, and moral good from wearing their simple hand-me-down dresses and adorning themselves with a few hot house flowers from Mr. Laurence's conservatory. - Theme: Love. Description: In Little Women, the March girls learn about the importance of love, both familial and romantic. The book can be seen as a record of the March girls' progression from an innocent, idealized vision of love to a more complex, worldly understanding of it by the end of the novel. The girls' idealized notions of romantic love are embodied in Jo's picaresque plays, in which swooning damsels find true love in spite of their hardships. (These plays can be seen as a reflection of the way romantic love was viewed in the 19th century – they represent an ideal that even Jo aspires to, even if she chafes against conventional femininity.) Laurie, the rich boy next door, offers Jo her first lessons in love, and helps her come to better understand what she's looking for in a successful marriage. By the end of Part 2, all of the March girls (with the exception of Beth) have found their way to true love. Working in tandem with this notion of romantic love is the notion of familial love – motherly love in particular. Mrs. March's love for her daughters is consistently upheld as an ideal that the March girls long to achieve both in their romantic lives and in themselves when they go on to become mothers. - Climax: In Part 1, the climax comes when Mr. March returns home after serving in the Civil War. In Part 2, the climax comes when Jo and Professor Bhaer are engaged. - Summary: The story opens in Concord, Massachusetts, just a few days before Christmas in the year 1860. The four March girls – motherly Meg (age 16), boyish Jo (age 15), frail yet pious Beth (age 13), and elegant Amy (age 12) – live alone with their mother, Mrs. March. Their father, Mr. March, has volunteered to serve in the Union army as a chaplain, leaving his wife and daughters to fend for themselves in his absence. Though impoverished, the March family is rich in spirit; they are bolstered by their familial love and steered by strong Christian morals. On Christmas morning, the girls wake to discover that they've each received a copy of Pilgrim's Progress, an allegorical novel about Christian morals. Together, they resolve to read a little from their books each day, and to put the morals they learn into practice. While attending a dance thrown by a local rich family, Meg and Jo meet Laurie, the grandson of the March family's rich neighbor, Mr. Laurence. Laurie becomes a fixture at the March household, and old Mr. Laurence befriends the girls and becomes a surrogate grandfather to them. Laurie's tutor, Mr. Brooke, also becomes a fixture in the March household, and he takes a special liking to Meg. Over the course of the following year, the girls encounter a number of trials that put their readings of Pilgrim's Progress to the test. Vain Meg, for instance, burns off a lock of her hair, conceited Amy is beaten in front of her classmates at school when she's discovered hoarding pickled limes in her desk, and Jo (blinded by anger) carelessly allows Amy to fall into an icy river. Toward the end of the year, they learn their father has fallen ill, and Mrs. March travels to Washington, D.C. (accompanied by Mr. Brooke) in order to tend to him. While Mrs. March is away, Beth contracts scarlet fever, and she grows so sick that the March girls and their servant Hannah fear that she won't survive. Beth's sickness finally abates the morning Mrs. March returns from Washington, much to everyone's relief. On Christmas, Laurie surprises Mrs. March and her daughters with the news that Mr. March has come home early. Mr. March surveys his daughters and is pleased with their moral growth in his absence. Soon after, Mr. Brooke confronts Meg and asks for her hand in marriage. She accepts, with the stipulation that they should wait three years before marrying, and the March family (with the exception of Jo, who wishes for her sister to remain at home) is awash in celebration. Part II opens with Meg's wedding to Mr. Brooke. The ceremony is a simple affair held at the March family's home. She and Mr. Brooke then begin their new life at their modest home, the Dovecote. Meg gives birth to twins, Daisy and Demi, not long afterward. Jo, meanwhile, is pursuing her writing in earnest; she soon sells several of her stories and poems to a local newspaper; she uses the proceeds from her publications to send Beth and Mrs. March on holiday. Amy, given her elegant manners, has become rich Aunt March's confidante. Amy also impresses a distant yet wealthy relative, Aunt Carrol, who decides to take Amy with her on a trip to Europe. Soon after, Jo decides to move to New York for the winter in order to evade Laurie, who is infatuated with Jo. While working as a governess in a boarding house, Jo meets a kindhearted German professor named Friedrich Bhaer. When Jo returns home after her stint in New York, Laurie confronts her and asks for her hand in marriage. Jo turns him down, and Laurie is devastated. Mr. Laurence then takes him on a trip to Europe, where Laurie soon runs into Amy. Meanwhile, back at home, Beth's health is waning. Jo takes her on one last holiday to the seashore, and Beth dies not long after. Word of Beth's death reaches Amy, who finds solace in her friendship with Laurie. Laurie realizes Amy was his true love all along; the two fall in love and elope. They return home the night before Jo's 25th birthday. That same night, Professor Bhaer makes a surprise visit. He proposes to Jo toward the end of his visit, and Jo accepts. Five years pass. Jo and Bhaer are married, they have two boys, and they inherit Aunt March's house when she dies. Jo and Bhaer turn it into a school called Plumfield. The book ends with the celebration of Mrs. March's 60th birthday. The entire March family gathers in the apple orchard and reflects on how blessed they are to have each other. Mrs. March reflects that there is no greater happiness than to experience the love she has for her family.

- Genre: Postmodern Novel / Road Narrative / American Novel / Immigrant Novel / Metafiction - Title: Lolita - Point of view: First-person retrospective - Setting: The French Riviera, Paris, the fictional town of Ramsdale, Massachusetts, Beardsley, motels and tourist attractions across the U.S. - Character: Humbert Humbert. Description: The narrator of Lolita. Humbert is a highly educated, mentally unstable, literarily gifted European man with an uncontrollable desire for young girls, whom he calls "nymphets." Humbert Humbert is extraordinarily charming, sarcastic, and seductive to both his readers and the other characters. With his book—which he writes in prison—he wants to immortalize Lolita, and to justify his perverse desires as artistic necessities. By the end of the novel, he realizes the immense pain he has caused Lolita, and repents of what he has done to her. He dies of coronary thrombosis (heart failure) while waiting for his murder trial to begin. - Character: Annabel Leigh. Description: Humbert Humbert's childhood love, and Lolita's predecessor in his imagination. She and Humbert Humbert come close to having sex in a beachside cave, but are interrupted by two men. Not long after, she dies of typhoid before they can consummate their love. Annabel's name and character come from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, "Annabel Lee," which is also about a beloved young girl who dies early. - Character: Valeria. Description: Humbert Humbert's first wife. She is a Polish woman in Paris who paints in the Cubist style. Humbert marries her as an outlet for his uncontrollable desires. Though she is not a nymphet, she often acts like a little girl, which he finds attractive. Just before they are to leave Paris for the U.S., Valeria leaves Humbert Humbert for Maximovich. Valeria and Maximovich die as test subjects in a humiliating experiment in California. - Character: Charlotte Haze. Description: Lolita's mother and Humbert Humbert's second wife. Charlotte is a lively, pretentious young widow who looks sort of like the movie star Marlene Dieterich. She dreams of moving upwards in cultural sophistication and social class, but never succeeds. She falls madly in love with Humbert Humbert when he comes to live with her as a boarder, mostly because of his European refinements. She has issues with her daughter, whom she sees as a spoiled, bratty pest. Charlotte is a very jealous woman, and this jealousy leads her to discover Humbert Humbert's secret love for Lolita. Charlotte is run over by Frank Beale as she runs across the street to mail letters with information about Humbert's crimes. - Character: Lolita (Dolores Haze). Description: The novel's title character, and Humbert Humbert's great nymphet love. Lolita begins the novel as a flirtatious, energetic twelve-year-old interested in comic books, crooners, and becoming a movie star. Her kidnapping and rape by Humbert Humbert—whom she reluctantly comes to view as a father—ruins her childhood. In her adolescence, Lolita learns acting and how to play tennis. As she matures, she gets better and better at manipulating Humbert. Eventually, she is able to plan an escape with her lover, the playwright and pornographer Clare Quilty. She leaves Quilty when he asks her to act in his porn films. She marries Dick Schiller, an engineer, and dies in childbirth on Christmas Day, 1952. - Character: Jean Farlow. Description: A friend of the Hazes, wife of John. On the day Humbert Humbert considers and then refrains from drowning Charlotte at Hourglass Lake, it turns out Jean is watching from the bushes as she paints a nature scene. Just before he leaves for Camp Q, Jean tries to kiss Humbert Humbert. He rejects her. She later dies of cancer. - Character: Clare Quilty. Description: A children's playwright, child pornographer, and the novel's villain. Quilty is Humbert Humbert's double and spiritual twin: a fellow pedophile, writer, and brilliant student of literature. Quilty is not revealed as a major character until the end of the novel, but clues to his identity are strewn throughout the book. Lolita falls in love with Quilty, who helps her to escape from Humbert. But she then abandons Quilty when he asks her to perform in his pornographic films. Quilty himself, it turns out, is impotent. At the end of the novel, Humbert Humbert murders Quilty in his decadent manor house. - Theme: Perversity, Obsession, and Art. Description: There is a relationship between Humbert Humbert's desire for nymphets and his artistic gifts. The common link is obsession, which Lolita suggests is the connector between sexual perversion and artistic talent. Humbert Humbert's passion for Lolita is not only perverse, but also physically and intellectually obsessive. He is not satisfied with merely molesting Lolita, or even with having sex with her, as more ordinary pedophiles might be. These things, to him, fall short of his ultimate goal, which is to "fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets." Humbert Humbert literally wants to know Lolita "inside out," and he lavishes his attention—physically and with his mind—on every minute detail of her body and manner. This physical obsession with Lolita is microscopic: he takes pleasure in licking a speck from her eye, feeling the tiny downy hairs on her legs, and even in noticing the shine of her hair. His precise physical obsession is analogous to his equally precise artistic obsession, which is to immortalize Lolita in writing. As a pedophile and as an artist, Humbert is obsessed with small details. The linked themes of artistic and sexual obsession are two of the most common in Nabokov's novels, appearing in his novels Pale Fire and Ada, or Ardor, among others. As a writer, Nabokov believed that obsessive attention to detail was the hallmark of all truly great artists. - Theme: Suburbia and American Consumer Culture. Description: Lolita pokes fun at the middle-class consumer culture of the American suburbs in the 1950s. As a savvy European aesthete, Humbert Humbert narrates his journey through his adopted country in a voice dripping with contempt. Many of the places and people in Lolita are pure caricatures of American "types." The novel makes fun of everything which was quintessentially "American" in the late 1940s and 1950s, good and bad: Hollywood movies, middle-class consumerism, motels, Freudian psychology, slang, racial stratification, and youth culture. Humbert Humbert struggles to adapt his elite European sensibilities to his kitschy American environment. Much of the novel's humor comes from moments when highbrow Humbert must endure American kitsch for the sake of lowbrow Lolita. This satire is particularly apparent in Humbert's marriage to Lolita's mother Charlotte: he is disgusted by her middle-class pretensions—especially her taste in art and her desire to take a cruise—but he plays along in order to stay close to Lolita. Although Humbert Humbert mocks the United States, one might say that the novel, in turn, mocks him. He is a caricatured member of a faded European literary elite, and his outrage is so outrageous that it makes him as ridiculous as the elements of American life he mocks. - Theme: Exile, Homelessness and Road Narratives. Description: Lolita is in many ways a novel about exile, about characters who have lost their homes. It is important to notice that there is no real "home," in Lolita: every place Humbert Humbert and his nymphet live is a temporary dwelling. Humbert Humbert's life begins at a hotel, and ends in a prison. In between, he lives in boarding houses, rented apartments, and motels—hundreds of them. He doesn't stay anywhere, or with anyone, for more than a few years. Further, he is an exile from his cultural home: a bewildered European in America. Lolita, too, is homeless. In Ramsdale, she is a newcomer who has lost her father and her hometown. With Humbert, she becomes a kidnapped orphan, with no way of putting down roots and living a normal life. Lolita is not only a story of exile, but a road narrative: a story of adventure by car which spans the length and breadth of the United States. The themes of exile and the road are part of what make Lolita a strong contender for the title of "The Great American Novel." The U.S. has always been a nation of immigrants, adventurers and exiles, and its history has been marked by internal migration and uprooting on a vast scale. Exile is one of the great themes of Nabokov's novels. Nabokov himself was an exile from his home country, Russia, and he never really settled down permanently after leaving. He died in a hotel in Switzerland. Humbert and Lolita's wanderings were in part inspired by the cross-country butterfly collecting trip Nabokov took while composing the novel. - Theme: Life and Literary Representation. Description: Humbert Humbert is not only a pedophile, but a literary scholar, and Lolita is as much—or more—about literature as it is about pedophilia. Often, literature functions as a lens through which Humbert sees and interprets the world around him. He also uses it as a tool to justify himself, and to make sense of his life. He uses Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Annabel Lee," to express his love for his childhood sweetheart. He often uses lines from French poetry to express his love for Lolita. To justify his passion for nymphets, he references the child brides or beloveds of famous literary figures like Petrarch, Dante, and Poe. Humbert Humbert's perceptions of America and Americans are, likewise, often influenced by his reading. Where he lacks real knowledge of the world, he substitutes ideas from literature. To give one among many examples, his perceptions of the few black characters in Lolita are clearly influenced more by his familiarity with Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin than by any real experience with black Americans: he imagines the old bellboy at The Enchanted Hunters as "Uncle Tom," and gives Miss Opposite's young driver and gardener Leslie the surname "Tomson." Humbert's knowledge of literature enriches his imagination and experience of the world, but it often keeps him from seeing the reality in front of his face. The best example is probably his relationship with Lolita. Humbert's fantastic ideas about what nymphets are like come from mythology and literature, rather than any real little girls. These fantasies of frolicking nymphets on mystical islands keep him from noticing the thoughts and feelings of the real little girl he has abducted, of the damage he has done to Lolita, whom he supposedly loves. - Theme: Women, Innocence, and Male Fantasy. Description: The flip side of Humbert Humbert's obsession with nymphets is his hatred of sexually mature women. Humbert Humbert treats the adult women of Lolita with almost infinite pity and contempt. Often, when angry, he thinks about killing them: he considers or at least imagines murdering Valeria, Charlotte, and Headmistress Pratt at the Beardsley School. Humbert's misogyny reaches its pinnacle in his marriage with Charlotte. Humbert hates Charlotte's body, and is disgusted by her sexual desire for him. He hates everything he perceives as feminine and domestic in his Ramsdale life, and associates women with stupidity, middle-class snobbery, and bad taste. Humbert Humbert's hatred of sexually mature women is related to his complex obsession with innocence. He hates older women because they lack the imagined purity and innocent devilishness of nymphets. He doesn't like women with mature sexual desires, even when those desires are for him. Instead, he obsesses over the fantastical innocence of nymphets. Even when he learns that Lolita has had sexual experiences before, he continues to think of her as innocent, unconnected with the world of adult sexuality: "She saw the stark act [of sex] merely as part of a youngster's furtive world, unknown to adults." This obsession with Lolita's innocence and naïveté causes Humbert to miss the more complex aspects of her budding personality, something for which he—and just as or more importantly, she—will pay dearly. It allows him to convince himself, for example, that she doesn't notice him molesting her when she is very young. For the plot of Lolita, Humbert's belief in his nymphet's innocence causes him not to believe in his suspicions when she plans her escape with Clare Quilty. By the end of the novel, though, Humbert Humbert has realized that he himself was the greatest threat to Lolita's innocence, and that he in fact destroyed her innocence in ways that could never be undone. - Theme: Patterns, Memory and Fate. Description: Throughout Lolita, Humbert Humbert seems to believe that his life is following the pre-established pathways of his fate. He tries to fit every event in his life into a mysterious pattern, finding subtle, hard-to-explain connections everywhere. Annabel Leigh's mysterious connection to Lolita is the first instance. Sunglasses appear on the cave floor with Annabel, and then again when Humbert Humbert first sees Lolita. Humbert Humbert also notices that life-changing things tend to happen to him around toilets and telephones: they are places "where [his] destiny [is] liable to catch." Another pattern in Humbert's story is the recurrence of the numbers 42, 52, and 342, each of which appears many times in the novel. You could go on from there, but the general idea should be clear: behind the confusion of events in Lolita, there seems to be a deeper pattern. Humbert Humbert imagines these patterns in his life as the creations of "McFate," a character he has invented to explain his strange destiny. Humbert Humbert's confrontation with Clare Quilty seems like another instance of the workings of fate: earlier in Lolita, Humbert finds two posters in Lolita's room, one with his own name written on it, and the other with a picture of Clare Quilty. It is unclear whether the patterns Humbert notices exist in the real world, or are merely products of his imagination. Humbert Humbert's artistic gifts might be interfering with his perception of reality: his vivid, obsessive imagination creates links between events and perceptions in his memory which may have no "real," relationship. Humbert Humbert often dwells on the difficulties of memory, in particular, memory's contamination by time, desire, and the imagination. Often, this contamination is symbolic. Humbert Humbert remembers the windows of Annabel's home as actual playing cards, because the adults were playing bridge inside while he and Annabel snuck out. The difficulties of memory, and the reality of patterns in fate, are recurring themes in almost all of Nabokov's novels. - Climax: After Lolita refuses to run away with Humbert Humbert, he drives to Clare Quilty's mansion and kills him in a theatrical shootout. - Summary: A fictional psychologist named John Ray Jr., Ph.D. introduces the rest of the novel, presenting it as a case study in abnormal psychology. He explains that it was written by a murderer and sexual pervert, who refers to himself in the manuscript as Humbert Humbert. The author, as well as the girl he abducted—Lolita—are now dead. The former died of a heart attack while awaiting trial in prison, and the latter died in childbirth on Christmas Day. Both died in the year 1952. Ray closes his foreword by praising the genius of the writer, condemning his actions, and recommending the book as a warning, a case study, and a guide to building a more ethical society. The foreword is dated August 5th, 1955. Humbert Humbert's narrative begins with the story of Lolita's predecessor, his childhood love. Young Humbert meets Annabel Leigh at the Hotel Mirana on the French Riviera. His father owns the hotel, and Annabel's parents are family friends. The two children fall in love, and try desperately to find some way of having sex without being discovered. They almost succeed, but are discovered at the last moment by two swimmers. Humbert never sees Annabel again, and she dies of typhoid a short time after. Annabel defines Humbert's ideal of nymphetry until he meets Lolita. As a young adult, Humbert moves to Paris. There and in London, he receives a literary education, and begins publishing articles in journals. He represses his urge for the young girls he finds attractive, whom he calls "nymphets." Nevertheless, he takes every chance he can to be near them. He visits prostitutes to deal with his erotic urges. One of these prostitutes, Monique, is so nymphet-like that it makes a striking impression on him. He tries to find a little girl prostitute in the Paris underworld, but gives up after being scammed by a Madame. Humbert Humbert hopes that the sexual and domestic routines of marriage will help him deal with his perverse desires. In 1935, he marries Valeria, the daughter of his doctor. It goes passably well for four years, at the end of which Valeria leaves him for a Russian taxi driver named Maximovich. Humbert Humbert leaves for the United States, where an uncle has left him a yearly stipend on the condition that he immigrates and shows an interest in business. Humbert Humbert immigrates to New York, where he works for a University writing a book on French Literature. His mental health deteriorates, and he ends up staying in sanatoriums for several years. In between stays, he accompanies a scientific expedition to the arctic, where he acts as a "psychological recorder." The report he drafts is entirely fictional. Soon after, he has to return to the sanatorium, where he revels in his ability to deceive his psychotherapists. Released