Famous Literature 4

Of Truth

Sir Francis Bacon starts his essay while referring the Ancient Roman Governor Pilate, who made the situation critical without doing an analysis of truth. Pilate asked for truth but did not wait for it. If he would have known the truth, he may have not passed the judgment to crucify the Christ. He then talks about skeptical minds, who are not easily convincible. He doubts that Pilate was also skeptical. Definitely, there are people who do not have strong beliefs. Numerous people are there in the world, who change their minds frequently. They consider that fixed beliefs are a sign of mental slavery. Whenever they think or take decisions, they use their free will; they stubbornly ignore every belief. In Greeks, there was a school of philosophers having skeptics. They may have died now but skeptical people are there even today in this world. What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness; and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursive wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labour which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favour, but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the later schools of the Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love lies; where neither they make for pleasure, as with poet; nor for advantage, as with the mer chant, but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell: this same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candlelights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day, but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy "vinum dæmonum,"; because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt, such as we spake of before. But howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth, that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense: the last was the light of reason; and his Sabbath work ever since, is the illumination of his Spirit. First, he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his chosen. The poet that beautified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: "It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth, (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene,) and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests in the vale below:" so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth. To pass from theological and philosophical truth, to the truth of civil business; it will be acknowledged even by those that practise it not, that clean and round dealing is the honour of man's nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent; which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious; and therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason, why the word of the lie should be such a disgrace, and such an odious charge, saith he, "If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much as to say, that he is brave towards God, and a coward towards men. For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man." Surely the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men: it being foretold, that when "Christ cometh," he shall not "find faith upon the earth."

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

The first novel of Irish writer James Joyce. A Künstlerroman in a modernist style, it traces the religious and intellectual awakening of young Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and an allusion to Daedalus, the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology. To be frank, there's not a whole lot of conventional "plot" in Portrait of the Artist. An unforgiving reader might just snort and say there's none, but we prefer the term "plot-challenged." What the book does contain, however, is an intense moment-to-moment narration of the life of its main character, Stephen Dedalus, from early childhood to adulthood (approximately ages 5 to 20 - we don't know exactly, but that's our educated guess). Basically, Joyce takes us through the everyday events, small and large, of one boy's life in early 20th century Dublin. So here's the quick rundown. The novel drops us straight into Stephen's early home life; he lives with his mother, father, Aunt Dante, and Uncle Charles. He leaves for a Jesuit boarding school early in the chapter, and we see him struggle with schoolmates and teachers there. He returns after a short and unhappy time away from home. But all is not sunshine and roses at home, either, and his family's financial situation steadily worsens throughout the book. They run out of money for boarding school, and Stephen is sent to a local Jesuit school, Belvedere College (these are actually the schools that Joyce himself attended!). While at Belvedere, Stephen gains a reputation for being smart and very serious. He cultivates a crush on a girl and writes a poem for her, but he doesn't know how to act around her - sound familiar? Stephen grows more and more dissatisfied with the condition of his life, and his feelings are made worse by the fact that his father sinks deeper and deeper into alcoholism and a kind of pathetic nostalgia. Stephen and his father visit Cork, Mr. D's hometown, to settle some business matters, and Stephen is sickened by how sad his father's life is. When they return to Dublin, Stephen uses some prize money he earned from writing to try and make their lives happier, but when it runs out, he falls into a slump. He gives into his fledgling physical lust and loses his sexual innocence to a Dublin prostitute. After a short period of bodily indulgence (and guilt), Stephen attends a religious retreat at his school. One of his old teachers from Clongowes, Father Arnall, is the guest of honor. Father Arnall delivers a searing, seemingly endless series of sermons about death, hell, and punishment. Stephen is horrified by his own sins and is certain he's going to suffer the unspeakable torments of hell. He immerses himself in strict Catholicism to try and avoid this fate. His religious period takes over all aspects of his life, from his senses to his emotions. However, when he faces the decision to join the priesthood, Stephen decides that he's not cut out for monastic life. He hopes to go to university instead; in this moment, he turns away from religion in general. The end of Chapter Four is perhaps one of the most famous moments in the book. Stephen goes to the river and sees a beautiful young girl, who reminds him of a wild seabird. He is astounded by the beauty of the moment and chooses to devote his life to creating art. As a student at University College, Dublin, Stephen feels more and more alienated from his family and especially from Ireland. He has a few good friends like Davin, Lynch, and Cranly, with whom he can discuss at least some of his theories and troubles. It becomes more and more apparent, however, that Stephen must leave Ireland in order to discover his vocation. His classmates are all into Irish nationalism, but Stephen doesn't share their beliefs. He openly admits to his disenchantment with the Irish cause and the Catholic Church. We witness Stephen alternately argue and explain himself with his school friends, who can't all understand why he feels the need to revolt against his country, home, and religion. In the end, we see Stephen prepare for his departure from Ireland, hoping that this self-imposed exile will allow him to truly experience life.

Canterbury Tales: General Prologue

The frame story of the poem, as set out in the 858 lines of Middle English which make up the General Prologue, is of a religious pilgrimage. The narrator, Geoffrey Chaucer, is in The Tabard Inn in Southwark, where he meets a group of "sundry folk" who are all on the way to Canterbury, the site of the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket, a martyr reputed to have the power of healing the sinful. The setting is April, and the prologue starts by singing the praises of that month whose rains and warm western wind restore life and fertility to the earth and its inhabitants. The setting arguably takes place in April being that travel conditions are not up for travel in real life during this time.[1] This abundance of life, the narrator says, prompts people to go on pilgrimages; in England, the goal of such pilgrimages is the shrine of Thomas Becket. The narrator falls in with a group of pilgrims, and the largest part of the prologue is taken up by a description of them; Chaucer seeks to describe their 'condition', their 'array', and their social 'degree.' According to The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume 1, "The narrator, in fact, seems to be expressing chiefly admiration and praise at the superlative skills and accomplishments of this particular group, even such dubious ones as the Friar's begging techniques or the Manciple's success in cheating the learned lawyers who employ him".[2] Chaucer arguably points out the virtues and vices of each of the pilgrims as described within the work. It is up to the reader to determine the gravity and underlying meaning of Chaucer's methods in doing so To telle yow al the condicioun,Of ech of hem, so as it semed me,And whiche they weren, and of what degree,And eek in what array that they were inne,And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne. The pilgrims include a knight, his son a squire, the knight's yeoman, a prioress accompanied by a second nun and the nun's priest, a monk, a friar, a merchant, a clerk, a sergeant of law, a franklin, a haberdasher, a carpenter, a weaver, a dyer, a tapestry weaver, a cook, a shipman, a doctor of physic, a wife of Bath, a parson, his brother a plowman, a miller, a manciple, a reeve, a summoner, a pardoner, the Host (a man called Harry Bailey), and a portrait of Chaucer himself. At the end of the section, the Host proposes that the group ride together and entertain one another with stories. He lays out his plan: each pilgrim will tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back. Whoever has told the most meaningful and comforting stories, with "the best sentence and moost solaas" (line 798) will receive a free meal paid for by the rest of the pilgrims upon their return. The company agrees and makes the Host its governor, judge, and record keeper. They set off the next morning and draw lots to determine who will tell the first tale. The Knight wins and prepares to tell his tale.[3]

A Passage to India

a novel E. M. Forster that was first published in 1924. Two englishwomen, the young Miss Adela Quested and the elderly Mrs. Moore, travel to India. Adela expects to become engaged to Mrs. Moore's son, Ronny, a British magistrate in the Indian city of Chandrapore. Adela and Mrs. Moore each hope to see the real India during their visit, rather than cultural institutions imported by the British. At the same time, Aziz, a young Muslim doctor in India, is increasingly frustrated by the poor treatment he receives at the hands of the English. Aziz is especially annoyed with Major Callendar, the civil surgeon, who has a tendency to summon Aziz for frivolous reasons in the middle of dinner. Aziz and two of his educated friends, Hamidullah and Mahmoud Ali, hold a lively conversation about whether or not an Indian can be friends with an Englishman in India. That night, Mrs. Moore and Aziz happen to run into each other while exploring a local mosque, and the two become friendly. Aziz is moved and surprised that an English person would treat him like a friend. Mr. Turton, the collector who governs Chandrapore, hosts a party so that Adela and Mrs. Moore may have the opportunity to meet some of the more prominent and wealthy Indians in the city. At the event, which proves to be rather awkward, Adela meets Cyril Fielding, the principal of the government college in Chandrapore. Fielding, impressed with Adela's open friendliness to the Indians, invites her and Mrs. Moore to tea with him and the Hindu professor Godbole. At Adela's request, Fielding invites Aziz to tea as well. At the tea, Aziz and Fielding immediately become friendly, and the afternoon is overwhelmingly pleasant until Ronny Heaslop arrives and rudely interrupts the party. Later that evening, Adela tells Ronny that she has decided not to marry him. But that night, the two are in a car accident together, and the excitement of the event causes Adela to change her mind about the marriage. Not long afterward, Aziz organizes an expedition to the nearby Marabar Caves for those who attended Fielding's tea. Fielding and Professor Godbole miss the train to Marabar, so Aziz continues on alone with the two ladies, Adela and Mrs. Moore. Inside one of the caves, Mrs. Moore is unnerved by the enclosed space, which is crowded with Aziz's retinue, and by the uncanny echo that seems to translate every sound she makes into the noise "boum." Aziz, Adela, and a guide go on to the higher caves while Mrs. Moore waits below. Adela, suddenly realizing that she does not love Ronny, asks Aziz whether he has more than one wife—a question he considers offensive. Aziz storms off into a cave, and when he returns, Adela is gone. Aziz scolds the guide for losing Adela, and the guide runs away. Aziz finds Adela's broken field‑glasses and heads down the hill. Back at the picnic site, Aziz finds Fielding waiting for him. Aziz is unconcerned to learn that Adela has hastily taken a car back to Chandrapore, as he is overjoyed to see Fielding. Back in Chandrapore, however, Aziz is unexpectedly arrested. He is charged with attempting to rape Adela Quested while she was in the caves, a charge based on a claim Adela herself has made. Fielding, believing Aziz to be innocent, angers all of British India by joining the Indians in Aziz's defense. In the weeks before the trial, the racial tensions between the Indians and the English flare up considerably. Mrs. Moore is distracted and miserable because of her memory of the echo in the cave and because of her impatience with the upcoming trial. Adela is emotional and ill; she too seems to suffer from an echo in her mind. Ronny is fed up with Mrs. Moore's lack of support for Adela, and it is agreed that Mrs. Moore will return to England earlier than planned. Mrs. Moore dies on the voyage back to England, but not before she realizes that there is no "real India"—but rather a complex multitude of different Indias. At Aziz's trial, Adela, under oath, is questioned about what happened in the caves. Shockingly, she declares that she has made a mistake: Aziz is not the person or thing that attacked her in the cave. Aziz is set free, and Fielding escorts Adela to the Government College, where she spends the next several weeks. Fielding begins to respect Adela, recognizing her bravery in standing against her peers to pronounce Aziz innocent. Ronny breaks off his engagement to Adela, and she returns to England. Aziz, however, is angry that Fielding would befriend Adela after she nearly ruined Aziz's life, and the friendship between the two men suffers as a consequence. Then Fielding sails for a visit to England. Aziz declares that he is done with the English and that he intends to move to a place where he will not have to encounter them. Two years later, Aziz has become the chief doctor to the Rajah of Mau, a Hindu region several hundred miles from Chandrapore. He has heard that Fielding married Adela shortly after returning to England. Aziz now virulently hates all English people. One day, walking through an old temple with his three children, he encounters Fielding and his brother‑in‑law. Aziz is surprised to learn that the brother-in-law's name is Ralph Moore; it turns out that Fielding married not Adela Quested, but Stella Moore, Mrs. Moore's daughter from her second marriage. Aziz befriends Ralph. After he accidentally runs his rowboat into Fielding's, Aziz renews his friendship with Fielding as well. The two men go for a final ride together before Fielding leaves, during which Aziz tells Fielding that once the English are out of India, the two will be able to be friends. Fielding asks why they cannot be friends now, when they both want to be, but the sky and the earth seem to say "No, not yet. . . . No, not there."

Gulliver's Travels

prose satire by Jonathan Swiftthat was first published in 1726. recounts the story of Lemuel Gulliver, a practical-minded Englishman trained as a surgeon who takes to the seas when his business fails. In a deadpan first-person narrative that rarely shows any signs of self-reflection or deep emotional response, Gulliver narrates the adventures that befall him on these travels. Gulliver's adventure in Lilliput begins when he wakes after his shipwreck to find himself bound by innumerable tiny threads and addressed by tiny captors who are in awe of him but fiercely protective of their kingdom. They are not afraid to use violence against Gulliver, though their arrows are little more than pinpricks. But overall, they are hospitable, risking famine in their land by feeding Gulliver, who consumes more food than a thousand Lilliputians combined could. Gulliver is taken into the capital city by a vast wagon the Lilliputians have specially built. He is presented to the emperor, who is entertained by Gulliver, just as Gulliver is flattered by the attention of royalty. Eventually Gulliver becomes a national resource, used by the army in its war against the people of Blefuscu, whom the Lilliputians hate for doctrinal differences concerning the proper way to crack eggs. But things change when Gulliver is convicted of treason for putting out a fire in the royal palace with his urine and is condemned to be shot in the eyes and starved to death. Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu, where he is able to repair a boat he finds and set sail for England. After staying in England with his wife and family for two months, Gulliver undertakes his next sea voyage, which takes him to a land of giants called Brobdingnag. Here, a field worker discovers him. The farmer initially treats him as little more than an animal, keeping him for amusement. The farmer eventually sells Gulliver to the queen, who makes him a courtly diversion and is entertained by his musical talents. Social life is easy for Gulliver after his discovery by the court, but not particularly enjoyable. Gulliver is often repulsed by the physicality of the Brobdingnagians, whose ordinary flaws are many times magnified by their huge size. Thus, when a couple of courtly ladies let him play on their naked bodies, he is not attracted to them but rather disgusted by their enormous skin pores and the sound of their torrential urination. He is generally startled by the ignorance of the people here—even the king knows nothing about politics. More unsettling findings in Brobdingnag come in the form of various animals of the realm that endanger his life. Even Brobdingnagian insects leave slimy trails on his food that make eating difficult. On a trip to the frontier, accompanying the royal couple, Gulliver leaves Brobdingnag when his cage is plucked up by an eagle and dropped into the sea. Next, Gulliver sets sail again and, after an attack by pirates, ends up in Laputa, where a floating island inhabited by theoreticians and academics oppresses the land below, called Balnibarbi. The scientific research undertaken in Laputa and in Balnibarbi seems totally inane and impractical, and its residents too appear wholly out of touch with reality. Taking a short side trip to Glubbdubdrib, Gulliver is able to witness the conjuring up of figures from history, such as Julius Caesar and other military leaders, whom he finds much less impressive than in books. After visiting the Luggnaggians and the Struldbrugs, the latter of which are senile immortals who prove that age does not bring wisdom, he is able to sail to Japan and from there back to England. Finally, on his fourth journey, Gulliver sets out as captain of a ship, but after the mutiny of his crew and a long confinement in his cabin, he arrives in an unknown land. This land is populated by Houyhnhnms, rational-thinking horses who rule, and by Yahoos, brutish humanlike creatures who serve the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver sets about learning their language, and when he can speak he narrates his voyages to them and explains the constitution of England. He is treated with great courtesy and kindness by the horses and is enlightened by his many conversations with them and by his exposure to their noble culture. He wants to stay with the Houyhnhnms, but his bared body reveals to the horses that he is very much like a Yahoo, and he is banished. Gulliver is grief-stricken but agrees to leave. He fashions a canoe and makes his way to a nearby island, where he is picked up by a Portuguese ship captain who treats him well, though Gulliver cannot help now seeing the captain—and all humans—as shamefully Yahoolike. Gulliver then concludes his narrative with a claim that the lands he has visited belong by rights to England, as her colonies, even though he questions the whole idea of colonialism.

The Brothers Karamazov

the final novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. is a passionate philosophical novel set in 19th-century Russia, that enters deeply into the ethicaldebates of God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, judgment, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia, with a plot which revolves around the subject of patricide. Dostoevsky composed much of the novel in Staraya Russa, which inspired the main setting.[1] Since its publication, it has been acclaimed as one of the supreme achievements in world literature. In his youth, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is a coarse, vulgar man whose main concerns are making money and seducing young women. He marries twice and has three sons: Dmitri, the child of his first wife, and Ivan and Alyosha, children of his second wife. Fyodor Pavlovich never has any interest in his sons, and when their mothers die, he sends them away to be brought up by relatives and friends. At the beginning of the novel, Dmitri Karamazov, who is now a twenty-eight-year-old soldier, has just returned to Fyodor Pavlovich's town. Fyodor Pavlovich is unhappy to see Dmitri because Dmitri has come to claim an inheritance left to him by his mother. Fyodor Pavlovich plans to keep the inheritance for himself. The two men swiftly fall into conflict over the money, and the coldly intellectual Ivan, who knows neither his father nor his brother well, is eventually called in to help settle their dispute. The kind, faithful Alyosha, who is about twenty, also lives in the town, where he is an acolyte, or apprentice, at the monastery, studying with the renowned elder Zosima. Eventually Dmitri and Fyodor Pavlovich agree that perhaps Zosima could help resolve the Karamazovs' quarrel, and Alyosha tentatively consents to arrange a meeting. At the monastery, Alyosha's worst fears are realized. After Fyodor Pavlovich makes a fool of himself by mocking the monks and telling vulgar stories, Dmitri arrives late, and Dmitri and Fyodor Pavlovich become embroiled in a shouting match. It turns out that they have more to quarrel about than money: they are both in love with Grushenka, a beautiful young woman in the town. Dmitri has left his fiancée, Katerina, to pursue Grushenka, while Fyodor Pavlovich has promised to give Grushenka 3,000 rubles if she becomes his lover. This sum is significant, as Dmitri recently stole 3,000 rubles from Katerina in order to finance a lavish trip with Grushenka, and he is now desperate to pay the money back. As father and son shout at each other at the monastery, the wise old Zosima unexpectedly kneels and bows his head to the ground at Dmitri's feet. He later explains to Alyosha that he could see that Dmitri is destined to suffer greatly. Many years previously, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov fathered a fourth son with a retarded mute girl who lived in town as the village idiot. The girl died as she gave birth to the baby, who was taken in by servants of Fyodor Pavlovich and forced to work as a servant for him as well. Fyodor Pavlovich never treats the child, Smerdyakov, as a son, and Smerdyakov develops a strange and malicious personality. He also suffers from epilepsy. Despite the limitations of his upbringing, however, Smerdyakov is not stupid. He enjoys nothing more than listening to Ivan discuss philosophy, and in his own conversations, he frequently invokes many of Ivan's ideas—specifically that the soul is not immortal, and that therefore morality does not exist and the categories of good and evil are irrelevant to human experience. After the humiliating scene in the monastery, the rest of Alyosha's day is only slightly less trying. Dmitri sends Alyosha to break off Dmitri's engagement with Katerina. Alyosha then argues about religion with Ivan in front of the smirking Fyodor Pavlovich. Alyosha also gets caught in the middle of another explosion between Dmitri and Fyodor Pavlovich over Grushenka, in the course of which Dmitri throws Fyodor Pavlovich to the ground and threatens to kill him. But despite the hardships of his day, Alyosha is so gentle and loving that he is concerned only with how he might help his family. After tending his father's wounds, he returns to the monastery for the night. The next day, Alyosha visits Katerina. To his surprise, Ivan is with Katerina, and Alyosha immediately perceives that Ivan and Katerina are in love. Alyosha tries to convince them that they should act on their love for one another, but they are both too proud and cold to listen. Alyosha has dinner with Ivan, and Ivan explains to him the source of his religious doubt: he cannot reconcile the idea of a loving God with the needless suffering of innocent people, particularly children. Any God that would allow such suffering, he says, does not love mankind. He recites a poem he has written called "The Grand Inquisitor," in which he accuses Christ of placing an intolerable burden upon humanity by guaranteeing that people have free will and the ability to choose whether or not to believe in God. That evening, Alyosha again returns to the monastery, where the frail Zosima is now on his deathbed. Alyosha hurries to Zosima's cell, and arrives just in time to hear his final lesson, which emphasizes the importance of love and forgiveness in all human affairs. Zosima dies stretching his arms out before him, as though to embrace the world. Many of the monks are optimistic that Zosima's death will be accompanied by a miracle, but no miracle takes place. If anything, Zosima's corpse begins to stink more quickly than might have been expected, which is taken by Zosima's critics to mean that he was corrupt and unreliable in life. Sickened by the injustice of seeing the wise and loving Zosima humiliated after his death, Alyosha allows his friend Rakitin to take him to see Grushenka. Although Rakitin and Grushenka hope to corrupt Alyosha, just the opposite happens, and a bond of sympathy and understanding springs up between Grushenka and Alyosha. Their friendship renews Alyosha's faith, and Alyosha helps Grushenka to begin her own spiritual redemption. That night, Alyosha has a dream in which Zosima tells him that he has done a good deed in helping Grushenka. This dream further strengthens Alyosha's love and resolve, and he goes outside to kiss the ground to show his passion for doing good on Earth. Dmitri has spent two days unsuccessfully trying to raise the money to pay Katerina the 3,000 rubles he owes her. No one will lend him the money, and he has nothing to sell. At last he goes to Grushenka's house, and when she is not there, he is suddenly convinced that she has gone to be with Fyodor Pavlovich. He rushes to Fyodor Pavlovich's house, but finds that Grushenka is not there. While prowling on the grounds, Dmitri strikes Fyodor Pavlovich's old servant, Grigory, leaving him bloody and unconscious. Then he flees. He returns to Grushenka's house, and learns from her maid that Grushenka has gone to rejoin a lover who abandoned her several years ago. Dmitri now decides that his only course of action is to kill himself. But he decides to see Grushenka one last time before he does so. A few minutes later, Dmitri strides into a shop, with his shirt bloody and a large wad of cash in his hand. He buys food and wine, and travels out to see Grushenka and her lover. When Grushenka sees the two men together, she realizes that she really loves Dmitri. Dmitri locks the other man in a closet, and Dmitri and Grushenka begin to plan their wedding. But the police suddenly burst in and arrest Dmitri. He is accused of the murder of his father, who has been found dead. Due to the large amount of evidence against Dmitri, including the money suddenly found in his possession, he will be made to stand trial. Dmitri says that the money was what he had left after spending half of the 3,000 rubles he stole from Katerina, but no one believes him. Dmitri is imprisoned. Meanwhile, Alyosha befriends some of the local schoolboys. He meets a dying boy named Ilyusha, and arranges for the other boys to come visit him every day. Alyosha helps Ilyusha's family as the young boy nears death, and he is universally adored by all the schoolboys, who look to him for guidance. Ivan talks to Smerdyakov about Fyodor Pavlovich's death, and Smerdyakov confesses to Ivan that he, and not Dmitri, committed the murder. But he says that Ivan is also implicated in the crime because the philosophical lessons Smerdyakov learned from Ivan, regarding the impossibility of evil in a world without a God, made Smerdyakov capable of committing murder. This statement causes Ivan to become consumed with guilt. After returning home, Ivan suffers a nervous breakdown in which he sees a devil that relentlessly taunts him. The apparition vanishes when Alyosha arrives with the news that Smerdyakov has hung himself. At the trial, Dmitri's case seems to be going well until Ivan is called upon to testify. Ivan madly asserts that he himself is guilty of the murder, throwing the courtroom into confusion. To clear Ivan's name, Katerina leaps up and shows a letter she received from Dmitri in which he wrote that he was afraid he might one day murder his father. Even after the letter is read, most of the people in the courtroom are convinced of Dmitri's innocence. But the peasants on the jury find him guilty, and he is taken back to prison to await his exile in Siberia. After the trial, Katerina takes Ivan to her house, where she plans to nurse him through his illness. She and Dmitri forgive one another, and she arranges for Dmitri to escape from prison and flee to America with Grushenka. Alyosha's friend Ilyusha dies, and Alyosha gives a speech to the schoolboys at his funeral. In plain language, he says that they must all remember the love they feel for one another and treasure their memories of one another. The schoolboys, moved, give Alyosha an enthusiastic cheer.