from the sanatorium in 1947, Humbert Humbert moves to New England. He arranges to lodge in the town of Ramsdale with a family called the McCoos. He is excited to learn the McCoos have a little daughter. When he arrives, Mr. McCoo informs him that their house has burnt down. He refers Humbert instead to the Hazes, a mother and daughter living at 342 Lawn Avenue. Charlotte Haze, the homeowner, gives Humbert Humbert a tour of the house. He is unimpressed with the décor, and has the unpleasant impression that Charlotte is flirting with him. He's all but decided not to take the offer, when all of a sudden he sees Charlotte's daughter Dolores sunbathing on the piazza. He falls in love at once, feeling that this twelve-year-old nymphet is the reincarnation of Annabel, his childhood love. He takes Charlotte's offer and moves in. Humbert Humbert begins keeping a diary. He writes about Lolita, detailing his fantasies and schemes to possess her. He is as discreet as possible, but manages to nuzzle her or touch her several times. Lolita fights constantly with her mother, who views her as a little brat. Charlotte is always trying to get Lolita out of the picture so that she can have time alone with Humbert Humbert, with whom its clear she wants to begin an affair. Meanwhile, Lolita takes a liking to Humbert. One day, Humbert is left alone in the house with Lolita. While they sit together singing on the davenport, he uses her legs to masturbate through his dressing gown, later groping at her thigh. Having finally "enjoyed," a nymphet—without her noticing, he claims—Humbert is overjoyed. Charlotte drives Lolita to summer camp, which he calls Camp Q. Before she leaves—Humbert claims—Lolita runs up the stairs to kiss him. Once mother and daughter have left, the maid, Louise, brings Humbert a note. It's a love letter from Charlotte, begging him to either marry her as soon as she returns, or to leave at once. Determined to stay near Lolita, Humbert decides to go through with it. Upon her return, Charlotte becomes Mrs. Humbert. During a swim at the Hourglass Lake, Charlotte announces to Humbert that she's planning to send Lolita to boarding school as soon as she's back from camp. Humbert is furious. He considers drowning Charlotte, but thinks better of it. He desperately looks for ways to assert himself in the marriage, so that he'll be able to ensure that Lolita stays near him. One day while he's out getting sleeping pills to drug Charlotte and her daughter to make it possible for him to molest Lolita undetected, Charlotte discovers Humbert Humbert's diary. When he returns home she screams at him, calling him a monster, and runs out into the street with incriminating letters in her hand. There, while Humbert is distracted by a telephone call, she is run over by a car and killed. Thinking quickly, Humbert Humbert arranges things so that he can become Lolita's guardian. He convinces John and Jean Farlow, close family friends, that he's Lolita's real father from a long ago affair with Charlotte. Humbert picks up Lolita at Camp Q. He tells her that her mother is ill and takes her to The Enchanted Hunters, a motel in Briceland. There, he drugs her with sleeping pills and tries to molest her in the bed. He is surprised when she wakes up, and he gives up his molestation attempt. In the morning, Lolita initiates sex with Humbert—according to Humbert, at least. He believes that she was "corrupted," at summer camp. When the two get back on the highway, Lolita begins threatening to call her mother, or the police, and tell them everything. Humbert then reveals her that her mother is dead; orphaned Lolita has nowhere else to go. Humbert Humbert and Lolita spend the next two years on the road, staying in motels and visiting tourist attractions throughout the United States. He creates a frantic, "fun" filled schedule to distract Lolita from any desire she might have to escape. He also threatens her: if she turns him in, she'll end up in some awful foster home. Throughout their journey, Humbert buys Lolita whatever she wants. In California, she starts taking tennis lessons. In the summer of 1948, Humbert Humbert begins having financial and legal worries about staying on the road. He decides to settle with Lolita in Beardsley, an eastern college town where a French friend named Gaston Godin is able to help him secure a job as a lecturer. He enrolls Lolita at the local girls school. Lolita makes friends and adapts to her new environment. But the Headmistress of the school, a woman named Pratt, begins to worry that something might be wrong with her home environment. She urges Humbert Humbert to let Lolita go on dates and socialize, as well as participate in the school play: a production of The Enchanted Hunters by Clare Quilty. As play rehearsals begin, Humbert's relationship with Lolita deteriorates. He mistrusts her, and worries she has told everything to a friend named Mona Dahl. When Humbert learns Lolita has been missing piano lessons, the two have a screaming fight, and Lolita runs out of the house. He catches up with her at a telephone booth, and her attitude has totally changed: she asks Humbert if they can go on the road again, but requires that she be the one to choose the route. In May of 1949, Humbert and Lolita set out on another cross-country trip. As they travel, Humbert Humbert becomes concerned: someone who looks like his uncle is following them in a red car, and Lolita seems to be communicating with this man when Humbert isn't paying attention. Humbert becomes more and more anxious, feeling that Lolita is trying to escape from him with their pursuer. Eventually, he convinces himself that he's being too paranoid. In a town called Elphinstone, Lolita falls ill. Humbert Humbert takes her to the local hospital, where she stays for several days. When the time comes to pick her up, Humbert is horrified—the hospital staff informs him that Lolita's uncle picked her up. Humbert realizes that Lolita has escaped with the man who was pursuing them. Humbert Humbert spends the rest of the summer looking for traces of Lolita and her lover. The man seems to have anticipated his investigation, and has left mocking false names in each of the motel registers. Humbert Humbert is impressed with the man's cleverness, and is ultimately unable to track him down. He falls into despair, ultimately starting a two-year relationship with a woman named Rita, who is something of an alcoholic and bum. In the September of 1952, Humbert Humbert receives a letter from Lolita. She is married to an engineer named Dick, and needs money so the two of them can move to Alaska for Dick's new job. She doesn't give her exact address, but Humbert Humbert manages to track her down anyway. He brings a gun, meaning to kill her husband, whom he assumes is the man who stole her away from him. Lolita greets Humbert Humbert at the door to her house. She is older, pregnant, and no longer a nymphet, but he still loves her. When Humbert sees that her husband isn't the same man as her kidnapper, he decides not to kill him. Humbert presses Lolita to reveal the identity of the lover with whom she escaped from him. Reluctantly, she tells him: it was Clare Quilty, a playwright her mother had known, and with whom she'd reconnected at rehearsals for the Beardsley school's production of his play. Lolita fell in love with Quilty and ran off with him, but left him after he wanted her to be in his child pornography films. Humbert Humbert gives Lolita the money she's asked for, and begs her to run away with him. For the first time, Lolita sees that her molester and "father," really did love her; she's surprised, maybe even touched, but firmly refuses. Heartbroken, Humbert Humbert drives away in tears. Humbert Humbert returns to Ramsdale to meet with Jack Windmuller, so that he can transfer Humbert's property (formerly Charlotte's) to Lolita. While he's there, he walks by the old house at 342. He tries to shock and offend everyone in town that he runs in to: Mrs. Chatfield, and the dentist, Ivor Quilty (Clare's uncle). Humbert leaves Ramsdale in search of Clare Quilty. On his journey, he begins to have a moral awakening: he realizes how terribly he hurt Lolita. He tracks Quilty to a huge, rickety house called Pavor Manor. The door is open in the morning, and he heads inside, with his gun, to look for Quilty. When he finds and threatens him, Quilty is unimpressed: he alternately mocks, ignores, and negotiates with Humbert. The two pedophiles—who turn out to be very similar people—have a long, slow fight involving lots of wrestling and missed shots, a parody of combat in contemporary Westerns and other Hollywood films. Finally, Humbert manages to shoot Quilty several times. The playwright reacts theatrically to every wound: he plays the piano, delivers dramatic lines similar to those in a play, and hops up and down. Finally, he dies. Humbert leaves the house, announcing the murder to Quilty's drunk young friends on the bottom floor—they don't believe him or don't care. Leaving Pavor Manor, Humbert drives on the wrong side of the highway until he is stopped by the police. He swerves the car to the top of the hill, then waits for arrest.

- Genre: Coming-of-age novel - Title: Looking for Alaska - Point of view: First person, from Miles' perspective - Setting: Culver Creek, in Birmingham, AL - Character: Miles Halter. Description: A junior in high school and the main character and narrator of the novel. He moves to the Culver Creek boarding school in Birmingham, AL from his home in Florida, where he is a good student but has few friends. He decides to leave home "to seek a Great Perhaps" and has a penchant for memorizing famous people's last words. Miles is very gangly, so his friends at Culver Creek nickname him "Pudge." Over time, Miles transforms into a confident, risk-taking person with a great capacity for forgiveness and introspection. - Character: Chip Martin (The Colonel). Description: The Colonel is Miles' roommate and best friend at Culver Creek, as well as the facilitator of all the pranks he and his friends pull on the school. The Colonel is very poor and lives with his mother, Dolores, in a trailer park. He attends Culver Creek on an academic scholarship. The Colonel loves memorizing facts about other countries and spearheads the search to find out more facts about Alaska's death. He is an extremely principled person, and he values loyalty and honesty among friends. - Character: Alaska Young. Description: Alaska is Miles' love interest at Culver Creek. She is smart and loves quoting poetry, but she can also be moody and unpredictable. Alaska loves sex, smoking, drinking, and pulling pranks. She occasionally reciprocates Miles' romantic, or at least sexual, interest, but also has a boyfriend named Jake. Alaska decides that the biggest question in life is how to "escape the labyrinth of suffering." When Alaska was young, her mother died in front of her, and Alaska failed to call 911. Alaska dies in a car crash halfway through the novel. - Character: Takumi Hikohito. Description: Takumi is very close withAlaska and good friends with Lara, the Colonel, and Miles. He loves to freestyle rap. Like Miles, he also has feelings for Alaska. The Colonel and Miles ignore Takumi after Alaska's death. In response, Takumi withholds information about her death from the Colonel and Miles, but eventually he does help them understand why Alaska died. Only when Miles decides to forgive Takumi does he understand how to move on from Alaska's death. - Character: Mr. Starnes (The Eagle). Description: Mr. Starnes, known as "the Eagle" among students, is the dean of students at Culver Creek. He believes that discipline is good for young people, and Miles, the Colonel, Takumi, and Alaska spend a great deal of time trying to avoid his watchful eye. The Eagle, however, does decide not to punish Miles and the Colonel for the Alaska Young Memorial Prank. - Character: Dr. Hyde (The Old Man). Description: Dr. Hyde is a very old religion teacher at Culver Creek. Miles thinks that he's a genius, even though he once kicks Miles out of class. Dr. Hyde encourages his students to think about the meaning of life and death, and after Alaska dies, he changes his final exam and asks students to answer Alaska's question about how to escape the labyrinth of suffering. - Character: Kevin. Description: Kevin and Longwell Chase cover Miles in duct tape and throw him into the lake at the beginning of the school year. Both are Weekday Warriors. The Colonel hates Kevin, and even though Kevin tries to call a truce multiple times, the Colonel dies Kevin's hair blue and sends a fake report card to his parents. - Theme: How to Live and Die. Description: While life and death are certainly important topics in Looking for Alaska, how to live and die are much bigger themes. Indeed, the novel is not titled Alaska, but rather Looking for Alaska—it's the search that matters. Miles and Alaska are both naturally inclined toward looking for meaning. Miles memorizes last words because they help him understand how people lived, and Alaska reads and memorizes poetry from her Life's Library, which helps her find words for what she is feeling. The Old Man's World Religions class then furthers Miles' understanding of how to live and die. The class exposes him to how a variety of cultures and religions have answered life's biggest questions. Alaska's answer to her search is "straight & fast"—she wants to escape from her "labyrinth of suffering" as quickly and easily as possible. Once Alaska dies, Miles' interest in how to live and die is intensified because it now has a practical application. But when Alaska escapes from her own labyrinth, she creates a new labyrinth for Miles. He gets lost in a pattern of grief in which he simultaneously wants to find answers and avoids looking for them. Despite his love for Alaska, Miles ultimately realizes that she gave up, whether or not she committed suicide. Overcome by guilt, she decided that her life had to be a sad one. When Miles chooses forgiveness—for himself, and for Alaska—he chooses to keep going forward and seek his "Great Perhaps." He learns from Alaska's mistakes that it is the uncertainty of life that makes it worth living. - Theme: Mystery and the Unknown. Description: Mystery is at the heart of this novel—so much so that it is embedded in the structure of the book. Rather than separating the novel into chapters, Green sections his book into days, each of which is titled with a number of days and the word "before" or "after." For example, the first section of the book is called "one-hundred thirty-six days before." Before what, however, is not made clear to the reader until two-thirds of the way through the book. Just as the mysterious structure of Looking for Alaska makes the novel intriguing, mystery is an intriguing part of Miles' life as well. At the book's beginning, Miles decides to move to Alabama to seek his "Great Perhaps." He is excited about the mysteries that await him, and he immediately becomes obsessed with understanding Alaska, who is a mystery herself. But while Alaska's active cultivation of a mysterious air does make her interesting to others, she suffers because of it. She is not willing to let others in, and is afraid for others to see the horrible person that she thinks herself to be. As a result, Alaska prevents her friends from getting to know her as well as they want to. Indeed, Miles and the Colonel let her drive away on the night of her death because they do not realize how upset she is, or that it is the anniversary of her mother's death.Only once Miles gives up trying to figure out Alaska and her death can he finally see Alaska for what she really is: a mystery that is not meant to be answered. Further, when he stops chasing after Alaska, he is once again able to pursue his own Great Perhaps. Ultimately, Miles is okay with not knowing exactly what happened to Alaska because it doesn't matter what happened. The solutions to mysteries aren't always important. Miles realizes that whether or not she killed herself, he still loves her and cares about her and believes that her spirit lives on. For him, that is enough. - Theme: Loyalty and Forgiveness. Description: Friendship, and particularly loyalty among friends, is extremely important at Culver Creek. The Colonel emphasizes to Miles that under no circumstances should he tell on a fellow student, and Alaska suffers emotionally for having done so to her roommate, Marya. This code of loyalty, while strict, encourages the students to forgive one another, or at least not to hold grudges. Friends are willing to take the fall for other friends if necessary, and when Alaska does this for Miles, she does not hold her punishment against him. Further, most students are willing to forgive one another even if they have been disloyal. For example, once Kevin has played a prank on Miles, he asks the Colonel for a truce because he feels the Colonel has been adequately punished for telling on Marya (which, of course, he did not in fact do). While the Colonel does not grant the truce, he ultimately forgives Kevin when he enlists his help to pull off the Alaska Young Memorial Prank.But while the characters in Looking for Alaska find it relatively easy to forgive one another, they often struggle to forgive themselves. Whether or not Alaska intended to take her own life, she dies because she is unable to forgive herself for the role she played in her mother's death years ago. And she is so furious with herself for forgetting the anniversary of her mother's death that she drives drunk and angry in the middle of the night. When she is still alive, Miles realizes that Alaska lives so recklessly and carelessly because she cannot forgive herself for her inaction during her mother's aneurysm. She doesn't want to freeze again, so she is constantly moving. Although Alaska ultimately dies because she cannot forgive herself, Miles survives the suffering brought about by her death because he can forgive himself. Miles struggles with this at first—he feels incredibly guilty and disloyal to Alaska for having let her go driving that night. However, when Miles realizes that Alaska would forgive him for letting her go, he decides to forgive himself, too. He restores his relationship with his friends and is able to escape from the grief that has consumed him. - Theme: Memory and Memorial. Description: In Looking for Alaska, characters are defined and even introduced to others by their ability to memorize things. The Colonel memorizes countries, Miles memorizes last words, and Alaska memorizes poetry. Despite the fact that these characters find solace in the words and numbers they memorize, they still struggle with their memories of other people and themselves. Indeed, while Alaska may be outwardly defined by her ability to quote poems about sadness and femininity, she defines herself by the memory of her mother's death. She is tormented by the fact that she was present for the death and yet did nothing to stop it. The memory of this inaction drives Alaska to be a reckless person, which in turn propels her toward her own death.While Alaska defines herself by a single memory, Miles is able to look at himself more holistically. His memory of wearing peed-on gym clothes is just as important to who he is as his memory of playing a prank with his new friends at Culver Creek. Miles does, however, struggle to remember Alaska correctly. He is so blinded by his love for her and his hope for what could have been that he forgets that she was frequently, as Alaska describes herself, a "sullen bitch." Miles spends a great deal of time after Alaska's death trying to learn everything about her, to make his mental picture of her more complete. Doing this starts driving him crazy, and he finally accepts that he will inevitably forget Alaska, just like Alaska forgot her mother's death. But while Miles may not be able to remember Alaska perfectly, letting go of the need to remember her exactly lets him memorialize her as she truly was through actions of his own. In addition to the Alaska Young Memorial Prank, Miles, The Colonel, Takumi, and Lara each throw a cigarette into the Smoking Hole in Alaska's honor. Like a cigarette, Alaska brought others great pleasure, but also a lot of pain. While the memory of some of that pleasure and some of that pain lives on, Alaska will eventually fade away like a cigarette's smoke and dying embers. As much as Miles likes to fix life into place by encapsulating it with last words, he must come to terms with the fact that everything in life can and will fade away. - Theme: Identity. Description: Coming-of-age stories, known as bildungsroman, often begin with a young person looking for the answers to life's questions, as Miles does in Looking for Alaska. In a traditional bildungsroman, loss or grief would motivate the main character to depart from home and go on a quest for knowledge, while in Looking for Alaska, a death interrupts the search on which Miles has already embarked. Like Looking for Alaska, however, a bildungsroman ends with its main character having gained maturity and self-knowledge. The character who "comes of age" (Miles) who has a less naïve and more realistic approach to life as a result of his experiences. While all coming-of-age novels are invested in identity, Looking for Alaska is particularly concerned with it. When Miles first arrives at Culver Creek, he thinks that he knows himself. He is well liked by teachers, doesn't care for sports, and is perfectly happy being alone. His quest, at that moment, is for adventure rather than self-awareness. Once Alaska dies, Miles turns his attention to trying to figure out who she really was. While she was alive, Miles could identify Alaska as beautiful and mysterious and smart, but she was also mean and selfish and irrational, and he struggles to come to terms with the many facets of her personality. Ultimately, Miles realizes that while the process of "looking for Alaska" never brought him any real answers about Alaska, it did help him grow closer to his friends and learn more about himself. Miles matures into someone who knows the value of friendship and forgiveness, and it is only once he realizes that he cares about these things that he truly knows himself. - Theme: Mischief. Description: The more time Miles spends at Culver Creek, the more comfortable he becomes with mischief. At the beginning of the novel, he is extremely upset when Dr. Hyde kicks him out of class for looking out the window, but by the end, he is blatantly coordinating and participating in a prank against the school. At one point, Alaska tells him that mischief will always win out over good deeds, and Miles learns that misbehaving at least makes life more exciting, because you never know what will happen next. Even the Eagle appreciates Miles' newfound willingness to get into trouble, to a certain extent at least, because he recognizes how well the prank Miles and the Colonel play captures Alaska's mischievous spirit. The mischief Alaska encourages also forges bonds among her friends, making them very loyal to one another. They do not want to get caught, and as a result, they grow closer by looking out for each other and doing their best to make sure no one gets in trouble. While Alaska's insistence on breaking the rules loosens Miles up a bit and encourages him to live more freely, Alaska takes mischief to the extreme. Indeed, she uses her mischief-loving personality as a cover for how reckless she really is. The night she dies, her decision to sneak off campus