Great Expectations

the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel: a bildungsroman that depicts the personal growth and personal development of an orphan nicknamed Pip. It is Dickens's second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. Pip, a young orphan living with his sister and her husband in the marshes of Kent, sits in a cemetery one evening looking at his parents' tombstones. Suddenly, an escaped convict springs up from behind a tombstone, grabs Pip, and orders him to bring him food and a file for his leg irons. Pip obeys, but the fearsome convict is soon captured anyway. The convict protects Pip by claiming to have stolen the items himself. One day Pip is taken by his Uncle Pumblechook to play at Satis House, the home of the wealthy dowager Miss Havisham, who is extremely eccentric: she wears an old wedding dress everywhere she goes and keeps all the clocks in her house stopped at the same time. During his visit, he meets a beautiful young girl named Estella, who treats him coldly and contemptuously. Nevertheless, he falls in love with her and dreams of becoming a wealthy gentleman so that he might be worthy of her. He even hopes that Miss Havisham intends to make him a gentleman and marry him to Estella, but his hopes are dashed when, after months of regular visits to Satis House, Miss Havisham decides to help him become a common laborer in his family's business. With Miss Havisham's guidance, Pip is apprenticed to his brother-in-law, Joe, who is the village blacksmith. Pip works in the forge unhappily, struggling to better his education with the help of the plain, kind Biddy and encountering Joe's malicious day laborer, Orlick. One night, after an altercation with Orlick, Pip's sister, known as Mrs. Joe, is viciously attacked and becomes a mute invalid. From her signals, Pip suspects that Orlick was responsible for the attack. One day a lawyer named Jaggers appears with strange news: a secret benefactor has given Pip a large fortune, and Pip must come to London immediately to begin his education as a gentleman. Pip happily assumes that his previous hopes have come true—that Miss Havisham is his secret benefactor and that the old woman intends for him to marry Estella. In London, Pip befriends a young gentleman named Herbert Pocket and Jaggers's law clerk, Wemmick. He expresses disdain for his former friends and loved ones, especially Joe, but he continues to pine after Estella. He furthers his education by studying with the tutor Matthew Pocket, Herbert's father. Herbert himself helps Pip learn how to act like a gentleman. When Pip turns twenty-one and begins to receive an income from his fortune, he will secretly help Herbert buy his way into the business he has chosen for himself. But for now, Herbert and Pip lead a fairly undisciplined life in London, enjoying themselves and running up debts. Orlick reappears in Pip's life, employed as Miss Havisham's porter, but is promptly fired by Jaggers after Pip reveals Orlick's unsavory past. Mrs. Joe dies, and Pip goes home for the funeral, feeling tremendous grief and remorse. Several years go by, until one night a familiar figure barges into Pip's room—the convict, Magwitch, who stuns Pip by announcing that he, not Miss Havisham, is the source of Pip's fortune. He tells Pip that he was so moved by Pip's boyhood kindness that he dedicated his life to making Pip a gentleman, and he made a fortune in Australia for that very purpose. Pip is appalled, but he feels morally bound to help Magwitch escape London, as the convict is pursued both by the police and by Compeyson, his former partner in crime. A complicated mystery begins to fall into place when Pip discovers that Compeyson was the man who abandoned Miss Havisham at the altar and that Estella is Magwitch's daughter. Miss Havisham has raised her to break men's hearts, as revenge for the pain her own broken heart caused her. Pip was merely a boy for the young Estella to practice on; Miss Havisham delighted in Estella's ability to toy with his affections. As the weeks pass, Pip sees the good in Magwitch and begins to care for him deeply. Before Magwitch's escape attempt, Estella marries an upper-class lout named Bentley Drummle. Pip makes a visit to Satis House, where Miss Havisham begs his forgiveness for the way she has treated him in the past, and he forgives her. Later that day, when she bends over the fireplace, her clothing catches fire and she goes up in flames. She survives but becomes an invalid. In her final days, she will continue to repent for her misdeeds and to plead for Pip's forgiveness. The time comes for Pip and his friends to spirit Magwitch away from London. Just before the escape attempt, Pip is called to a shadowy meeting in the marshes, where he encounters the vengeful, evil Orlick. Orlick is on the verge of killing Pip when Herbert arrives with a group of friends and saves Pip's life. Pip and Herbert hurry back to effect Magwitch's escape. They try to sneak Magwitch down the river on a rowboat, but they are discovered by the police, who Compeyson tipped off. Magwitch and Compeyson fight in the river, and Compeyson is drowned. Magwitch is sentenced to death, and Pip loses his fortune. Magwitch feels that his sentence is God's forgiveness and dies at peace. Pip falls ill; Joe comes to London to care for him, and they are reconciled. Joe gives him the news from home: Orlick, after robbing Pumblechook, is now in jail; Miss Havisham has died and left most of her fortune to the Pockets; Biddy has taught Joe how to read and write. After Joe leaves, Pip decides to rush home after him and marry Biddy, but when he arrives there he discovers that she and Joe have already married. Pip decides to go abroad with Herbert to work in the mercantile trade. Returning many years later, he encounters Estella in the ruined garden at Satis House. Drummle, her husband, treated her badly, but he is now dead. Pip finds that Estella's coldness and cruelty have been replaced by a sad kindness, and the two leave the garden hand in hand, Pip believing that they will never part again. (Note: Dickens's original ending to Great Expectations differed from the one described in this summary. The final Summary and Analysis section of this SparkNote provides a description of the first ending and explains why Dickens rewrote it.)

The Trojan Woman

tragedy by the Greek playwright Euripides. Produced in 415 BC during the Peloponnesian War, it is often considered a commentary on the capture of the Aegean island of Melos and the subsequent slaughter and subjugation of its populace by the Athenians earlier that year (see History of Milos).[1] 415 BC was also the year of the scandalous desecration of the hermai and the Athenians' second expedition to Sicily, events which may also have influenced the author. Hecuba: Alas! Alas! Alas! Ilion is ablaze; the fire consumes the citadel, the roofs of our city, the tops of the walls! Chorus: Like smoke blown to heaven on the wings of the wind, our country, our conquered country, perishes. Its palaces are overrun by the fierce flames and the murderous spear. Hecuba: O land that reared my children! Euripides's play follows the fates of the women of Troy after their city has been sacked, their husbands killed, and as their remaining families are about to be taken away as slaves. However, it begins first with the gods Athena and Poseidondiscussing ways to punish the Greek armies because they condoned that Ajax the Lesser raped Cassandra, the eldest daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba, after dragging her from a statue of Athena. What follows shows how much the Trojan women have suffered as their grief is compounded when the Greeks dole out additional deaths and divide their shares of women. The Greek herald Talthybius arrives to tell the dethroned queen Hecuba what will befall her and her children. Hecuba will be taken away with the Greek general Odysseus, and Cassandra is destined to become the conquering general Agamemnon's concubine. Karen Tiegren (Cassandra) in The Trojan Women, directed by Brad Maysat the ARK Theatre Company in Los Angeles, 2003 Cassandra, who can see the future, is morbidly delighted by this news: she sees that when they arrive in Argos, her new master's embittered wife Clytemnestra will kill both her and her new master. However, Cassandra is also cursed so that her visions of the future are never believed, and she is carried off. The widowed princess Andromache arrives and Hecuba learns from her that her youngest daughter, Polyxena, has been killed as a sacrifice at the tomb of the Greek warrior Achilles. Andromache's lot is to be the concubine of Achilles' son Neoptolemus, and more horrible news for the royal family is yet to come: Talthybius reluctantly informs her that her baby son, Astyanax, has been condemned to die. The Greek leaders are afraid that the boy will grow up to avenge his father Hector, and rather than take this chance, they plan to throw him off from the battlements of Troy to his death. Helen, though not one of the Trojan women, is supposed to suffer greatly as well: Menelaus arrives to take her back to Greece with him where a death sentence awaits her. Helen begs and tries to seduce her husband into sparing her life. Menelaus remains resolved to kill her, but the audience watching the play knows that he will let her live and take her back. At the end of the play it is revealed that she is still alive; moreover, the audience knows from Telemachus' visit to Sparta in Homer's Odyssey that Menelaus continued to live with Helen as his wife after the Trojan War. In the end, Talthybius returns, carrying with him the body of little Astyanax on Hector's shield. Andromache's wish had been to bury her child herself, performing the proper rituals according to Trojan ways, but her ship had already departed. Talthybius gives the corpse to Hecuba, who prepares the body of her grandson for burial before they are finally taken off with Odysseus. Throughout the play, many of the Trojan women lament the loss of the land that reared them. Hecuba in particular lets it be known that Troy had been her home for her entire life, only to see herself as an old grandmother watching the burning of Troy, the death of her husband, her children, and her grandchildren before she will be taken as a slave to Odysseus.

Barn Burning

a short story by the American author William Faulkner which first appeared in Harper's in June 1939 (pp. 86-96) and has since been widely anthologized. The story deals with class conflicts, the influence of fathers, and vengeance as viewed through the third-person perspective of a young, impressionable child. set in about 1895) opens in a country drug store, which is doubling as a Justice of the Peace Court. A hungry boy named Sarty craves the stew and bread in the store. He's afraid. His father, Abner Snopes, is in court, accused of burning down Mr. Harris's barn. Sarty is called up to testify against his father, and he knows he's going to have to lie and say his father didn't burn the barn. The Justice and Mr. Harris realize they are putting the young boy in a bad position, and they let him off the hook. The Judge tells Mr. Snopes to leave the country and never come back. As Sarty leaves the courthouse, a kid calls him "Barn Burner!" and knocks him down, twice (16). Sarty tries to chase the kid but his father stops him. Sarty, his older brother, and his father get into the family wagon, where his mother, aunt, and two sisters are waiting. The wagon is already loaded with their broken possessions. That night, the family camps. After Sarty falls asleep, his father wakes him up and tells Sarty to follow him. Sarty does. His father accuses him of being on the verge of betraying him in court. He hits Sarty. Then he tells him that the most important thing is to stand by your family. The next day the Snopeses arrive at their new home, a shack on the farm where they will be working as tenant farmers. Abner wants to talk to the owner and he takes Sarty with him. When Sarty sees the owner's fancy, white mansion he feels like everything just might be all right after all. He thinks his father can't possibly hurt people who live in a house like that. On the way to the front door, Sarty notices that Abner deliberately steps in some fresh horse excrement. At the front door, a "House Negro" greets them and tells Snopes to wipe off his boots. In defiance of the request for politeness, Snopes pushes past with a racial insult and tracks the excrement all over the white rug in the front room. Later that day, the owner of the rug and mansion, Mr. de Spain, has the rug dropped off at Abner's shack. Abner sets his two daughters to cleaning it, and then dries it in front of the fire. Early the next morning, Abner wakes Sarty and the two of them return the rug to de Spain. De Spain shows up shortly after, insulting Abner and complaining that the rug is "ruined" (62). He tells Abner he's going to charge him twenty extra bushels of corn to pay for the hundred-dollar rug. When he leaves, Sarty tells Abner that they shouldn't give de Spain any corn at all. After working hard all week, Sarty goes with his family to town that Saturday. He goes with his father into a store, and sees that a Justice of the Peace Court is in session. De Spain is there. Sarty doesn't realize that Abner is suing de Spain to have the fee of twenty bushels reduced. Sarty blurts out that his father isn't guilty of burning any barns. Abner sends him back to the wagon, but he stays in the store to see what happens. The Justice decides that Abner is responsible for the damage to the rug, but he reduces the fee to ten bushels. Sarty, his father, and his brother spend some time in town and don't go home until the sun has almost set. After dinner, Sarty hears his mother trying to stop his father from doing something. He realizes his father is planning to burn the de Spain barn. His father and brother realize that Sarty is planning on alerting de Spain, and they leave him behind, held tight in his mother's arms. Sarty breaks free and runs to the de Spain house. He's only able to say "Barn!" a few times, and then he's on the run again. De Spain is right behind him, about to run him over. Sarty jumps into a ditch and then returns to the road. He hears three gunshots soon after. At midnight Sarty is on top of a hill. He's come a long way. Everything is behind him. He mourns the loss of his father (who he seems to assume is dead), but is no longer afraid. He falls asleep and feels better when he wakes up. The whippoorwills are singing and it's almost morning. He starts walking toward the woods in front of him. He doesn't turn around.

Preface to Shakespeare

Samuel Johnson's preface to The Plays of William Shakespeare has long been considered a classic document of English literary criticism. In it Johnson sets forth his editorial principles and gives an appreciative analysis of the "excellences" and "defects" of the work of the great Elizabethan dramatist. Many of his points have become fundamental tenets of modern criticism; others give greater insight into Johnson's prejudices than into Shakespeare's genius. The resonant prose of the preface adds authority to the views of its author. The Tragedy of Lear is deservedly celebrated among the dramas of Shakespeare. There is perhaps no play which keeps the attention so strongly fixed; which so much agitates our passions and interests our curiosity. The artful involutions of distinct interests, the striking opposition of contrary characters, the sudden changes of fortune, and the quick succession of events, fill the mind with a perpetual tumult of indignation, pity, and hope. There is no scene which does not contribute to the aggravation of the distress or conduct of the action, and scarce a line which does not conduce to the progress of the scene. So powerful is the current of the poet's imagination, that the mind, which once ventures within it, is hurried irresistibly along. On the seeming improbability of Lear's conduct it may be observed, that he is represented according to histories at that time vulgarly received as true. And perhaps if we turn our thoughts upon the barbarity and ignorance of the age to which this story is referred, it will appear not so unlikely as while we estimate Lear's manners by our own. Such preference of one daughter to another, or resignation of dominion on such conditions, would be yet credible, if told of a petty prince of Guinea or Madagascar. Shakespeare, indeed, by the mention of his Earls and Dukes, has given us the idea of times more civilised, and of life regulated by softer manners; and the truth that though he so nicely discriminates, and so minutely describes the characters of men, he commonly neglects and confounds the characters of ages, by mingling customs ancient and modern, English and foreign.

The Death of Ivan Ilych

Leo Tolstoy begins at the chronological end of the story. A group of judges are gathered together in a private room of the courthouse when Peter Ivanovich, a judge and close friend of Ivan Ilych, announces that Ivan has died. Consoled by the thought that it is Ivan who has died and not them, the men in the room cannot help but think of the promotions and transfers that Ivan's death will occasion. That evening, Peter drives to Ivan's house to attend his funeral. But while looking at Ivan's corpse, Peter is bothered by an expression of disapproval and warning on Ivan's face. Ivan's wife Praskovya quizzes Peter about possible strategies to maximize her dead husband's government pension. On his way out, Peter encounters Gerasim, Ivan's sick nurse. Peter mentions that Ivan's death and funeral are a sad affair, and Gerasim surprises Peter with the observation that everyone dies some day. The story then shifts more than thirty years into the past and picks up with a description of Ivan's life. Ivan is the second of three sons, and in all respects is an average and commonplace person. Around the age of thirteen he attends the School of Law where he assimilates the values and behavior of those with high social standing. Ivan becomes an examining magistrate in the reformed judicial institutions and moves to a new province. Ivan marries and things progress smoothly until Praskovya becomes pregnant. As Praskovya's behavior begins to disrupt the proper and decorous lifestyle cherished by Ivan and approved by society, Ivan increasingly absorbs himself in his official work and distances himself from his family. At work he prides himself on removing all personal concerns from his consideration, and at home he adopts a formal attitude toward his family. Time passes and Ivan moves up in the ranks. He expects to be awarded the post of presiding judge in a University town, but is passed over for promotion. Infuriated and struck by a keen sense of injustice, Ivan obtains a leave of absence and moves with his family to his brother-in-law's house in the country. Conscious that his salary cannot cover his family's living expenses, Ivan travels to St. Petersburg to look for a higher paying job. He learns that due to a change in the administration of the Ministry of Justice, a close friend has landed a position of great authority. Ivan is awarded a higher paying position in the city, and informing his family of the good news, Ivan departs alone to buy and furnish a house in preparation for the family's arrival. One day as he is mounting a step-ladder to hang some drapes, he makes a false step and slips, banging his side against the window frame. The injury is not serious, however, and Ivan is quite pleased with the final appearance of the house. He settles into his new life and acquires a love of bridge. Ivan begins to experience some discomfort in his left side and an unusual taste in his mouth. The discomfort gradually increases and soon Ivan is both irritable and quarrelsome. The doctors Ivan visits all disagree on the nature of the illness, and Ivan becomes depressed and fearful. Even cards lose their appeal. Ivan's physical condition degenerates rapidly. One night while lying alone in the dark, he is visited by his first thoughts of mortality, and they terrify him. He realizes that his illness is not a question of health or disease, but of life or death. Praskovya does not understand nor wish to understand her husband's plight, and Ivan can barely suppress his hatred for her. Ivan knows that he is dying, but he is unable to grasp the full implications of his mortality. He tries to erect screens to block the thought of death from his mind, but death haunts him ceaselessly. In the midst of this suffering, Gerasim, Ivan's peasant servant, enters the scene. Assigned the task of helping Ivan with his excretions, Gerasim soon begins passing the entire night with the dying man. To ease his pain, Gerasim supports Ivan's legs on his shoulders. More than any other living person, Gerasim provides Ivan with the compassion and honesty that he needs. Ivan's daily routine is monotonous and maddening. As those around him continue to pretend that he is only sick and not dying, Ivan feels that he is surrounded by artificiality. No one wants to confront the fact of Ivan's imminent death. Ivan becomes silently enraged, and seeing his little son Vasya, Ivan realizes that Vasya is the only one besides Gerasim who understands him. That night Ivan dreams of a deep black sack. He is being violently pushed into the sack, but cannot fall through. And he both fears and desires to fall into it. Awaking from his dream, Ivan sends Gerasim away, and for the first time he hears the inner voice of his soul speaking to him. Twelve more days pass, and Ivan is no longer able to leave the sofa. He lies pondering death and questioning the rationale behind his suffering. As he examines his life, Ivan realizes that the further back he looks, the more joy there is. He finds that just as the pain grew worse and worse, so too did his life. He knows that an explanation for the suffering would be possible if he had not lived rightly, but recalling the propriety of his life, he resigns himself to the senselessness of death. Then, one night while looking at Gerasim's face, Ivan begins to doubt whether he has lived his life correctly. He imagines the black sack again, and the immense agony he experiences stems partly from his being thrust into the sack, and partly from not being able to get right into it. The conviction that his life was a good one prevents him from entering the sack, but for some reason he is unwilling to relinquish that belief. Suddenly, "some force" strikes Ivan in the chest and side. It pushes him through the sack and into the presence of a bright light. At that very moment his hand falls on his sons head and he feels sorry for him. His wife approaches his bed, her face wet with tears, and he feels sorry for her too. He realizes that his official life and his family and social relations were all artificial. And he experiences a sense of extreme joy. In the middle of a sigh, Ivan stretches out and dies.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Mark Twain Hank Morgan runs a munitions and machinery factory in 19th-century Connecticut. He's struck by a crowbar during a dispute with the workers, and wakes up thirteen centuries in the past. A knight from King Arthur's Court takes him prisoner, and Arthur orders him executed. Hank escapes by "predicting" an eclipse and claiming that he could blot out the sun if they executed him. Hank becomes the King's prime minister—a.k.a. The Boss—with a reputation for performing miracles. It makes him a number of enemies, notably the wizard Merlin who doesn't like Hank's new status as Arthur's bestie. Hank doesn't do much to discourage Merlin's resentment, and instead responds by destroying Merlin's tower with explosives and a lightning rod. In the process, he begins confiding in a young man named Clarence, who comes to serve as Boy Wonder to his Batman. Soon after, Hank accompanies the Demoiselle Alisande a la Carteloise—thankfully nicknamed Sandy because that's a mouthful of a name—on a quest to save her mistresses from a band of vicious ogres. As it turns out, the mistresses are nothing but pigs whom the Demoiselle believes are enchanted. Hank plays along by buying the pigs and taking them home. Along the way they meet a group of pilgrims journeying to a holy fountain. Their trip turns into a bummer when they find out that the fountain has gone dry. Merlin is already working on restoring it but Hank figures out that it's a simple leak and fixes it easily, bringing the office score to Hank: 2, Merlin: 0. Hank then sets out on a new adventure, disguising himself as a peasant and travelling the country to see how the poor really live. Arthur decides to come with him, which ultimately causes problems since he can't act like a commoner to save his life. A nobleman captures them and plans to sell them into slavery. When Hank escapes, they intend to hang him, the king and their fellow slaves, but at the last minute Launcelot and the knights of the Round Table arrive to rescue them... riding bicycles provided by Clarence. You'd think that Hank would be ready for a rest by then, but no such luck. A knight he insulted, Sir Sagramor, forces him into a duel, along with a passel of his buddies and enchanted weapons and armor from Merlin. Hank defeats them by pulling them out of their saddles with a lasso, then shooting them dead with a pistol when they try to up the ante. Three years pass. Hank marries Sandy and has a baby with her; he also builds some roads, schools, and factories. Unfortunately, he forgets certain particulars of Arthurian literature, which ultimately catch up to him. Arthur is killed after starting a war with Launcelot, and the country revolts—Hank flees with Clarence, hiding in Merlin's cave with a small group of loyal teenage boys. They build fortifications, including land mines, Gatling guns, and electric fences, then battle to victory against an army of 30,000 sent to wipe them out. After the battle, Hank goes out to tend to the wounded, one of whom recognizes him and stabs him in a flagrant display of unsportsmanlike conduct. Clarence and the boys take him back to the cave, but Merlin has a last trick for them, and disguised as a woman, he puts Clarence in an enchanted sleep and leaves him and the others to die in the cave. Back in the present, Hank lies on his deathbed, dreaming about Sandy but lost forever to the ancient world he helped create.

A Defence of Poetry

Percy Bysshe Shelley's essay contains no rules for poetry, or aesthetic judgments of his contemporaries. Instead, Shelley's philosophical assumptions about poets and poetry can be read as a sort of primer for the Romantic movement in general. In this essay, written a year before his death, Shelley addresses "The Four Ages of Poetry," a witty magazine piece by his friend, Thomas Love Peacock. Peacock's work teases and jokes through its definitions and conclusions, specifically that the poetry has become valueless and redundant in an age of science and technology, and that intelligent people should give up their literary pursuits and put their intelligence to good use. Shelley takes this treatise and extends it, turning his essay into more of a rebuttal than a reply. To begin, Shelley turns to reason and imagination, defining reason as logical thought and imagination as perception, adding, "reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things." From reason and imagination, man may recognize beauty, and it is through beauty that civilization comes. Language, Shelley contends, shows humanity's impulse toward order and harmony, which leads to an appreciation of unity and beauty. Those in "excess" of language are the poets, whose task it is to impart the pleasures of their experience and observations into poems. Shelley argues, that civilization advances and thrives with the help of poetry. This assumption then, through Shelley's own understanding, marks the poet as a prophet, not a man dispensing forecasts but a person who "participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one." He goes on to place poetry in the column of divine and organic process: "A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth . . . the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the Creator." The task of poets then is to interpret and present the poem; Shelley's metaphor here explicates: "Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted." The next portion of Shelley's argument approaches the question of morality in poetry. To Shelley, poetry is utilitarian, as it brings civilization by "awaken[ing] and enlarg[ing] the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world." Shelley also addresses drama and the critical history of poetry through the ages, beginning with the classical period, moving through the Christian era, and into the middle ages until he arrives back in his present day, pronouncing the worth of poets and poetry as "indeed divine," and the significant role that poets play, concluding with his famous last line: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

The Rambler No. 4

Samuel Johnson is primarily thought of not as a fiction writer but as a critic, and since his criticism explains so much about the peculiar form which his own fiction was to take, it is wise to discuss his views on criticism. The subject of The Rambler 4 is modern fiction. Johnson recognized that fiction underwent a profound change in his lifetime. Gone were the improbabilities of the romantic fiction of the past, expressed in its giants, knights, ladies, hermits, and battles. Contemporary works of fiction, Johnson wrote, "exhibit life in its true state, diversified only by accidents that daily happen in the world, influenced by passions and qualities which are really to be found in conversing with mankind." With this new verisimilitude, fiction acquires a new power, and consequently, a new responsibility. Since these works are chiefly read by the "young, the ignorant, and the idle, to whom they serve as lectures of conduct, and introductions into life," writers must be very careful in choosing their subjects and characters:It is not a sufficient vindication of a character, that it is drawn as it appears, for many characters ought never to be drawn; nor of a narrative, that the train of events is agreeable to observation and experience, for that observation which is called knowledge of the world, will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good. Fiction, then, has a didactic purpose, whether a writer wishes it or not: Readers imitate the behavior of the characters their authors offer as admirable, and authors therefore have a moral responsibility to select their characters and incidents carefully. They must also distinguish the "good and bad qualities in their principal personages," lest, as readers became more involved with these characters, they "lose the abhorrence of their faults, or, perhaps, regard them with some kindness for being united with so much merit." The type of fictional hero Johnson advocates is virtuous, although not angelic. In the plot, his virtue, "exercised in such trials as the various revolutions of things shall bring upon it, may, by conquering some calamities, and enduring others, teach us what we may hope, and what we can perform." Vice must be shown, but it "should always disgust; nor should the graces of gaiety, or the dignity of courage, be so united with it, as to reconcile it to the mind." The final purpose of fiction is to teach this moral truth:That virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness; and that vice is the natural consequence of narrow thoughts, that it begins in mistake, and ends in ignominy. Johnson was acutely sensitive to the power which people's lives, both fictional and historical, have on the reader. In The Rambler 60, he stresses the fundamental "uniformity in the state of man," insisting that "there is scarce any possibility of good or ill, but is common to human kind. We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure." An examination of Johnson's fiction reveals that these beliefs about character and the moral function of fiction appear again and again. Many of The Rambler, The Adventurer, and The Idler essays take the form of short fictional letters, didactic and moral in their intent, which recount more or less artificial tales of hope and misfortune. They are not really what is considered fiction: Plot is stylized, truncated, and undramatic; characterization is minimal; and both are subordinated to the moral lesson. Johnson does not create individual personalities but displays states of minds, generalized experiences, and moral decisions common to all. Carey McIntosh has pointed out that Johnson's fiction characteristically contradicts the pattern of conventional novels: His characters begin in prosperity and success and end as sadder but wiser victims of their own folly or the world's cruelty. These letters commonly take the form of confessions (in which the narrator admits to a fault or mistake), complaints (tales of misfortune told by a victim), or quests (in which the hero goes through a number of opportunities, all of which prove specious). In all three types, the reader is led to a sense of Johnson's usual theme—the vanity of human wishes. Johnson creates not individuals, but character types, and the character's name, expressed in Latin or English, is frequently the key: Verecundulus (bashful), Hyperdulus (super slave), Misella (miserable), Squire Bluster, Prospero, Suspirius the screech owl. Some papers are sketches of characters in the Theophrastan sense, such as Prospero, the nouveau riche (The Rambler 200), and Dick Minim, the critic (The Idler 60 and 61), typifying a quality, vice, or virtue. Others are moral fables, such as the story of Seged's futile attempt to make one week happy (The Rambler 204 and 205). Through each character the reader sees reality generalized and abstracted; the reader is not expected to believe the reality of the character or the fiction, but rather to recognize, in the formalized patterns and choices depicted, similar..

The War Prayer

a short story or prose poem by Mark Twain, is a scathing indictment of war, and particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war. The structure of the work is simple: an unnamed country goes to war, and patriotic citizens attend a church service for soldiers who have been called up. The people call upon God to grant them victory and protect their troops. Suddenly, an "aged stranger" appears and announces that he is God's messenger. He explains to them that he is there to speak aloud the second part of their prayer for victory, the part which they have implicitly wished for but have not spoken aloud themselves: the prayer for the suffering and destruction of their enemies. What follows is a grisly depiction of hardships inflicted on war-torn nations by their conquerors. The story ends with the man being ignored.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

James Thurber tells the story of the aging Walter Mitty on a trip into town with his overbearing wife, Mrs. Mitty. Walter is inept at many things; he is an absent-minded driver, he can't handle simple mechanical tasks, and he forgets things easily. What makes Walter exceptional is his imagination. While Walter goes through a day of ordinary tasks and errands, he escapes into a series of romantic fantasies, each spurred on by some mundane reality. As he drives his car, he imagines he is commanding "a Navy hydroplane" through a terrible storm (1). When he rides past a hospital, he imagines he is a world-famous surgeon saving a VIP's life. When he hears a newsboy shouting about a trial, he imagines he is a crack shot being interrogated in the courtroom. As he waits for his wife to finish at the hairdresser's, Walter sees pictures of German plane and imagines he is a British pilot willing to sacrifice his life for his country. Lastly, as Mitty waits outside against a wall for his wife to buy something in a drugstore, he fantasizes that he is a bold and brave man about to be shot by a firing squad. The story ends with the inscrutable Walter Mitty awaiting this romantic death.

Whoso List to Hunt

Sir Thomas Wyatt Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, But as for me, hélas, I may no more. The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, I am of them that farthest cometh behind. Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore, Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind. Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, As well as I may spend his time in vain. And graven with diamonds in letters plain There is written, her fair neck round about: Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am, And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

Of Plantations

Francis Bacon Plantations are amongst ancient, primitive, and heroical works. When the world was young, it begat more children; but now it is old, it begets fewer; for I may justly account new plantations to be the children of former kingdoms. I like a plantation in a pure soil; that is, where people are not displanted to the end to plant in others; for else it is rather an extirpation than a plantation. Planting of countries is like planting of woods; for you must make account to lose almost twenty years profit, and expect your recompense in the end: for the principal thing that hath been the destruction of most plantations, hath been the base and hasty drawing of profit in the first years. It is true, speedy profit is not to be neglected, as far as may stand with the good of the plantation, but no further. It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people and wicked condemned men, to be the people with whom you plant; and not only so, but it spoileth the plantation; for they will ever live like rogues, and not fall to work, but be lazy, and do mischief, and spend victuals, and be quickly weary, and then certify over to their country to the discredit of the plantation. The people wherewith you plant ought to be gardeners, ploughmen, labourers, smiths, carpenters, joiners, fishermen, fowlers, with some few apothecaries, surgeons, cooks, and bakers. In a country of plantation, first look about what kind of victual the country yields of itself to hand; as chestnuts, walnuts, pineapples, olives, dates, plums, cherries, wild honey, and the like, and make use of them. Then consider what victual, or esculent things there are which grow speedily and within the year: as parsnips, carrots, turnips, onions, radish, artichokes of Jerusalem, maize, and the like: for wheat, barley, and oats, they ask too much labour; but with pease and beans you may begin, both because they ask less labour, and because they serve for meat as well as for bread; and of rice likewise cometh a great increase, and it is a kind of meat. Above all, there ought to be brought store biscuit, oatmeal, flour, meal, and the like, in the beginning, till bread may be had. For beasts, or birds, take chiefly such as are least subject to diseases, and multiply fastest; as swine, goats, cocks, hens, turkeys, geese, house-doves, and the like. The victual in plantations ought to be expended almost as in a besieged town; that is, with certain allowance: and let the main part of the ground employed to gardens or corn, be to a common stock; and to be laid in, and stored up, and then delivered out in proportion; besides some spots of ground that any particular person will manure for his own private use. Consider, likewise, what commodities the soil where the plantation is doth naturally yield, that they may some way help to defray the charge of the plantation; so it be not, as was said, to the untimely prejudice of the main business, as it hath fared with tobacco in Virginia. Wood commonly aboundeth but too much: and therefore timber is fit to be one. If there be iron ore, and streams whereupon to set the mills, iron is a brave commodity where wood aboundeth. Making of bay-salt, if the climate be proper for it, would be put in experience: growing silk likewise, if any be, is a likely commodity: pitch and tar, where store of firs and pines are, will not fail; so drugs and sweet woods, where they are, cannot but yield great profit; soap-ashes likewise, and other things that may be thought of; but moil not too much under ground, for the hope of mines is very uncertain and useth to make the planters lazy in other things. For government, let it be in the hands of one, assisted with some counsel; and let them have commission to exercise martial laws, with some limitation; and, above all, let men make that profit of being in the wilderness, as they have God always, and his service before their eyes; let not the government of the plantation depend upon too many counsellors and undertakers in the country that planteth, but upon a temperate number; and let those be rather noblemen and gentle men, than merchants; for they look ever to the present gain: let there be freedoms from custom, till the plantation be of strength; and not only freedom from custom, but freedom to carry their commodities where they may make their best of them, except there be some special cause of caution. Cram not in people, by sending too fast, company after company; but rather hearken how they waste, and send supplies proportionably; but so as the number may live well in the plantation, and not by surcharge be in penury. It hath been a great endangering to the health of some plantations, that they have built along the sea and rivers in marish and unwholesome grounds: therefore, though you begin there, to avoid carriage and other like discommodities, yet build still rather upwards from the stream, than along. It concerneth likewise the health of the plantation that they have good store of salt with them, that they may use it in their victuals when it shall be necessary. If you plant where savages are, do not only entertain them with trifles and gingles, but use them justly and graciously, with sufficient guard nevertheless; and do not win their favour by helping them to invade their enemies, but for their defence it is not amiss: and send oft of them over to the country that plants, that they may see a better condition than their own, and commend it when they return. When the plantation grows to strength, then it is time to plant with women as well as with men; that the plantation may spread into generations, and not be ever pieced from without. It is the sinfullest thing in the world to forsake or destitute a plantation once in forwardness; for, besides the dishonour, it is the guiltiness of blood of many commiserable persons

Metaphysical Wit

The term metaphysical poets was coined by the critic Samuel Johnson to describe a loose group of 17th-century English poets whose work was characterized by the inventive use of conceits, and by a greater emphasis on the spoken rather than lyrical quality of their verse. These poets were not formally affiliated and few were highly regarded until 20th century attention established their importance. The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and, to show their learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and, very often, such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables. ... But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of "discordia concors;" a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtilty surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased. 10 Characteristics of Metaphysical Poetry 1] the conceit--"farfetched," "combination of dissimilar images," "heterogeneous ideas yoked by violence together"--NB greater intellectuality than Petrarchan conceit; 2] complexity & obscurity; 3] paradox; 4] exaggeration, hyperbole; 5] rebellion against Petrarchan and Elizabethan poetic conventions; 6] colloquial language; 7] natural speech rhythms or extreme distortions of metrical patterns--"modulation so imperfect that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables"; 8] irregular lines and stanzas; 9] argumentative form and content; 10] persona & situation--like dramatic monologue.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

a novella by Robert Louis Stevenson that was first published in 1886. On their weekly walk, an eminently sensible, trustworthy lawyer named Mr. Utterson listens as his friend Enfield tells a gruesome tale of assault. The tale describes a sinister figure named Mr. Hyde who tramples a young girl, disappears into a door on the street, and reemerges to pay off her relatives with a check signed by a respectable gentleman. Since both Utterson and Enfield disapprove of gossip, they agree to speak no further of the matter. It happens, however, that one of Utterson's clients and close friends, Dr. Jekyll, has written a will transferring all of his property to this same Mr. Hyde. Soon, Utterson begins having dreams in which a faceless figure stalks through a nightmarish version of London. Puzzled, the lawyer visits Jekyll and their mutual friend Dr. Lanyon to try to learn more. Lanyon reports that he no longer sees much of Jekyll, since they had a dispute over the course of Jekyll's research, which Lanyon calls "unscientific balderdash." Curious, Utterson stakes out a building that Hyde visits—which, it turns out, is a laboratory attached to the back of Jekyll's home. Encountering Hyde, Utterson is amazed by how undefinably ugly the man seems, as if deformed, though Utterson cannot say exactly how. Much to Utterson's surprise, Hyde willingly offers Utterson his address. Jekyll tells Utterson not to concern himself with the matter of Hyde. A year passes uneventfully. Then, one night, a servant girl witnesses Hyde brutally beat to death an old man named Sir Danvers Carew, a member of Parliament and a client of Utterson. The police contact Utterson, and Utterson suspects Hyde as the murderer. He leads the officers to Hyde's apartment, feeling a sense of foreboding amid the eerie weather—the morning is dark and wreathed in fog. When they arrive at the apartment, the murderer has vanished, and police searches prove futile. Shortly thereafter, Utterson again visits Jekyll, who now claims to have ended all relations with Hyde; he shows Utterson a note, allegedly written to Jekyll by Hyde, apologizing for the trouble he has caused him and saying goodbye. That night, however, Utterson's clerk points out that Hyde's handwriting bears a remarkable similarity to Jekyll's own. For a few months, Jekyll acts especially friendly and sociable, as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. But then Jekyll suddenly begins to refuse visitors, and Lanyon dies from some kind of shock he received in connection with Jekyll. Before dying, however, Lanyon gives Utterson a letter, with instructions that he not open it until after Jekyll's death. Meanwhile, Utterson goes out walking with Enfield, and they see Jekyll at a window of his laboratory; the three men begin to converse, but a look of horror comes over Jekyll's face, and he slams the window and disappears. Soon afterward, Jekyll's butler, Mr. Poole, visits Utterson in a state of desperation: Jekyll has secluded himself in his laboratory for several weeks, and now the voice that comes from the room sounds nothing like the doctor's. Utterson and Poole travel to Jekyll's house through empty, windswept, sinister streets; once there, they find the servants huddled together in fear. After arguing for a time, the two of them resolve to break into Jekyll's laboratory. Inside, they find the body of Hyde, wearing Jekyll's clothes and apparently dead by suicide—and a letter from Jekyll to Utterson promising to explain everything. Utterson takes the document home, where first he reads Lanyon's letter; it reveals that Lanyon's deterioration and eventual death were caused by the shock of seeing Mr. Hyde take a potion and metamorphose into Dr. Jekyll. The second letter constitutes a testament by Jekyll. It explains how Jekyll, seeking to separate his good side from his darker impulses, discovered a way to transform himself periodically into a deformed monster free of conscience—Mr. Hyde. At first, Jekyll reports, he delighted in becoming Hyde and rejoiced in the moral freedom that the creature possessed. Eventually, however, he found that he was turning into Hyde involuntarily in his sleep, even without taking the potion. At this point, Jekyll resolved to cease becoming Hyde. One night, however, the urge gripped him too strongly, and after the transformation he immediately rushed out and violently killed Sir Danvers Carew. Horrified, Jekyll tried more adamantly to stop the transformations, and for a time he proved successful; one day, however, while sitting in a park, he suddenly turned into Hyde, the first time that an involuntary metamorphosis had happened while he was awake. The letter continues describing Jekyll's cry for help. Far from his laboratory and hunted by the police as a murderer, Hyde needed Lanyon's help to get his potions and become Jekyll again—but when he undertook the transformation in Lanyon's presence, the shock of the sight instigated Lanyon's deterioration and death. Meanwhile, Jekyll returned to his home, only to find himself ever more helpless and trapped as the transformations increased in frequency and necessitated even larger doses of potion in order to reverse themselves. It was the onset of one of these spontaneous metamorphoses that caused Jekyll to slam his laboratory window shut in the middle of his conversation with Enfield and Utterson. Eventually, the potion began to run out, and Jekyll was unable to find a key ingredient to make more. His ability to change back from Hyde into Jekyll slowly vanished. Jekyll writes that even as he composes his letter he knows that he will soon become Hyde permanently, and he wonders if Hyde will face execution for his crimes or choose to kill himself. Jekyll notes that, in any case, the end of his letter marks the end of the life of Dr. Jekyll. With these words, both the document and the novel come to a close.

Hard Times

novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirises the social and economic conditions of the era. Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy, retired merchant in the industrial city of Coketown, England, devotes his life to a philosophy of rationalism, self-interest, and fact. He raises his oldest children, Louisa and Tom, according to this philosophy and never allows them to engage in fanciful or imaginative pursuits. He founds a school and charitably takes in one of the students, the kindly and imaginative Sissy Jupe, after the disappearance of her father, a circus entertainer. As the Gradgrind children grow older, Tom becomes a dissipated, self-interested hedonist, and Louisa struggles with deep inner confusion, feeling as though she is missing something important in her life. Eventually Louisa marries Gradgrind's friend Josiah Bounderby, a wealthy factory owner and banker more than twice her age. Bounderby continually trumpets his role as a self-made man who was abandoned in the gutter by his mother as an infant. Tom is apprenticed at the Bounderby bank, and Sissy remains at the Gradgrind home to care for the younger children. In the meantime, an impoverished "Hand"—Dickens's term for the lowest laborers in Coketown's factories—named Stephen Blackpool struggles with his love for Rachael, another poor factory worker. He is unable to marry her because he is already married to a horrible, drunken woman who disappears for months and even years at a time. Stephen visits Bounderby to ask about a divorce but learns that only the wealthy can obtain them. Outside Bounderby's home, he meets Mrs. Pegler, a strange old woman with an inexplicable devotion to Bounderby. James Harthouse, a wealthy young sophisticate from London, arrives in Coketown to begin a political career as a disciple of Gradgrind, who is now a Member of Parliament. He immediately takes an interest in Louisa and decides to try to seduce her. With the unspoken aid of Mrs. Sparsit, a former aristocrat who has fallen on hard times and now works for Bounderby, he sets about trying to corrupt Louisa. The Hands, exhorted by a crooked union spokesman named Slackbridge, try to form a union. Only Stephen refuses to join because he feels that a union strike would only increase tensions between employers and employees. He is cast out by the other Hands and fired by Bounderby when he refuses to spy on them. Louisa, impressed with Stephen's integrity, visits him before he leaves Coketown and helps him with some money. Tom accompanies her and tells Stephen that if he waits outside the bank for several consecutive nights, help will come to him. Stephen does so, but no help arrives. Eventually he packs up and leaves Coketown, hoping to find agricultural work in the country. Not long after that, the bank is robbed, and the lone suspect is Stephen, the vanished Hand who was seen loitering outside the bank for several nights just before disappearing from the city. Mrs. Sparsit witnesses Harthouse declaring his love for Louisa, and Louisa agrees to meet him in Coketown later that night. However, Louisa instead flees to her father's house, where she miserably confides to Gradgrind that her upbringing has left her married to a man she does not love, disconnected from her feelings, deeply unhappy, and possibly in love with Harthouse. She collapses to the floor, and Gradgrind, struck dumb with self-reproach, begins to realize the imperfections in his philosophy of rational self-interest. Sissy, who loves Louisa deeply, visits Harthouse and convinces him to leave Coketown forever. Bounderby, furious that his wife has left him, redoubles his efforts to capture Stephen. When Stephen tries to return to clear his good name, he falls into a mining pit called Old Hell Shaft. Rachael and Louisa discover him, but he dies soon after an emotional farewell to Rachael. Gradgrind and Louisa realize that Tom is really responsible for robbing the bank, and they arrange to sneak him out of England with the help of the circus performers with whom Sissy spent her early childhood. They are nearly successful, but are stopped by Bitzer, a young man who went to Gradgrind's school and who embodies all the qualities of the detached rationalism that Gradgrind once espoused, but who now sees its limits. Sleary, the lisping circus proprietor, arranges for Tom to slip out of Bitzer's grasp, and the young robber escapes from England after all. Mrs. Sparsit, anxious to help Bounderby find the robbers, drags Mrs. Pegler—a known associate of Stephen Blackpool—in to see Bounderby, thinking Mrs. Pegler is a potential witness. Bounderby recoils, and it is revealed that Mrs. Pegler is really his loving mother, whom he has forbidden to visit him: Bounderby is not a self-made man after all. Angrily, Bounderby fires Mrs. Sparsit and sends her away to her hostile relatives. Five years later, he will die alone in the streets of Coketown. Gradgrind gives up his philosophy of fact and devotes his political power to helping the poor. Tom realizes the error of his ways but dies without ever seeing his family again. While Sissy marries and has a large and loving family, Louisa never again marries and never has children. Nevertheless, Louisa is loved by Sissy's family and learns at last how to feel sympathy for her fellow human beings

Don Quixote

a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, it is often labeled "the first modern novel"[2]and is sometimes considered the best literary work ever written. The story follows the adventures of a noble (hidalgo) named Alonso Quixano who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his sanity and decides to become a knight-errant(caballero andante), reviving chivalry and serving his country, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote's rhetorical orations on antiquated knighthood. Don Quixote, in the first part of the book, does not see the world for what it is and prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story. Throughout the novel, Cervantes uses such literary techniques as realism, metatheatre, and intertextuality. The book had a major influence on the literary community, as evidenced by direct references in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers (1844), Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac(1897), as well as the word quixotic and the epithet Lothario; the latter refers to a character in "El curioso impertinente" ("The Impertinently Curious Man"), an intercalated story that appears in Part One, chapters 33-35. The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer cited Don Quixote as one of the four greatest novels ever written, along with Tristram Shandy, La Nouvelle Héloïse, and Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.[5] When first published, Don Quixote was usually interpreted as a comic novel. After the French Revolution, it was better known for its central ethic that individuals can be right while society is quite wrong and seen as disenchanting. In the 19th century, it was seen as a social commentary, but no one could easily tell "whose side Cervantes was on". Many critics came to view the work as a tragedy in which Don Quixote's idealism and nobility are viewed by the post-chivalric world as insane, and are defeated and rendered useless by common reality. By the 20th century, the novel had come to occupy a canonical space as one of the foundations of modern literature.

The Metamorphosis

a novella written by Franz Kafka which was first published in 1915. One of Kafka's best-known works, The Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect (German ungeheures Ungeziefer, literally "monstrous vermin"), subsequently struggling to adjust to this new condition. The novella has been widely discussed among literary critics, with differing interpretations being offered. Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a "monstrous vermin". He initially considers the transformation to be temporary and slowly ponders the consequences of this metamorphosis. Unable to get up and leave the bed, Gregor reflects on his job as a traveling salesman and cloth merchant, which he characterizes as an exhausting and never-ending traffic. He sees his employer as a despot and would quickly quit his job were he not his family's sole breadwinner and working off his bankrupt father's debts. While trying to move, Gregor finds that his office manager, the chief clerk, has shown up to check on him, indignant about Gregor's unexcused absence. Gregor attempts to communicate with both the manager and his family, but all they can hear from behind the door is incomprehensible vocalizations. Gregor laboriously drags himself across the floor and opens the door. The manager, upon seeing the transformed Gregor, flees the apartment. Gregor's family is horrified, and his father drives him back into his room under the threat of violence. With Gregor's unexpected incapacitation, the family is deprived of their financial stability. Although Gregor's sister Grete now shies away from the sight of him, she takes to supplying him with food, which they find he can only eat rotten. Gregor begins to accept his new identity and begins crawling on the floor, walls and ceiling. Discovering Gregor's new pastime, Grete decides to remove some of the furniture to give Gregor more space. She and her mother begin taking furniture away, but Gregor finds their actions deeply distressing. He desperately tries to save a particularly-loved portrait on the wall of a woman clad in fur. His mother loses consciousness at the sight of Gregor clinging to the image to protect it. As a nurse rushes to assist his mother, Gregor follows her and is hurt by a medicine bottle falling on his face. His father returns home from work and angrily tosses apples at Gregor. One of them is lodged into a sensitive spot in his back and severely wounds him. Gregor suffers from his injuries for several weeks and takes very little food. He is increasingly neglected by his family and his room becomes used for storage. To secure their livelihood, the family takes three tenants into their apartment. The cleaning lady alleviates Gregor's isolation by leaving his door open for him on the evenings that the tenants eat out. One day, his door is left open despite the presence of the tenants. Gregor, attracted by Grete's violin-playing in the living room, crawls out of his room and is spotted by the unsuspecting tenants, who complain about the apartment's unhygienic conditions and cancel their tenancy. Grete, who has by now become tired of taking care of Gregor and is realizing the burden his existence puts on each one in the family, tells her parents they must get rid of "it", or they will all be ruined. Gregor, understanding that he is no longer wanted, dies of starvation before the next sunrise. The relieved and optimistic family takes a trolley ride out to the countryside, and decide to move to a smaller apartment to further save money. During this short trip, Mr. and Mrs. Samsa realize that, in spite of going through hardships which have brought an amount of paleness to her face, Grete appears to have grown up into a pretty and well-figured lady, which leads her parents to think about finding her a husband.

Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale

among the best-known of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It provides insight into the role of women in the Late Middle Ages and was probably of interest to Chaucer himself, for the character is one of his most developed ones, with her Prologue twice as long as her Tale. There was a knight in King Arthur's time who raped a fair young maiden. King Arthur issues a decree that the knight must be brought to justice. When the knight is captured, he is condemned to death, but Queen Guinevere intercedes on his behalf and asks the King to allow her to pass judgment upon him. The Queen tells the knight that he will be spared his life if he can discover for her what it is that women most desire, and allots him a year and a day in which to roam wherever he pleases and return with an answer. Everywhere the knight goes he explains his predicament to the women he meets and asks their opinion, but "No two of those he questioned answered the same." The answers range from fame and riches to play, or clothes, or sexual pleasure, or flattery, or freedom. When at last the time comes for him to return to the Court, he still lacks the answer he so desperately needs. Outside a castle in the woods, he sees twenty-four maidens dancing and singing, but when he approaches they disappear as if by magic, and all that is left is an old woman. The Knight explains the problem to the old woman, who is wise and may know the answer, and she forces him to promise to grant any favour she might ask of him in return. With no other options left, the Knight agrees. Arriving at the court, he gives the answer that women most desire sovereignty over their husbands, which is unanimously agreed to be true by the women of the court who, accordingly, free the Knight. The old woman then explains to the court the deal she has struck with the Knight, and publicly requests his hand in marriage. Although aghast, he realises he has no other choice and eventually agrees. On their wedding night the old woman is upset that he is repulsed by her in bed. She reminds him that her looks can be an asset—she will be a virtuous wife to him because no other men would desire her. She asks him what he would prefer—an old ugly wife who is loyal, true and humble or a beautiful young woman about whom he would always have doubts concerning her faithfulness. The Knight responds by saying that the choice is hers, an answer which pleases her greatly. Now that she has won power over him, she asks him to kiss her, promising both beauty and fidelity. The Knight turns to look at the old woman again, but now finds a young and lovely woman. They live happily into old age together.[5] This Prologue is by far the longest in The Canterbury Tales and is twice as long as the actual story, showing the importance of the prologue to the significance of the overall tale. In the beginning the wife expresses her views in which she believes the morals of women is not merely that they all solely desire "sovereignty", but that each individual woman should have the opportunity to make the decision. "The Wife of Bath", contradicts many of the typical customs of the time and provides an overbearing assessment in which the roles of women in society are bound to accept it quietly.[1] The Wife of Bath knows the stories of many holy men who have had multiple wives and says: Well I know Abrahamwas a holy man, and Jacob as well, as far as I know, and each of them had more than two wives. And many other holy men did as well. When have you seen that in any time great God forbade marriage explicitly? Tell me, I Pray you.[7] Through this quote, she addresses why society should not look down on her or any other female who has wed to multiple men throughout their life. The tale confronts the double standard and the social belief in the inherent inferiority of women, and attempts to establish a defence of secular women's sovereignty that opposes the conventions available to her.[8] The Wife of Bath's tale argues that women are morally identical to men who have also had more than one spouse.[1] Double standards for men and women were common and deeply rooted in culture.