is not inspired merely by wanting to break the rules. Instead, she leaves because she does not value her own life enough to stop herself. Alaska can be wild and fun, but she can just as easily be destructive and dangerous. When she dies, Miles and the Colonel feel so guilty and ashamed that they behave recklessly, too. The Colonel, for example, smokes in front of a police officer even though he is clearly too young to do so. By the end of the novel, however, the Colonel and Miles value themselves enough to behave responsibly, while still having fun and pulling pranks. Green doesn't try to instruct his readers to always follow the rules—instead he demonstrates that breaking the rules can be fun and worthwhile, but also can have dangerous consequences. - Climax: Alaska's Death - Summary: The book begins with Miles Halter leaving his home in Florida to attend the Culver Creek boarding school in Birmingham, AL. Miles arrives at the school as a smart but lonely junior, and he is determined "to seek a Great Perhaps." At school he befriends Chip (also known as the Colonel), Alaska, and Takumi, each of whom have a special talent—memorizing facts about other countries, quoting poetry, and freestyle rapping, respectively. Miles is obsessed with famous people's last words, and Alaska introduces him to the last words of Simón Bolívar, who died wondering how to "escape the labyrinth." Alaska is often exciting and wild, but she can also be moody and withdrawn. Miles spends a lot of time trying to understand her better, although he makes little progress. Overall, however, he is thrilled to finally have friends. In addition to making friends for the first time in his life, Miles spends much of his time at Culver Creek learning to break the rules. His friends encourage him to smoke and eventually he drinks on campus as well. When Miles first arrives on campus, Kevin and Longwell, two Weekday Warriors (wealthy kids who don't board at the school), pull him out of bed in the middle of the night, wrap him in duct tape, and throw him into the school's lake. The Colonel is furious about this, and he and Alaska work on a plan to get back at them. Over time, the group discovers that Kevin and Longwell thought that the Colonel had ratted to the Eagle, the dean of students, about two students named Marya and Paul. Marya used to be Alaska's roommate, but she and Paul were caught smoking pot after having drunken sex and expelled. Kevin and Longwell thus hurt one of the Colonel's friends because they think he hurt one of theirs. Alaska's desire to get back at the Weekday Warriors is exacerbated when they flood her room and ruin her "Life's Library" of books she is saving to read. For much of the first semester, how Marya and Paul got expelled is a mystery, but eventually Alaska tells Takumi that she reported them, and Takumi tells Miles. The Eagle caught Alaska breaking the rules and threatened expulsion unless she gave him information about other students. Takumi and Miles can't figure out why Alaska would be so afraid of getting expelled that she ratted on her friend, because not ratting on anyone, no matter what they do, is the most important social code at Culver Creek. The Colonel is furious when he finds out that Alaska was responsible, because he takes loyalty very seriously. Alaska and Miles spend Thanksgiving break on campus together, and then everyone goes home for Christmas. When they get back, Alaska, Miles, Takumi, the Colonel and Lara, whom Alaska thinks Miles should date, execute a prank on the Weekday Warriors. Takumi and Miles distract the Eagle by setting off fireworks around campus while Lara puts blue dye in Kevin's conditioner and hair gel. Meanwhile, Alaska and the Colonel send fake progress reports with failing grades to a number of Weekday Warrior parents. The next morning the group hangs out and gets drunk in a barn. They play a game called Best Day/Worst Day, in which each person tells the story of their best and worst day. Alaska's worst day was when she came home from school and her mom collapsed to the ground and started shaking. Alaska was very young, so instead of calling 911, she sat with her mother until she thought she fell asleep, but in fact, she died. Alaska has never told anyone at Culver Creek that her mother is dead, and for the first time, Miles can understand why Alaska is so moody and impulsive. She is paralyzed by the memory of freezing when her mother needed her, so she compensates with constant action. Later that evening Miles and Lara start dating. The next evening, Alaska and the Colonel get drunk to celebrate the success of their prank. Alaska dares Miles to make out with her. They do, until Alaska says that she is sleepy, and she asks Miles, "To be continued?" Everyone falls asleep until Miles and the Colonel are woken up by a hysterical Alaska. She enlists their help distracting the Eagle so that she can leave campus. Miles and the Colonel have no idea why she is upset or where she wants to go, but they distract the Eagle long enough for her to leave. The next morning the Eagle announces to the school that Alaska died in a car crash the night before. Miles and the Colonel spend much of the rest of the year trying to deal with their grief, hoping to figure out why Alaska left and whether she intended to kill herself or not. Miles and the Colonel get into a number of fights, and both fall into a depression, though his World Religion class helps Miles come to terms with what occurred. Eventually the friends decide to memorialize Alaska by pulling the prank she had planned for their senior year. A few days later, with Takumi's help, Miles and the Colonel realize that the night Alaska died was the anniversary of her mother's death. Alaska had forgotten to put flowers on her mother's gravestone, and so she had drunkenly driven off with that purpose. Miles ends up deciding that he doesn't care whether or not Alaska committed suicide in the end, because he loves her no matter what. The novel concludes with Miles returning to his quest for the "Great Perhaps" and deciding that forgiveness is the best way out of "the labyrinth of suffering."

- Genre: Adventure Novel, Psychological Novel - Title: Lord Jim - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: Various ports in Southeast Asia and a remote village called Patusan - Character: Jim. Description: Jim, the titular character of Lord Jim, is a romantic young man in his mid-twenties who dreams of becoming a hero. He forms an unusual friendship with an older sea captain named Marlow and tells him about his shameful past. Jim is the son of a parson and comes from a relatively well-off family, so his need for adventure seems to be driven by a desire to leave behind his comfortable past and create a new future for himself. Eventually, Jim becomes a respected leader in Patusan, a remote Malay village, where he marries a mixed-race woman, Jewel, and is known throughout the region as "Tuan Jim," or "Lord Jim." Before this success, however, Jim has many setbacks and must face the cruel reality that his dreams rarely live up to his lived experience. Jim's defining setback happens toward the novel's beginning. Jim is a crew member on a large passenger ship called the Patna. One day, the Patna strikes something in the water and starts to sink. Though Jim wants to be a hero and save the ship's passengers, he ultimately flees with the other white sailors. When the Patna doesn't sink, Jim and the other crew members are exposed as cowards who abandoned their duty. Jim tries to atone for his shameful actions by standing trial (where he meets Marlow), but even receiving official legal judgment isn't enough to clear Jim's guilty conscience. Feeling lost and ashamed, Jim drifts from job to job, until finally Marlow makes an arrangement with a man named Stein to have Jim take over a trading post in Patusan. Patusan represents a chance for Jim to redeem himself. When he leads the Bugis people (headed by Doramin and his son Dain Waris) to defeat the dreaded bandit Sherif Ali, he becomes the hero he always dreamed of being. Still, it's not long before Jim makes another human error that leads to Waris's death. Needing to atone for his grave error, he publicly takes responsibility for Waris's death and then dies when Doramin, still grieving his son's death, shoots him. Jim is a complex character who represents the dangers both of holding on to the past and of dreaming too much of the future. - Character: Marlow. Description: Marlow is an older sea captain who narrates Jim's story, first through a monologue he delivers to an audience at a dinner party, then through a series of letters he sends to the privileged reader. Marlow first sees Jim when Jim is standing trial for the Patna incident, and Marlow is immediately fascinated by him. On the one hand, Marlow sometimes finds Jim ridiculous, particularly during a moment when Jim flies into a rage because he believes someone called him a "cur," only to realize later that someone is talking about an actual cur (mixed-breed dog) in the crowd. More often, however, Marlow sympathizes with Jim's plight and decides to help Jim get back on his feet after the Patna incident. Ultimately, it is through Marlow's connection to a man named Stein that Jim ends up becoming a great leader—Tuan Jim—in the remote Malay village of Patusan, at least until Jim makes a final grave error that results in his downfall and death. Marlow represents the difficulty of finding out the truth from any single source. He obsesses over Jim like a biographer, but despite his enduring interest in Jim, he is often forced to piece Jim's life together from fragmentary parts, just as the novel Lord Jim is made up of various fragments and narration styles. - Character: Doramin. Description: Doramin is the elderly but steady leader of a group of Malay called the Bugis in Patusan, who rebel against the cruel rule of Rajah Allang. Marlow describes Doramin as one of the most impressive Malay men he's ever met, and Jim also admires him, although it's clear that old age has diminished Doramin—he needs help to stand and rarely leaves his village. Doramin's son is Dain Waris, and though Doramin's ultimate goal is to have Dain Waris succeed him, Doramin also takes a fatherly interest in Jim and Jim's growth as a leader—at least until Jim makes a mistake that causes Dain Waris's death. The novel ends with Doramin personally executing Jim with a gunshot to the chest. Doramin embodies history and tradition. His character shows how justice is an important concept in remote parts of the world, even if it takes different forms than European notions of justice. - Character: Dain Waris. Description: Dain Waris is one of the Bugis people from the remote region of Patusan and the son of Doramin. He is a spirited warrior who nevertheless controls himself in the presence of his respected father. Out of all the Malays, he is described as the most European-minded, and so it makes sense that he forms a friendship with Jim, who is white and around the same age as Dain Waris. Although Jim poses a potential threat to Dain Waris's future authority, Dain Waris is happy to work with Jim, particularly after Jim's bold strategy helps the Bugis defeat the bandit Sherif Ali. Ultimately, however, Dain Waris's trust in Jim leads him to his own death when Gentleman Brown betrays Jim and Dain Waris dies in an ambush. Dain Waris's death represents the consequences that many in Southeast Asia faced when interacting with white European colonizers. - Character: Stein. Description: Stein is an associate of Marlow's. He's a naturalist and successful trader. Although Marlow describes Stein as one of the most trustworthy people he knows, it's clear that Stein is involved in all sorts of shady business dealings in various parts of the world. Stein is the one who helps Jim get set up at a trading post in the remote Malay village of Patusan. Stein went on wild adventures abroad in his youth, but he now plays more of a managerial role, although he still retains some of his boyish looks and vigor, even into his sixties. Stein is a famous naturalist, and the most notable feature of his house is the large collection of butterfly specimens. But while the butterflies are perfectly preserved in death, Stein himself eventually gets worn down by old age. One of the book's final images depicts Stein him preparing for death—suggesting that no one's youthfulness can last forever. - Character: Gentleman Brown. Description: Gentleman Brown is a notorious sailor who causes havoc for Jim in Patusan, ultimately leading to Jim's death. Marlow meets Brown on Brown's deathbed, and so while the version of events that Marlow hears portrays Brown as someone cunning and daring, the reader should take Brown's version of events with a grain of salt. But even Brown's version of events makes it clear that Brown was a nasty character. At one point, he orders an innocent Malay man to be shot dead, simply to prove how effective Brown's crew's guns are a distance. Later, when Jim shows Brown mercy, Brown returns the favor by ambushing some Malay warriors, killing Dain Waris. This attack accomplishes nothing for Brown—it is simply his way of leaving his mark on the world. Brown represents pure evil in the story, in particular the evil of white men who carelessly exploit and disregard the lives of people in the lands they colonize. - Character: Jewel. Description: Jewel (who is often simply called "the girl") is the part-white, part-Malay stepdaughter of Cornelius and the eventual wife of Jim. Jewel seems to be a nickname, signifying the immense value she has to Jim—but also perhaps the way he makes her a treasure in his fantastical adventures he constructs in his mind. Cornelius treats Jewel cruelly ( he was equally cruel to his late wife, Jewel's mother), and this motivates Jim to try to save Jewel. Ultimately, Jim's interest in Jewel sets off a chain of events that leads to Cornelius helping Gentleman Brown to betray Jim. At the end of the story, Jim chooses to sacrifice his own life for an abstract ideal rather than listening to the advice of his loving wife. Thus, Jewel embodies everything a romantic like Jim seek—but also what he's willing to leave behind to chase his abstract ideals about honor. - Character: Rajah Allang. Description: Rajah Allang is a greedy, dirty-looking Malay man who tries to impose his control over the Bugis people of Patusan. While Doramin, Patusan's leader, is a noble leader who remains steady despite his old age, Rajah Allang is a coward who wants to dominate people with arbitrary displays of power—but who gets scared at the slightest threat to his own authority. The Rajah imprisons Jim when he first arrives in Patusan, but eventually the two reach an uneasy working relationship. Arguably, Rajah Allang is a stereotyped caricature without much depth to him, although his inability to overcome his own cowardice provides an interesting parallel to Jim's own struggles with cowardice. - Character: Cornelius. Description: Cornelius is the stepfather of Jewel and Jim's predecessor in working with Stein at Patusan. Cornelius is cruel, ugly, and manipulative—although he paints himself as a victim, it's heavily implied that he was cheating Stein during their business relationship and also mistreating his wife. Although Marlow judges Cornelius as a man of no consequence, Cornelius ultimately plays a role in Jim's death (by aiding Gentleman Brown in killing Dain Waris). - Character: The Skipper. Description: The skipper (or captain) of the Patna is a white man charged with leading a passenger ship of mostly nonwhite Muslim pilgrims. Jim is the skipper's chief mate. As a leader, the skipper is a total failure: he abandons the ship with no consideration for anyone's life but his own, and then he later refuses to stand trial and face the consequences of his actions. The skipper represents what Jim fears most—the failure to be a hero—but when things get difficult, Jim flees just like the skipper, suggesting that despite the skipper's seemingly exceptional cowardice, he might be more representative of the average person than many would like to admit. - Character: Tamb' Itam. Description: Tamb' Itam is Jim's faithful servant and bodyguard while he lives in Patusan. Tamb' Itam loyally watches over Jim. Though Jim becomes famous for his power and invincibility, this reputation is really built on the silent work of Malay people like Tamb' Itam. After Jim makes a mistake that gets Dain Waris killed, Tamb' Itam sticks with Jim and is willing to do whatever it takes to save Jim's life. He embodies loyalty and nobility—perhaps even to a fault. - Character: Sherif Ali. Description: Sherif Ali is a bandit who is an enemy both of Doramin's Bugis people and of Rajah Allang. Jim's daring plan to use cannons against Sherif Ali isn't very tactically sound, but it succeeds in frightening Sherif Ali enough to flee the country, setting the stage for Jim's rise to power in Patusan. - Character: Brierly. Description: Captain Brierly is a distinguished captain who is one of the men presiding over Jim's trial. He seems bored and convinced of Jim's guilt during the trial. Marlow, however, who observes Jim's trial with interest, learns that Brierly dies by suicide following the trial. The exact circumstances of Brierly's death are unclear, but it seems that Brierly was depressed and that something about Jim's trial may have triggered him to kill himself. While Jim doesn't technically die by suicide in the book, Brierly's fate foreshadows how Jim and men like him can be self-destructive even if they don't literally take their own lives. - Character: George. Description: Two engineers escape the Patna along with the skipper and Jim, but perhaps the most significant engineer is George, the third engineer who dies while attempting to escape the ship. George's fate is ironic—he is older and dies because his weak heart got too much excitement during the escape attempt, suggesting that if he had just done his duty and remained calm, he might have survived the ordeal. Jim trips over George's corpse to escape the Patna, and so George represents the dangers of cowardice and the grim future that awaits men like Jim who run away from their problems. - Character: The Privileged Reader. Description: The privileged reader is an unnamed character who is at the dinner party where Marlow tells Jim's story. After the story, he comes up to Marlow and makes racist comments about how Jim sold his soul to brutes (nonwhite people). Marlow responds by sending the man a packet containing letters that tell the end of Jim's story, raising questions about why the privileged reader is the only character in the book who gets to hear the end of Jim's story. - Character: The French Lieutenant. Description: The French lieutenant is a character who witnessed the Patna incident without understanding what was going on. Despite his lack of understanding, his account helps fill in some gaps in Jim's story for Marlow. The French lieutenant shows how having an outside perspective can help a person discover come closer to understanding the truth. - Character: Chester. Description: Chester is an excitable Australian man who believes he's found a get-rich-quick scheme with a guano island (guano refers to the excrement of seabirds and bats for use as fertilizer), and he urges Marlow to invite Jim to join this guano expedition. Marlow refuses, Chester goes ahead without Jim, getting himself and his whole crew killed in a hurricane. Chester represents the arrogance and greed of white men in Asia, as well as the potential consequences of following this greed. - Character: The two engineers. Description: The two engineers flee the Patna in a lifeboat with the skipper and Jim. They go along with everything the skipper says, including the lies he talks about what happened on the Patna, and they worry that Jim might decide to blow their cover. Unlike Jim, they don't appear in court for the Patna trial. - Theme: Fantasy vs. Reality. Description: The title character of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim is, above all, a romantic. When Marlow, the sea captain who relates Jim's story, calls Jim a romantic, he usually means romance in the way it's used to describe adventure stories about daring feats at sea or knights in shining armor. Jim comes from a relatively comfortable upbringing, but he has big dreams about going on his own adventures and performing noble deeds. The problem, however, is that Jim's dreams are so big that his real life can't possibly live up to them. Jim's biggest encounter with disillusionment comes during the Patna incident, when Jim finds himself on a large passenger ship that seems to be sinking. Jim wants to believe that he's the type of person who would stay on a sinking ship and help rescue people, but when the time comes, he finds himself escaping with a few other cowardly sailors. The reality of Jim's actions is so different from his fantasy of being a hero that he blacks out and can't remember how he escaped. Though the passenger ship miraculously avoids sinking, Jim nevertheless remains haunted by his moment of cowardice when he abandoned innocent people to save his own life. Marlow believes that Jim isn't so unusual and that many sailors wouldn't live up to their ideals when put to the test—they're just lucky enough to never face such a test. Nevertheless, Jim remains haunted by his failure to live up to his fantasies long after the rest of the world has forgotten about the Patna disaster. When Marlow arranges for Jim to go live in the Malay village of Patusan, Jim eagerly accepts—not because it's an opportunity to face reality, but because it's a clean slate for him to create a new fantasy. For a while, Jim gets to lead the fantasy life he always dreamed of, becoming a respected leader that many people trust with their lives. But this fantasy life reaches an appropriately dramatic conclusion when Jim makes a judgment error and offers his own life as a sacrifice rather than running away or fighting. Marlow's long retelling of Jim's life is a celebration of fantasy and its ability to drive a person's real life, but it's also a warning of the anguish and misfortune a person can suffer when their real life doesn't live up to their fantasies or when a fantasy goes too far. - Theme: Justice and Duty. Description: Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim deals with justice both in the strict legal sense, as well as in the harder-to-define moral sense. The first part of the novel largely focuses on the legal trial where Marlow first witnesses Jim. Jim is on trial for failing his duty as a sailor, having abandoned the passengers traveling on the Patna in order to save his own life (only to find out later that the Patna didn't actually sink). While Jim's accomplices all flee the scene to avoid trial and Jim has ample opportunity to do the same, he nevertheless decides to stand trial and face whatever consequences come of it, even though he doesn't have a high opinion of the people running the court. Ultimately, the court strips Jim of his sailing certifications, but he's otherwise free to go. Although Jim has dutifully fulfilled all of his legal obligations, he nevertheless remains haunted by feelings of guilt. The whole scene of Jim's trial and his lingering feelings of guilt afterward suggest that the concept of justice is much more complicated than what happens in a courtroom. Later, Jim becomes a respected leader in the remote island village of Patusan, which falls well outside any European-inspired legal framework. When Jim makes the mistake of trusting the visitor Gentleman Brown, Brown returns the favor by killing several local villagers, including Dain Waris, the son of the local leader Doramin. Echoing his earlier behavior, Jim decides that instead of running from his error, he will go right to Doramin to face judgment. He is still haunted by his earlier failure to live up to his duty on the Patna and perhaps sees an opportunity to make amends. Doramin responds by shooting Jim in the chest, killing him instantly in what amounts to a very different type of justice. Both the bureaucracy of Jim's court case and the blunt violence of Doramin's judgment have a sort of justice to them, but Lord Jim shows that determining what's just is never easy and is influenced by who does the judging. Ultimately, then, the novel suggests that there is a difference between institutional justice and true morality—and that the power of the human conscience can be even stronger than the authority of institutions. - Theme: Racism and Colonialism. Description: Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim is a novel about the consequences of racism and colonialism. Race is a controversial topic in Conrad's work, with some critics accusing Conrad of perpetuating racist stereotypes. However, if the reader takes the book at face value, it seems clear that violent European characters like the scoundrel Gentleman Brown are meant to be villains, whereas innocent characters like Jim's part-Malay wife Jewel are meant to inspire sympathy in the reader. The whole reason why European sailors like Jim and Marlow are in Asian waters is due to colonialism and the desire of many European leaders to extract Asian resources. The novel includes white characters like Chester, who recklessly gets himself and many Asian sailors killed over some guano (seabird excrement used as fertilizer); and Stein, who is clearly involved in crooked (and potentially deadly) dealings in the remote Malay region of Patusan that governments overlook, to hint at the exploitative nature of European colonialism. And Marlow, the sea captain who relates Jim's story, doesn't know the full details of Stein's dealings and seemingly doesn't want to know them, perhaps reflecting how many Europeans preferred to live in ignorance of what went on abroad. Interestingly, the only character who gets to hear the end of Marlow's story is a man (referred to as the privileged reader) who comes up to Marlow after the first part of his story and makes racist remarks about Patusan. Marlow doesn't tell the privileged reader what to think when he sends him a package about the final events of the story, but the story sets up a clear contrast between Brown, a man who seemingly places no value on Malay life, and Jim, who sacrifices everything to the Malay. While Marlow stops short of endorsing Jim's fanatical dedication to both his ideals and the welfare of Patusan, he nevertheless makes the case that both Jim and the people of Patusan are nobler than a simple plunderer like Brown, who takes things just because he can. The racist, privileged reader could also be seen as a stand-in for real-life readers whose racist views the story may have challenged. Some critics suggest that Conrad doesn't go far enough, and that the presence of characters like Rajah Allang (who is often described as dirty and ugly, embodying the stock character of the villainous "savage") undercuts the book's anti-racist themes. Nevertheless, while it's possible to debate the overall effectiveness of Conrad's arguments against racism and to question his portrayals of Malay characters, Lord Jim nevertheless interrogates Europe's relationship with the rest of the world and highlights flaws in the colonialist status quo. - Theme: Truth and Perspective. Description: Most of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim is narrated by Marlow, who wants to tell the full and true version of Jim's life. The problem, however, is that Marlow has limited information and so must piece together the truth from multiple sources, not all of which are reliable or fully detailed. Jim, for instance, romanticizes his version of events that he tells Marlow, while Stein is guarded and oblique, and Brown is openly self-serving. The fractured nature of the book itself reinforces the difficulty of finding the truth, with parts of the story told in traditional narration, parts told as a monologue, and parts told in letters. The end of the book takes this to the extreme, with Marlow sending a package containing several different documents—some of them written in different handwriting and one of which contains many stories within stories—to a nameless character who hasn't appeared before and is referred to only as the privileged reader. But the novel's many narrative shifts don't necessarily mean that it's impossible to find out a real, true version of events. Rather, Lord Jim explores truth by presenting its subject from many different angles. Marlow's dedication to getting Jim's life story right shows that it may be possible to tell the truth—or at least something close to it—but only after considering many different sources and the potential biases they bring. - Climax: Jim learns that his actions have indirectly caused Dain Waris to be killed. - Summary: Near the end of the nineteenth century, Jim is a young man in his mid-twenties who is the son of a relatively well-off parson in Britain. There's nothing remarkable about Jim's early life or physical appearance, but he has big dreams of one day going on adventures and making a name for himself, so he starts training to become a sailor. Eventually, Jim becomes the first mate of a ship called the Patna, a steamer that has only a few crew members but 800 passengers who are all religious pilgrims, mostly from poor villages. One night, the Patna hits an unseen object in the water. The damage is extensive, and Jim and the skipper believe the ship will soon sink. The skipper and two engineers decide to save themselves by lowering a lifeboat. Jim feels that these men are cowardly and wants to use the crisis to prove himself as a hero. But before Jim knows it, he finds himself almost unconsciously jumping into the lifeboat, right next to the other deserting crew members. Jim and the fleeing crewmembers believe that the Patna will sink that night, but it doesn't, and the passengers on board are eventually rescued by some French ships. Jim and the other crew members have committed a serious crime by abandoning ship, but Jim is the only one who stays around to face trial. During Jim's trial, a man named Captain Marlow takes an interest in Jim, and Jim notices Marlow in the crowd, as well. Jim and Marlow talk and begin a cautious friendship, with Jim sensitive about any potential insult to his honor and Marlow confused by many of Jim's actions. After a few days of trial, Jim gets a comparatively light sentence: he is stripped of his sailing certifications but is otherwise free to go. Jim becomes aimless after the trial, having faced the legal consequences of his actions but still feeling haunted by them. With Marlow's help, he gets a series of low-level jobs where he doesn't need certifications, but he runs away from them all, often after someone makes a casual reference to the Patna incident. Finally, with the help of Marlow's associate Stein, a world-famous naturalist and a trader with connections to the black market, Jim gets the opportunity to help run a trading post in a remote village called Patusan. Jim's journey to Patusan gets off to a rough start when Rajah Allang, a greedy Malay chief who causes problems for many Patusan locals, particularly the Bugis people led by the elderly Doramin, imprisons him. Eventually, however, Jim manages to escape and form an alliance with Doramin, as well as with Doramin's son, Dain Waris, who has an interest in Europe and will one day inherit Doramin's leadership position. But brash Jim doesn't stay under Doramin's protection in Patusan; instead, he seeks out Cornelius, the man who previously worked for Stein but had a falling out with him, and Jim takes on Stein's former role. Cornelius is conniving and cruel, particularly to his part-Malay stepdaughter. Jim hates seeing how Cornelius treats his stepdaughter. Eventually, he ends up rescuing her and marrying her, calling her by the name of Jewel. Two years after Jim's arrival in Patusan, Marlow visits and finds that Jim is so well respected by all the locals that they call him "Tuan Jim," meaning "Lord Jim." Marlow begins to believe Jim may have finally mastered his fate and come to terms with his past. One day, however, a notorious captain known as Gentleman Brown ends up near Patusan by chance. Brown recently stole a Spanish ship and is in desperate need of food to continue his journey, and he and his men plan to ransack Patusan for supplies. Jim is away at the time, but Dain Waris and other local warriors manage to wound some of the invaders. Without Jim's leadership, the villagers of Patusan can't agree on finishing off Brown's men, and so they all remain for a while in a stalemate. When Jim gets back, Brown sees an opportunity to take revenge on Jim for how the Bugis warriors attacked his men. The double-crossing Cornelius is also looking for revenge on Jim and is eager to help Brown. Brown leads Jim to believe that his men just want peaceful safe passage back to the ocean so that they can leave Patusan for good. Jim agrees with this plan and orders Dain Waris and the others not to attack them. As Brown is leaving, however, he sneaks up on Dain Waris and his men and fires several rounds, for no reason other than to send a message. Dain Waris dies, along with many others. Doramin is devastated when he learns that his son, Dain Waris, is dead and that Jim was the one who gave the order to let Brown walk free. Jim himself feels extremely guilty—when Jewel tells him that he must be prepared to flee the village or to fight for his life, Jim instead resigns himself to going to Doramin to face judgment for his actions. A grief-stricken Doramin pulls out a gun and shoots Jim in the chest, killing him instantly. Jewel eventually ends up with Stein, who grows old and begins to prepare to die in his house full of butterfly specimens from his days as a naturalist. Marlow learns about Jim's fate one day when he visits Stein's house.

- Genre: Allegorical novel / Adventure novel - Title: Lord of the Flies - Point of view: Third person omniscient - Setting: A deserted tropical island in the middle of a nuclear world war - Character: Ralph. Description: The largest and most physically powerful boy on the island. Despite his size and strength, Ralph shows no signs of wanting to dominate others and is preoccupied with being rescued. He insists on planning and following the rules, and is able to prioritize the needs of the group above his own selfish desires. For example, Ralph builds the huts even though he dislikes the work, in contrast to the other boys who go off to play whenever they dislike doing important tasks. Ralph feels the exhilaration of hunting and killing, but he always manages to suppress savage feelings. Ralph symbolizes law, government, and civil society. - Character: Piggy. Description: The smartest boy on the island. Due to his obesity and asthma, Piggy is also the weakest of the biguns. Piggy believes passionately in civilization, law, and reasoning through problems, but he seldom does any work because of his obesity and his nonstop craving for food. Piggy also has a tendency to lecture and criticize. His condescension infuriates the other boys and inspires them to single him out, ridicule him, and even physically abuse him. Piggy symbolizes science and rationality. - Character: Jack. Description: The head boy of his chorus back in civilization, Jack becomes the leader of the hunters on the island. Jack loves power. Laws and rules interest him only because they give him the chance to punish the other boys and express his dominance over them. He loves to hunt and kill because it gives him a chance to dominate nature. Jack gets angry whenever he doesn't get his way: he believes a proper leader issues orders and is obeyed. By the end of the novel he becomes exactly that sort of leader, wielding power only for his own whim and benefit. Jack symbolizes the human love of dominance and power. - Character: Simon. Description: A dreamy, dark haired boy, prone to fainting spells and occasional fits. Simon is the only member of Jack's chorus who doesn't become a hunter. The most generous of the biguns, Simon helps Ralph build the shelters not out of a sense of duty, but because he wants to. Simon is also the most insightful and in many ways the bravest of the boys. Only Simon recognizes that the boys carry the beast within themselves; only Simon suggests that they confront the "beast" by climbing the mountain; and only Simon is unafraid when alone in the jungle. Some critics have called Simon a symbol of Jesus Christ, but his symbolic role is actually more general. With his fits and spiritual insights, he stands for the mystics, prophets, and priests of all religions who confront and reveal the darkest aspects of human nature. - Character: Roger. Description: A quiet, brooding member of Jack's chorus. Roger is at first little more than a mystery, a quiet, intense boy who seems to hide himself from the other boys. But as the trappings of civilization begin to recede on the island, Roger begins to reveal himself, first by throwing rocks at littleuns (and purposely missing), then by killing a pig more viciously than necessary, then by rolling a boulder down on Piggy, then by torturing Samneric, and finally by sharpening a stick on which he plans to stake Ralph's head, just as he earlier staked a pig's head. While Jack loves power, Roger loves to cause pain. He symbolizes mankind's sadistic instincts, the suppressed desire to hurt others. - Character: Samneric. Description: The identical twins Sam and Eric who do everything together. They so closely resemble each other that the other boys use just one name to refer to both of them. The twins prove to be less influenced by fear of the beast or Jack than any of the other boys (except Ralph and Piggy), perhaps because as twins they're less alone than any of the other boys. - Theme: Human Nature. Description: William Golding once said that in writing Lord of the Flies he aimed to trace society's flaws back to their source in human nature. By leaving a group of English schoolboys to fend for themselves on a remote jungle island, Golding creates a kind of human nature laboratory in order to examine what happens when the constraints of civilization vanish and raw human nature takes over. In Lord of the Flies, Golding argues that human nature, free from the constraints of society, draws people away from reason toward savagery. The makeshift civilization the boys form in Lord of the Flies collapses under the weight of their innate savagery: rather than follow rules and work hard, they pursue fun, succumb to fear, and fall to violence. Golding's underlying argument is that human beings are savage by nature, and are moved by primal urges toward selfishness, brutality, and dominance over others. Though the boys think the beast lives in the jungle, Golding makes it clear that it lurks only in their hearts. - Theme: Civilization. Description: Although Golding argues that people are fundamentally savage, drawn toward pleasure and violence, human beings have successfully managed to create thriving civilizations for thousands of years. So that disproves Golding's theory about human nature being savage, right? Wrong. The famous psychologist Sigmund Freud argued that without the innate human capacity to repress desire, civilization would not exist. In Lord of the Flies, Golding makes a similar argument. He depicts civilization as a veil that through its rules and laws masks the evil within every individual. So even while civilizations thrive, they are merely hiding the beast. They have not destroyed it. The Lord of the Flies is a chronicle of civilization giving way to the savagery within human nature, as boys shaped by the supremely civilized British society become savages guided only by fear, superstition, and desire. And even before the boys become fully savage under Jack, Golding shows hints of the savage beast within society by showing Piggy's love of food, the way the boys laugh when Jack mocks Piggy, and all the boys' irrational fear of the "beast." And as the boys on the island shed civilization for savagery, the adults of the supposedly "civilized" world outside the island are engaged in a savage and brutal worldwide nuclear war. - Theme: Savagery and the "Beast". Description: The "beast" is a symbol Golding uses to represent the savage impulses lying deep within every human being. Civilization exists to suppress the beast. By keeping the natural human desire for power and violence to a minimum, civilization forces people to act responsibly and rationally, as boys like Piggy and Ralph do in Lord in the Flies. Savagery arises when civilization stops suppressing the beast: it's the beast unleashed. Savages not only acknowledge the beast, they thrive on it and worship it like a god. As Jack and his tribe become savages, they begin to believe the beast exists physically—they even leave it offerings to win its favor to ensure their protection. Civilization forces people to hide from their darkest impulses, to suppress them. Savages surrender to their darkest impulses, which they attribute to the demands of gods who require their obedience. - Theme: Spirituality and Religion. Description: Most of the boys on the island either hide behind civilization, denying the beast's existence, or succumb to the beast's power by embracing savagery. But in Lord of the Flies, Golding presents an alternative to civilized suppression and beastly savagery. This is a life of religion and spiritual truth-seeking, in which men look into their own hearts, accept that there is a beast within, and face it squarely. Simon occupies this role in Lord of the Flies, and in doing so he symbolizes all the great spiritual and religious men, from Jesus to Buddha to nameless mystics and shamans, who have sought to help other men accept and face the terrible fact that the beast they fear is themselves. Of all the boys, only Simon fights through his own fear to discover that the "beast" at the mountaintop is just a dead man. But when Simon returns with the news that there's no real beast, only the beast within, the other boys kill him. Not just the savages, not just the civilized boys—all the boys kill Simon, because all of the boys lack the courage Simon displayed in facing the beast. - Theme: The Weak and the Strong. Description: Within the larger battle of civilization and savagery ravaging the boys's community on the island, Lord of the Flies also depicts in great detail the relationships and power dynamics between the boys. In particular, the novel shows how boys fight to belong and be respected by the other boys. The main way in which the boys seek this belonging and respect is to appear strong and powerful. And in order to appear strong and powerful, boys give in to the savage instinct to ignore, pick on, mock, or even physically abuse boys who are weaker than them. Over and over, Lord of the Flies shows instances where a boy who feels vulnerable will save himself by picking on a weaker boy. - Climax: Piggy's death - Summary: A group of English schoolboys are marooned on a jungle island with no adults after their plane is shot down in the middle of a war. Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy find a conch shell. Ralph blows into it like a horn, and all the boys on the island assemble. At the assembly, a boy named Jack mocks Piggy for being fat and runs against Ralph to become chief of the group. Ralph wins the election, and declares Jack the leader of the group's hunters. Soon after, Ralph, Jack, and another boy named Simon explore the island and discover wild pigs.At a second assembly, the boys set up rules to govern themselves. The first rule is that whoever wants to speak at an assembly must hold the conch. At the meeting, one young boy claims he saw a "beastie" in the jungle, but Ralph dismisses it as just the product of a nightmare. Ralph then suggests that they build a signal fire at the top of a mountain so any passing ships will see its smoke and rescue them. The boys use Piggy's glasses to light the fire, but they're careless, and accidentally set part of the forest on fire. The boy who saw the beastie vanishes during the fire and is never seen again.Time passes. Tensions rise. Ralph becomes frustrated when no one helps him build shelters. Lots of boys goof off, while Jack obsesses about hunting and takes every opportunity to mock Piggy, who is smart but weak. Simon, meanwhile, often wanders off into the forest to meditate. The rivalry between Ralph and Jack erupts when Jack forces the boys who were supposed to watch the signal fire come hunting with him. They kill their first pig, but a ship passes while the signal fire is out, which causes a tremendous argument between Ralph and Jack.Ralph calls an assembly hoping to set things right. But the meeting soon becomes chaotic as several younger boys talk about the beast. Now even the bigger boys are fearful. That night, after a distant airplane battle, a dead parachutist lands on the mountaintop next to the signal fire. The boys on duty at the fire think it's the beast. Soon Ralph and Jack lead an expedition to search the island for the beast. While searching, they find a rock outcropping that would make a great fort, but no beast. Tempers between the two boys soon flare up, and they climb the mountain in the dark to prove their courage. They spot the shadowy parachutist and think he's the beast.The next morning, Jack challenges Ralph's authority at an assembly. Ralph wins, but Jack leaves the group, and most of the older boys join him. Jack's tribe paint their faces, hunt, and kill a pig. They then leave its head as an offering to the beast. Simon comes upon the head, and sees that it's the Lord of the Flies—the beast within all men. While Jack invites everyone to come to a feast, Simon climbs the mountain and sees the parachutist. When Simon returns to tell everyone the truth about the "beast," however, the boys at the feast have become a frenzied mob, acting out a ritual killing of a pig. The mob thinks Simon is the beast and kills him.Jack's tribe moves to the rock fort. They steal Piggy's glasses to make fire. Ralph and his last allies, Piggy and the twins named Samneric, go to get the glasses back. Jack's tribe captures the twins, and a boy named Roger rolls a boulder from the fort that smashes the conch and kills Piggy. The next day the tribe hunts Ralph, setting fire to the forest as they do. He evades them as best he can, and becomes a kind of animal that thinks only of survival and escape. Eventually the boys corner Ralph on the beach where they first set up their society when they crash landed on the island. But the burning jungle has attracted a British Naval ship, and an officer is standing on the shore. The boys stop, stunned, and stare at the man. He jokingly asks if the boys are playing at war, and whether there were any casualties. When Ralph says yes, the officer is shocked and disappointed that English boys would act in such a manner. Ralph starts to cry, and soon the other boys start crying too. The officer, uncomfortable, looks away toward his warship.