"Analysis Terminable and Interminable

Freud's views on obstacles to psychoanalytic progress, and the impact on the analytic process of destructive impulses, and unconscious guilt over destructiveness are considered. In addition, the potential contribution of the destructiveness of the analyst is explored. The stance of Heinz Kohut, through which the thwarted developmental lines of childhood are allowed to unfold and build new psychic structure, may help to avoid these dangers. Despite these dangers, long analytic processes may be both necessary and fruitful in some cases.

The Fingers of Aurora

In one of the most gripping chapters of that book, titled "The Fingers of Aurora," Solzhenitsyn showed how the foundations of the Gulag were laid at the very dawn of Communist thought, namely in Marx's approval of forced labor for political indoctrination and re-education. Reading Solzhenitsyn's account many years ago was a formative experience for me, as I saw more clearly than ever before the power and consequence of ideas.

Lord of the Flies

Nobel Prize-winner William Golding's 1954 dystopian novel, allegorizes the story of schoolboys marooned on an island to investigate mankind's inherent savagery. The novel greatly influenced writers of horror and post-apocalyptic fiction. In the midst of a raging war, a plane evacuating a group of schoolboys from Britain is shot down over a deserted tropical island. Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy, discover a conch shell on the beach, and Piggy realizes it could be used as a horn to summon the other boys. Once assembled, the boys set about electing a leader and devising a way to be rescued. They choose Ralph as their leader, and Ralph appoints another boy, Jack, to be in charge of the boys who will hunt food for the entire group. Ralph, Jack, and another boy, Simon, set off on an expedition to explore the island. When they return, Ralph declares that they must light a signal fire to attract the attention of passing ships. The boys succeed in igniting some dead wood by focusing sunlight through the lenses of Piggy's eyeglasses. However, the boys pay more attention to playing than to monitoring the fire, and the flames quickly engulf the forest. A large swath of dead wood burns out of control, and one of the youngest boys in the group disappears, presumably having burned to death. At first, the boys enjoy their life without grown-ups and spend much of their time splashing in the water and playing games. Ralph, however, complains that they should be maintaining the signal fire and building huts for shelter. The hunters fail in their attempt to catch a wild pig, but their leader, Jack, becomes increasingly preoccupied with the act of hunting. When a ship passes by on the horizon one day, Ralph and Piggy notice, to their horror, that the signal fire—which had been the hunters' responsibility to maintain—has burned out. Furious, Ralph accosts Jack, but the hunter has just returned with his first kill, and all the hunters seem gripped with a strange frenzy, reenacting the chase in a kind of wild dance. Piggy criticizes Jack, who hits Piggy across the face. Ralph blows the conch shell and reprimands the boys in a speech intended to restore order. At the meeting, it quickly becomes clear that some of the boys have started to become afraid. The littlest boys, known as "littluns," have been troubled by nightmares from the beginning, and more and more boys now believe that there is some sort of beast or monster lurking on the island. The older boys try to convince the others at the meeting to think rationally, asking where such a monster could possibly hide during the daytime. One of the littluns suggests that it hides in the sea—a proposition that terrifies the entire group. Not long after the meeting, some military planes engage in a battle high above the island. The boys, asleep below, do not notice the flashing lights and explosions in the clouds. A parachutist drifts to earth on the signal-fire mountain, dead. Sam and Eric, the twins responsible for watching the fire at night, are asleep and do not see the parachutist land. When the twins wake up, they see the enormous silhouette of his parachute and hear the strange flapping noises it makes. Thinking the island beast is at hand, they rush back to the camp in terror and report that the beast has attacked them. The boys organize a hunting expedition to search for the monster. Jack and Ralph, who are increasingly at odds, travel up the mountain. They see the silhouette of the parachute from a distance and think that it looks like a huge, deformed ape. The group holds a meeting at which Jack and Ralph tell the others of the sighting. Jack says that Ralph is a coward and that he should be removed from office, but the other boys refuse to vote Ralph out of power. Jack angrily runs away down the beach, calling all the hunters to join him. Ralph rallies the remaining boys to build a new signal fire, this time on the beach rather than on the mountain. They obey, but before they have finished the task, most of them have slipped away to join Jack. Jack declares himself the leader of the new tribe of hunters and organizes a hunt and a violent, ritual slaughter of a sow to solemnize the occasion. The hunters then decapitate the sow and place its head on a sharpened stake in the jungle as an offering to the beast. Later, encountering the bloody, fly-covered head, Simon has a terrible vision, during which it seems to him that the head is speaking. The voice, which he imagines as belonging to the Lord of the Flies, says that Simon will never escape him, for he exists within all men. Simon faints. When he wakes up, he goes to the mountain, where he sees the dead parachutist. Understanding then that the beast does not exist externally but rather within each individual boy, Simon travels to the beach to tell the others what he has seen. But the others are in the midst of a chaotic revelry—even Ralph and Piggy have joined Jack's feast—and when they see Simon's shadowy figure emerge from the jungle, they fall upon him and kill him with their bare hands and teeth. The following morning, Ralph and Piggy discuss what they have done. Jack's hunters attack them and their few followers and steal Piggy's glasses in the process. Ralph's group travels to Jack's stronghold in an attempt to make Jack see reason, but Jack orders Sam and Eric tied up and fights with Ralph. In the ensuing battle, one boy, Roger, rolls a boulder down the mountain, killing Piggy and shattering the conch shell. Ralph barely manages to escape a torrent of spears. Ralph hides for the rest of the night and the following day, while the others hunt him like an animal. Jack has the other boys ignite the forest in order to smoke Ralph out of his hiding place. Ralph stays in the forest, where he discovers and destroys the sow's head, but eventually, he is forced out onto the beach, where he knows the other boys will soon arrive to kill him. Ralph collapses in exhaustion, but when he looks up, he sees a British naval officer standing over him. The officer's ship noticed the fire raging in the jungle. The other boys reach the beach and stop in their tracks at the sight of the officer. Amazed at the spectacle of this group of bloodthirsty, savage children, the officer asks Ralph to explain. Ralph is overwhelmed by the knowledge that he is safe but, thinking about what has happened on the island, he begins to weep. The other boys begin to sob as well. The officer turns his back so that the boys may regain their composure.

Preface to the Dictionary

Samuel Johnson comments on the effects that travel and trade have upon the evolution of language. In Johnson's view, the new global mingling of languages that results from commercial and leisured travel represents nothing less than an infectious linguistic threat to the English language: Total and sudden transformations of a language seldom happen; conquests and migrations are now very rare: but there are other causes of change, which, though slow in their operation, and invisible in their progress, are perhaps as much superior to human resistance as the revolutions of the sky, or intumescence of the tide. Commerce, however necessary, however lucrative, as it depraves the manners, corrupts the language; they that have frequent intercourse with strangers, to whom they endeavor to accommodate themselves, must in time learn a mingled dialect, like the jargon which serves the traffickers on the Mediterranean and Indian coasts. This will not always be confined to the exchange, the warehouse, or the port, but will be communicated by degrees to other ranks of the people, and be at last incorporated with the current speech. The words shown below — citizen, civilize, colony, commerce, curiosity, nation, national, native, pirate, privateer, savage, tour, trade, translation, travel, travels, view, voyage — represent a select lexicon that tells us something about the way in which eighteenth-century readers understood key concepts relating to travel and trade. In Johnson's Dictionary, each word is not only defined but also illustrated by the inclusion of "Examples from the best Writers." Thus, these words are not just associated with travel and trade; they are frequently defined by the way that writers in the eighteenth century and earlier eras used them in travel narratives, such as Sir Walter Raleigh's Historie of the World (1614). In turn, the examples furnished by these writers and Johnson's own explanations in the Dictionary continued to shape the way the British people perceived the objects of travel, trade, and empire.

The Gulag Archipelago

A collection of Soviet-era labor camps for political prisoners, made famous by writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. A string of prisons and labor camps scattered throughout the Soviet Union is called the gulag archipelago because its administrative title, the Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps, forms the acronym "gulag" in Russian and because its far-flung prisons and camps, with their own laws and their oppressed population of zeks(prisoners), resembles a separate country made up of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of islands. Vladimir Ilich Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the first head of the Soviet state, established this extensive prison system in 1918, ostensibly to detain and "rehabilitate" Soviet citizens suspected of anti-Soviet or counterrevolutionary activity. The system was greatly expanded by Lenin's successor, Joseph Stalin, the ironfisted ruler of the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Under Stalin, the secret police arrested millions of people, nearly all of whom received either the death sentence or lengthy prison terms in the gulag archipelago. A decorated captain of artillery in the Soviet Red Army during World War II, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is arrested for anti-Soviet activity in 1945 because he criticized Stalin in letters to a friend. Solzhenitsyn's "guilt" was already established in his letters, so the secret police interrogators try to persuade Solzhenitsyn to implicate other anti-Soviet "conspirators" rather than to confess. The interrogators use only sleep deprivation, the mildest of their thirty-one documented methods of torture. He refuses to sign the fabricated "confession" but relents when investigators threaten to begin the interrogation all over again. Sent to Butyrki prison in Moscow, he begins his eight years as a zek

Madame Bovary

a novel by Gustave Flaubert that was first published in 1856. begins when Charles Bovary is a young boy, unable to fit in at his new school and ridiculed by his new classmates. As a child, and later when he grows into a young man, Charles is mediocre and dull. He fails his first medical exam and only barely manages to become a second-rate country doctor. His mother marries him off to a widow who dies soon afterward, leaving Charles much less money than he expected. Charles soon falls in love with Emma, the daughter of a patient, and the two decide to marry. After an elaborate wedding, they set up house in Tostes, where Charles has his practice. But marriage doesn't live up to Emma's romantic expectations. Ever since she lived in a convent as a young girl, she has dreamed of love and marriage as a solution to all her problems. After she attends an extravagant ball at the home of a wealthy nobleman, she begins to dream constantly of a more sophisticated life. She grows bored and depressed when she compares her fantasies to the humdrum reality of village life, and eventually her listlessness makes her ill. When Emma becomes pregnant, Charles decides to move to a different town in hopes of reviving her health. In the new town of Yonville, the Bovarys meet Homais, the town pharmacist, a pompous windbag who loves to hear himself speak. Emma also meets Leon, a law clerk, who, like her, is bored with rural life and loves to escape through romantic novels. When Emma gives birth to her daughter Berthe, motherhood disappoints her—she had desired a son—and she continues to be despondent. Romantic feelings blossom between Emma and Leon. However, when Emma realizes that Leon loves her, she feels guilty and throws herself into the role of a dutiful wife. Leon grows tired of waiting and, believing that he can never possess Emma, departs to study law in Paris. His departure makes Emma miserable. Soon, at an agricultural fair, a wealthy neighbor named Rodolphe, who is attracted by Emma's beauty, declares his love to her. He seduces her, and they begin having a passionate affair. Emma is often indiscreet, and the townspeople all gossip about her. Charles, however, suspects nothing. His adoration for his wife and his stupidity combine to blind him to her indiscretions. His professional reputation, meanwhile, suffers a severe blow when he and Homais attempt an experimental surgical technique to treat a club-footed man named Hippolyte and end up having to call in another doctor to amputate the leg. Disgusted with her husband's incompetence, Emma throws herself even more passionately into her affair with Rodolphe. She borrows money to buy him gifts and suggests that they run off together and take little Berthe with them. Soon enough, though, the jaded and worldly Rodolphe has grown bored of Emma's demanding affections. Refusing to elope with her, he leaves her. Heartbroken, Emma grows desperately ill and nearly dies. By the time Emma recovers, Charles is in financial trouble from having to borrow money to pay off Emma's debts and to pay for her treatment. Still, he decides to take Emma to the opera in the nearby city of Rouen. There, they encounter Leon. This meeting rekindles the old romantic flame between Emma and Leon, and this time the two embark on a love affair. As Emma continues sneaking off to Rouen to meet Leon, she also grows deeper and deeper in debt to the moneylender Lheureux, who lends her more and more money at exaggerated interest rates. She grows increasingly careless in conducting her affair with Leon. As a result, on several occasions, her acquaintances nearly discover her infidelity. Over time, Emma grows bored with Leon. Not knowing how to abandon him, she instead becomes increasingly demanding. Meanwhile, her debts mount daily. Eventually, Lheureux orders the seizure of Emma's property to compensate for the debt she has accumulated. Terrified of Charles finding out, she frantically tries to raise the money that she needs, appealing to Leon and to all the town's businessmen. Eventually, she even attempts to prostitute herself by offering to get back together with Rodolphe if he will give her the money she needs. He refuses, and, driven to despair, she commits suicide by eating arsenic. She dies in horrible agony. For a while, Charles idealizes the memory of his wife. Eventually, though, he finds her letters from Rodolphe and Leon, and he is forced to confront the truth. He dies alone in his garden, and Berthe is sent off to work in a cotton mill.

The Red Wheelbarrow

William Carlos Williams so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens

Heart of Darkness

a novella by Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad about a narrated voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State in the so-called Heart of Africa. Charles Marlow, the narrator, tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames. centers around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz, reputed to be an idealistic man of great abilities. Marlow takes a job as a riverboat captain with the Company, a Belgian concern organized to trade in the Congo. As he travels to Africa and then up the Congo, Marlow encounters widespread inefficiency and brutality in the Company's stations. The native inhabitants of the region have been forced into the Company's service, and they suffer terribly from overwork and ill treatment at the hands of the Company's agents. The cruelty and squalor of imperial enterprise contrasts sharply with the impassive and majestic jungle that surrounds the white man's settlements, making them appear to be tiny islands amidst a vast darkness. Marlow arrives at the Central Station, run by the general manager, an unwholesome, conspiratorial character. He finds that his steamship has been sunk and spends several months waiting for parts to repair it. His interest in Kurtz grows during this period. The manager and his favorite, the brickmaker, seem to fear Kurtz as a threat to their position. Kurtz is rumored to be ill, making the delays in repairing the ship all the more costly. Marlow eventually gets the parts he needs to repair his ship, and he and the manager set out with a few agents (whom Marlow calls pilgrims because of their strange habit of carrying long, wooden staves wherever they go) and a crew of cannibals on a long, difficult voyage up the river. The dense jungle and the oppressive silence make everyone aboard a little jumpy, and the occasional glimpse of a native village or the sound of drums works the pilgrims into a frenzy. Marlow and his crew come across a hut with stacked firewood, together with a note saying that the wood is for them but that they should approach cautiously. Shortly after the steamer has taken on the firewood, it is surrounded by a dense fog. When the fog clears, the ship is attacked by an unseen band of natives, who fire arrows from the safety of the forest. The African helmsman is killed before Marlow frightens the natives away with the ship's steam whistle. Not long after, Marlow and his companions arrive at Kurtz's Inner Station, expecting to find him dead, but a half-crazed Russian trader, who meets them as they come ashore, assures them that everything is fine and informs them that he is the one who left the wood. The Russian claims that Kurtz has enlarged his mind and cannot be subjected to the same moral judgments as normal people. Apparently, Kurtz has established himself as a god with the natives and has gone on brutal raids in the surrounding territory in search of ivory. The collection of severed heads adorning the fence posts around the station attests to his "methods." The pilgrims bring Kurtz out of the station-house on a stretcher, and a large group of native warriors pours out of the forest and surrounds them. Kurtz speaks to them, and the natives disappear into the woods. The manager brings Kurtz, who is quite ill, aboard the steamer. A beautiful native woman, apparently Kurtz's mistress, appears on the shore and stares out at the ship. The Russian implies that she is somehow involved with Kurtz and has caused trouble before through her influence over him. The Russian reveals to Marlow, after swearing him to secrecy, that Kurtz had ordered the attack on the steamer to make them believe he was dead in order that they might turn back and leave him to his plans. The Russian then leaves by canoe, fearing the displeasure of the manager. Kurtz disappears in the night, and Marlow goes out in search of him, finding him crawling on all fours toward the native camp. Marlow stops him and convinces him to return to the ship. They set off down the river the next morning, but Kurtz's health is failing fast. Marlow listens to Kurtz talk while he pilots the ship, and Kurtz entrusts Marlow with a packet of personal documents, including an eloquent pamphlet on civilizing the savages which ends with a scrawled message that says, "Exterminate all the brutes!" The steamer breaks down, and they have to stop for repairs. Kurtz dies, uttering his last words—"The horror! The horror!"—in the presence of the confused Marlow. Marlow falls ill soon after and barely survives. Eventually he returns to Europe and goes to see Kurtz's Intended (his fiancée). She is still in mourning, even though it has been over a year since Kurtz's death, and she praises him as a paragon of virtue and achievement. She asks what his last words were, but Marlow cannot bring himself to shatter her illusions with the truth. Instead, he tells her that Kurtz's last word was her name

The Passing of Arthur

Alfred, Lord Tennyson by Sir Bedivere, the last survivor of the Round Table. One night on the march westward, Bedivere overhears Arthur lamenting in his tent. The king is perplexed and confused by recent events, the failure of the institutions he has founded, and the people whom he trusted. He speaks of his belief in God, musing: "I found Him in the shining of the stars, I mark'd Him in the flowering of His fields, But in His ways with men I find Him not.. . . for why is all around us here As if some lesser god had made the world, But had not force to shape it as he would. . . ." Arthur finally wonders whether God has forsaken him after all his efforts, and concludes: "My God, thou hast forgotten me in my death! Nay — God, my Christ — I pass but shall not die." Another night, the ghost of Gawain, killed in the war with Lancelot, comes to plague Arthur, howling: "Hollow, hollow all delight! Hail, King! to-morrow thou shalt pass away. Farewell!. . ." At this, Arthur cries out, and Bedivere tries to comfort him by reminding the king of his past glories. He points out that the rebels still recognize Arthur's sovereignty, and that he should "Arise, go forth and conquer as of old." Arthur answers that the forthcoming battle is of a different sort from any previous one. In the past, they have fought only enemies, but now they must fight his own former subjects, and: ". . . The king who fights his people fights himself. And they my knights, who loved me once, the stroke That strikes them dead is as my death to me. . . ." No matter though, Arthur continues, they must go on in whatever path destiny has outlined for them and attempt to solve each new problem as it arises. At long last, the two armies meet in the wilderness near Lyonnesse. The battle is fought under the weirdest and most terrifying conditions; the air is cold and still, and a thick white mist covers the entire field so that no one can see his adversary. Blinded by the fog, many warriors kill their own friends or relatives, and others have strange visions of ghosts and past events. The battle is savage, and many deeds of great nobility, as well as many of cowardice and evil, take place on the field. Everywhere, Arthur fights in the midst of the fierce conflict. Finally the day comes to an end. Arthur stands with Bedivere, and the two survey the heaps of hacked, bloody corpses. They are the victors, but Arthur sadly points out that he seems king only among the dead. Suddenly they notice that Modred too has survived. Arthur attacks the traitor and kills him, but Modred, as his last act, mortally wounds the king. Sir Bedivere carries the dying king to a nearby chapel and attempts to tend his wound. Arthur realizes that his end is nigh and instructs his faithful follower to take his royal sword, Excalibur, and throw it into the lake. The sword is so beautiful that Bedivere feels it should be saved as a memorial of Arthur and his ideals for later generations. Twice he pretends to have obeyed the command, and both times Arthur recognizes that Bedivere is not telling the truth. He insists that the knight carry out this one last order. Bedivere throws the sword toward the center of the lake, and an arm wrapped in white cloth reaches out to catch it. After brandishing Excalibur in the air three times, the arm draws it into the water. When Arthur hears this, he asks Bedivere to carry him to the edge of the lake. When they arrive at the shore, they see a barge draped in black slowly drawing up to them. On the deck stand three queens, dressed in black and wearing golden crowns. They lift Arthur into the barge, wash his wounds, and weep as they do. Bedivere asks Arthur what is to become of him now that the Round Table is destroyed and justice has vanished from the world. Arthur answers: "The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me? I have lived my life, and that which I have done May He within himself make pure! but thou, If thou shouldst never see my face again, Pray for my soul. . . .But now farewell. I am going a long way With these thou seest . . .To the island — valley of Avilion; Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound." The barge sails off and Arthur is never seen again. Bedivere stands watching for a long time, reliving many memories, until the boat is just a tiny dot on the horizon. He groans to himself: "The King is gone. . . . From the great deep to the great deep he goes." Bedivere slowly turns and walks away, murmuring: "He passes to be King among the dead, And after healing of his grievous wound He comes again. . . ." In the distance, Bedivere hears a sound like that of a great city's populace welcoming a king on his victorious return from the wars. He looks again and, for a moment, sees a speck that must be the barge, far off on the horizon. Then the spot sails on and disappears, "and the new sun rose bringing the new year."

Of Marriage and Single Life

Francis Bacon He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men; which, both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public. Yet it were great reason that those that have children should have greatest care of future times, unto which they know they must transmit their dearest pledges. Some there are, who, though they lead a single life, yet their thoughts do end with themselves, and account future times impertinences; nay, there are some other that account wife and children but as bills of charges; nay more, there are some foolish rich covetous men, that take a pride in having no children, because they may be thought so much the richer; for, perhaps, they have heard some talk, "Such an one's a great rich man" and another except to it. "Yea, but he hath a great charge of children;" as if it were an abatement to his riches: but the most ordinary cause of a single life is liberty, especially in certain self-pleasing and humorous minds, which are so sensible of every restraint, as they will go near to think heir girdles and garters to be bonds and shackles. Unmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants; but not always best subjects; for they are light to run away; and almost all fugitives are of that condition. A single life doth well with churchmen, for charity will hardly water the ground where it must first fill a pool. It is indifferent for judges and magistrates; for if they be facile and corrupt, you shall have a servant five times worse than a wife. For soldiers, I find the generals commonly, in their hortatives, put men in mind of their wives and children; and I think the despising of marriage among the Turks maketh the vulgar soldier more base. Certainly wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity; and single men, though they may be many times more charitable, because their means are less exhaust, yet, on the other side, they are more cruel and hardhearted, (good to make severe inquisitors,) because their tenderness is not so oft called upon. Grave natures, led by custom, and therefore constant, are commonly loving husbands, as was said of Ulysses, "vetulam suam prætulit immortalitati." Chaste women are often proud and froward, as presuming upon the merit of their chastity. It is one of the best bonds, both of chastity and obedience, in the wife, if she think her husband wise; which she will never do if she find him jealous. Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses; so as a man may have a quarrel to marry when he will: but yet he was reputed one of the wise men, that made answer to the question when a man should marry:—"A young man not yet, an elder man not at all." It is often seen, that bad husbands have very good wives; whether it be that it raiseth the price of their husband's kindness when it comes, or that the wives take a pride in their patience; but this never fails, if the bad husbands were of their own choosing, against their friends consent, for then they will be sure to make good their own folly.

Crime and Punishment

a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866.[1] It was later published in a single volume. It is the second of Dostoevsky's full-length novels following his return from 5 years of exile in Siberia. Crime and Punishment is considered the first great novel of his "mature" period of writing. Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, a former student, lives in a tiny garret on the top floor of a run-down apartment building in St. Petersburg. He is sickly, dressed in rags, short on money, and talks to himself, but he is also handsome, proud, and intelligent. He is contemplating committing an awful crime, but the nature of the crime is not yet clear. He goes to the apartment of an old pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna, to get money for a watch and to plan the crime. Afterward, he stops for a drink at a tavern, where he meets a man named Marmeladov, who, in a fit of drunkenness, has abandoned his job and proceeded on a five-day drinking binge, afraid to return home to his family. Marmeladov tells Raskolnikov about his sickly wife, Katerina Ivanovna, and his daughter, Sonya, who has been forced into prostitution to support the family. Raskolnikov walks with Marmeladov to Marmeladov's apartment, where he meets Katerina and sees firsthand the squalid conditions in which they live. The next day, Raskolnikov receives a letter from his mother, Pulcheria Alexandrovna, informing him that his sister, Dunya, is engaged to be married to a government official named Luzhin and that they are all moving to St. Petersburg. He goes to another tavern, where he overhears a student talking about how society would be better off if the old pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna were dead. Later, in the streets, Raskolnikov hears that the pawnbroker will be alone in her apartment the next evening. He sleeps fitfully and wakes up the next day, finds an ax, and fashions a fake item to pawn to distract the pawnbroker. That night, he goes to her apartment and kills her. While he is rummaging through her bedroom, looking for money, her sister, Lizaveta, walks in, and Raskolnikov kills her as well. He barely escapes from the apartment without being seen, then returns to his apartment and collapses on the sofa. Waking up the next day, Raskolnikov frantically searches his clothing for traces of blood. He receives a summons from the police, but it seems to be unrelated to the murders. At the police station, he learns that his landlady is trying to collect money that he owes her. During a conversation about the murders, Raskolnikov faints, and the police begin to suspect him. Raskolnikov returns to his room, collects the goods that he stole from the pawnbroker, and buries them under a rock in an out-of-the-way courtyard. He visits his friend Razumikhin and refuses his offer of work. Returning to his apartment, Raskolnikov falls into a fitful, nightmare-ridden sleep. After four days of fever and delirium, he wakes up to find out that his housekeeper, Nastasya, and Razumikhin have been taking care of him. He learns that Zossimov, a doctor, and Zamyotov, a young police detective, have also been visiting him. They have all noticed that Raskolnikov becomes extremely uncomfortable whenever the murders of the pawnbroker and her sister are mentioned. Luzhin, Dunya's fiancé, also makes a visit. After a confrontation with Luzhin, Raskolnikov goes to a café, where he almost confesses to Zamyotov that he is the murderer. Afterward, he impulsively goes to the apartment of the pawnbroker. On his way back home, he discovers that Marmeladov has been run over by a carriage. Raskolnikov helps to carry him back to his apartment, where Marmeladov dies. At the apartment, he meets Sonya and gives the family twenty rubles that he received from his mother. Returning with Razumikhin to his own apartment, Raskolnikov faints when he discovers that his sister and mother are there waiting for him. Raskolnikov becomes annoyed with Pulcheria Alexandrovna and Dunya and orders them out of the room. He also commands Dunya to break her engagement with Luzhin. Razumikhin, meanwhile, falls in love with Dunya. The next morning, Razumikhin tries to explain Raskolnikov's character to Dunya and Pulcheria Alexandrovna, and then the three return to Raskolnikov's apartment. There, Zossimov greets them and tells them that Raskolnikov's condition is much improved. Raskolnikov apologizes for his behavior the night before and confesses to giving all his money to the Marmeladovs. But he soon grows angry and irritable again and demands that Dunya not marry Luzhin. Dunya tells him that she is meeting with Luzhin that evening, and that although Luzhin has requested specifically that Raskolnikov not be there, she would like him to come nevertheless. Raskolnikov agrees. At that moment, Sonya enters the room, greatly embarrassed to be in the presence of Raskolnikov's family. She invites Raskolnikov to her father's funeral, and he accepts. On her way back to her apartment, Sonya is followed by a strange man, who we later learn is Svidrigailov—Dunya's lecherous former employer who is obsessively attracted to her. Under the pretense of trying to recover a watch he pawned, Raskolnikov visits the magistrate in charge of the murder investigation, Porfiry Petrovich, a relative of Razumikhin's. Zamyotov is at the detective's house when Raskolnikov arrives. Raskolnikov and Porfiry have a tense conversation about the murders. Raskolnikov starts to believe that Porfiry suspects him and is trying to lead him into a trap. Afterward, Raskolnikov and Razumikhin discuss the conversation, trying to figure out if Porfiry suspects him. When Raskolnikov returns to his apartment, he learns that a man had come there looking for him. When he catches up to the man in the street, the man calls him a murderer. That night Raskolnikov dreams about the pawnbroker's murder. When he wakes up, there is a stranger in the room. The stranger is Svidrigailov. He explains that he would like Dunya to break her engagement with Luzhin, whom he esteems unworthy of her. He offers to give Dunya the enormous sum of ten thousand rubles. He also tells Raskolnikov that his late wife, Marfa Petrovna, left Dunya three thousand rubles in her will. Raskolnikov rejects Svidrigailov's offer of money and, after hearing him talk about seeing the ghost of Marfa, suspects that he is insane. After Svidrigailov leaves, Raskolnikov and Razumikhin walk to a restaurant to meet Dunya, Pulcheria Alexandrovna, and Luzhin. Razumikhin tells Raskolnikov that he is certain that the police suspect Raskolnikov. Luzhin is insulted to find that Raskolnikov, contrary to his wishes, is in attendance at the meal. They discuss Svidrigailov's arrival in the city and the money that has been offered to Dunya. Luzhin and Raskolnikov get into an argument, during the course of which Luzhin offends everyone in the room, including his fiancée and prospective mother-in-law. Dunya breaks the engagement and forces him to leave. Everyone is overjoyed at his departure. Razumikhin starts to talk about plans to go into the publishing business as a family, but Raskolnikov ruins the mood by telling them that he does not want to see them anymore. When Raskolnikov leaves the room, Razumikhin chases him down the stairs. They stop, face-to-face, and Razumikhin realizes, without a word being spoken, that Raskolnikov is guilty of the murders. He rushes back to Dunya and Pulcheria Alexandrovna to reassure them that he will help them through whatever difficulties they encounter. Raskolnikov goes to the apartment of Sonya Marmeladov. During their conversation, he learns that Sonya was a friend of one of his victims, Lizaveta. He forces Sonya to read to him the biblical story of Lazarus, who was resurrected by Jesus. Meanwhile, Svidrigailov eavesdrops from the apartment next door. The following morning, Raskolnikov visits Porfiry Petrovich at the police department, supposedly in order to turn in a formal request for his pawned watch. As they converse, Raskolnikov starts to feel again that Porfiry is trying to lead him into a trap. Eventually, he breaks under the pressure and accuses Porfiry of playing psychological games with him. At the height of tension between them, Nikolai, a workman who is being held under suspicion for the murders, bursts into the room and confesses to the murders. On the way to Katerina Ivanovna's memorial dinner for Marmeladov, Raskolnikov meets the mysterious man who called him a murderer and learns that the man actually knows very little about the case. The scene shifts to the apartment of Luzhin and his roommate, Lebezyatnikov, where Luzhin is nursing his hatred for Raskolnikov, whom he blames for the breaking of his engagement to Dunya. Although Luzhin has been invited to Marmeladov's memorial dinner, he refuses to go. He invites Sonya to his room and gives her a ten-ruble bill. Katerina's memorial dinner goes poorly. The widow is extremely fussy and proud, but few guests have shown up, and, except for Raskolnikov, those that have are drunk and crude. Luzhin then enters the room and accuses Sonya of stealing a one-hundred-ruble bill. Sonya denies his claim, but the bill is discovered in one of her pockets. Just as everyone is about to label Sonya a thief, however, Lebezyatnikov enters and tells the room that he saw Luzhin slip the bill into Sonya's pocket as she was leaving his room. Raskolnikov explains that Luzhin was probably trying to embarrass him by discrediting Sonya. Luzhin leaves, and a fight breaks out between Katerina and her landlady. After the dinner, Raskolnikov goes to Sonya's room and confesses the murders to her. They have a long conversation about his confused motives. Sonya tries to convince him to confess to the authorities. Lebezyatnikov then enters and informs them that Katerina Ivanovna seems to have gone mad—she is parading the children in the streets, begging for money. Sonya rushes out to find them while Raskolnikov goes back to his room and talks to Dunya. He soon returns to the street and sees Katerina dancing and singing wildly. She collapses after a confrontation with a policeman and, soon after being brought back to her room, dies. Svidrigailov appears and offers to pay for the funeral and the care of the children. He reveals to Raskolnikov that he knows Raskolnikov is the murderer. Raskolnikov wanders around in a haze after his confession to Sonya and the death of Katerina. Razumikhin confronts him in his room, asking him whether he has gone mad and telling him of the pain that he has caused his mother and sister. After their conversation, Porfiry Petrovich appears and apologizes for his treatment of Raskolnikov in the police station. Nonetheless, he does not believe Nikolai's confession. He accuses Raskolnikov of the murders but admits that he does not have enough evidence to arrest him. Finally, he urges him to confess, telling him that he will receive a lighter sentence if he does so. Raskolnikov goes looking for Svidrigailov, eventually finding him in a café. Svidrigailov tells him that though he is still attracted to Dunya, he has gotten engaged to a sixteen-year-old girl. Svidrigailov parts from Raskolnikov and manages to bring Dunya to his room, where he threatens to rape her after she refuses to marry him. She fires several shots at him with a revolver and misses, but when he sees how strongly she dislikes him, he allows her to leave. He takes her revolver and wanders aimlessly around St. Petersburg. He gives three thousand rubles to Dunya, fifteen thousand rubles to the family of his fiancée, and then books a room in a hotel. He sleeps fitfully and dreams of a flood and a seductive five-year-old girl. In the morning, he kills himself. Raskolnikov, who is visiting his mother, tells her that he will always love her and then returns to his room, where he tells Dunya that he is planning to confess. After she leaves, he goes to visit Sonya, who gives him a cross to wear. On the way to the police station, he stops in a marketplace and kisses the ground. He almost pulls back from confessing when he reaches the police station and learns of Svidrigailov's suicide. The sight of Sonya, however, convinces him to go through with it, and he confesses to one of the police officials, Ilya Petrovich. A year and a half later, Raskolnikov is in prison in Siberia, where he has been for nine months. Sonya has moved to the town outside the prison, and she visits Raskolnikov regularly and tries to ease his burden. Because of his confession, his mental confusion surrounding the murders, and testimony about his past good deeds, he has received, instead of a death sentence, a reduced sentence of eight years of hard labor in Siberia. After Raskolnikov's arrest, his mother became delirious and died. Razumikhin and Dunya were married. For a short while, Raskolnikov remains as proud and alienated from humanity as he was before his confession, but he eventually realizes that he truly loves Sonya and expresses remorse for his crime.

Lord Jim

novel by Joseph Conrad originally published as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine from October 1899 to November 1900. An early and primary event in the story is the abandonment of a passenger ship in distress by its crew, including a young British seaman named Jim. He is publicly censured for this action and the novel follows his later attempts at coming to terms with himself and his past. Recovered from an injury, Jim seeks a position on the Patna, a steamer serving the transport of 800 "pilgrims of an exacting belief" to a port on the Red Sea. He is hired as first mate. After some days of smooth sailing, the ship hits something in the night and begins taking on water. The captain thinks the ship will sink, and Jim agrees, but wants to put the passengers on the few boats before that can happen. The captain and two other crewmen think only to save themselves, and prepare to lower a boat. The helmsmen remain, as no order has been given to do otherwise. In a crucial moment, Jim jumps into the boat with the captain. A few days later, they are picked up by an outbound steamer. When they reach port, they learn that the Patna and its passengers were brought in safely by a crew from a French navy ship. The captain's actions in abandoning both ship and passengers are against the code of seamen and the crew is publicly vilified. When the other men leave town before the magistrate's court can be convened, Jim is the only crew member left to testify. All lose their certificates to sail. Brierly, a captain of perfect reputation who is on the panel of the court, commits suicide days after the trial. Captain Charles Marlow attends the trial and meets Jim, whose behavior he condemns, but the young man intrigues him. Wracked with guilt, Jim confesses his shame to Marlow, who finds him a place to live in a friend's home. Jim is accepted there but leaves abruptly when an engineer who had also abandoned the ship appears to work at the house. Jim then finds work as a ship chandler's clerk in ports of the East Indies, always succeeding in the job then leaving abruptly when the Patna is mentioned. In Bangkok, he gets in a fistfight. Marlow realises that Jim needs a new situation, something that will take him far away from modern ports and keep him occupied so that he can finally forget his guilt. Marlow consults his friend Stein, who sees that Jim is a romantic and considers his situation. Stein offers Jim to be his trade representative or factor in Patusan, a village on a remote island shut off from most commerce, which Jim finds to be exactly what he needs. After his initial challenge of entering the settlement of native Malay and Bugispeople, Jim manages to earn their respect by relieving them of the depredations of the bandit Sherif Ali and protecting them from the corrupt local Malay chief, Rajah Tunku Allang. He builds a solid link with Doramin, the Bugis friend of Stein, and his son Dain Waris. For his leadership, the people call him "tuan Jim", or Lord Jim. Jim also wins the love of Jewel, a young woman of mixed race, and is "satisfied... nearly". Marlow visits Patusan once, two years after Jim arrived there, and sees his success. Jewel does not believe that Jim will stay, as her father left her mother, and she is not reassured that Marlow or any other will not arrive to take him from her. Her mother had been married before her death to Cornelius, previously given the factor's role by Stein for her benefit. Cornelius is a lazy, jealous, and brutal man who treats his stepdaughter cruelly and steals the supplies Stein sends for sale; he is displaced by Jim's arrival and resents him for it. "Gentleman" Brown, a marauder captain notorious for his evil ways, then arrives in Patusan, his small crew on the brink of starvation. The local defence led by Dain Waris manages to prevent the marauders from looting the village and holds them entrenched in place while Jim is away in the island's interior. When Jim returns, Brown deceptively wins Jim's mercy, who hesitantly negotiates to allow them to leave Patusan unobstructed, but reminds Brown that the long passage down river to the sea will be guarded by armed men. Cornelius sees his chance to get rid of Jim. He tells Brown of a side channel that will bypass most of the defenses, which Brown uses, stopping briefly to ambush the defenders he finds. Dain Waris is killed among others, and Brown sails on, leaving Cornelius behind; Jim's man Tamb' Itam kills Cornelius for his betrayal. Jim is mortified when he receives word of the death of his good friend, and resolves to leave Patusan. Jewel, who had wanted Jim to attack Brown and his ship, is distraught. Jim then goes directly to Doramin and takes responsibility for the death of his only son. Doramin uses his flintlock pistols, given him by Stein, to shoot Jim in the chest. On his regular route, Marlow arrives at Stein's house a few days after this event, finding Jewel and Tamb' Itam there, and tries to make sense of what happened. Jewel stays in Stein's house.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain, 1884 opens by familiarizing us with the events of the novel that preceded it, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Both novels are set in the town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, which lies on the banks of the Mississippi River. At the end of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, a poor boy with a drunken bum for a father, and his friend Tom Sawyer, a middle-class boy with an imagination too active for his own good, found a robber's stash of gold. As a result of his adventure, Huck gained quite a bit of money, which the bank held for him in trust. Huck was adopted by the Widow Douglas, a kind but stifling woman who lives with her sister, the self-righteous Miss Watson. As Huckleberry Finn opens, Huck is none too thrilled with his new life of cleanliness, manners, church, and school. However, he sticks it out at the bequest of Tom Sawyer, who tells him that in order to take part in Tom's new "robbers' gang," Huck must stay "respectable." All is well and good until Huck's brutish, drunken father, Pap, reappears in town and demands Huck's money. The local judge, Judge Thatcher, and the Widow try to get legal custody of Huck, but another well-intentioned new judge in town believes in the rights of Huck's natural father and even takes the old drunk into his own home in an attempt to reform him. This effort fails miserably, and Pap soon returns to his old ways. He hangs around town for several months, harassing his son, who in the meantime has learned to read and to tolerate the Widow's attempts to improve him. Finally, outraged when the Widow Douglas warns him to stay away from her house, Pap kidnaps Huck and holds him in a cabin across the river from St. Petersburg. Whenever Pap goes out, he locks Huck in the cabin, and when he returns home drunk, he beats the boy. Tired of his confinement and fearing the beatings will worsen, Huck escapes from Pap by faking his own death, killing a pig and spreading its blood all over the cabin. Hiding on Jackson's Island in the middle of the Mississippi River, Huck watches the townspeople search the river for his body. After a few days on the island, he encounters Jim, one of Miss Watson's slaves. Jim has run away from Miss Watson after hearing her talk about selling him to a plantation down the river, where he would be treated horribly and separated from his wife and children. Huck and Jim team up, despite Huck's uncertainty about the legality or morality of helping a runaway slave. While they camp out on the island, a great storm causes the Mississippi to flood. Huck and Jim spy a log raft and a house floating past the island. They capture the raft and loot the house, finding in it the body of a man who has been shot. Jim refuses to let Huck see the dead man's face. Although the island is blissful, Huck and Jim are forced to leave after Huck learns from a woman onshore that her husband has seen smoke coming from the island and believes that Jim is hiding out there. Huck also learns that a reward has been offered for Jim's capture. Huck and Jim start downriver on the raft, intending to leave it at the mouth of the Ohio River and proceed up that river by steamboat to the free states, where slavery is prohibited. Several days' travel takes them past St. Louis, and they have a close encounter with a gang of robbers on a wrecked steamboat. They manage to escape with the robbers' loot. During a night of thick fog, Huck and Jim miss the mouth of the Ohio and encounter a group of men looking for escaped slaves. Huck has a brief moral crisis about concealing stolen "property"—Jim, after all, belongs to Miss Watson—but then lies to the men and tells them that his father is on the raft suffering from smallpox. Terrified of the disease, the men give Huck money and hurry away. Unable to backtrack to the mouth of the Ohio, Huck and Jim continue downriver. The next night, a steamboat slams into their raft, and Huck and Jim are separated. Huck ends up in the home of the kindly Grangerfords, a family of Southern aristocrats locked in a bitter and silly feud with a neighboring clan, the Shepherdsons. The elopement of a Grangerford daughter with a Shepherdson son leads to a gun battle in which many in the families are killed. While Huck is caught up in the feud, Jim shows up with the repaired raft. Huck hurries to Jim's hiding place, and they take off down the river. A few days later, Huck and Jim rescue a pair of men who are being pursued by armed bandits. The men, clearly con artists, claim to be a displaced English duke (the duke) and the long-lost heir to the French throne (the dauphin). Powerless to tell two white adults to leave, Huck and Jim continue down the river with the pair of "aristocrats." The duke and the dauphin pull several scams in the small towns along the river. Coming into one town, they hear the story of a man, Peter Wilks, who has recently died and left much of his inheritance to his two brothers, who should be arriving from England any day. The duke and the dauphin enter the town pretending to be Wilks's brothers. Wilks's three nieces welcome the con men and quickly set about liquidating the estate. A few townspeople become skeptical, and Huck, who grows to admire the Wilks sisters, decides to thwart the scam. He steals the dead Peter Wilks's gold from the duke and the dauphin but is forced to stash it in Wilks's coffin. Huck then reveals all to the eldest Wilks sister, Mary Jane. Huck's plan for exposing the duke and the dauphin is about to unfold when Wilks's real brothers arrive from England. The angry townspeople hold both sets of Wilks claimants, and the duke and the dauphin just barely escape in the ensuing confusion. Fortunately for the sisters, the gold is found. Unfortunately for Huck and Jim, the duke and the dauphin make it back to the raft just as Huck and Jim are pushing off. After a few more small scams, the duke and dauphin commit their worst crime yet: they sell Jim to a local farmer, telling him Jim is a runaway for whom a large reward is being offered. Huck finds out where Jim is being held and resolves to free him. At the house where Jim is a prisoner, a woman greets Huck excitedly and calls him "Tom." As Huck quickly discovers, the people holding Jim are none other than Tom Sawyer's aunt and uncle, Silas and Sally Phelps. The Phelpses mistake Huck for Tom, who is due to arrive for a visit, and Huck goes along with their mistake. He intercepts Tom between the Phelps house and the steamboat dock, and Tom pretends to be his own younger brother, Sid. Tom hatches a wild plan to free Jim, adding all sorts of unnecessary obstacles even though Jim is only lightly secured. Huck is sure Tom's plan will get them all killed, but he complies nonetheless. After a seeming eternity of pointless preparation, during which the boys ransack the Phelps's house and make Aunt Sally miserable, they put the plan into action. Jim is freed, but a pursuer shoots Tom in the leg. Huck is forced to get a doctor, and Jim sacrifices his freedom to nurse Tom. All are returned to the Phelps's house, where Jim ends up back in chains. When Tom wakes the next morning, he reveals that Jim has actually been a free man all along, as Miss Watson, who made a provision in her will to free Jim, died two months earlier. Tom had planned the entire escape idea all as a game and had intended to pay Jim for his troubles. Tom's Aunt Polly then shows up, identifying "Tom" and "Sid" as Huck and Tom. Jim tells Huck, who fears for his future—particularly that his father might reappear—that the body they found on the floating house off Jackson's Island had been Pap's. Aunt Sally then steps in and offers to adopt Huck, but Huck, who has had enough "sivilizing," announces his plan to set out for the West.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Wallace Stevens Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month's newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb. Let the lamp affix its beam. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

This is Just to Say

William Carlos Williams I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

Invisible Man

a novel by Ralph Ellison, published by Random House in 1952. It addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African Americans early in the twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity. The narrator, an unnamed black man, begins by describing his living conditions: an underground room wired with hundreds of electric lights, operated by power stolen from the city's electric grid. He reflects on the various ways in which he has experienced social invisibility during his life and begins to tell his story, returning to his teenage years. The narrator lives in a small Southern town and, upon graduating from high school, wins a scholarship to an all-black college. However, to receive it, he must first take part in a brutal, humiliating battle royal for the entertainment of the town's rich white dignitaries. One afternoon during his junior year at the college, the narrator chauffeurs Mr. Norton, a visiting rich white trustee, out among the old slave-quarters beyond the campus. By chance, he stops at the cabin of Jim Trueblood, who has caused a scandal by impregnating both his wife and his daughter in his sleep. Trueblood's account horrifies Mr. Norton so badly that he asks the narrator to find him a drink. The narrator drives him to a bar filled with prostitutes and patients from a nearby mental hospital. The mental patients rail against both of them and eventually overwhelm the orderly assigned to keep the patients under control. The narrator hurries an injured Mr. Norton away from the chaotic scene and back to campus. Dr. Bledsoe, the college president, excoriates the narrator for showing Mr. Norton the underside of black life beyond the campus and expels him. However, Bledsoe gives several sealed letters of recommendation to the narrator, to be delivered to friends of the college in order to assist him in finding a job so that he may eventually re-enroll. The narrator travels to New York and distributes his letters, with no success; the son of one recipient shows him the letter, which reveals Bledsoe's intent to never admit the narrator as a student again. Acting on the son's suggestion, the narrator seeks work at the Liberty Paint factory, renowned for its pure white paint. He is assigned first to the shipping department, then to the boiler room, whose chief attendant, Lucius Brockway, is highly paranoid and suspects that the narrator is trying to take his job. This distrust worsens after the narrator stumbles into a unionmeeting, and Brockway attacks the narrator and tricks him into setting off an explosion in the boiler room. The narrator is hospitalized and subjected to shock treatment, overhearing the doctors' discussion of him as a possible mental patient. After leaving the hospital, the narrator faints on the streets of Harlem and is taken in by Mary Rambo, a kindly old-fashioned woman who reminds him of his relatives in the South. He later happens across the eviction of an elderly black couple and makes an impassioned speech that incites the crowd to attack the law enforcement officials in charge of the proceedings. The narrator escapes over the rooftops and is confronted by Brother Jack, the leader of a group known as "the Brotherhood" that professes its commitment to bettering conditions in Harlem and the rest of the world. At Jack's urging, the narrator agrees to join and speak at rallies to spread the word among the black community. Using his new salary, he pays Mary the back rent he owes her and moves into an apartment provided by the Brotherhood. The rallies go smoothly at first, with the narrator receiving extensive indoctrination on the Brotherhood's ideology and methods. Soon, though, he encounters trouble from Ras the Exhorter, a fanatical black nationalist who believes that the Brotherhood is controlled by whites. Neither the narrator nor Tod Clifton, a youth leader within the Brotherhood, is particularly swayed by his words. The narrator is later called before a meeting of the Brotherhood and accused of putting his own ambitions ahead of the group. He is reassigned to another part of the city to address issues concerning women, seduced by the wife of a Brotherhood member, and eventually called back to Harlem when Clifton is reported missing and the Brotherhood's membership and influence begin to falter. The narrator can find no trace of Clifton at first, but soon discovers him selling dancing Sambo dolls on the street, having become disillusioned with the Brotherhood. Clifton is shot and killed by a policeman while resisting arrest; at his funeral, the narrator delivers a rousing speech that rallies the crowd to support the Brotherhood again. At an emergency meeting, Jack and the other Brotherhood leaders criticize the narrator for his unscientific arguments and the narrator determines that the group has no real interest in the black community's problems. The narrator returns to Harlem, trailed by Ras's men, and buys a hat and a pair of sunglasses to elude them. As a result, he is repeatedly mistaken for a man named Rinehart, known as a lover, a hipster, a gambler, a briber, and a spiritual leader. Understanding that Rinehart has adapted to white society at the cost of his own identity, the narrator resolves to undermine the Brotherhood by feeding them dishonest information concerning the Harlem membership and situation. After seducing the wife of one member in a fruitless attempt to learn their new activities, he discovers that riots have broken out in Harlem due to widespread unrest. He realizes that the Brotherhood has been counting on such an event in order to further its own aims. The narrator gets mixed up with a gang of looters, who burn down a tenement building, and wanders away from them to find Ras, now on horseback, armed with a spear and shield, and calling himself "the Destroyer." Ras shouts for the crowd to lynch the narrator, but the narrator attacks him with the spear and escapes into an underground coal bin. Two white men seal him in, leaving him alone to ponder the racism he has experienced in his life. The epilogue returns to the present, with the narrator stating that he is ready to return to the world because he has spent enough time hiding from it. He explains that he has told his story in order to help people see past his own invisibility, and also to provide a voice for people with a similar plight: "Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?"