- Genre: Short Story - Title: Lullaby - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: Cebolleta (also called Seboyeta), New Mexico in the 1970s - Character: Ayah. Description: - Character: Chato. Description: - Character: Jimmie. Description: - Character: Ayah's Mother. Description: - Character: Danny. Description: - Character: Ella. Description: - Character: The Rancher. Description: - Character: The White Doctors. Description: - Character: The Bar Owner. Description: - Theme: Memory, Loss, and Grief. Description: - Theme: Maternal Kinship and Community. Description: - Theme: Nature and Familial Identity. Description: - Theme: Power, Discrimination, and Oppression. Description: - Theme: Language and Translation. Description: - Climax: Ayah realizes Chato is going to freeze to death. - Summary: "Lullaby" takes place in Cebolleta, New Mexico in the 1970s, alternating between flashbacks and the present. Ayah, an elderly Navajo woman, waits for her husband, Chato, by the creek. It is winter, and heavy snow falls on Ayah, who shields herself with her son Jimmie's old army blanket. Not wanting to dwell on memories of Jimmie, she recalls the way her mother and grandmother taught her to weave wool into thick blankets in her youth. The day Jimmie was born, Ayah's mother helped her give birth; since then, she has given birth so many times that the memories have merged together. Jimmie is dead now, killed in a helicopter crash while serving in the army, but to Ayah it feels more like he simply failed to come home. Since Ayah does not speak English, Chato had to translate when the military officer delivered the bad news. Ayah was never able to bury Jimmie's body, and she mourned him throughout the years, especially in moments when the family needed him most. Slipping from one memory to the next, Ayah remembers the day white doctors came to take her younger children away. She is alone at the shack with Danny and Ella when they come, and she cannot understand what they are saying. Hoping to appease the doctors, Ayah signs their papers, only to become afraid when they refuse to leave. She takes Danny and Ella and flees into the hills, staying there until Chato returns. The next day, the doctors return and take the children with them, claiming they have inherited a rare disease. Chato does nothing to stop them, telling Ayah that they have her signature and that is enough. Ayah despises Chato for teaching her to sign her name, and she mourns Jimmie all the more because, had he been there, he would have warned her not to sign. Years later, Chato's employer—the rancher—evicts him and Ayah from their home because Chato is too old to work. It satisfies Ayah to see that Chato's attempts at assimilation and loyalty have not earned him better treatment. In the present, Ayah emerges from her reverie and goes looking for Chato. He is supposed to be cashing their welfare check at a bar in Cebolleta. On past trips, she has found him drunk afterwards, having spent all their money on wine. Chato is not at the bar, but the bar owner—who Ayah knows to be racist toward Navajos—and his patrons look at her with fear, which satisfies her. These looks remind her of how Danny and Ella looked at her on the rare occasions they were brought home to visit. She has not seen them now for many years, and this loss is more painful to her than if they had died. Ayah has many other children who died young, but knowing where they are buried brings her some small comfort. Ayah leaves the bar and finds Chato walking along the sidewalk. He has been forgetting things lately, and he looks at her with some confusion when she catches up to him. Ayah suggests they find a place to rest, and together they huddle beneath Jimmie's blanket in the shelter of some boulders. Ayah watches the cold night wear on, marveling at the beauty of the sky. She knows with sudden clarity that Chato will freeze to death, but she takes comfort that the wine will help him sleep through it. Tucking the blanket around him triggers a memory of Ella as a baby, and Ayah sings aloud a lullaby passed down from her mother and grandmother. The lullaby, which she cannot recall singing to her own lost children, likens elements of nature—the earth and the sky—to family members who are always together, as they should be.

- Genre: Novel - Title: Madame Bovary - Point of view: In the first chapter of the novel, the narrator is a plural first-person "we", which stands for a group of Charles's classmates. Throughout the rest of the novel, the narration is third-person omniscient. - Setting: Tostes, Yonville, and Rouen, France, mid-19th century. - Character: Emma Bovary. Description: A beautiful, mediocre woman consumed by the desire to live an elegant and passionate life. Emma's placid country childhood sharpens her appetite for passionate feeling and excitement. Her only idea of a life other than her own, a life full of pleasure and joy, comes from romance novels. These novels teach her that excitement, for a woman, is only possible through love, and that love must be carefully cultivated with elegant settings, beautiful clothes, and noble-sounding words. When she realizes that her marriage does not resemble the affairs in her novels, and Charles does not resemble the novels' heroes, she falls into misery and boredom. She becomes fatally obsessed with achieving her only goal – to bring into her own life the joy and passion in books. Her obsession makes her cruelly mistreat her husband and daughter, pursue two unhappy affairs, rack up enormous debt, and finally kill herself by swallowing arsenic. - Character: Charles Bovary. Description: Emma's husband, a kind and peaceful country doctor whose main joys in life are his wife, his daughter, and a hearty meal. After an unhappy marriage to Mamade Dubuc, Charles is overjoyed to be married to the beautiful Emma, whose every movement, word, and flounce enchants him. Charles is not attractive, charming, or brilliant, though he is for the most part a competent doctor. He has endless patience for his difficult, mean wife, and he is both mother and father to their daughter Berthe. He has a rough, dull exterior, and he is not very good with words, but he is delicate and his selflessness is morally beautiful. He turns a blind eye to Emma's affairs and violent temper throughout the book. When he discovers her trove of love letters after her death, he dies of shock. - Character: Rodolphe Boulanger. Description: A free-spirited, relatively wealthy landowner and womanizer. Emma falls for him because of his stylish green coat and his title, and he desires her because she seems like an easy conquest, and because she is prettier than his present mistress. Rodolphe is a cynical, calculating man who habitually feigns love and sweetness to seduce credulous women. At first Emma is very happy with him, because he faithfully copies the manners of fictional lovers, but gradually he grows tired of the charade and begins to act like himself – like a ruthless, cold, rapacious man. Emma becomes unhappy, but she does not understand why: she is not in the habit of evaluating character. Rodolphe abandons Emma the day they plan to elope together. He is indifferent in the face of her desperation and financial ruin, and he does not mourn her death. - Character: Léon Dupuis. Description: Emma's second lover. When Emma first meets Léon, he is a bored, ambitious clerk who loves to talk vaguely with her about music and literature. He works for the lawyer Guillaumin, and, like Emma, feels stifled by his quiet country life. Emma likes his auburn curls and blue eyes, and they quickly become infatuated with one another. At first nothing happens between them, and Léon moves to Paris to finish his law degree. When he and Emma meet in Rouen four years later, they finally strike up an affair, fueled by many years' longing and regret. But because their only subject of conversation is love and sentimentality, they know almost nothing of one another, and find no basis for real affection. Léon tires of Emma's demands and wants to focus on his career. When Emma dies, Léon does not mourn her. - Character: Monsieur Homais. Description: Yonville's pharmacist, an ambitious, deceitful, sugar-tongued man who befriends the Bovarys when they're new to town. Homais loves talking about rationality and progress, and he loves berating priests and religion. He has a large, prosperous family that meets every standard of propriety. He initially seems merry and well-meaning, though a little pompous, but gradually it becomes evident that his one true passion is self-advancement, and that he feigns most other feelings to win admiration and to further his career. He treats people well when it benefits him, but he does not hesitate to treat people cruelly. He plays a principal part in promotion the operation that cripples Hippolyte, and shows no hint of remorse or pity. The novel ends tragically for most central characters, but Homais is flourishing: he receives the Legion of Honour. - Character: Monsieur Lheureux. Description: Yonville's versatile merchant, who slowly and deliberately drives the Bovarys to financial ruin. Lheureux affects a pleasant air, but he is a ruthless businessman. He makes money by encouraging people like Emma to spend more than they can afford and then lending them money at very steep rates. Homais may be indifferent to other people's suffering, but Lheureux seems to enjoy it. Though he is in large part responsible for Emma's death, he attends her funeral without a trace of guilt. - Character: The elder Madame Bovary. Description: Charles's mother, a nervous, demanding woman exhausted by years of unhappy marriage. She craves Charles's affection, and resents sharing it with his wife. She often quarrels with Emma. Charles wants to please both women, and finds it very difficult to take sides. She abandons Charles after Emma's death, when he is at his most helpless, because of a meaningless fight. - Character: Berthe Bovary. Description: Emma and Charles's daughter, a sweet, affectionate toddler. Emma generally ignores her or treats her cruelly, though the little girl obviously wants her attention very badly. Charles adores her, plays with her, and tries to teach her to read. After her parents die, she ends up living with a poor relation and working in a mill. - Character: Monsieur Rouault. Description: Emma's father, a nice, lonely man. His wife passed away when Emma was a child, and Emma is his one joy and consolation. He lives quite far from Yonville and does not often get to visit, but he sends the Bovarys a turkey every year as a token of his affection. He is devastated by Emma's death. - Character: Hippolyte. Description: The stableman at the Golden Lion, a quiet, hardworking man afflicted with clubfoot. Homais convinces him to undergo an experimental operation, because he thinks the operation would bring prestige to Yonville and to himself. The experimental method is a hoax; Hippolyte develops gangrene, and his leg has to be amputated. Though Homais promised that the operation would be painless and effective, Hippolyte never complains. When he is able to walk with an artificial leg, he resumes work at the inn. - Theme: Abstraction, Fantasy, and Experience. Description: All of us make use of both detail and abstraction in the effort to interpret our experience. We arrange a vast amount of sensory detail into lower-level abstractions, like the concept of a tree, and higher-level abstractions, like the concept of loyalty. We interpret new experience according to previously established abstractions, and we alter our abstractions to fit our experiences. We cycle between experience and abstraction, adjusting the one and the other, in order to maintain a connection between them – the connection that we call knowledge. But the balance between abstraction and experience is different for each person. Madame Bovary explores the psychology of a person who always chooses abstraction over experience as a guide to action, and who derives her abstractions not from her own life but from sentimental novels. Like Don Quixote, Emma abstracts a set of rules from a literary genre and then imposes those rules onto a complicated reality, which exceeds and contradicts those rules at every turn. But unlike Quixote, Emma never learns to adjust her abstractions according to her experiences. She ignores everything that does not fit well with the rules of romance novels, and deems irrelevant anything that falls outside their province. That means she blinds herself to anything not directly related to love, beauty, and sensual luxury, and to any love that doesn't strongly resemble the love in novels. She then finds that almost her entire life is unreal to her: her marriage, her child, her town, all her pursuits. Only her love affairs with Léon and Rodolphe, which are made to resemble the affairs in books, seem to have any value. Léon himself lives in similar world of abstractions, and Rodolphe knows that world well enough to pretend as part of his efforts at seduction. The men's artificiality and insincerity paradoxically allow Emma to experience the affairs as real and true. The affairs dissolve shamefully, life seems to run to nothing, and Emma senses a vague disillusionment: the exhaustion of ideals growing stale. But she holds fast to them, and dies with them. - Theme: The Sublime and the Mundane. Description: Flaubert, who knew Don Quixote by heart even before learning to read, shares Cervantes's habit of always putting the beautiful next to the hideous, the lofty next to the petty, and the tragic next to the mundane. Hardly a chapter goes by that does not contain the juxtaposition, but the most pointed examples center on the beggar with the infected eyelids. He is there, leering and suffering, when Emma sits dreaming rosily about her new affair with Léon, and he is there singing about a young girl in love while Emma is dying. In Madame Bovary, the contrast emphasizes the absurdity of any perspective that excludes the extremities of ugliness and suffering. Every gruesome detail seems to punish the reader, the writer, and most of the main characters for their blindness. Such details are a reproach to the vague, soaring mindset of the romantic, a perspective that must ignore so much in order to maintain itself, and which therefore chooses emotional comfort over truth. The denunciation of the romantic is also closely related to issues of abstraction and reality. A person like Emma, who lives by canned abstractions, is basically hypocritical: such a person appropriates beliefs without grounding them in action or experience. But the novel does not come out squarely on the side of the mundane. It does not amount to unqualified praise of the realist, for Lheureux is basically a realist. The far side of realism is disbelief in anything intangible: extreme realism relegates every ideal to foolish fantasy and irrelevance, including the ideals of beauty, kindness, and love, The best and most difficult life, the book implies, is one that tries to create an implausible harmony between fact and belief, reality and fantasy, the world and the imagination. - Theme: Love and Desire. Description: Since Emma's romance novels describe appearance rather than experience, love, for Emma, is identical to the appearance of love, to certain expressions of love. Her third-rate novels have no fully developed characters, only cardboard stereotypes, so she comes to understand love not as a feeling of admiration and affection for a distinct person, but as a series of pleasure-giving interactions. Love, for her, is desire, sex, and flowery letters: she does not recognize that these are only the surface aspects of an emotion. She mistakes the smoke for the fire. In this sense, she and Rodolphe are alike. Love affairs, for him, amount only to a series of pretty faces and sentimental words, with no distinct people or feelings behind them. Love understood as pleasure is self-directed and self-contained. It is fundamentally an interaction with oneself, in which another person serves as a prop. A love like Charles's, on the other hand, is directed outward at the beloved, anchored in the other person's qualities, cares, and general well-being. It brings joy, but only incidentally – an unselfish joy in the beloved's existence. Emma and Charles embody two extremes of love, which in life are always mingled.For Emma and Léon, experiencing the right kind of love is also bound up with self-image. Since love in books dwells only in aristocratic homes, they feel that the right kind of love connects them to the right kind of life, the refined, elevated life they've always dreamed of. Rodolphe's love affairs are also bound up with self-image, because they allow him to feel strong, canny, and superior. Unlike Rodolphe, Emma wants love that is true and everlasting, but a frail foundation of sensual pleasure weakened by the intrusions of reality keeps her affairs disappointing and short. - Theme: Causes, Appearances, and Boredom. Description: Charles falls in love with Emma, and then shows his love through kindness, care, admiration, and desire. The emotion of love is the cause, and the behaviors of love are the result. But Emma inverts the cause and the result: she simulates the appearances and behaviors of love without the impetus of actual love, and she expects the simulation to bring her happiness – her flawed approximation for the emotion of love. Her true impetus for the behaviors of love is her desire to imitate fictional heroines. But her life can never quite resemble the cartoonish novels, the desire to imitate is frustrated, and she is left mechanically performing actions even after the incentive has disintegrated. Novels have taught Emma that love leads to permanent happiness. When she discovers that the happiness of love eventually turns to boredom, she becomes cynical: "For now she knew the pettiness of the passions that art exaggerates." But her conclusion is false, for she has gone through the motions of love without experiencing love itself. Or, rather, she has ignored any love she did feel so thoroughly that it naturally wilted out of existence. Her pursuit of love weakens her capacity for actual love, and she experiences the consequent emotional emptiness as a terrible boredom. Emma is surprised that her mechanical, simulated passions fail to inspire real joy. But to the end of the novel, and in every area of her life, she inverts cause and effect: she substitutes appearance for impetus. Just as she thinks love is sex, she thinks religion is prayer, and she equates motherly love to the activities of motherhood (like washing behind the ears). But praying without the inner impetus for prayer, and washing ears without actual love and care, soon seems nonsensical and exhausting, and profoundly boring. Convention and mimicry can only carry Emma so far, for they provide a very short supply of motivation.The novels she loves have taught her, paradoxically, both to value intense emotions above all else and to act out the shells of emotions without understanding their origins. She faithfully tries to act out the shells, but the shells soon leave her cold – and being cold is intolerable to her. She is trapped in an ever-cooling cycle. - Theme: Truth, Rhetoric, and Hypocrisy. Description: In several asides, Flaubert insists that human speech does not often convey anything true about the speaker or the subject matter: it either surpasses its subject, or fails to reach it. Language is full of cliché and abstraction, rhetorical tools that allow the speaker to convince the listener of something quite other than the truth, and therefore it is often a conduit for conscious or unconscious hypocrisy: "Language is indeed a machine that continually amplifies the emotions."Skilled speakers and writers – rhetoricians – easily manipulate language to their own ends. Homais's linguistic facility allows him to disguise or distort the truth: he vastly exaggerates his emotions and achievements, and his article about Charles's irresponsible operation makes Charles seem like a hero. Rodolphe employs the rhetoric of romantic love, which disguises his actual cynicism, in order to manipulate Emma and seduce her. On the other hand, kind but tongue-tied people like Charles and Catherine Leroux often fail to convey the depth and delicacy of their emotions. For them, language does not quite rise up to the truth. People incorrectly assume that their simple, stunted ways of speaking indicate stupidity: "… as though the soul's abundance does not sometimes spill over in the most decrepit metaphors, since no one can give the exact measure of their needs, their ideas, their afflictions." We are urged to remember that language is an imperfect reflection of the speaker's opinions and emotions. If an author's goal is manipulation or personal gain, language is a well of fluidity and floweriness one can plumb indefinitely; but if an author is concerned with truth, language is a precision game she is bound to lose. Flaubert lived this belief through his meticulous, searching prose and his disdain of linguistic ornament and cliché. - Climax: Emma's death. - Summary: The novel begins by introducing us to a teenaged Charles, awkward, mild, dull, and studious. After struggling though primary school and a series of courses in medicine that he finds inscrutable, Charles passes his exams and becomes a doctor. His solicitous mother finds him a wealthy middle-aged wife named Madame Dubuc, and the couple move to a small town called Tostes, where Charles begins to practice medicine. One night, he receives a call to set a man's broken leg. During his visit, Charles is enchanted by the man's daughter, a beautiful, elegant girl named Emma. Not long after, Charles's wife dies of a nervous ailment, and within a year Charles and Emma are married. Charles adores his new wife, but Emma is soon bored and disappointed. She does not feel anything like the love described in her favorite romance novels, and she blames Charles's bad looks and dull conversation. Though he is kind, loving, and moderately successful in his profession, she feels that he is not an adequate husband, and spends her days dreaming of a better life – an elegant, refined, exciting life. When she and Charles attend a dazzling ball, Emma's longings are sharpened and intensified. She becomes thin and listless, and Charles decides to move them to a new town in hopes of curing Emma's malaise. Around that time, she becomes pregnant and gives birth to girl named Berthe. Emma and Charles move to Yonville, a little farming town near Rouen. They quickly meet the town's small cast of characters, who bore Emma – all except Léon, a dreamy clerk who shares her interest in sentimental discussions of music and literature. She and Léon fall in love, but Emma holds him at bay. Soon, he moves to Paris to finish his law degree, and she languishes in his absence. One day, though, she meets a wealthy, aristocratic man named Rodolphe – a womanizer who decides to seduce her. They begin a long, passionate affair, which initially brings Emma a great deal of joy and satisfaction. But Rodolphe does not really love Emma, and begins to tire of the charade of love. He breaks up with her in a letter the day that they had planned to run away together, and Emma is miserable and delirious for months. Meanwhile, she is racking up very large debts buying pretty clothes and gifts from the sly Lheureux, the town draper. Meanwhile, she and Homais, the town pharmacist, convince Charles to perform a dubious operation on Hippolyte, the stableman at the inn, and the man ends up losing a leg. One day Charles and Emma travel to Rouen to attend a play. They run into Léon, who has returned from Paris, and Emma and Léon finally strike up an affair. By pretending to take piano lessons, Emma manages to come to town once a week to see him. As with Rodolphe, the affair is joyful at first but eventually becomes repetitive and boring, and both lovers grow dissatisfied with one another. Emma's debts grow larger and larger, and one day she receives an official notice stating that she must pay a very large sum of money or forfeit all her possessions. In desperation, Emma tries to get the money from Léon, who is noncommittal; from the town lawyer, who propositions her; and finally from Rodolphe, who refuses her coldly. Emma is wild with confusion and fear. She convinces Justin, the pharmacist's assistant, to lead her into Homais's laboratory, and she eats a fistful of arsenic. She dies horribly later that night. Charles is miserable with grief, and overwhelmed by Emma's debts. Some time after the funeral he finds Emma's love letters, and dies only a few days later. Berthe goes to live with a poor relative, who sends her to work at a mill.