The Hunger Artist

a short story by Franz Kafka first published in Die neue Rundschau in 1922. explores the familiar Kafka themes of death, art, isolation, asceticism, spiritual poverty, futility, personal failure and the corruption of human relationships. PlotEdit "A Hunger Artist" is told retrospectively through third-person narration. The narrator looks back several decades from "today", to a time when the public marvelled at the professional hunger artist, a public performer who fasts for many days. It then depicts the waning interest in such displays. The story begins with a general description of "the hunger artist" and then narrows in on a single performer, the protagonist. The hunger artist performed in a cage for the curious spectators, and was attended by teams of watchers (usually three butchers) who ensured that he was not secretly eating. Despite such precautions, many, including some of the watchers themselves, were convinced that the hunger artist cheated. Such suspicions annoyed the hunger artist, as did the forty-day limit imposed on his fasting by his promoter, or "impresario". The impresario insisted that after forty days public sympathy for the hunger artist inevitably declined. The hunger artist, however, found the time limit irksome and arbitrary, as it prevented him from bettering his own record, from fasting indefinitely. At the end of a fast the hunger artist, amid highly theatrical fanfare, would be carried from his cage and made to eat, both of which he always resented. These performances, followed by intervals of recuperation, were repeated for many years. Despite his fame, the hunger artist felt dissatisfied and misunderstood. If a spectator, observing his apparent melancholy, tried to console him, he would erupt in fury, shaking the bars of his cage. The impresario would punish such outbursts by apologizing to the audience, pointing out that irritability was a consequence of fasting. He would then mention the hunger artist's boast that he could fast much longer than he was doing, but would show photographs of the hunger artist near death at the end of a previous fast. In this way he suggested that the hunger artist's sadness and poor physique was caused by fasting, when, in the hunger artist's view, he was depressed because of the premature cessation of his fasts. The impresario's "perversion of the truth" further exasperated the hunger artist. Seemingly overnight, popular tastes changed and public fasting went out of fashion. The hunger artist broke his ties with the impresario and hired himself to a circus, where he hoped to perform truly prodigious feats of fasting. No longer a main attraction, he was given a cage on the outskirts of the circus, near the animal cages. Although the site was readily accessible, and crowds thronged past on their way to see the animals, any spectators who stopped to see him created an obstruction in the flow of people on their way to the animals. At first the hunger artist looked forward to the passing of the crowds, but in time he grew irritated by the noise and disruption caused by the people, and the stench, the roaring, and the feeding of the animals depressed him. Eventually, the hunger artist was completely ignored. No one, not even the artist himself, counted the days of his fast. One day an overseer noticed the hunger artist's cage with its dirty straw. He wondered why the cage was unused; when he and the attendants inspected it, however, they found the hunger artist near death. Before he died he asked forgiveness and confessed that he should not be admired, since the reason he fasted was simply that he could not find food to his liking. The hunger artist was buried with the straw of his cage and replaced by a panther. Spectators crowded about the panther's cage because the panther took so much joy in life, unlike the hunger artist. The story also mentions that the panther was always brought the food he liked, a hint to the readers that can be interpreted in many ways.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

A homespun account by Benjamin Franklin of his early and middle years. He advocates hard work and stresses the importance of worldly success. Benjamin Franklin was the youngest son and 15th of 17 children of Josiah Franklin, a soap and candle maker who had immigrated to Boston from Northamptonshire, England. Because he disliked his father's trade but loved reading, he was apprenticed at the age of 12 to his brother James, a printer. He and James often disagreed, and finally Benjamin quit before his contract had expired. Looking for work, he went first to New York and then to Philadelphia, where he was hired by Samuel Keimer. Governor Keith of Pennsylvania was impressed with Franklin and offered to set him up in business. Assuming that Keith had placed letters of credit for him on board his ship, Franklin sailed for England to purchase his printing equipment, only to find that no such letters had been written. He therefore was forced to spend several months working in a London printing house. But he returned home when a merchant named Denham offered him a good job as clerk and manager of Denham's Philadelphia store. A few months after they landed, however, Denham died, and Keimer rehired Franklin as his manager. Eventually Franklin set up a printing shop with one of the men he had trained at Keimer's, Hugh Meredith. Later he bought Meredith's share and found himself in business alone. He "married" the girl whom he had courted before leaving for England, Deborah Read, and the two prospered. Franklin secured many valuable orders through his job as clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly. From his early years, Franklin constantly struggled to improve himself. This passion culminated in a plan to attain perfection in 13 weeks, by unlearning bad habits and acquiring the 13 virtues Franklin felt most important, one each week. He also outlined a perfect day, allotting each necessary activity its proper amount of time. But Franklin's passion for improvement was not spent exclusively upon himself. Public projects to which he turned his attention included Philadelphia's first public library, fire company, public academy, philosophical society, militia, defense system, and hospital. Besides these projects, he helped improve the city's police system and its streets (which he advocated paving), and devised a more equitable tax system. The Autobiography ends as Franklin wins his first skirmish while serving as Pennsylvania's agent in England. Thus his account brings the reader to the point at which Franklin's activity becomes international in scope and the proper concern of professional historians.

The Eagle

Alfred, Lord Tennyson He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ring'd with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Inferno

Italian for "Hell") is the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. It is followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso. The Inferno tells the journey of Dante through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth; it is the "realm ... of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen".[1] As an allegory, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul toward God, with the Inferno describing the recognition and rejection of sin.

The Lord of the Rings

J.R.R. Tolkien When Tolkien first published his magnum opus,The Lord of the Rings, early reviews seemed oddly mixed, and yet, the trilogy is now widely accepted as the beginning of all modern fantasy, winning awards all over the globe, including several countries' "best-loved book." In 1999, Amazon customers declared The Lord of the Rings as their favourite book of the millennium. Originally written as one immense tome, for publishing purposes it was divided into three texts: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, the first of which is covered here. The Fellowship of the Ring is the book that began a legend. It has been the reference of every fantasy or epic book to come after; it, like Shakespeare, invented whole languages, such as Elvish, and words, such as Tolkienian, that are now canon in the Oxford English Dictionary. Religions, languages, and myths (notably Norse mythology) from all over the world influenced the novel, and though denied, it clearly took inspiration from Tolkien's real experience in WWI. It is the catalyst that created fantasy role-playing games(Dungeons and Dragons), influenced music (numerous explicit Led Zeppelin references and at least one Black Sabbath song to name a few), and endless references in pop culture to this day. Thematically it would be impossible to list everything, but significant themes include: race, social class, religion, good versus evil, morality, catholic ideals, conservatism, the monomyth, friendship and loyalty, and home. The Fellowship of the Ring, and the entire masterpiece of The Lord of the Rings, is easily one of the most famous modern novels of all time. Bilbo Baggins throws a party on his"eleventy-first"(111th) birthday, where he announces he is leaving the Shire for what he calls a permanent holiday. He is leaving all of his belongings to his young cousin, heir, and fellow birthday boy, Frodo. After disappearing mysteriously in a puff of smoke, Bilbo meets Gandalf the Grey, a powerful wizard and close friend, who insists Bilbo leave the Ring to Frodo. Bilbo does not want to give up his most cherished possession, which he found during his adventures, chronicled in The Hobbit. The most obvious power the Ring has is invisibility to the wearer, but Gandalf suspects it to be the very dangerous Ring of Sauron, the Dark Lord. Bilbo reluctantly agrees, and leaves. Gandalf then warns Frodo to keep the Ring a secret, and leaves to find out more information. Frodo lives at Bag End for many years, seemingly without aging, as Bilbo had lived. One day,Gandalf appears to warn Frodo about his confirmed suspicions, including the corrupting power of the One Ring. Sauron is after the Ring to conquer the world, and has sent Gollum and many other frightening creatures to search for it. The Ring will always destroy and corrupt the wearer and anyone close by, Gandalf says, but Frodo can and must destroy it by throwing it into the volcano at Mount Orodruin. It cannot be done by anyone else because it is Frodo's fate. Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin (fellow hobbit friends) set out, and are pursued by Sauron's Black Riders, or Nazgûl, bodiless evil horsemen. In the village of Bree, the hobbits meet and team up with a man who calls himself Strider. They do not trust him until they receive a letter from Gandalf. Strider reveals his real name is Aragorn, a friend of Gandalf and heir to Isildur. They travel to Rivendell, eluding the Ringwraiths, where Elrond saves them. Frodo is reunited with Bilbo, who finally understands the danger of the Ring. There is a council to discuss what to do with the Ring, during which Gandalf explains his visit to Isengard. He asked for Saruman's help, but the great wizard has been corrupted by Sauron's evil. The council decides the Ring must be destroyed because of its intrinsic evil, and the Company of the Ring is formed.The group consists of two men, Aragorn and Boromir; an Elf, Legolas; the great wizard, Gandalf; the Dwarf, Gimli; and the four hobbits. Bill the Pony comes too. When the group's plan to cross over the Misty Mountains fails because of heavy storms, they have no choice but to take a dangerous path under the mountains, through the ancient Dwarf mines of Moria. They are attacked by Orcs and must flee, but just before they escape, they encounter a Balrog, an evil demon of fire and shadow. Gandalf turns to defend them, but both the wizard and the demon fall into an abyss. The group continues on. In the Elf-haven of Lothlorien, Lady Galadriel of the Elves gives them magical items to help them. After leaving Lothlorien, the group plans its next move. Boromir, clearly corrupted by the Ring's dark power, says Frodo should give the Ring to his father, and thus fight the evil Sauron. Boromir tries to take the ring for himself, and Frodo puts on the Ring to escape and disappear. Boromir is suddenly ashamed of his actions; he had been under the power of the Ring, but understands his error. He admits to the rest of the Fellowship what he did, and they search for Frodo frantically. Frodo, however, has fled, believing the burden of the Ring must be his and his alone. Demonstrating an understanding of his friend that the others clearly did not possess, Sam finds Frodo and refuses to leave his side. The two hobbits continue down the river in a little boat. They are more determined than ever to destroy the Ring. The action continues in the second book, The Two Towers.

Tom Jones

a novel by Henry Fielding that was first published in 1749. The distinguished country gentleman Allworthy, who lives in Somersetshire with his unmarried sister Bridget Allworthy, arrives home from a trip to London to discover a baby boy in is bed. Allworthy undertakes to uncover the mother and father of this foundling, and finds local woman Jenny Jones and her tutor, Mr. Partridge, guilty. Allworthy sends Jenny away from the county, and the poverty-stricken Partridge leaves of his own accord. In spite of the criticism of the parish, Allworthy decides to bring up the boy. Soon after, Bridget marries Captain Blifil, a visitor at Allworthy's estate, and gives birth to a son of her own, named Blifil. Captain Blifil regards Tom Jones with jealousy, since he wishes his son to inherit all of Allworthy possessions. While meditating on money matters, Captain Blifil falls dead of an apoplexy. The narrator skips forward twelve years. Blifil and Tom Jones have been brought up together, but receive vastly different treatment from the other members of the household. Allworthy is the only person who shows consistent affection for Tom. The philosopher Square and the reverend Thwackum, the boys' tutors, despise Tom and adore Blifil, since Tom is wild and Blifil is pious. Tom frequently steals apples and ducks to support the family of Black George, one of Allworthy's servants. Tom tells all of his secrets to Blifil, who then relates these to Thwackum or Allworthy, thereby getting Tom into trouble. The people of the parish, hearing of Tom's generosity to Black George, begin to speak kindly of Tom while condemning Blifil for his sneakiness. Tom spends much time with Squire Western—Allworthy's neighbor—since the Squire is impressed by Tom's sportsmanship. Sophia Western, Squire Western's daughter, falls deeply in love with Tom. Tom has already bestowed his affection on Molly Seagrim, the poor but feisty daughter of Black George. When Molly becomes pregnant, Tom prevents Allworthy from sending Molly to prison by admitting that he has fathered her child. Tom, at first oblivious to Sophia's charms and beauty, falls deeply in love with her, and begins to resent his ties to Molly. Yet he remains with Molly out of honor. Tom's commitment to Molly ends when he discovers that she has been having affairs, which means Tom is not the father of her child and frees him to confess his feelings to Sophia. Allworthy falls gravely ill and summons his family and friends to be near him. He reads out his will, which states that Blifil will inherit most of his estate, although Tom is also provided for. Thwackum and Square are upset that they are each promised only a thousand pounds. Tom experiences great emotion at Allworthy's illness and barely leaves his bedside. A lawyer named Dowling arrives and announces the sudden and unexpected death of Bridget Allworthy. When the doctor announces that Allworthy will not die, Tom rejoices and gets drunk on both joy and alcohol. Blifil calls Tom a "bastard" and Tom retaliates by hitting him. Tom, after swearing eternal constancy to Sophia, encounters Molly by chance and makes love to her. Mrs. Western, the aunt with whom Sophia spent much of her youth, comes to stay at her brother's house. She and the Squire fight constantly, but they unite over Mrs. Western's plan to marry Sophia to Blifil. Mrs. Western promises not to reveal Sophia's love for Tom as long as Sophia submits to receiving Blifil as a suitor. Blifil thus begins his courtship of Sophia, and brags so much about his progress that Allworthy believes that Sophia must love Blifil. Sophia, however, strongly opposes the proposal, and Squire Western grows violent with her. Blifil tells Allworthy that Tom is a rascal who cavorted drunkenly about the house, and Allworthy banishes Tom from the county. Tom does not want to leave Sophia, but decides that he must follow the honorable path. Tom begins to wander about the countryside. In Bristol, he happens to meet up with Partridge, who becomes his loyal servant. Tom also rescues a Mrs. Waters from being robbed, and they begin an affair at a local inn. Sophia, who has run away from Squire Western's estate to avoid marrying Blifil, stops at this inn and discovers that Tom is having an affair with Mrs. Waters. She leaves her muff in Tom's bed so that he knows she has been there. When Tom finds the muff, he frantically sets out in pursuit of Sophia. The Irishman Fitzpatrick arrives at the inn searching for his wife, and Western arrives searching for Sophia. On the way to London, Sophia rides with her cousin Harriet, who is also Fitzpatrick's wife. In London, Sophia stays with her lady relative Lady Bellaston. Tom and Partridge arrive in London soon after, and they stay in the house of Mrs. Miller and her daughters, one of whom is named Nancy. A young gentleman called Nightingale also inhabits the house, and Tom soon realizes that he and Nancy are in love. Nancy falls pregnant and Tom convinces Nightingale to marry her. Lady Bellaston and Tom begin an affair, although Tom privately, continues to pursue Sophia. When he and Sophia are reconciled, Tom breaks off the relationship with Lady Bellaston by sending her a marriage proposal that scares her away. Yet Lady Bellaston is still determined not to allow Sophia and Tom's love to flourish. She encourages anoter young man, Lord Fellamar, to rape Sophia. Soon after, Squire Western, Mrs. Western, Blifil, and Allworthy arrive in London, and Squire Western locks Sophia in her bedroom. Mr. Fitzpatrick thinks Tom is his wife's lover and begins a duel with Tom. In defending himself, Tom stabs Fitzpatrick with the sword and is thrown into jail. Partridge visits Tom in jail with the ghastly news that Mrs. Waters is Jenny Jones, Tom's mother. Mrs. Waters meets with Allworthy and explains that Fitzpatrick is still alive, and has admitted to initiating the duel. She also tells Allworthy that a lawyer acting on behalf of an unnamed gentleman tried to persuade her to conspire against Tom. Allworthy realizes that Blifil is this very gentleman, and he decides never to speak to him again. Tom, however, takes pity on Blifil and provides him with an annuity. Mrs. Waters also reveals that Tom's mother was Bridget Allworthy. Square sends Allworthy a letter explaining that Tom's conduct during Allworthy's illness was honorable and compassionate. Tom is released from jail and he and Allworthy are reunited as nephew and uncle. Mrs. Miller explains to Sophia the reasons for Tom's marriage proposal to Lady Bellaston, and Sophia is satisfied. Now that Tom is Allworthy's heir, Squire Western eagerly encourages the marriage between Tom and Sophia. Sophia chastises Tom for his lack of chastity, but agrees to marry him. They live happily on Western's estate with two children, and shower everyone around them with kindness and generosity.

Crossing the Bar

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar.

The Long Love that in My Thought Doth Harbor

BY SIR THOMAS WYATT The longë love that in my thought doth harbour And in mine hert doth keep his residence, Into my face presseth with bold pretence And therein campeth, spreading his banner. She that me learneth to love and suffer And will that my trust and lustës negligence Be rayned by reason, shame, and reverence, With his hardiness taketh displeasure. Wherewithall unto the hert's forest he fleeth, Leaving his enterprise with pain and cry, And there him hideth and not appeareth. What may I do when my master feareth But in the field with him to live and die? For good is the life ending faithfully.

On Creativity and the Unconscious

Freud's important essays on the many expressions of creativity—including art, literature, love, dreams, and spirituality. This diverse collection includes "The 'Uncanny,'" "The Moses of Michelangelo," "The Psychology of Love," "The Relation of the Poet to Day-Dreaming," "On War and Death," and "Dreams and Telepathy.,"

The Loved One

1948 satirical novella written by famed British author Evelyn Waugh. Set in 1940s Hollywood, the story revolves around the macabre exploits of British poet-cum-screenwriter Dennis Barlow. After losing his studio contract, Dennis careens back and forth between his job at Happier Hunting Ground pet cemetery and the Whispering Glades funeral home, tending the corpses of both humans and animals. Upon courting a female cosmetician named Aimee Thanatogenos, Dennis becomes embroiled in a sordid love triangle with Aimee and her distinguished employer, Mr. Joyboy. Loosely adapted into a feature film in 1965, The Loved One is a mordant satire on British expatriation, the pomp and pretense of the Hollywood film industry, and the cruel commercialism of the American funerary business. Narrated in the third-person dramatic POV, the story commences in Hollywood, California. Posh British thespian Sir Ambrose Abercrombie visits the house of Dennis Barlow and his publicist roommate Francis Hinsley. Dennis, a British emigrant and poet-cum-screenwriter, has just been relieved of his contract at Megalopolitan Studios. Dennis has since taken a position at Happier Hunting Grounds, a cemetery and funeral parlor for deceased pets. Abercrombie expresses his dismay, declaring such a job reflects poorly on the British community back home. Undeterred, Dennis gets a call from a Ms. Heinkel, soliciting his services for her dead dog Arthur. Dennis arrives at Ms. Heinkel's place, negotiates the funeral arrangements, and stores Arthur's corpse back at Happier Hunting Grounds. Weeks after, Hinsley continues to struggle at Megalopolitan Studios. Tasked with reimaging the visage of screen idol Juanita del Pablo from "Spanish to Irish," the job proves too difficult for Hinsley. The studio forces him to leave the premises and work from home. When his secretary stops showing up for work, Hinsley confronts studio brass. He learns his contract has been terminated and that a younger publicist has replaced him. Hinsley grows deeply depressed and hangs himself. When Dennis discovers Hinsley's corpse, Abercrombie advises him to make funeral arrangements at Whispering Glades. Abercrombie, ever-obsessed with maintaining an upscale English reputation, discusses with fellow British expats about Dennis' scurrilous choice to eschew Hollywood for the cemetery. While at Whispering Glades, Dennis greets and becomes instantly infatuated with the junior cosmetician, Aimee Thanatogenos (Aimee means "loved one" in French and Thanatogenos means "born of death" in Greek). Dennis and Aimee discuss how Hinsley ought to be made up for his funeral. Afterwards, Aimee expresses her adoration for Mr. Joyboy, the chief mortician and cosmetician at Whispering Glades. Hearing this, Dennis declines a further tour of the mortuary. At Happier Hunting Grounds, Dennis asks his employer Mr. Schultz for three days off to prepare for Hinsley's funeral. Schultz reluctantly agrees. Arranging the funeral, Abercrombie meets with Dennis and asks him to select meaningful literary works of Hinsley's to recite in a eulogy. Dennis finds an esoteric book review and passes it to Abercrombie. Dennis gives a scandalous ode to Hinsley, further sullying the English reputation. All the while, Joyboy is preparing the body of Hinsley at Whispering Glades. He shows his work to Aimee, who beams with compliments. Joyboy's trademark smile kneaded into the face of his corpses is once again on display with Hinsley. Six weeks on, torn between her affection for Dennis and Joyboy, Aimee writes to advice columnist Guru Brahmin asking what to do. Aimee's previously held romantic feelings for Joyboy start to diminish when she meets his overbearing mother. Also, Dennis begins wooing Aimee by sending her plagiarized poetry from literary decedents, the origins of which remain unbeknownst to her. Aimee is further bemused when Joyboy informs her that she has been groomed to be the first female embalmer at Whispering Glades. The same day that Aimee meets Joyboy's mother for dinner, she also attends a daytime date with Dennis. Dennis proposes marriage during their date, but when Aimee learns the proposal is in part based on the earning power of her potential raise at Whispering Glades, she becomes irate. Torn, Aimee asks for more advice from Guru Brahmin. It turns out Guru Brahmin are actually three separate people: a secretary, a columnist, and an alcoholic advice writer named Mr. Slump. After consideration, Mr. Slump implores Aimee to choose Joyboy over Dennis. Aimee opts to wed Dennis instead. Dennis asks for a raise, gets denied, and then speaks with a minister at a pet funeral service. In realizing the ministry is far more lucrative than his work at the mortuary, Dennis tells Aimee his intention of becoming a nondenominational pastor. Still unaware that Dennis works at Happier Hunting Grounds, Aimee informs Guru Brahmin and Joyboy that she has decided to marry Dennis after all. Joyboy is distraught over the decision, while Guru Brahmin deigns a congratulatory blessing. Joyboy soon discovers Dennis' poetic ruse when Aimee leaves a poem out for her employer to read. Joyboy also visits Happier Hunting Grounds to arrange for the funeral of his mother's dead parrot. While there, Joyboy discovers Dennis is an employee. Knowing this information will devastate Aimee, Joyboy invites her to attend the funeral for his mother's parrot. Upon learning of Dennis' deceit, Aimee ends their engagement. Dennis tries to win Aimee back, to no avail. Aimee seeks solace from Joyboy, but he's too busy entertaining his mother's new parrot. Aimee then seeks advice from Mr. Slump, who she learns has been fired. Still, he drunkenly berates Aimee. She then swallows a bottle of barbiturates. At work the next day, Aimee injects herself with embalming fluid and dies. Joyboy finds Aimee's corpse and takes her to Happier Hunting Grounds for Dennis' help. Dennis assures Joyboy that he will take care of it. Abercrombie shows up, paying Dennis to return to England rather than stay and besmirch the British community by becoming a pastor. The novella ends with everyone in town thinking Dennis and Aimee ran off to England together. In reality, Dennis sits back with a book and waits for Aimee's body to incinerate

The Lotos-Eaters

Alfred, Lord Tennyson "Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon." In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. Full-faced above the valley stood the moon; And like a downward smoke, the slender stream Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem. A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go; And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke, Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. They saw the gleaming river seaward flow From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops, Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, Stood sunset-flush'd: and, dew'd with showery drops, Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse. The charmed sunset linger'd low adown In the red West: thro' mountain clefts the dale Was seen far inland, and the yellow down Border'd with palm, and many a winding vale And meadow, set with slender galingale; A land where all things always seem'd the same! And round about the keel with faces pale, Dark faces pale against that rosy flame, The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came. Branches they bore of that enchanted stem, Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave To each, but whoso did receive of them, And taste, to him the gushing of the wave Far far away did seem to mourn and rave On alien shores; and if his fellow spake, His voice was thin, as voices from the grave; And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake, And music in his ears his beating heart did make. They sat them down upon the yellow sand, Between the sun and moon upon the shore; And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland, Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar, Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. Then some one said, "We will return no more"; And all at once they sang, "Our island home Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam." Summary Odysseus tells his mariners to have courage, assuring them that they will soon reach the shore of their home. In the afternoon, they reach a land "in which it seemed always afternoon" because of the languid and peaceful atmosphere. The mariners sight this "land of streams" with its gleaming river flowing to the sea, its three snow-capped mountaintops, and its shadowy pine growing in the vale.

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Alfred, Lord Tennyson I Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. "Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!" he said. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. II "Forward, the Light Brigade!" Was there a man dismayed? Not though the soldier knew Someone had blundered. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. III Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volleyed and thundered; Stormed at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of hell Rode the six hundred. IV Flashed all their sabres bare, Flashed as they turned in air Sabring the gunners there, Charging an army, while All the world wondered. Plunged in the battery-smoke Right through the line they broke; Cossack and Russian Reeled from the sabre stroke Shattered and sundered. Then they rode back, but not Not the six hundred. V Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon behind them Volleyed and thundered; Stormed at with shot and shell, While horse and hero fell. They that had fought so well Came through the jaws of Death, Back from the mouth of hell, All that was left of them, Left of six hundred. VI When can their glory fade? O the wild charge they made! All the world wondered. Honour the charge they made! Honour the Light Brigade, Noble six hundred!

Poor Richard's Almanac

Benjamin Franklin's highly popular collection of information, parables, and advice. The Almanack contained the calendar, weather, poems, sayings and astronomicaland astrological information that a typical almanac of the period would contain. Franklin also included the occasional mathematical exercise, and the Almanackfrom 1750 features an early example of demographics. It is chiefly remembered, however, for being a repository of Franklin's aphorisms and proverbs, many of which live on in American English. These maxims typically counsel thrift and courtesy, with a dash of cynicism.[5] In the spaces that occurred between noted calendar days, Franklin included proverbial sentences about industry and frugality. Several of these sayings were borrowed from an earlier writer, Lord Halifax, many of whose aphorisms sprang from, "... [a] basic skepticism directed against the motives of men, manners, and the age."[6] In 1757, Franklin made a selection of these and prefixed them to the almanac as the address of an old man to the people attending an auction. This was later published as The Way to Wealth, and was popular in both America and England.

Nature

Emerson lays out and attempts to solve an abstract problem: that humans do not fully accept nature's beauty. He writes that people are distracted by the demands of the world, whereas nature gives but humans fail to reciprocate. The essay consists of eight sections: Nature, Commodity, Beauty, Language, Discipline, Idealism, Spirit and Prospects. Each section takes a different perspective on the relationship between humans and nature. In the essay Emerson explains that to experience the wholeness with nature for which we are naturally suited, we must be separate from the flaws and distractions imposed on us by society. Emerson believed that solitude is the single mechanism through which we can be fully engaged in the world of nature, writing "To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars."[5] When a person experiences true solitude, in nature, it "take[s] him away". Society, he says, destroys wholeness, whereas "Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the material, but is also the process and the result. All the parts incessantly work into each other's hands for the profit of man. The wind sows the seed; the sun evaporates the sea; the wind blows the vapor to the field; the ice, on the other side of the planet, condenses rain on this; the rain feeds the plant; the plant feeds the animal; and thus the endless circulations of the divine charity nourish man."[6] Emerson defines a spiritual relationship. In nature a person finds its spirit and accepts it as the Universal Being. He writes: "Nature is not fixed but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, it. ... Know then that the world exists for you. For you is the phenomenon perfect.

Brideshead Revisited

Evelyn Waugh The novel's narration begins in the first person with Captain Charles Ryder of the British Army (which he disdains) in the early 1940s. His troops have just arrived at their new camp, a large and beautiful estate called Brideshead Castle. Over the course of a flashback, Charles recounts his long and complicated history with the estate and the Flyte family that owns it. It all starts at the beginning of Charles's first year at Oxford University in 1922. Charles himself is from a wealthy family that includes his caustic father and older cousin Jasper, who advises him on what to study, where to eat, and whom to avoid in his early days at the University. Charles soon makes the acquaintance of Sebastian Flyte, an extremely wealthy, quirky, beautiful young man who obeys his every impulse, shirks his duties, charms the pants off everyone, carries around a teddy bear named Aloysius, parties like a rock star, and makes his first introduction to Charles by leaning his head into our narrator's first-floor dorm room window and puking up several bottles of wine. The two boys quickly become the best of friends, much to Jasper's exasperation (since Sebastian hangs out with "the wrong crowd" - partiers and not scholars). Among Sebastian's unorthodox friends is Anthony Blanche, a flamboyantly gay international playboy. Anthony takes Charles aside and tells him all about Sebastian and his family. Sebastian's parents, Lord and Lady Marchmain, are separated. Lord Marchmain lives in Italy with his mistress Cara. Lady Marchmain, a very devout Catholic, refuses to get a divorce and lives at the family's large and ornate country estate, Brideshead, as well as their home in London, called Marchmain House. Sebastian has three siblings: a stuffy and religious older brother, the Earl of Brideshead (simply called "Brideshead" or "Bridey"); a sister Julia who is a clever and self-indulgent beauty; and a younger sister Cordelia. It soon becomes clear that Sebastian has major family issues. First of all, he struggles with the Catholicism his mother has so intently forced on her family. He also remains in close contact with his father, which Lady Marchmain seems to read as betrayal. Charles and Sebastian spend the first summer away from Oxford together, at Brideshead. Charles briefly meets Sebastian's sister Julia, but is largely alone with Sebastian for the duration of the vacation, getting quietly drunk every evening on the estate's astounding wine collection. Because Charles is a burgeoning artist, he is in constant awe of the architecture and interior design of Brideshead Castle. He devotes quite a bit of text to describing it in detail, and interprets his summer there as a time he was "very close to heaven." During his stay he also meets Cordelia, Sebastian's energetic and playfully troublemaking little sister, as well as Sebastian's old Nanny, who for some reason still lives on the estate. When Sebastian's brother Brideshead comes to dinner, Charles confirms that he is very much as Anthony Blanche predicted: stuffy, restrained, and grave. Religion seems an inevitable topic of conversation among the Flytes, especially when Charles, a self-proclaimed agnostic, is around. Towards the end of the summer, Charles and Sebastian travel to Veniceto visit Lord Marchmain (Sebastian's father) and his mistress Cara. Cara provides some useful information for Charles: Lord Marchmain despises his wife and everyone who loves her; that's why he's left England. Cara adds that, while Charles drinks controllably and to have a good time, Sebastian drinks to drown his sorrows and is fast becoming an alcoholic. The second year at Oxford, Anthony Blanche is absent, having decided to stay and party in Munich instead of returning to school. Charles pursues his interest in painting, and Sebastian continues to drink. Meanwhile Lady Marchmain, nervous about her son's position at the university, comes to visit. She tries to befriend Charles to get him on her side in "helping" Sebastian. She also employs the help of Mr. Samgrass, a professor at Oxford, in trying to keep her son under control. Soon after, Julia comes to visit, bringing with her a man named Rex Mottram who is suave, politically connected, and rumored to carry a gun. (He's Tony Soprano meets James Bond, but he's a bit of a wannabe.) Rex takes Sebastian, Charles, and one of their university friends, Boy Mulcaster, to a party. The Oxford guys sneak away to party at a club of ill repute and end up arrested for drunk driving. Rex gets them out of jail via his smooth-talking people skills. But because Sebastian's family is so revered as part of England's old aristocracy, his arrest makes for quite the scandal. Lady Marchmain cracks down, and both Sebastian and Charles end up stuck with a curfew back at Oxford, courtesy of Mr. Samgrass's authority. Needless to say, they both hate Samgrass. Meanwhile Charles notices that Sebastian's drinking has indeed taken a turn for the worse. Though Lady Marchmain continues to try to keep Charles in her good graces, he ultimately chooses to side with Sebastian "against the world." Lady Marchmain gets fed up and pulls Sebastian out of Oxford, sending him off with Mr. Samgrass to tour around Europe. Cut to Christmas at the end of the year. Charles is at Brideshead estate again with Sebastian and Samgrass, who have just returned from their European travels. Though it was Samgrass's job to keep Sebastian sober and out of trouble, Charles soon discovers that he actually lost Sebastian, or rather, that Sebastian gave him the slip in order to drink himself silly. Meanwhile, at Brideshead, Lady Marchmain has instructed all the servants to not give Sebastian any alcohol. Charles feels bad for his friend and gives him money to buy booze. When Lady Marchmain finds out, she guilt trips Charles, who leaves when Sebastian tells him he's no use around here anyway. When Charles returns to Oxford, Rex Mottram visits him and explains that he wants to marry Julia. Lady Marchmain is against it, since he is about 15 years older than her daughter, not of noble blood, and of suspect business dealings. Also, he's been sleeping with a married woman named Brenda Champion. Rex adds that Lady Marchmain has gotten very sick but refuses to see a doctor on account of her religion. At this point the narrative time is disrupted and we get information in a scattered order through various flashbacks on Charles's part. The quick and dirty is as follows: Julia agrees to marry Rex, though he has to convert to Catholicism first. They find out just before the wedding that Rex was married and divorced once, which means he can't be married as a Catholic after all. They have a brief Protestant ceremony instead, to Lady Marchmain's horror. In the meantime Charles bumps into Anthony Blanche, who updates him on Sebastian: still a drunkard and worse than ever. Sebastian has also struck up a close friendship with a German sergeant. When Charles hears that Lady Marchmain is dying, he hurries to see her at Brideshead, where she apologizes for being so harsh about his siding with Sebastian against her. Then, at her request, Charles sets out to find Sebastian and bring him back to Brideshead to say good-bye to his mother. Charles travels to Morocco and finds Kurt, the German sergeant with whom Sebastian is living. It's clear that Kurt is taking advantage of Sebastian and using him for his money. Sebastian himself is ill in the hospital and, when confronted, defends his friendship with Kurt. He likes that, for once, he can finally take care of someone else, when all his life his family has been taking care of him. Then word arrives that Lady Marchmain has died. Now we jump forward a few years. Charles is now a professional architectural painter - he paints people's houses, usually before the buildings are torn down for one reason or another. He's married, but we don't know who his wife is yet. After tiring of British architecture, Charles traveled to South America to paint there. Then he met up with his wife to take a ship back to America. She's just had their second baby, whom Charles hasn't met yet and has no interest in seeing. The honeymoon is clearly over between these two, and Charles is basically masking (poorly) some intense hostility for his wife. We finally discover that the wife is Celia Mulcaster, sister to Boy Mulcaster, one of Charles's friends from Oxford. Meanwhile, Julia Flyte is also on this ship back to England and, during a violent storm at sea, she and Charles begin a passionate affair. This is problematic, since Julia is also married (to Rex) and also hates her spouse. It soon becomes clear, however, that both Celia and Rex have been adulterous in the past. So both Charles and Julia decide to get divorced and marry each other. While staying at Brideshead estate together, Julia's brother Bridey visits and announces that he's getting married himself, to a widow who is apparently not attractive and has kids from her first marriage. Cordelia has returned home as well, bringing with her news of Sebastian. Kurt got himself arrested by the Germans and hanged himself; Sebastian drank in distress and ended up begging a monastery in Tunis to take him in. She predicts that her brother will live out his days there, trying to be holy and repeatedly lapsing into alcoholic binges until his liver gives up and he dies. Both divorces (Charles's and Julia's) are in progress when Lord Marchmain announces that he's dying and wants to live out his last days at Brideshead. He arrives with his mistress Cara to do so. When alone with Julia and Charles, he admits that he met Bridey's new wife, Beryl, and despises her. He doesn't want her living at Brideshead, so, although it's tradition to leave the estate to the eldest son, he wants Julia and Charles to have it instead. Charles is a bit ashamed by his own joy at this prospect. However, it never comes to fruition: Julia decides that in order to be a good Catholic, she needs to make a sacrifice, and she chooses to sacrifice her happiness with Charles. They break up shortly after her father's death, which involves a heated debate over whether or not they should force the old man to see a priest. (Lord Marchmain was adamantly against religion). Charles, despite his previous agnosticism, is moved by the way Julia's father receives the priest at his deathbed. Somehow or another Charles ends up a Catholic himself by the time we pull out of the flashback and return to him as a Captain in the Army revisiting Brideshead. The novel ends with Charles examining the estate and reflecting with optimism on the flame still burning in Brideshead's little chapel.

The Hobbit

J. R. R. Tolkein Bilbo Baggins lives a quiet, peaceful life in his comfortable hole at Bag End. Bilbo lives in a hole because he is a hobbit—one of a race of small, plump people about half the size of humans, with furry toes and a great love of good food and drink. Bilbo is quite content at Bag End, near the bustling hobbit village of Hobbiton, but one day his comfort is shattered by the arrival of the old wizard Gandalf, who persuades Bilbo to set out on an adventure with a group of thirteen militant dwarves. The dwarves are embarking on a great quest to reclaim their treasure from the marauding dragon Smaug, and Bilbo is to act as their "burglar." The dwarves are very skeptical about Gandalf's choice for a burglar, and Bilbo is terrified to leave his comfortable life to seek adventure. But Gandalf assures both Bilbo and the dwarves that there is more to the little hobbit than meets the eye. Shortly after the group sets out, three hungry trolls capture all of them except for Gandalf. Gandalf tricks the trolls into remaining outside when the sun comes up, and the sunlight turns the nocturnal trolls to stone. The group finds a great cache of weapons in the trolls' camp. Gandalf and the dwarf lord Thorin take magic swords, and Bilbo takes a small sword of his own. The group rests at the elfish stronghold of Rivendell, where they receive advice from the great elf lord Elrond, then sets out to cross the Misty Mountains. When they find shelter in a cave during a snowstorm, a group of goblins who live in the caverns beneath the mountain take them prisoner. Gandalf leads the dwarves to a passage out of the mountain, but they accidentally leave behind Bilbo. Wandering through the tunnels, Bilbo finds a strange golden ring lying on the ground. He takes the ring and puts it in his pocket. Soon he encounters Gollum, a hissing, whining creature who lives in a pool in the caverns and hunts fish and goblins. Gollum wants to eat Bilbo, and the two have a contest of riddles to determine Bilbo's fate. Bilbo wins by asking the dubious riddle, "What have I got in my pocket?" Gollum wants to eat Bilbo anyway, and he disappears to fetch his magic ring, which turns its wearer invisible. The ring, however, is the same one Bilbo has already found, and Bilbo uses it to escape from Gollum and flee the goblins. He finds a tunnel leading up out of the mountain and discovers that the dwarves and Gandalf have already escaped. Evil wolves known as Wargs pursue them, but Bilbo and his comrades are helped to safety by a group of great eagles and by Beorn, a creature who can change shape from a man into a bear. The company enters the dark forest of Mirkwood, and, making matters worse, Gandalf abandons them to see to some other urgent business. In the forest, the dwarves are caught in the webs of some giant spiders, and Bilbo must rescue them with his sword and magic ring. After slaying his first spider, Bilbo names his sword Sting. Shortly after escaping the spiders, the unlucky dwarves are captured by a group of wood elves who live near the river that runs through Mirkwood. Bilbo uses his ring to help the company escape and slips the dwarves away from the elves by hiding them inside barrels, which he then floats down the river. The dwarves arrive at Lake Town, a human settlement near the Lonely Mountain, under which the great dragon sleeps with Thorin's treasure. After sneaking into the mountain, Bilbo talks to the sly dragon Smaug, who unwittingly reveals that his armorlike scales have a weak spot near his heart. When Bilbo steals a golden cup from the dragon's hoard, Smaug is furious and flies out of the mountain to burn Lake Town in his rage. Bard, a heroic archer, has learned the secret about Smaug's weakness from a thrush, and he fires an arrow into the dragon's heart, killing him. Before Smaug dies, however, he burns Lake Town to the ground. The humans of Lake Town and the elves of Mirkwood march to the Lonely Mountain to seek a share of the treasure as compensation for their losses and aid, but Thorin greedily refuses, and the humans and elves besiege the mountain, trapping the dwarves and the hobbit inside. Bilbo sneaks out to join the humans in an attempt to bring peace. When Thorin learns what Bilbo has done, he is livid, but Gandalf suddenly reappears and saves Bilbo from the dwarf lord's wrath. At this moment, an army of goblins and Wargs marches on the mountain, and the humans, elves, and dwarves are forced to band together to defeat them. The goblins nearly win, but the arrival of Beorn and the eagles helps the good armies win the battle. After the battle, Bilbo and Gandalf return to Hobbiton, where Bilbo continues to live. He is no longer accepted by respectable hobbit society, but he does not care. Bilbo now prefers to talk to elves and wizards, and he is deeply content to be back among the familiar comforts of home after his grand and harrowing adventures.

Canterbury Tales

collection of 24 stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400.

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë's only novel, was published in 1847 under the pseudonym "Ellis Bell". Catherine falls in love with Heathcliff, a boy her father adopts. Their love is doomed, and both eventually marry other people. Catherine dies in childbirth, and Heathcliff joins her in death after enacting his revenge upon the next generation. Wuthering Heights summary key points: In Wuthering Heights, Mr. Lockwood narrates his visit to Wuthering Heights and recalls dreaming of a ghostly child trying to come in through the windowpane. Nelly, Lockwood's housekeeper, recalls working at Wuthering Heights and tells Lockwood how Mr. Earnshaw adopted a boy called Heathcliff. Mr. Earnshaw's daughter, Catherine, develops a close friendship with Heathcliff while his son, Hindley, envies Heathcliff's close relationship with Mr. Earnshaw. After Mr. Earnshaw dies, Hindley becomes the master of Wuthering Heights and relegates Heathcliff to servant status. Catherine marries the wealthy Edgar Linton, and Heathcliff marries Edgar's sister to inherit her money. Catherine dies after giving birth to a daughter named Cathy. Edgar's sister flees Heathcliff's abuse and gives birth to a son named Linton. Heathcliff gains ownership of Wuthering Heights. Edgar and Linton die, and Heathcliff dies after realizing that he wishes to rejoin his beloved Catherine.

Of Studies

Francis Bacon Studies serve for delight, for ornament and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business; for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one: but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar: they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend "Abeunt studia in mores;" nay, there is no stond or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises; bowling is good for the stone and reins, shooting for the lungs and breast, gentle walking for the stomach, riding for the head, and the like; so, if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again; if his wit be no apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen, for they are "Cymini sectores;" if he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call upon one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyer's cases: so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.

A Modest Proposal

Jonathan Swift, 1729 The full title of Swift's pamphlet is "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to their Parents, or the Country, and for Making them Beneficial to the Publick." The tract is an ironically conceived attempt to "find out a fair, cheap, and easy Method" for converting the starving children of Ireland into "sound and useful members of the Commonwealth." Across the country poor children, predominantly Catholics, are living in squalor because their families are too poor to keep them fed and clothed. The author argues, by hard-edged economic reasoning as well as from a self-righteous moral stance, for a way to turn this problem into its own solution. His proposal, in effect, is to fatten up these undernourished children and feed them to Ireland's rich land-owners. Children of the poor could be sold into a meat market at the age of one, he argues, thus combating overpopulation and unemployment, sparing families the expense of child-bearing while providing them with a little extra income, improving the culinary experience of the wealthy, and contributing to the overall economic well-being of the nation. The author offers statistical support for his assertions and gives specific data about the number of children to be sold, their weight and price, and the projected consumption patterns. He suggests some recipes for preparing this delicious new meat, and he feels sure that innovative cooks will be quick to generate more. He also anticipates that the practice of selling and eating children will have positive effects on family morality: husbands will treat their wives with more respect, and parents will value their children in ways hitherto unknown. His conclusion is that the implementation of this project will do more to solve Ireland's complex social, political, and economic problems than any other measure that has been proposed.

The American Scholar

Ralph Waldo Emerson Originally titled "An Oration Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, [Massachusetts,] August 31, 1837," Emerson delivered what is now referred to as "The American Scholar" essay as a speech to Harvard's Phi Beta Kappa Society, an honorary society of male college students with unusually high grade point averages. At the time, women were barred from higher education, and scholarship was reserved exclusively for men. Emerson published the speech under its original title as a pamphlet later that same year and republished it in 1838. In 1841, he included the essay in his book Essays, but changed its title to "The American Scholar" to enlarge his audience to all college students, as well as other individuals interested in American letters. Placed in his Man Thinking: An Oration (1841), the essay found its final home in Nature; Addresses, and Lectures (1849). The text begins with an introduction (paragraphs 1-7) in which Emerson explains that his intent is to explore the scholar as one function of the whole human being: The scholar is "Man Thinking." The remainder of the essay is organized into four sections, the first three discussing the influence of nature (paragraphs 8 and 9), the influence of the past and books (paragraphs 10-20), and the influence of action (paragraphs 21-30) on the education of the thinking man. In the last section (paragraphs 31-45), Emerson considers the duties of the scholar and then discusses his views of America in his own time. Readers should number each paragraph in pencil as these Notes make reference to individual paragraphs in the essay.

Divinity School Address

Ralph Waldo Emerson gave to the graduating class of Harvard Divinity School on July 15, 1838. Emerson presented his speech to a group of graduating divinity students, their professors, and local ministers on July 15, 1838, at Divinity Hall.[1] At the time of Emerson's speech, Harvard was the center of academic Unitarian thought. In this address, Emerson made comments that were radical for their time. Emerson proclaimed many of the tenets of Transcendentalism against a more conventional Unitarian theology. He argued that moral intuition is a better guide to the moral sentiment than religious doctrine, and insisted upon the presence of true moral sentiment in each individual, while discounting the necessity of belief in the historical miracles of Jesus.[2] Emerson's Divinity School address was influenced by his life experiences. He was an ex-Unitarian minister, having resigned from his ministry at Second Church, Boston, in 1832. Emerson had developed philosophical questions about the validity of Holy Communion, also called The Lord's Supper. He believed this ritual was not consistent with the original intentions of Jesus. It is felt that this concern was only one of many philosophical differences with Unitarian beliefs of the 1830s, but it was a concern that could be readily understood by the members of his congregation. Emerson was well liked by his congregation and efforts were made to reconcile the congregation's needs with his philosophy, but Emerson resigned after a final sermon explaining his views. Over the next few years, Emerson's views continued to drift away from the mainstream Unitarian thought. His biographer Robert Richardson describes him as having moved beyond Unitarianism but not beyond religion. Emerson became a noted lecturer and essayist. He was frequently invited as a guest minister into Unitarian pulpits. The 1838 Divinity School graduating class was composed of seven seniors, though only six of them were in attendance for the address; Emerson was invited to speak by class members themselves. Emerson decided the time was appropriate to discuss the failures of what he called "historical Christianity". In his address, he not only rejected the notion of a personal God, he castigated the church's ministers for suffocating the soul through lifeless preaching. Also in attendance were theologians including Andrews Norton, Henry Ware Jr., and Divinity School Dean John G. Palfrey.

Self-Reliance

Ralph Waldo Emerson Published first in 1841 in Essays and then in the 1847 revised edition of Essays, "Self-Reliance" took shape over a long period of time. Throughout his life, Emerson kept detailed journals of his thoughts and actions, and he returned to them as a source for many of his essays. Such is the case with "Self-Reliance," which includes materials from journal entries dating as far back as 1832. In addition to his journals, Emerson drew on various lectures he delivered between 1836 and 1839. The first edition of the essay bore three epigraphs: a Latin line, meaning "Do not seek outside yourself"; a six-line stanza from Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune; and a four-line stanza that Emerson himself wrote. Emerson dropped his stanza from the revised edition of the essay, but modern editors have since restored it. All three epigraphs stress the necessity of relying on oneself for knowledge and guidance. The essay has three major divisions: the importance of self-reliance (paragraphs 1-17), self-reliance and the individual (paragraphs 18-32), and self-reliance and society (paragraphs 33-50). As a whole, it promotes self-reliance as an ideal, even a virtue, and contrasts it with various modes of dependence or conformity. Because the essay does not have internally marked divisions delineating its three major sections, readers should number each paragraph in pencil as this discussion will make reference to them.

Criticisms of Paradise Lost from the Life of Milton

Samuel Johnson wrote "A Study of Milton's 'Paradise Lost,'" in which he praises Milton's as a work of genius, as it unites "pleasure with truth" and "the probable with the marvelous" in its account of the creation, fall, and redemption of human beings. Johnson writes that Milton has "peculiar power to astonish." Johnson also believes that the poem has integrity, as Aristotle defined it, with a beginning, middle, and end. When discussing the virtue of Milton's work, Johnson finds "sanctity of thought and purity of manners, except when the train of the narration requires the introduction of the rebellious spirits." Johnson believes that Milton's portrayal of Adam and Eve shows the proper sentiment about their fall from God's grace. Johnson's criticism of the poem is that "it comprises neither human actions nor human manners." In other words, the reader does not find Adam and Eve relatable humans. As Johnson writes, "The want of human interest is always felt." Johnson also finds fault with Milton's giving the spirits in the poem, such as Satan, physical form. For example, when Satan appears before Gabriel, he is carrying a spear and shield. In addition, Satan hears reports that Adam and Eve are in heaven before he is expelled, meaning that they share heaven for some period of time. For these reasons, including the lack of human actions and manners surrounding Adam and Eve, Johnson feels that reading Paradise Lost is "a duty rather than a pleasure." He finds the work the creation of a genius but a tedious creation in some ways.

"On Moving His Resolutions for Conciliation with America

When he gave this speech in the House of Commons, Edmund Burke believed that it was possible to frame legislation which would end the distrust of the American colonists and bring peace between The Colonies and Great Britain. He points out that he is not searching for anything but simple peace, and that he is speaking with good intentions and genuine simplicity of heart. He states that the number of persons living in the American Colonies has been growing rapidly, and he cites the extent of the trade between The Colonies and Great Britain, illustrating its growth between 1704 and 1772. He suggests that to use force on the colonists will be but temporary and uncertain in its results; that the American colonists are the descendants of Englishmen, "not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas, and on English principles," and he notes that one Englishman is the unfittest person in the world to try to argue another Englishman into slavery. He tries to make the point that the British government, in any attempt to conciliate the Americans, must be willing to admit past mistakes and must cease to regard rebellious colonists as criminals: At this proposition I must pause a moment. The thing seems a great deal too big for my ideas of jurisprudence. It would seem to my way of conceiving such matters, that there is a very wide difference in reason and policy, between the mode of proceeding on the irregular conduct of scattered individuals, or even of bands of men, who disturb order within the state, and the civil dissensions which may, from time to time, on great questions, agitate the several communities which compose a great empire. It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic, to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people. . . . I hope I am not ripe to pass sentence on the gravest public bodies, intrusted with magistracies of great authority and dignity, and charged with the safety of their fellow-citizens, upon the very same title that I am. I really think, that for wise men this is not judicious; for sober men, not decent; for minds tinctured with humanity, not mild and merciful.