- Genre: Short story, coming of age - Title: Marigolds - Point of view: First person - Setting: Rural town in Maryland - Character: Lizabeth. Description: Lizabeth is the narrator of the story. From an unspecified moment later in time, she remembers a difficult summer in rural Maryland when she lost her innocence and came of age. That summer, Lizabeth, her brother Joey, and their neighborhood friends are living in poverty, surrounded by dust and ugliness. The only splash of color is Miss Lottie's marigolds, which the children hate because they're too beautiful—they stand out against the ugliness of the town. One day, Lizabeth and her friends start decapitating a few of the marigolds, which makes Lizabeth feel ashamed. This marks the beginning of her transformation to adulthood, because she's able to have complicated feelings about something that once would have felt simple to her. Lizabeth's truly devastating moment of transition comes later, after she overhears her father sobbing—apparently he's unable to find work, and his tears shake Lizabeth to her core, because she realizes that the world isn't as stable or understandable as she once thought. In her bewilderment, Lizabeth takes out her rage on Miss Lottie's flowers. She tramples and pulls them, destroying the entire garden, then looks up and sees Miss Lottie standing over her. But she sees Miss Lottie differently in this moment: she's not a witch, just an old woman who grew dazzling marigolds. Lizabeth feels compassion for the first time in her life, an emotion that signals the loss of her innocence and transition to adulthood. - Character: Joey. Description: Joey is Lizabeth's younger brother, and while Lizabeth is struggling with her transition from childhood to adulthood, Joey remains secure in his childish innocence. In this way he is often a foil to Lizabeth. It's Joey who initially suggests that they go and throw stones at Miss Lottie's marigolds, and afterwards, when Lizabeth begins to feel shame, Joey makes merry with the other children. Indeed, Joey sleeps blissfully through the conversation between his parents that so confounds Lizabeth, and Lizabeth's insights after destroying Miss Lottie's flowers remain hidden from Joey, who stands by, frightened, and begs her to stop. - Character: Miss Lottie. Description: Miss Lottie is the town's most impoverished resident. She's an old woman who lives at the edge of town in a ramshackle building with her disabled son, John Burke. While the circumstances of Miss Lottie's life seem particularly challenging, she still makes time to grow and nurture her dazzling marigolds. It would be easy for Miss Lottie to be bitter or resentful, but instead she cultivates beauty within poverty, courageously seeking to make her decrepit home, which the children call a "monument to decay," a better place. - Character: Lizabeth's Father. Description: – Like nearly half of Black adults in America during the Great Depression, Lizabeth's father is out of work. Still, he goes to town every morning attempting to find a job. Lizabeth knows her father as a strong, traditionally masculine figure: he whisks children onto his shoulders, he whittles toys from wood, and he taught his children how to fish and hunt. So when she hears his loud, painful sobs in the middle of the night, her understanding of the world is rattled. Her father is not the rock of the family, but rather requires comfort like a child. Poverty has blurred simple binaries, and Lizabeth doesn't know how to grasp this new complexity. - Character: Lizabeth's Mother. Description: Lizabeth's mother has a job and provides for the family, but her job forces her to be absent from the house well into the evening. Like with her father, Lizabeth's understanding of her mother relies on simple binaries. These are challenged when she overhears a conversation between her parents late one night. She hears her father sobbing loudly, and her mother comforting him as if he were a child. Her mother, who she knew to be small and soft, now appears to be the strength of the family. Poverty has created a complex family dynamic and this event reveals to Lizabeth that reality no longer matches her simple view of the world. - Theme: Coming of Age. Description: When Lizabeth, the narrator of "Marigolds," thinks back to the summer when she was fourteen, she recalls the devastating moment when she suddenly became more woman than child: she, her brother Joey, and their friends destroyed the beloved marigolds of their elderly neighbor, Miss Lottie. This marked the end of Lizabeth's childhood, because her compassion for Miss Lottie in the aftermath was her first experience of seeing the world as complex—a defining trait of adulthood.  While tormenting Miss Lottie seemed funny to the children she was with, Lizabeth felt conflicted in the moment that she was first decapitating some of the marigolds: the kid in her said it was all in good fun, but the woman in her cringed at the thought of hurting an old woman. This inner conflict indicates that Lizabeth is no longer a child who can enjoy juvenile behavior without any remorse or further reflection. Later that night, Lizabeth has to confront even more complexity when she overhears her parents in the other room. Her father bemoans the fact that he can't find any work and has to rely on his wife to support their family. He sobs loudly, and Lizabeth's mother comforts him as though he were a child. This is the first time that Lizabeth has ever heard a man cry; she's bewildered that her strong father could be reduced to tears, and it makes her feel that her world is no longer as neat and ordered as she once thought. Losing her innocence makes Lizabeth feel rage, and she sneaks out of the house and runs to Miss Lottie's garden. While she and her friends had previously only decapitated a few marigolds, now Lizabeth tramples the whole patch, ruining every flower. Lizabeth looks up and sees Miss Lottie watching the destruction, and for the first time in her whole life, Lizabeth feels compassion; she's just destroyed the thing that Miss Lottie values most, and she feels ashamed. The story says that this marks the end of Lizabeth's innocence, since children are innocent only as long as they accept things at face value. After Lizabeth destroys the marigolds, she is suddenly seeing a more complex truth: Miss Lottie is not a witch, but a broken old woman who dared to grow beautiful flowers. This marks Lizabeth's transition from childhood to adulthood. - Theme: The Importance of Beauty. Description: When Lizabeth thinks about the shantytown where she grew up, what she remembers most is dust. She doesn't recall any green lawns or leafy trees—just brown, crumbly dust. Miss Lottie's sunny yellow marigolds provide the only splash of beauty and color in town, but Lizabeth and the other children hate those flowers. While the children don't understand why they hate the marigolds, the story suggests a reason: they find the flowers too beautiful—the marigolds stand out against the ugliness of the rest of the town. The implication seems to be that poverty and ugliness aren't so bad as long as it's all the children know, but when something like the marigolds reminds them of their difficult circumstances, it enrages them. While the children hate the flowers for symbolizing something they can't access and don't understand—namely, beauty and a better life—Miss Lottie has a different attitude. She is the most destitute of all the town's residents, but the marigolds don't enrage her by reminding her of her misfortune. Instead, she cherishes them, spending her time planting and nurturing those flowers year after year, all summer long. If poverty and misery are represented by the absence of color, then Miss Lottie's colorful marigolds represent a resistance to misery. Though Miss Lottie lives in a ramshackle building and is ostracized by the town, she still has beauty and meaning in her life as long as she has her marigolds. Lizabeth destroys the marigolds out of misguided rage, but she realizes their value immediately afterwards, regretting her childish behavior. Life can be as barren as a dusty road, and sometimes it takes courage and effort to find the beauty in it. - Theme: Poverty. Description: Lizabeth is a young African-American girl growing up during the Great Depression, and at the beginning of the story, she's ignorant of the extent of her poverty. She and her friends have no way of comparing themselves to others—they're too poor to have radios or magazines—so they don't see themselves as particularly poor. Nonetheless, they feel poverty's effects: Lizabeth feels as if she's in a cage, but her anger is vague and undirected, because she can't articulate what is wrong in her life. It's not until Lizabeth overhears a conversation between her parents that she comes to understand the complexity of her family's class position: she hears her father lament that he can't find a job and provide for his family, which makes him feel inept and emasculated, and he begins to sob loudly and painfully. Lizabeth's mother comforts him by humming softly, as if he was a child. This event throws Lizabeth's understanding of the world into chaos: her father isn't the rock of the family that she believed him to be, and her mother is stronger than Lizabeth previously understood. Poverty has blurred simple binaries, forcing Lizabeth to confront the fact that her understanding of the world no longer matches reality. This revelation results in rage, which she unleashes on Miss Lottie's marigolds. After destroying the flowers Lizabeth is finally able to see who Miss Lottie really is: a woman who resists the misery of poverty not with anger, but by cultivating a beauty that improves the world around her. - Climax: Destroying the marigolds - Summary: When Lizabeth thinks about the dusty shantytown where she grew up, she remembers Miss Lottie's dazzling yellow marigolds. That, and the devastating moment when she became more woman than child. At this time, the nation is in the middle of the Great Depression, though Lizabeth, her brother Joey, and their neighborhood friends are only vaguely aware of the extent of their poverty. One summer, when Lizabeth is fourteen, the children decide to go throw stones at Miss Lottie's marigolds. Miss Lottie is an old woman who lives in a ramshackle building with her disabled son, John Burke. The children scamper over to Miss Lottie's house and decapitate a few marigolds. Miss Lottie yells at them, but Lizabeth dances around her, mocking her and calling her a witch. Finally, John Burke jumps up and chases the children off. Though the other children revel in the success of annoying Miss Lottie, Lizabeth feels ashamed. The child in her thinks it was all in good fun, but the woman in her flinches at the thought of the attack that she led. Lizabeth is in a bad mood all day and goes to bed upset. She wakes in the middle of night and overhears a conversation between her parents in the other room. Her father laments that he can't find work and provide for his family. He relies on his wife for financial support, which makes him feel emasculated. He begins to sob loudly and painfully. Hearing her strong, traditionally masculine father cry bewilders Lizabeth. Her mother then comforts him by humming soothingly, as if he were a child. Lizbeth is baffled. Her dad is supposed to be strong, her mom soft. The world has lost its boundary lines. She wakes Joey because she doesn't want to be alone, and she runs out of the house, toward Miss Lottie's marigolds. She leaps into the garden and pulls furiously at the flowers, destroying them all. Lizabeth looks up and sees Miss Lottie standing before her. This time, however, she doesn't view Miss Lottie as a witch. Instead, she sees a broken old woman who dared to create something beautiful amid so much ugliness. Lizabeth feels compassion for the first time in her life, completing her transformation from child to woman.

- Genre: Science fiction short story - Title: Marionettes, Inc. - Point of view: Third person - Setting: Earth - Character: Braling. Description: Braling, the story's protagonist, is Smith's good friend and Mrs. Braling's husband. He is about thirty-five years old and has slightly graying hair and "sad gray eyes." Ten years ago, after presumably having consensual sex, the future Mrs. Braling threatened Braling with a rape accusation if he didn't marry her. He agreed to the marriage to protect his business reputation and his parents. Even ten years later, Mrs. Braling is still as controlling as ever, and Braling admits that his wife hates him. He is only able to go out for a drink with Smith—for the first time in ten years—because of his new marionette, whom he calls Braling Two. The marionette is supposed to obediently stand-in for Braling when needed (like during the month that Braling plans to slip away to Rio) and be locked in the toolbox in the cellar when not in use. However, Braling Two falls in love with Mrs. Braling and consequently aims to take over Braling's life. The end of the story is ambiguous, but it seems that the marionette succeeds in locking human Braling in the cellar toolbox and throwing away the key. - Character: Smith. Description: Smith is Braling's good friend and Nettie Smith's husband. He's about thirty-five years old and has been married for ten years. He feels suffocated by his wife, who constantly dotes on him and overwhelms him with affection. Smith craves a short "respite" from her—even just one night per month—and consequently decides to buy a marionette of his own to let him do so. However, it's notable that Smith is willing to spend eight thousand dollars (more than half of the couple's fifteen-thousand-dollar savings) for this short break, which suggests that he actually wishes to escape his wife more than one night per month. Smith seems like a controlling husband, seen by the way he accuses Nettie of buying a small vacation home by the Hudson River without his permission, and the implication that he's been ignoring her dreams about the Hudson (just as Mrs. Braling impedes Braling from going to Rio). He's also horrified when he realizes that Nettie tapped into their savings account, even though he was about to secretly do the very same thing. Even though he resents his wife in many ways, Smith knows that he should be grateful for her love and loyalty. Even though it's been ten years, he still can't believe that Nettie chose him instead of Bud Chapman, a man she used to like. - Character: Nettie Smith. Description: Nettie Smith is Smith's overly affectionate wife. According to Smith, Nettie constantly smothers him with hugs and kisses and rarely lets him out of her sight. Although Smith knows he should be grateful for Nettie's loving nature, he also feels suffocated by his wife and longs for a little break from her—even just one night a month. However, at the end of the story, it's clear that Nettie wanted a break from her husband, too, and purchased a marionette of her own. Smith's repeated observation that Nettie has been even more affectionate than usual the past month suggests that he has been unknowingly living alongside a marionette for over a month—thus, the real Nettie doesn't appear in the story whatsoever. When Smith realizes that the bulk of their money is gone, his first thought is that his wife gluttonously purchased several thousands of dollars' worth of hats, handbags, and perfume, consequently depicting Nettie as thoughtless and vain. However, Smith's second thought is that Nettie purchased—without permission—the small vacation home alongside the Hudson that she's been talking about for months. This small detail feels similar to Braling's desire to go to Rio, and his plan to buy a marionette to allow him to do so. This suggests that perhaps Nettie did the same thing, buying a marionette and running off to the place she's been dreaming about that her husband has barred her from. In addition, Smith's horror that Nettie did something without his permission implies that he is a domineering, controlling partner, and that perhaps the pair had an unhappy marriage. - Character: Braling Two. Description: Braling Two is Braling's marionette, which he secretly purchased from Marionettes, Inc. Braling Two looks (and even smells) exactly like the real Braling: both look to be about thirty-five and have slightly graying hair, "sad gray eyes," and a small mustache. The one differentiator is that instead of a heartbeat, Braling Two's chest makes a ticking sound. Braling purchased the marionette as a way to distract the controlling Mrs. Braling so that he can take a month-long trip to Rio without her knowing. However, Braling thinks Braling Two is "difficult specimen," because the marionette has thoughts, emotions, and aspirations that Braling didn't expect. For example, Braling Two dislikes being shut up in the locked toolbox, longs to go to Rio, and has a crush on Mrs. Braling. In addition, Braling Two has the agency to act on his desires, and ultimately does so by (presumably) locking the real Braling in the toolbox in the cellar. - Character: Mrs. Braling. Description: Mrs. Braling is Braling's hateful, controlling wife. She forced Braling into marrying her by threatening him with a rape accusation (after the pair presumably had mutually consenting sex). Ten years later, she is still as controlling as ever. Even though Smith has been trying to get Braling to go out for a drink with him for ten years, Braling is only able to do so once he can distract Mrs. Braling with Braling Two. Mrs. Braling only appears in the final lines of the story. She is startled when "someone" (likely Braling Two) kisses her cheek while she is asleep, implying that the Bralings' marriage has been affectionless and stale for years. When Braling Two turns against Braling by attempting to lock him up in the toolbox (and presumably let him die), Braling frantically asks the marionette if Mrs. Braling put him up to this. The fact that Braling would even consider that his wife was behind his impending murder suggests that the pair's relationship is not just dysfunctional—it's built on true hatred and contempt. - Theme: The Cost of Technology. Description: In Ray Bradbury's "Marionettes, Inc.," thirty-five-year-old Braling buys a "marionette" (a lifelike android, not a traditional puppet with strings) to temporarily distract his controlling wife, Mrs. Braling, so that he can have a little time away from her. Although the ultra-realistic marionette seems like a creative fix for Braling's troubled marriage (and later, for that of his good friend Smith), things soon go terribly wrong. Although the story illustrates that technology can provide innovative solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems, it ultimately cautions readers about turning to technology as a quick fix for delicate, interpersonal problems. Doing so may only exacerbate the issue at hand or create several other—and bigger—problems to grapple with. The story initially shows that technology can provide innovative solutions to complicated issues. For over ten years, Braling has dreamed of going to Rio, but his nervous, controlling wife has always stood in the way of his travels. When Braling (somehow) stumbles across the top-secret company called Marionettes, Inc., he realizes that having his own lifelike marionette is the perfect solution. By using his marionette, Braling Two, the real Braling can slip off to Rio, and Mrs. Braling won't even know he left—thereby avoiding her controlling tendencies, anxiety, and rage altogether. Similarly, seeing how the marionette will help Braling solve—or at least sidestep—some of the problems in his marriage, Smith decides that he wants one, too. Smith's problem is that his wife, Nettie, "overdoes it." Exasperated, Smith explains to Braling that "when you've been married ten years, you don't expect a woman to sit on your lap for two hours every evening, call you at work twelve times a day and talk baby talk." Having a marionette, Smith thinks, will allow him a "respite." Nevertheless, Smith is also grateful for his wife and knows that he's lucky to have her. Therefore, the marionette seems like an ingenious solution to Smith's discontent: it would allow Smith to have a break from Nettie even just one night a month without hurting her feelings. However, the story is also cautious about using technology to solve such sensitive interpersonal problems. Through Smith and Braling's interactions with marionettes, the story shows that technological solutions can actually create new, bigger problems. Although Smith doesn't follow through with his plan of purchasing his own marionette, his wife does. The marionette costs nearly eight thousand dollars (and Nettie takes an additional two thousand dollars to live on for a while), leaving the couple with a mere five thousand dollars in their once-cushioned joint bank account. Seeing such a dramatic drop in his savings sends Smith into a panic: "His heart throbbed violently. His tongue dried. He shivered. His knees suddenly turned to water. He collapsed." While Nettie may have been trying to find her own "respite" from her husband—or perhaps wished to leave him entirely but couldn't bear actually doing so—her seemingly innovative solution ends up sending him into a fit of anxiety, first because of the monetary cost of the marionette and then because of the emotional blow. Upon realizing that his wife has, in fact, skipped out on him and left a marionette in her place, Smith is overcome by "terror," "loneliness," "fever," and "disillusionment" in tandem. Nettie's solution to her marital problems emotionally crushes her husband, possibly more so than if she just talked to him about her feelings. Meanwhile, Braling's plan of distracting his wife with a marionette ends up hurting himself the most, further underscoring the costs of using technology to fix one's problems. On his very first night of "employment," Braling Two goes rogue, claiming that he's fallen in love with Mrs. Braling and plans to take over Braling's entire life. To do so, the marionette vows to lock human Braling in the cellar toolbox and lose the key forever. Although the story ends ambiguously—with "someone" going back upstairs to rejoin Mrs. Braling—it seems that the marionette has overpowered the human due to his quick thinking, "metal-firm grip," and ability to withstand "all physical wear." In this way, the novel darkly points out that technological solutions can sometimes prove fatal, harming the very people they were supposed to help. In "Marionettes, Inc.," Bradbury provides a nuanced view of technology, showing how it can help solve (or completely avoid) certain problems while also underscoring how technology invites a slew of its own problems into the mix. He uses Braling, Smith, and Nettie—three characters who either covet or actually purchase their own marionette—to caution readers about turning to technology to quickly fix their problems. - Theme: Control. Description: In "Marionettes, Inc.," two friends, Braling and Smith, are unhappy with their respective marriages and decide that marionettes—extraordinarily lifelike androids—will solve their marital problems. With the marionettes standing in for them once in a while, both men think that they will get a much needed break from their wives, and their wives will never suspect a thing. Braling's wife is too controlling (and would never agree to give her husband a little space), while Smith thinks his wife, Nettie, is annoyingly clingy, and wishes she would "relax her grip a little bit." Charting the characters' interactions with one another and with the marionettes, the story highlights how the desire for control is rooted in selfishness, and that attempting to control another person actually has the opposite effect: inspiring them to rebel. From the very beginning, the story suggests that the desire for control is an act of selfishness. Ten years ago, the future Mrs. Braling coerced Braling into marrying her by threatening to accuse him of rape after the two had what the story implies to be consensual sex. Mrs. Braling "tore her clothes and rumpled her hair and threatened to call the police unless [Braling] married her." At the time, Braling was about to leave for a much-anticipated trip to Rio, but the soon-to-be Mrs. Braling got in the way of those plans. Even now, ten years later, Braling still dreams of visiting Rio. He's not even allowed to have a one-night reprieve by going out for a drink with his friend Smith (he can only manage to do so with help from his marionette, Braling Two). In this way, Mrs. Braling's desire to control Braling—who he marries, where he travels, who he spends time with, whether he can go out at night—is an act of selfishness. It seems she wants Braling to be tied down to her at all times (even if, according to Braling, she "hate[s]" him). Smith is similarly selfish about his relationship, which manifests as a desire to control his wife. The story never spells out why Smith is incapable of simply talking to Nettie about his feelings about their marriage—or, if he's that unhappy, why he can't divorce her. Smith depicts Nettie as being overly loving, bubbly, girlish, and clingy, suggesting that a serious discussion about their marriage would be a huge emotional blow for her. Considering how much Nettie irritates Smith, however, it doesn't seem that he necessarily wants to protect his wife from having such a difficult, emotional discussion. Instead, it seems that Smith wants to protect himself from having to deal with Nettie's emotional fallout, which, considering her characterization, is likely to be overblown and emotionally taxing for Smith. Besides being an indication of selfishness, trying so hard to control someone is actually unproductive, as it can have the opposite effect and make the other person more likely to rebel. Braling depicts his wife as being controlling and manipulating due to her "nervous" nature. However, Mrs. Braling's attempts to control her husband only make him want to escape from her clutches even more. In fact, Mrs. Braling's desire for control over her husband is what inspires Braling to purchase Braling Two in the first place, so that the human Braling can spend an entire wifeless month in Rio. Further, Braling tries to control his marionette, Braling Two. The human Braling treats Braling Two as an employee (and when the marionette shows early signs of falling in love with Mrs. Braling, Braling ignorantly says he's glad the marionette is "enjoying [his] employment"). However, being treated as such gets Braling Two "thinking," and makes him want to rise up against Braling, which he eventually does. Similarly, Smith attempts to control his wife financially, which also inspires her rebellion. When Smith decides that he's going to spend eight thousand dollars on a marionette for himself, he has no hesitation about slipping the large sum of money out of his and Nettie's joint bank account—even though it's over half of their savings, and the account belongs to both of them. However, when he finds out that Nettie drew several thousand dollars from the account herself, possibly to buy "that little house on the Hudson she's been talking about for months," Smith is furious. Mostly, he can't believe that his wife took the money "without so much as a by your leave"—that is, without Smith's permission. Stunned by his half-drained bank account, Smith repeatedly cries, "What've you done with my money! […] What've you done with my money!" Even though it's a joint bank account, Smith refers to the money as specifically his, once again emphasizing his controlling nature. Although Smith's attitude toward his wife and money is reflective of traditional gender norms, it also suggests that his controlling tendencies (like repeatedly ignoring her dreams about buying "that little house on the Hudson") may have spurred Nettie to defy her husband. In "Marionettes, Inc.," Bradbury illustrates how attempting to control someone else is not only selfish, but also futile. Braling, Smith, and Nettie go to great lengths to control their partners, begging the question of why they can't just talk openly with one another about how they feel. In trying to control one another, the characters add additional complications and strain to their relationships. Bradbury ultimately reveals to the reader that resorting to control is not only unethical but also unproductive, and that there are simpler, more direct (and more honorable) ways to deal with other people. - Theme: Love and Marriage. Description: At the center of Ray Bradbury's "Marionettes, Inc." are two deeply unhappy marriages. The introduction of the marionettes (the extremely lifelike androids that stand in for specific people) complicates both marriages, as many characters use a marionette to evade their spouse. The story uses the shortcomings in Braling's marriage to the controlling Mrs. Braling, as well as his friend Smith's marriage to the clingy Nettie Smith, to highlight why these marriages are toxic and destined to fail. Using these two negative examples of marriage, Bradbury consequently illustrates that three things must be mutual for a marriage to be healthy and thrive: affection, decision-making, and, most crucially, the desire to stay in the relationship. In a healthy marriage, affection is consensual, but in both marriages that appear in "Marionettes, Inc." the desire to give and receive affection is extremely unbalanced, which fuels everyone's discontent in their respective relationships. In the closing lines of the story, "someone" (most likely Braling Two, Braling's marionette who is implied to have just done away with the human Braling forever by trapping him in the cellar) rejoins Mrs. Braling in the bedroom and wakes her up with a kiss on the cheek: "She put her hand to her cheek. Someone had just kissed it. She shivered and looked up. 'Why—you haven't done that in years,' she murmured. 'We'll see what we can do about that,' someone said." Mrs. Braling's startled reaction reveals that her relationship has been stale and affectionless "for years." While earlier Braling had claimed that his wife "hate[s]" him, Mrs. Braling seems pleased by the sudden kiss, suggesting that she does desire love and affection from her husband, but he's not interested in giving it. Nettie and Smith also appear to have an unbalanced desire for affection, which dooms their marriage. According to Smith, Nettie coos in his ear, calls him twelve times a day while he's at work, sits on his lap for two hours every night, and talks in a baby voice to him. Smith finds all of this incredibly irritating and assumes that Nettie's behavior means that she craves a lot of attention and love. However, when it is clear that Nettie has skipped out on her husband (temporarily or otherwise) and left a marionette in her place, the story suggests that Nettie also didn't like playing the role of the clingy, overly loving wife and also wanted space. Meanwhile, Smith cringes at the thought of Nettie's smothering love. He tells Braling, "remember the old poem: 'Love will fly if held too lightly, love will die if held too tightly.' I just want [Nettie] to relax her grip a little bit." Although Smith thinks Nettie is irritating, he does claim to love her. However, her suffocating, constant affection is a major deterrent and is exactly what prompts Smith to get the business card for Marionettes, Inc. from Braling. Besides showing mutual affection, spouses in a healthy marriage must also take part in decision-making together—whether that means coming to a consensus or making a willing compromise, neither of which the characters in "Marionettes, Inc." successfully do. Throughout their ten-year marriage, Mrs. Braling prevents her husband from visiting Rio, which is his lifelong dream. In retaliation, Braling buys a marionette so that he can finally go to Rio in peace. This disagreement about Rio spurs much of the conflict in the story and even leads to—the story implies—Braling's death. Just as Mrs. Braling keeps her husband from going to Rio, so too does Smith prevent his wife from buying the small vacation house on the Hudson River that she's been pining over for months. Once again, the decision is lopsided. Since Nettie takes more money from the pair's joint account than is needed to purchase a marionette, the story implies that she perhaps fled to the Hudson (and possibly bought or rented the vacation property she had her eye on) just as Braling planned to take his much-anticipated trip to Rio. Smith is distraught when he realizes that Nettie took the money "without so much as a by your leave," meaning without permission. Although this initially seems like Smith is advocating for an egalitarian decision-making process in his marriage, he is actually just affirming what he perceives as his own authority in the relationship. Prior to discovering that Nettie took ten thousand dollars from their account, Smith also planned on slipping several thousand dollars from their joint account. He decided that, if Nettie asked, he'd vaguely attribute the large withdrawal to some "business venture." Clearly, Smith planned to give Nettie no say in the decision. Crucially, the desire to stay in the relationship must also be consensual for a healthy, satisfying marriage. Although none of the characters express outright a desire to leave their marriages, none of them express a desire to stay in their marriages either, and nearly all of the characters try to somehow escape their spouses. Before realizing his "wife" is actually a marionette, Smith reaffirms several times that, in the last month, Nettie "loved [him] more wildly than ever before." Considering this sudden change in behavior, the story suggests that Nettie has been gone for at least a month. Meanwhile, Smith wants a marionette of his own so he can finally have a "little respite. A night or so, once a month even." Like Nettie and Braling, Smith sees the marionette as a way in which he can avoid his spouse. Considering all of the trouble the characters go through to escape or alleviate their strained marriages, it's a wonder that none of the characters just talk plainly with their spouses about how they feel. The marriage between Braling and Mrs. Braling, as well as that of Smith and Nettie, both lack a commitment to mutual understanding, which is exacerbated by their failure to talk honestly with one another. Neither couple demonstrates healthy, consensual affection, and neither couple illustrates spouses making decisions together. Even more significantly, none of the characters seem particularly keen on continuing their marriages, ultimately illustrating that both marriages are destined to fail—if they haven't already. - Theme: Secrecy and Deception. Description: In "Marionettes, Inc.," the protagonist, Braling, illegally buys a lifelike android (called a marionette) so that he can have a temporary escape from his overbearing, controlling wife, Mrs. Braling. By setting up the marionette (Braling Two) in his place, Braling thinks he will be free to travel for a month without his wife even knowing. Braling's good friend Smith has a similar problem with his own wife, Nettie, though she is overbearing in the sense that she is annoyingly loving and clingy. Through the characters of Braling, Braling Two, Smith, and Nettie, Ray Bradbury demonstrates how secrecy and deception are dangerously self-perpetuating. The very concept of the marionette illustrates that secrecy is self-perpetuating—that is, harboring secrets only creates more secrets. According to Marionettes, Inc.'s business card, "Clients must be pledged to secrecy, for while an act is pending in Congress to legalize Marionettes, Inc., it is still a felony, if caught, to use one." Significantly, the company claims that it is a felony to use a marionette only if the user is caught. Besides showing some murky morality, this wording highlights how Marionettes, Inc.'s underground operation forces its customers to also use their marionettes discreetly, thereby perpetuating a cycle of secrecy. The repercussions of this are massive, especially for Braling. Since Braling is forced to use Braling Two in secret—the only person who knows about the marionette is Smith—Braling's (presumable) murder at the hands of the marionette will also likely remain a secret. In this way, Braling's secret about his marionette feeds Braling Two's secret about killing Braling. Smith and Nettie's tenuous marriage also highlights how deception breeds even more deception. Smith is convinced that his wife, Nettie, "loves [him] madly." He tells Braling, "My wife loves me so much she can't bear to have me gone an hour." However, by the end of the story, it's clear that the real Nettie has been gone for at least a month, leaving a marionette in her place. It seems, then, that Nettie has been deceiving her husband by putting on an act that makes him think she is crazy about him, when in actuality, she also desires some space. It's unclear why she would pretend to be so clingy and loving—perhaps she felt compelled to play the part of the "good, loving wife"—but nonetheless, her deception is what spurs Smith to covet his own marionette so that he can have a little space from his wife. This is sad, because it's likely that Nettie thought that Smith was the one who craved an exorbitant amount of love and affection—spurring her to purchase a marionette who could do so more convincingly and also give Nettie a break. Unknowingly, both Nettie and Smith were deceiving one another and consequently encouraging further dishonesty. "Marionettes, Inc." largely deals with the dangers of secrecy and deception, ultimately revealing how both are self-perpetuating. All the characters in the story are guilty of harboring secrets and acting deceptively, which only invites more secrecy and deception. In this way, Bradbury uses strong negative examples—that is, examples of how not to behave—in order to teach his audience about the value of honesty and transparency. - Climax: When Braling Two tells Braling that it's his turn to be locked up in the toolbox. - Summary: Smith has been trying to get his friend Braling to go out for a "quiet drink" for the past ten years, and tonight, Braling finally consented. Smith jokingly asks his friend if he had to put sleeping powder in Mrs. Braling's coffee in order to sneak out of the house. Braling says of course not—"that would be unethical." The two men talk about their respective marriages, which have both been going on for ten years. Braling's is particularly bad, as he was manipulated into marrying his wife—she threatened him with a rape accusation if he didn't agree to marry her. At the time, Braling was about to embark on a trip to Rio, but with all of the drama surrounding the soon-to-be Mrs. Braling, he was never able to go. Braling pulls out a ticket for Rio and tells Smith that things are about to change. Smith is delighted for his friend but concerned that Mrs. Braling won't take kindly to Braling's trip. Braling mysteriously says that he's found a way to be gone for an entire month without his wife even knowing, but that he'll explain it to Smith later. The men discuss how Smith's marriage isn't great either—his wife, Nettie, loves him too much. She almost never lets him out of her grasp, and she smothers him with unwanted affection. When the men arrive at Braling's house, Braling gestures to a second story window, and Smith notices a man in the window gazing down at them—and he looks exactly like Braling. When the man comes outside, Braling asks Smith to press his ear against the man's chest. Hesitantly, Smith complies, and hears a faint ticking noise. Braling reveals that the man, whom he calls Braling Two, is a marionette made by a top-secret company called Marionettes, Inc. Braling Two produces a business card that boasts of "new humanoid plastic 1990 models […] From $7,600 to our $15,000 deluxe model." Braling explains that he's kept the marionette locked in a toolbox in the cellar for the past month, but that tonight was the first night he used the marionette. Braling affirms that his plan is "highly ethical." Smith admits that he wants a marionette for himself, so he can have a little break from his wife—maybe just one night a month. After saying goodbye to Braling, Smith reads from the business card that "Clients must be pledged to secrecy, for while an act is pending in Congress to legalize Marionettes, Inc., it is still a felony, if caught, to use one." The card also states that clients must have an extensive mold taken of their bodies, as well as a color index check of all of their features, and that the process takes at least two months. Smith thinks two months isn't too bad, and that he can just slip eight thousand dollars out of his joint account with Nettie—they have fifteen thousand in total—and tell her it's for a business venture. When Smith gets home, he locates his bankbook, but upon opening it, he realizes that ten thousand dollars are missing from their bank account, and they only have five thousand dollars left. He begins screaming Nettie's name, accusing her of buying more hats, perfume, and bags—or even that small vacation home on the Hudson River that she's been dreaming about for months. Smith wakes up his wife and begs her to tell him what she's done with all of his money. Suddenly, he has a terrible realization and presses his ear against his wife's chest. "Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick." Meanwhile, Braling Two protests when it's time to go back in the toolbox. He doesn't like being trapped in the toolbox, thinks it's unfair that Braling gets to go to Rio, and has also fallen in love with Braling's wife. Realizing his marionette has gone rogue, Braling makes a mad dash out of the cellar, but the marionette grabs him with an iron grip and commands him not to run. The marionette slowly says he is going to lock Braling up, permanently lose the key, and go to Rio with Mrs. Braling. Braling tries desperately to reason with him, but the marionette chillingly says, "Good-by[e], Braling." Ten minutes later, Mrs. Braling wakes up, startled by a kiss on her cheek. She mumbles to her husband that he hasn't kissed her cheek in years. "Someone" answers, "We'll see what we can do about that."

- Genre: Short story - Title: Marriage is a Private Affair - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: Lagos and an Ibo village in Colonial Nigeria - Character: Nnaemeka. Description: Nnaemeka, the protagonist of the story and a young Ibo man, is Nene's fiancé and Okeke's son. He is extremely cautious and cares greatly about his father's opinion of him. For that reason, he postpones telling Okeke about his engagement, afraid that his father will react negatively because Nene is not an Ibo. This causes tension to rise between him and Nene until he finally agrees to leave Lagos and travel to his rural village to talk to his father about his decision to marry Nene. Despite his father's vehement disproval and subsequent estrangement from him, Nnaemeka remains optimistic that his father will eventually accept Nene and his decision to marry her. What Nnaemeka doesn't fully internalize, though, is that he is the very first person in the community to go against the grain of tradition by choosing his own spouse and choosing to marry someone who is not an Ibo, which makes his decision all the more shocking and offensive to Okeke and the rest of the village. However, spurred by the eventual acceptance Nene finds among her Ibo peers in Lagos, Nnaemeka continues to send letters and pictures to his father about him and Nene's marital life in Lagos. While Nnaemeka does not regret his decision to marry Nene, regardless of his father's reaction, he never stops hoping Okeke will accept their marriage and play a role in their growing family. Thus, Nnaemeka is a man that is torn between his deep love for his father and his desire to be a good son and his urban lifestyle that wholeheartedly embraces multiculturalism. - Character: Nene Atang. Description: Nnaemeka's fiancée. At the beginning of the story, Nene is eager to for Nnaemeka to share the news of their engagement with his father, Okeke, believing that the man will be thrilled. Her naivete, however, does not allow her to anticipate Okeke's firm resistance to their marriage. As a woman who grew up in the cosmopolitan culture of Lagos, Nene struggles to grasp the different norms and ideas that govern rural life, and has trouble understanding how sidestepping these conventions in a community that so greatly values tradition can be a serious offense. Thus, she urges her husband to talk to his father, convinced and optimistic that Okeke's love for his son will supersede any anger and disappointment. Nevertheless, she must grapple with the fact that her ethnic identity and role as a teacher are enough to disqualify her as a suitable wife for Nnaemeka when she realizes that Okeke has harshly cut her out of her own wedding picture. This does not stop her from trying to win him and others over, which speaks to her persistence. She eventually wins over the Ibo community in Lagos by showing how capable of a wife she is, and people begin to respect how happy her marriage is as well. In her persistence, she sends a letter to Okeke about what his absence in her son's (his grandchildren's) lives are costing them as a family, a move that points to an eventual resolution within the family. - Character: Okeke / Nnaemeka's Father. Description: Okeke is Nnaemeka's father and the antagonist in the story. He is the one that shows the fiercest resistance to his son's news that he plans to marry Nene, a girl who is neither from their village nor Ibo. A deeply Christian and family-oriented man, Okeke sees his son's decision as deviant, sinful, and particularly disrespectful to him as a father. Nevertheless, he takes it as his duty as a father to teach his son to see reason; consequently, he spends ample time encouraging his son to change his mind. Once it is clear, however, that Nnaemeka has made up his mind, Okeke stubbornly refuses to see him for eight years as punishment for his son's decision to marry Nene. He insists all the while that he wants nothing to do with such an insolent son whom he believes has chosen to sever himself from his family and community for a sinful marriage. Nevertheless, underneath Okeke's hubris, he continues to hope and pray every day that his son will return to him and ask for his forgiveness. It is Okeke, however, who shows the first signs of remorse. Upon learning about the existence of his grandchildren, he realizes that his actions may have cost him the opportunity to play a critical role in his grandchildren's lives. Nene's letter to him, along with nature's reprimand in the form of a storm outside his window, remind him that he may never recover from the pain his absence has caused his family now and in the future. - Character: Madubogwu. Description: Madubogwu is one of the members of Okeke's rural village. He is a practical man who likes finding ordinary and uncomplicated solutions to problems. He is the one to first suggest to Okeke that he consider hiring a native doctor to help Nnaemeka change his mind about marrying Nene. Although Okeke eventually rejects his suggestion, Madubogwu shows that the issue of marriage involves a lot more actors than just Nnaemeka and Nene. It involves Okeke as well as other people in the village, who see marriage as a community issue rather than a private one. - Theme: Urban vs. Rural Spaces. Description: "Marriage is a Private Affair" begins in Lagos with a conversation between two of the central characters of the story, Nene and Nnaemeka. The conversation is tense as Nene tries to understand why her fiancé hasn't yet spoken to his father, Okeke, about their engagement. The root of the tension, however, stems from the fact that both of the characters disagree about what the father's reaction to their engagement will be, since Nene is not Ibo like her fiancé: Nene insists that Okeke will be happy, while Nnaemeka reminds her that her expectations are skewed because of her naivete about rural spaces and cultures. He reminds her that she has spent her entire life in Lagos and thus understands "very little about people in remote parts of the country." In other words, Nene does not understand how devotedly Nnaemeka's father clings to the expectation that one must marry a person from their ethnic group. With this conflict, Achebe suggests that there exists a gulf between urban and rural spaces—one space culturally diverse and governed by choice, the other insular and marked by tradition—and that this gulf is difficult to bridge. Nene and Nnaemeka's conversation at the beginning of the story introduces the coming rift between the realities of the more accepting city space in which they have made their home and the rigid traditional expectations that Nnaemeka has left behind in his rural home. From the beginning, it is evident that Nene has taken for granted her urban upbringing to the point that she has come to expect that every space shares similar progressive ideas about marriage. Consequently, she cannot understand why Okeke would be anything but happy for his son. Her naivete is reflected in her assertion to Nnaemeka that "[Okeke] should be let into our happiness now." Of course, Nnaemeka objects to this, reminding her that the remote part of the country he comes from is different from Lagos. He reminds his wife bluntly that not only are the people from his father's community "unhappy if the engagement is not arranged by them," but that things are even worse for him and Nene because she is "not even an Ibo." In other words, tradition takes precedent over choice in rural spaces. The bluntness of Nnaemeka's assertion causes Nene to reflect on the different expectations of rural spaces, something she hasn't had to consider before: "In the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city it had always seemed to her something of a joke that a person's tribe could determine whom he married." For the first time, she must grapple with the ease and freedom of choice that dwelling in an urban space affords her. It is a sobering moment, one that opens her eyes to the difficulties that lay ahead for her and Nnaemeka as they navigate and seek to reconcile their urban lives with the resilient traditions of Nnameka's rural upbringing. Notwithstanding the opposition from Okeke, Nnaemeka and Nene eventually get married, severely underestimating the extent to which his rural and largely homogenous village will shun them because of it. However, "if it had occurred to [Nnaemeka] that never in the history of his people had a man married a woman who spoke a different tongue, he might have been less optimistic." Nene is not just marrying Nnaemeka—she is also marrying into a previously homogenous, traditional community. The villagers must grapple with the fact that her very presence forces them to broaden the way they define themselves and their community. It is an unchartered territory, and because of that, it's terrifying for everyone. They must decide if they will embrace the cosmopolitanism of city life and make Nene one of their own. Okeke, though, refuses to see his son and daughter-in-law for eight years and even writes to Nnaemeka to tell him that he is not welcome to even step foot in Okeke's house. Scathingly, he adds: "it can be of no interest to me where or how you spend you leave—or your life, for that matter." With this declaration, Okeke essentially declares that Nnaemeka is better off in Lagos since he has chosen to scorn his rural community's customs on two counts, first by denying Okeke the fatherly duty of arranging his son's marriage, and then by choosing to marry someone outside of the community. Consequently, the rural community has turned his back on Nnaemeka as well, as Okeke's house is no longer fit for his son. This suggests that one can only belong to one space or the other, but not both. As Nnaemeka has chosen to live in Lagos with a non-Ibo wife, Okeke believes he has effectively rejected his rural community. In contrast, while the Ibo people from Nnaemeka's village alienate Nnaemeka for many years, he and Nene find some refuge in the cosmopolitan spaces of Lagos—even among other Ibo people. Though at first, they show Nene "such excessive deference as to make her feel she was not one of them," eventually they warm up to her, and "slowly and grudgingly they began to admit that she kept her home much better than most of them." Their acceptance of Nene further proves that Lagos—a multicultural space—is not as hampered by the same inflexible rules and time-worn traditions that govern rural spaces. In a cosmopolitan space, people are able to break away from outdated expectations because of the diversity of ideas and people that surround them. Consequently, they are able to more easily traverse the stubborn deference to tradition that hampers their rural counterparts. In contrast, it takes Okeke many years for him to even consider accepting the marriage. This proves that the rural space he comes from is more resilient to progressive ideas centered around choice and new perspectives on community. It also shows that urban and rural spaces are fated to have a contentious relationship, as Achebe shows how anxiously those from urban spaces fear losing their hold on their children to the freedoms promised by urban spaces. - Theme: Family, Love, and Marriage. Description: In "Marriage is a Private Affair," Okeke vehemently believes that as a father, he should be the one to choose who his son, Nnaemeka, marries. He believes this so much that in his letter to Nnaemeka, he does not ask about his son's willingness to marry the woman he has found for him. Instead, he confidently declares that he has "found a girl who will suit [his son] admirably," suggesting that Okeke's approval of the girl matters more than Nnaemeka's desire to marry the girl. This implies that Okeke believes that marriage is not a private affair, as the title would suggest, but a familial one. Thus, when Nnaemeka rejects his father's choice and marries Nene instead of Ugoye, the father and son's familial bond unravels. Okeke sees their subsequent estrangement as proof that Nnaemeka has denied him his rights as a father and rejected his duties as a son and community member, which he likens to filial suicide. However, Okeke's stubbornness begins to soften upon learning that his son's wife has given birth to two sons, who are now old enough to be asking about their grandfather whom they've never met. Though Okeke believes denying familial expectations is a grave insult, it is not enough for him to risk alienating the new generation of family member from the old generation and create a lasting rift within his lineage. This implies that in Okeke's world, as the patriarch of the family, failing to ensure the past and present generations know and learn from each other is akin to ensuring a family's doom, and that familial love can and should eclipse other concerns. When Okeke realizes that his son is resolute in his decision to marry Nene, he takes it as his fatherly duty to change his son's mind. However, his son's stubbornness proves too insurmountable, forcing Okeke to break ties with him in hopes that the threat of losing him as a father will be enough incentive for his son to shun Nene and accept his filial duty by marrying a wife whom Okeke approves of. Okeke takes his responsibilities as a father so seriously that before alienating Nnaemeka, he reminds his son that it is his "duty to show [Nnaemeka] what is right and what is wrong." He is unable to sit idly and watch his son internalize wrong ideas about marriage because "whoever put this idea into [Nnaemeka's] head might as well have cut [his] throat." Within this, Okeke implies that Nnaemeka has forgotten that family is a lifeline and so disobeying Okeke is akin to severing the very thing that sustains him. It is also a warning to Nnaemeka that refusing to fulfill one's filial duty is to live as if already dead. Nevertheless, Okeke's words are not enough to change Nnaemeka's mind, and Okeke disowns his son: "From that night the father scarcely spoke to his son. He did not, however, cease hoping that he would realize how serious was the danger he was heading for." Again, a rejection of familial expectations is so perverse to Okeke that he equates it to danger as if Nnaemeka's life is on the line. Okeke staunchly holds on to his disavowal of his son's decision to marry Nene, refusing to see his son for many years. Other people in Okeke's community echo this belief, reassuring Okeke that he is right for alienating his son; they remind him that the Bible says, "it is the beginning of the end" when "sons […] rise against their Fathers." Moreover, an elder in the village delivers a lasting "verdict" on the situation with the simple statement, "it has never been heard." This, taken with the other dire warnings the villagers give Okeke, imply that Nnaemeka's refusal to marry the woman of his father's choosing is an exceptionally grave insult, one that previous generations of sons would have never entertained. Again, Achebe emphasizes that a son's duty to his father is and has always been to marry a wife his father deems suitable. So Nnaemeka is essentially turning his back on not only his father but previous generations of family members who faithfully followed this rule. Nevertheless, Okeke refuses to entertain his neighbors' suggestion that he rectify the situation by visiting a native doctor; he notes that Nnaemeka's stubbornness is enough for his son to kill himself, "with his own hands," adding that he will no longer have any part in it. While Okeke refuses to see a native doctor, he still implies that his son has made a fatal decision. Okeke, nevertheless, eventually learns that Nnaemeka and Nene have children, which forces him to see the conflict between him and his son in a new light. For the first time, he entertains the possibility that his harsh reaction may permanently disrupt his family lineage. He is so anxious that his family will never recover from his alienation that as he chastises himself, Okeke imagines nature is chastising him as well for destroying the sacred connection between a family's past and present. Okeke realizes that "it was one of those rare occasions when even nature takes a hand in a human fight. Very soon it began to rain […] [coming] down in large sharp drops […] accompanied by the lightning and thunder which mark a change of season." In this moment, even nature spurs him to change his ways so that he can restore order between the past and the future generations and ensure his family endures beyond his conflict with his Nnaemeka. Okeke's consequent guilt and fear "that he might die without making it up to them"—presumably his grandchildren, but perhaps his son and daughter-in-law as well—are a positive sign that he understands the stakes of his flawed decision. It also implies that he is willing to make amends to save his family from losing its connection to the past, thereby setting up the future generation for success. - Theme: Christianity. Description: In "Marriage is A Private Affair," Christianity is intricately linked to the question of marriage. Both Nnaemeka and his father are on the same page about the expectation that Nnaemeka marry a woman who is a "good Christian," and thus implied to be a good woman and good wife. In fact, this is one of the only things they both agree on in the course of the story. Nevertheless, while Christianity is a unifier in this instance, it is a divider in many others. After all, it is what Okeke and his neighbors use as a reason to reinforce their opposition to Nnaemeka's choice for a wife. For example, shortly after Nnaemeka delivers the news that he is marrying a woman his father did not approve, Okeke declares that this decision is "Satan's work." Here, Okeke likens his son's choice to Satan to project some of the negative associations connected to the devil unto Nnaemeka's choice for a wife. He does this to convince Nnaemeka to change course and choose God and the Christian path by listening to Okeke. Christianity thus plays a dual role in the story: Okeke and Nnaemeka both use it to find common ground, but it is also a convenient crutch that Okeke uses to plant doubt and guilt in his son. In this way, Achebe shows that Christianity is a flexible religion that can be both a positive force and a negative one, a way to unite people and a way to divide them. From the outset, it's clear that Christianity plays a crucial role in the lives of the story's characters, as both Okeke and Nnaemeka invoke it during their conversation about marriage to align their respective choice for Nnaemeka's wife with goodness and virtue. As Okeke reminds his son, "Look here, my son […] what one looks for in a wife are a good character and a Christian background." Nnaemeka echoes this point a few moments later as he—taking a page out of his father's book—characterizes Nene: "She is a good Christian." In an otherwise tense conversation, Okeke and Nnaemeka use their joint belief that Nnaemeka's wife should be a devout Christian to find common ground, revealing in the process that Christianity can be a unifying principle. While they do not agree with each other's choice for who Nnaemeka should marry, they do agree that the person must at the very least have a "good Christian upbringing." The definition of a "good" Christian woman, however, is left purposely vague as if they understand that it loses its power as a unifying force once they define it with stricter terminology. Yet this is precisely what happens moments later when Nnaemeka mentions to his father that in addition to being a "good Christian," Nene is also "a teacher in a Girls' School in Lagos." Suddenly his father foregoes the unifying aspects of Christianity and uses his definition of the religion as a way of undermining his son's choice for a wife. His censure is immediate: "Teacher did you say? If you consider that a qualification for a good wife I should like to point out to you, Emeka, that no Christian woman should teach. St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians says that women should keep silence." Like before, Okeke conflates goodness and Christianity, except now he is arguing for a specific definition of Christianity that is binary and leaves Nene out. According to Okeke, the only a thing a good Christian woman should study is the Bible, and "fluently" in fact; they certainly should not teach, and they must silent and subservient. He says as much in his letter about his choice for his son's wife: "[Ugoye] has a proper Christian upbringing. When she stopped schooling some years ago her father […] sent her to live in the house of a pastor where she has received all the training a wife could need […] and she reads her Bible very fluently." That Nene dares to depart, even minutely, from this characterization of a good Christian woman is enough for Okeke to believe she is bad for her son. In this moment, Okeke is asking Nnaemeka to forego marrying someone who is a sinner, and thus a bad woman, according to his understanding of Christianity. Okeke tells his son to reject aligning himself with a sinner, Nene, and follow his advice because it is closer to the Christian way and thus closer to God. It is an argument meant to produce guilt, shame, and a need for atonement from Nnaemeka. It is also a moment of truth: suddenly, the promise of different, coexisting definitions of Christianity, promised by the vagueness of "good" used by both characters in the beginning, is abandoned for Okeke's more narrow vision of Christianity. In addition to undermining their earlier show of solidarity, this final moment illuminates the fluidity of Christianity in the story. Although it helps Okeke and Nnaemeka find common ground, it also deepens the rift between them by the end of the conversation. Thus, Achebe suggests that there is something indefinite about Christianity, and perhaps religion in general, as its power to unite and divide gives it a slippery texture that makes it pliable for those who can bend it to suit their needs and opinions. - Climax: Okeke dismisses Nnaemeka and refuses to talk to him for eight years because of Nnaemeka's refusal to marry Ugoye, the woman Okeke has chosen for him, instead of Nene. - Summary: "Marriage is a Private Affair," begins with Nene asking Nnaemeka if he has told his father, Okeke, about their big news. Though Nnaemeka thinks it would be better to have the conversation with his father in six weeks when he goes to visit his village, Nene encourages him to write to Okeke and tell him sooner. She is sure that Okeke will be happy—who wouldn't be delighted that their son is getting married?—but Nnaemeka has to remind her that things are more complicated because the rural community that he is from is much different from Lagos, the city where Nene has lived all her life. He explains that in his community, it is customary for a father to choose a spouse for his children, and that said spouse must be Ibo. Although this is difficult for Nene to grasp, she realizes for the first time that Okeke might be displeased by their decision to get married. She nevertheless remains positive that Okeke will forgive Nnaemeka and subsequently continues to encourage him to send a letter to his father. Before returning to his place, Nnaemeka is able to finally convince Nene that it will be better for him to tell his father in person. Later, Nnaemeka thinks about the letter his father sent him recently and smiles. In the letter, Okeke details the merits of a woman named Ugoye, particularly her "Christian upbringing," and communicates his desire to begin marriage negotiations between Nnaemeka and Ugoye in December. During the second night of Nnaemeka's visit to his village, he asks his father for forgiveness before refusing to marry Ugoye, claiming that he doesn't love her. Okeke is shocked by Nnaemeka's refusal and is surprised that his son thinks he has to love Ugoye to marry her. Although Okeke tries to change his son's mind, Nnaemeka won't budge. Instead, Nnaemeka tells Okeke more about Nene, particularly her Christian faith and her job as a teacher. This makes Okeke even more furious, as he does not believe Christian women should teach, but his anger reaches its height when he realizes that Nene is not Ibo. Nnaemeka remains steadfast, however, and insists that Nene will be his future wife. Okeke walks away from the conversation and refuses to eat dinner that night. The next day, Okeke again tries to convince his son to change course, but is unsuccessful, leading him to characterize his son's decision as "Satan's work." Nnaemeka, however, continues to hope that Okeke will change his mind, though Okeke promises that he will never accept or even meet Nene. The rest of the village takes Okeke's side and share in his disappointment that Nnaemeka has chosen to marry "a woman who spoke a different tongue." Some take Nnaemeka's behavior as a sign of the "beginning of the end." One person in the village, Madubogwu, eventually suggests that Okeke consult a native doctor and get medicine to cure his son. Okeke refuses, citing Ms. Ochuba's mistakes as the reason he will not consult a native doctor to help his son "kill himself." Six months pass and Okeke still has not come around. He even sends back the wedding picture Nnaemeka and Nene sent to him, with Nene cut out of the picture, with a letter describing how little interest he has in the couple. Nnaemeka consoles Nene after they read the letter. Eight more years pass and Okeke still refuses to see his son or have him in his house. Nene also faces hardship within the Ibo community in Lagos, but the community eventually comes around accepts her. News of Nene and Nnaemeka's happy marriage travel to Okeke's village, but Okeke remains aloof. He uses his energy to push his son out of his mind, almost killing himself in the process. One day, however, Okeke receives a letter from Nene. In the letter, Nene reveals that she and Nnaemeka have two sons, and explains that the boys would like to know their grandfather. For the first time since shunning Nnaemeka, Okeke feels overcome with guilt. Though he tries to fight it and attempts to stuff down his feelings, the raging storm outside pushes him to think about the consequences of his actions, his estrangement from his son and grandsons, and what it will mean for his family. He is unable to sleep peacefully that night because of his fear that he will never atone for his behavior.