Culture and Anarchy

a series of periodical essays by Matthew Arnold, first published in Cornhill Magazine 1867-68 and collected as a book in 1869. The preface was added in 1875.[1] Arnold's famous piece of writing on cultureestablished his High Victorian cultural agenda which remained dominant in debate from the 1860s until the 1950s. According to his view advanced in the book, "Culture [...] is a study of perfection". He further wrote that: "[Culture] seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light [...]". His often quoted phrase "[culture is] the best which has been thought and said" comes from the Preface to Culture and Anarchy: The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically. The book contains most of the terms - culture, sweetness and light, Barbarian, Philistine, Hebraism, and many others - which are more associated with Arnold's work influence.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. It traces Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to the fall of Byzantium. Volume I was published in 1776 and went through six printings. the history of Roman Empire from the end of the golden age to the fall of Byzantium. Though considerable strides in historical understanding have been made since the 1700s, and the work is no longer widely reflective of modern understanding, it is still considered to be an extraordinary literary achievement due to Gibbon's great strides in methodology and the undertaking of such a daunting task with so few comprehensive sources. Gibbon states that the death of Marcus Aurelius was the beginning of the end for the Roman Empire. What follows is the succession of events that lead to its ultimate demise. According to Gibbon, these events included repeated attacks by barbarians as well as a loss of civility among Roman citizens. In particular, Gibbon cites Christianity as a major reason for the fall of Rome. Gibbon came under severe criticism for his perceived attack on Christianity, and he seemed to be expecting it. Like many thinkers of the time, he held the role that the Christian Church played in the dark ages in contempt. The tone on which he speaks on the religion in the work is cynical, to say the least. Critics commenting on chapters fifteen and sixteen even went as far to call Gibbon a "paganist." The way Gibbon writes through footnotes offers a humorous view of his thought process and moralist views on the Roman Empire as well as Gibbon's modern world, and have served as a standard for the modern use of footnotes. These incredibly entertaining sections have been called "Gibbon's Table Talk."

On American Taxation

a speech given by Edmund Burke in the British House of Commons on April 19, 1774, advocating the full repeal of the Townshend Revenue Act of 1767. Parliament had previously repealed five of the six duties of this revenue tax on the American colonies, but the tax on tea remained. Notable quotations[edit] Could anything be a subject of more just alarm to America, than to see you go out of the plain high road of finance, and give up your most certain revenues and your clearest interests, merely for the sake of insulting your Colonies? No man ever doubted that the commodity of Tea could bear an imposition of three-pence. But no commodity will bear three-pence, or will bear a penny, when the general feelings of men are irritated, and two millions of people are resolved not to pay. The feelings of the Colonies were formerly the feelings of Great Britain. Theirs were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden when called upon for the payment of twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune? No! but the payment of half twenty shillings, on the principle it was demanded, would have made him a slave. It is the weight of that preamble, of which you are so fond, and not the weight of the duty, that the Americans are unable and unwilling to bear. Whether you were right or wrong in establishing the Colonies on the principles of commercial monopoly, rather than on that of revenue, is at this day a problem of mere speculation. You cannot have both by the same authority. To join together the restraints of a universal internal and external monopoly, with a universal internal and external taxation, is an unnatural union; perfect uncompensated slavery. Again, and again, revert to your own principles—Seek Peace, and ensue it—leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself.

The Bear

in William Faulkner's collection of seven fiction pieces in "Go Down, Moses" in 1942, has been called a short story. It's also been labeled a novella. At 40,000 words or so, it is considered by many to be a novel. (Indeed, I read the piece in a collection titled, "Nine Short Novels.") To further complicate matters, "Go Down, Moses" has been thought of as a grouping of related short stories, but Faulkner contended that these stories, taken together, formed a novel. I haven't read the other six pieces in "Go Down, Moses," but, about "The Bear," I can say it's something very much like an epic poem. The Iliad is about a war. The Odyssey is about a journey. "The Bear" is about something internal, an inner rot, a peculiarly American sin, the Original American Sin, if you will — slavery. This is the corruption that slavery wreaks upon the whites who see themselves as masters, and upon their children and children's children — often, as in this story, brothers and sisters, cousins and kin of different colors. And not just slavery, but that particular American skill of turning land into real estate, the soil into a commodity. Using Nature, employing Nature. The way that Africans and African-Americans were used and employed without regard to the requirements of, well, kinship. Of humanity, if not blood. In the novel's second paragraph, Faulkner writes of 16-year-old Isaac McCaslin listening, in 1883, to hunters talk "of the wilderness, the big woods, bigger and older than any recorded document; — of white man fatuous enough to believe he had bought any fragment of it, of Indian ruthless enough to pretend that any fragment of it had been his to convey..." The novel rotates around the battle of a huge ancient bear, Old Ben, and a huge untamed dog, Lion. It rotates around Isaac's growing awareness of the sins of his forebears and its taint on him. It rotates around the kinship of the hunt, and the kinship of the plantation, and the kinship of the town. It rotates around the question of freedom. It has five sections, and they rotate around the fourth which takes up just about half of the novel and is made up of essentially a single continuous breathless sentence. "The Bear" is a work to leave you breathless.

Spring and All

I By the road to the contagious hospital under the surge of the blue mottled clouds driven from the northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the waste of broad, muddy fields brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen patches of standing water the scattering of tall trees All along the road the reddish purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy stuff of bushes and small trees with dead, brown leaves under them leafless vines- Lifeless in appearance, sluggish dazed spring approaches- They enter the new world naked, cold, uncertain of all save that they enter. All about them the cold, familiar wind- Now the grass, tomorrow the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf One by one objects are defined- It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf But now the stark dignity of entrance-Still, the profound change has come upon them: rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken

Civilization and Its Discontents

a book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It was written in 1929 and first published in German in 1930 as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur ("The Uneasiness in Civilization"). Exploring what Freud sees as the important clash between the desire for individuality and the expectations of society, the book is considered one of Freud's most important and widely read works, and one of the most influential and studied books in the field of modern psychology. one of the most widely-read and influential works by Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis and a titan of the 20th century. The book examines the conflict between societies and their individual members, how cultures try to channel human drives toward constructive ends, and how individuals struggle to balance social demands for conformity with their own urges and yearnings. Late in the 19th century, Freud founded psychoanalysis, a talking therapy that unearths a patient's unconscious desires and buried traumas so the patient may transcend them and, thus freed, manage life more effectively. This therapeutic system inspired the growing field of psychology during the 20th century. Civilization and Its Discontents is one of the last of more than 20 books Freud wrote on the topic. Together, his works on psychoanalysis have influenced generations of therapists, popularizing such concepts as "libido," "neurosis," "super-ego," "narcissism," "Oedipus complex," "reaction-formation," and "the id." Civilization and Its Discontents first discusses the problem of human suffering and how individuals strive to avoid pain and enhance pleasure. Three main sources of pain plague humanity: old age, the harshness of nature, and social conflicts. And people tend to respond to suffering in three ways: distractions, intoxication, and fantasies. Individuals who fail to manage their suffering may become neurotic, displaying symptoms of anxiety, or they may fall into substance abuse or, in extreme cases, collapse into insanity. Freud considers religion merely a sop that fails to genuinely resolve human unhappiness. Freud goes on to describe how civilizations evolved to tackle the problem of suffering. Early human societies transformed individual selfishness and sexual urges into affection for others. Codes of conduct facilitated society, but these rules sometimes caused more distress than they relieved. Modern people hold their cultures to high standards, often lamenting that ancient peoples must have been happier and that modern societies have failed to enhance satisfactions. Next, Freud examines some of the ways, including political movements, societies attempt to resolve members' conflicts. In the West, a prime directive is to "love thy neighbor as thyself", an admonition Freud believes is impossible to fulfill and only makes things harder for individuals as they strive to improve their social interactions. The most difficult thing to resolve, however, is antisocial aggression that springs from the deep-seated destructive urge, or "death instinct," within each human being. The book concludes with an examination of the most successful tool of social control, the ingrained super-ego, which guards against antisocial thoughts and actions. Under the command of the super-ego, nearly every member of a society comes to regard as evil many otherwise pleasurable activities because they are deemed culturally inappropriate. Freud observes that entire societies can be neurotic—that is, suffer a group affliction similar to that of an individual. He hopes his analysis will prove useful to the world at large as humanity strives toward a future with less suffering and more satisfaction. The Dover Thrift Edition of Civilization and Its Discontents is translated by Joan Riviere, a psychoanalyst and associate of Freud's. The book includes Freud's footnotes, some of which are mini-essays in themselves.

They Flee from Me

BY SIR THOMAS WYATT They flee from me that sometime did me seek With naked foot, stalking in my chamber. I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek, That now are wild and do not remember That sometime they put themself in danger To take bread at my hand; and now they range, Busily seeking with a continual change. Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise Twenty times better; but once in special, In thin array after a pleasant guise, When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall, And she me caught in her arms long and small; Therewithall sweetly did me kiss And softly said, "Dear heart, how like you this?" It was no dream: I lay broad waking. But all is turned thorough my gentleness Into a strange fashion of forsaking; And I have leave to go of her goodness, And she also, to use newfangleness. But since that I so kindly am served I would fain know what she hath deserved.

Candide

By Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire Candide is the illegitimate nephew of a German baron. He grows up in the baron's castle under the tutelage of the scholar Pangloss, who teaches him that this world is "the best of all possible worlds." Candide falls in love with the baron's young daughter, Cunégonde. The baron catches the two kissing and expels Candide from his home. On his own for the first time, Candide is soon conscripted into the army of the Bulgars. He wanders away from camp for a brief walk, and is brutally flogged as a deserter. After witnessing a horrific battle, he manages to escape and travels to Holland. In Holland, a kindly Anabaptist named Jacques takes Candide in. Candide runs into a deformed beggar and discovers that it is Pangloss. Pangloss explains that he has contracted syphilis and that Cunégonde and her family have all been brutally murdered by the Bulgar army. Nonetheless, he maintains his optimistic outlook. Jacques takes Pangloss in as well. The three travel to Lisbon together, but before they arrive their ship runs into a storm and Jacques is drowned. Candide and Pangloss arrive in Lisbon to find it destroyed by an earthquake and under the control of the Inquisition. Pangloss is soon hanged as a heretic, and Candide is flogged for listening with approval to Pangloss's philosophy. After his beating, an old woman dresses Candide's wounds and then, to his astonishment, takes him to Cunégonde. Cunégonde explains that though the Bulgars killed the rest of her family, she was merely raped and then captured by a captain, who sold her to a Jew named Don Isaachar. At present, she is a sex slave jointly owned by Don Isaachar and the Grand Inquisitor of Lisbon. Each of Cunégonde's two owners arrive in turn as she and Candide are talking, and Candide kills them both. Terrified, Candide, the old woman, and Cunégonde flee and board a ship bound for South America. During their journey, the old woman relates her own story. She was born the Pope's daughter but has suffered a litany of misfortunes that include rape, enslavement, and cannibalism. Candide and Cunégonde plan to marry, but as soon as they arrive in Buenos Aires, the governor, Don Fernando, proposes to Cunégonde. Thinking of her own financial welfare, she accepts. Authorities looking for the murderer of the Grand Inquisitor arrive from Portugal in pursuit of Candide. Along with a newly acquired valet named Cacambo, Candide flees to territory controlled by Jesuits who are revolting against the Spanish government. After demanding an audience with a Jesuit commander, Candide discovers that the commander is Cunégonde's brother, the baron, who also managed to escape from the Bulgars. Candide announces that he plans to marry Cunégonde, but the baron insists that his sister will never marry a commoner. Enraged, Candide runs the baron through with his sword. He and Cacambo escape into the wilderness, where they narrowly avoid being eaten by a native tribe called the Biglugs. After traveling for days, Candide and Cacambo find themselves in the land of Eldorado, where gold and jewels litter the streets. This utopian country has advanced scientific knowledge, no religious conflict, no court system, and places no value on its plentiful gold and jewels. But Candide longs to return to Cunégonde, and after a month in Eldorado he and Cacambo depart with countless invaluable jewels loaded onto swift pack sheep. When they reach the territory of Surinam, Candide sends Cacambo to Buenos Aires with instructions to use part of the fortune to purchase Cunégonde from Don Fernando and then to meet him in Venice. An unscrupulous merchant named Vanderdendur steals much of Candide's fortune, dampening his optimism somewhat. Frustrated, Candide sails off to France with a specially chosen companion, an unrepentantly pessimistic scholar named Martin. On the way there, he recovers part of his fortune when a Spanish captain sinks Vanderdendur's ship. Candide takes this as proof that there is justice in the world, but Martin staunchly disagrees. In Paris, Candide and Martin mingle with the social elite. Candide's fortune attracts a number of hangers-on, several of whom succeed in filching jewels from him. Candide and Martin proceed to Venice, where, to Candide's dismay, Cunégonde and Cacambo are nowhere to be found. However, they do encounter other colorful individuals there, including Paquette, the chambermaid-turned-prostitute who gave Pangloss syphilis, and Count Pococurante, a wealthy Venetian who is hopelessly bored with the cultural treasures that surround him. Eventually, Cacambo, now a slave of a deposed Turkish monarch, surfaces. He explains that Cunégonde is in Constantinople, having herself been enslaved along with the old woman. Martin, Cacambo, and Candide depart for Turkey, where Candide purchases Cacambo's freedom. Candide discovers Pangloss and the baron in a Turkish chain gang. Both have actually survived their apparent deaths and, after suffering various misfortunes, arrived in Turkey. Despite everything, Pangloss remains an optimist. An overjoyed Candide purchases their freedom, and he and his growing retinue go on to find Cunégonde and the old woman. Cunégonde has grown ugly since Candide last saw her, but he purchases her freedom anyway. He also buys the old woman's freedom and purchases a farm outside of Constantinople. He keeps his longstanding promise to marry Cunégonde, but only after being forced to send the baron, who still cannot abide his sister marrying a commoner, back to the chain gang. Candide, Cunégonde, Cacambo, Pangloss, and the old woman settle into a comfortable life on the farm but soon find themselves growing bored and quarrelsome. Finally, Candide encounters a farmer who lives a simple life, works hard, and avoids vice and leisure. Inspired, Candide and his friends take to cultivating a garden in earnest. All their time and energy goes into the work, and none is left over for philosophical speculation. At last everyone is fulfilled and happy.

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 Jazz Age novel about the impossibility of recapturing the past, was initially a failure. Today, the story of Gatsby's doomed love for the unattainable Daisy is considered a defining novel of the 20th century. Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their fortunes too recently to have established social connections and who are prone to garish displays of wealth. Nick's next-door neighbor in West Egg is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and throws extravagant parties every Saturday night. Nick is unlike the other inhabitants of West Egg—he was educated at Yale and has social connections in East Egg, a fashionable area of Long Island home to the established upper class. Nick drives out to East Egg one evening for dinner with his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, an erstwhile classmate of Nick's at Yale. Daisy and Tom introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful, cynical young woman with whom Nick begins a romantic relationship. Nick also learns a bit about Daisy and Tom's marriage: Jordan tells him that Tom has a lover, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the valley of ashes, a gray industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle. At a vulgar, gaudy party in the apartment that Tom keeps for the affair, Myrtle begins to taunt Tom about Daisy, and Tom responds by breaking her nose. As the summer progresses, Nick eventually garners an invitation to one of Gatsby's legendary parties. He encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, a surprisingly young man who affects an English accent, has a remarkable smile, and calls everyone "old sport." Gatsby asks to speak to Jordan alone, and, through Jordan, Nick later learns more about his mysterious neighbor. Gatsby tells Jordan that he knew Daisy in Louisville in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many nights staring at the green light at the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion. Gatsby's extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are simply an attempt to impress Daisy. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy, but he is afraid that Daisy will refuse to see him if she knows that he still loves her. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection. Their love rekindled, they begin an affair. After a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious of his wife's relationship with Gatsby. At a luncheon at the Buchanans' house, Gatsby stares at Daisy with such undisguised passion that Tom realizes Gatsby is in love with her. Though Tom is himself involved in an extramarital affair, he is deeply outraged by the thought that his wife could be unfaithful to him. He forces the group to drive into New York City, where he confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom asserts that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand, and he announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminal—his fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy realizes that her allegiance is to Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt him. When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes, however, they discover that Gatsby's car has struck and killed Myrtle, Tom's lover. They rush back to Long Island, where Nick learns from Gatsby that Daisy was driving the car when it struck Myrtle, but that Gatsby intends to take the blame. The next day, Tom tells Myrtle's husband, George, that Gatsby was the driver of the car. George, who has leapt to the conclusion that the driver of the car that killed Myrtle must have been her lover, finds Gatsby in the pool at his mansion and shoots him dead. He then fatally shoots himself. Nick stages a small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and moves back to the Midwest to escape the disgust he feels for the people surrounding Gatsby's life and for the emptiness and moral decay of life among the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick reflects that just as Gatsby's dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism has disintegrated into the mere pursuit of wealth. Though Gatsby's power to transform his dreams into reality is what makes him "great," Nick reflects that the era of dreaming—both Gatsby's dream and the American dream—is over.

The Confessions, Books I-VI

St. Augustine a diverse blend of autobiography, philosophy, theology, and critical exegesis of the Christian Bible. The first nine Books (or chapters) of the work trace the story of Augustine's life, from his birth (354 A.D.) up to the events that took place just after his conversion to Catholicism (386 A.D.). Augustine treats this autobiography as much more than an opportunity to recount his life, however, and there is hardly an event mentioned that does not have an accompanying religious or philosophical explication. In fact, the events that Augustine chooses to recount are selected mainly with a view to these larger issues. Born and raised in Thagaste, in eastern Algeria (then part of the Roman empire), Augustine enters a social world that he now sees as sinful to the point of utter folly. Grade school teaches questionable pursuits with misguided aims, and everywhere boys like Augustine are trained to devote themselves to transient, material pursuits rather than to the pursuit of God. As a student in Thagaste and then Carthage, Augustine runs amok in sexual adventures and false philosophies (most notably Manicheism). He sees this period of his life primarily as a lesson in how immersion in the material world is its own punishment of disorder, confusion, and grief. The young Augustine does, however, catch a passion for the pursuit of Philosophical truth, learning the doctrines of Manicheism, skepticism, and Neoplatonism. This last philosophy will have a profound influence on him-- the Confessions are perhaps the most masterful expression of his intricate fusion of Catholic theology with Neoplatonic ideas. Moving back to Thagaste, then back to Carthage again, and on to Rome and Milan, Augustine continues to wrestle with his doubts about what he has learned and with his budding interest in Catholicism, the faith of his mother, Monica. He also continues to pursue his career as a teacher of rhetoric (an occupation he later frowns upon as the salesmanship of empty words) and his habits of indulgence in sex and other pleasures of the sensual world. Things change in Milan, where Augustine finally decides that Catholicism holds the only real truth. Convinced of this but lacking the will to make the leap into a fully devoted life (including baptism and sexual abstinence), Augustine has a famous conversion experience in his Milan garden and becomes a devoted and chaste Catholic. The last four Books of the Confessionsdepart from autobiography altogether, focusing directly on religious and philosophical issues of memory (Book X), time and eternity (Book XI), and the interpretation of the Book of Genesis (Books XII and XIII). Despite this apparent sudden shift in content, however, the Confessions are remarkably coherent as a whole; in making his autobiography a profoundly reflective one, Augustine has already introduced many of the same ideas and themes that receive a direct treatment in the last four Books. The unifying theme that emerges over the course of the entire work is that of redemption: Augustine sees his own painful process of returning to God as an instance of the return of the entire creation to God. The form of the work corresponds closely to its aim and its content; the work is about the return of creation to God, it aims to inspire others to actively seek this return, and it takes the highly original form of a direct address to God from one being in his creation. In this context, it is also noteworthy that, for Augustine, "confession" carried the dual meanings of an admission of guilt and an act of praise.

The Snow Man

Wallace Stevens One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

The Relation of the Poet to Daydreaming

informal talk given in 1907 by Sigmund Freud, and subsequently published in 1908, on the relationship between unconscious phantasy and creative art. Freud's argument - that artists, reviving memories of childhood daydreams and play activities, succeeded in making them acceptable through their aesthetic technique[1] - was to be widely influential for interwar modernism.

Joseph Andrews

by Henry Fielding was published in 1742 and was his first full-length novel. It was among the earliest of all English language novels. It tells of Joseph Andrews, a footman, and his travels on the road from London with his friend Abraham Adams. Adams is his mentor and a parson. In style, Joseph Andrews has similarities to Cervantes' Don Quixote. Sir Thomas Booby's wife, Lady Booby, has taken a romantic interest in the household's footman Joseph Andrews. Also developing an interest in Joseph for different reasons is Parson Adams, who wants to develop the moral, as well as intellectual, potential he sees in the servant. Joseph is to begin studying Latin but first, Sir Thomas and Lady Booby embark on a trip to London with Joseph in tow. Once in London, Joseph takes up with an unsavory crowd and continues to be the target of Lady Booby's implied advances. Joseph does not give in to any temptations, however. A year later, Sir Thomas dies, fueling his wife's advances toward Joseph. Joseph does not pick up on her insinuations, feeling that a woman of her social position would never be interested in him. As Joseph remains virtuous, Lady Booby is more and more angered. She decides to fire him but has difficulty following through. Her steward, Peter Pounce, pays Joseph and dismisses him from their employ. Joseph is not disappointed with this outcome, as he has become uncomfortable with Lady Booby. He decides to go to the Boobys' country parish to find Fanny Goodwill, a milkmaid and sweetheart from his childhood whom he plans to marry. On his way he is beaten, robbed, and left for dead. A coach passing by comes to his aid, although only because a lawyer on board warns the passengers that there could be legal repercussions if they let him die there. He is left at an inn and is not expected to survive. He does, however, and Adams arrives while on his way to London hoping to have volumes of his sermons published. Through a series of events, Adams comes to realize that he left the sermons at home and no longer needs to go to London. He and Joseph decide to head for home with Joseph riding Adams' horse and Adams riding in a coach. When they arrive at an inn, the pair gets into a brawl with the innkeeper and his wife. When they leave to continue their journey home, Joseph is in the coach, and Adams is walking, having in his typically absent-minded way, forgotten about his horse. While walking alone, Adams comes upon a sportsman on a partridge hunt and talking of how much he admires bravery. A woman's cries are heard and the sportsman quickly leaves; Adams remains to help her. He beats her assailant who, when another group of men arrive, accuses Adams and the woman of robbing him. This leads to the men taking Adams and the woman to a Justice of the Peace with the hope of a reward. It turns out that the woman is Fanny Goodwill, who is out looking for Joseph. The authorities are ready to send Fanny and Adams to prison when an onlooker recognizes Adams as a clergyman and vouches for him. The pair is released. They arrive at an inn where they find Joseph. Joseph wants to marry Fanny immediately, but she and Adams suggest waiting. In the morning, upon realizing that they do not have the money to pay their bill at the inn, Adams goes to find the rich Parson Trulliber at a nearby parish, who rejects his request for financial assistance. Back at the inn, a peddler lends them the money, and the travelers continue on their way. Further encounters on their journey include meeting a squire who offers, but then retracts his help, and a group of sheep-stealers. They meet and are hosted by the Wilson family whose simple approach to life inspires a discussion of virtue and vice. Farther along, Adams is attacked by a pack of hunting dogs and is saved by Joseph. There follows an abduction of Fanny after a skirmish in which Adams and Joseph are tied up. A group of Lady Booby's servants happen by and rescue Fanny. They go on to the inn where Adams and Joseph are tied up, and they all set off for Lady Booby's parish. On Sunday, the parson announces the pending marriage of Joseph and Fanny. Lady Booby later tells the parson that she opposes the union. Adams refuses to help her keep them apart, so Lady Booby has a lawyer fabricate a legal reason to prevent the marriage. Lady Booby's nephew, Mr. Booby, and his wife, Pamela, who is Joseph's sister, arrive, and the legal maneuverings of Lady Booby are avoided. Further complications ensue as Lady Booby continues to seek ways to prevent the marriage. Familial histories suggest that Joseph and Fanny could be siblings. Ultimately, their lineage is sorted out. Joseph is from a respected background. A wedding ceremony takes place, and the reader is informed that the story has ended and that there will not be a sequel.

"A Dissertation on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Mankind

by: Jean-Jacques Rousseau The aim of the Discourse is to examine the foundations of inequality among men, and to determine whether this inequality is authorized by natural law. Rousseau attempts to demonstrate that modern moral inequality, which is created by an agreement between men, is unnatural and unrelated to the true nature of man. To examine natural law, Rousseau argues, it is necessary to consider human nature and to chart how that nature has evolved over the centuries to produce modern man and modern society. To do this, he begins in the imaginary state of nature, a condition before society and the development of reason. Discarding the Biblical account of human creation and development, Rousseau attempts to conjecture, or guess, what man in this state would be like. He examines man's physical and mental characteristics, and finds him to be an animal like any other, motivated by two key principles: pity and self-preservation. The only real attribute that separates him from the animals is his perfectibility, a quality that is vitally important in the process Rousseau goes on to describe. Man in the state of nature has few needs, no idea of good and evil, and little contact with other humans. Nevertheless, he is happy. However, man does not remain unchanged. The quality of perfectibility allows him to be shaped by, and to change in response to, his environment. Natural forces such as earthquakes and floods drive men into all parts of the globe, and force them to develop language and other skills. As men come into contact more frequently, small groups or societies start to form. The human mind begins to develop, and as man becomes more aware of others, he develops a series of new needs. The emergence of reason and society are related, but the process by which they evolve is a negative one. As men start to live in groups, pity and self- preservation are replaced by amour propre, which drives men to compare themselves to others, and to need to dominate others in order to be happy. The invention of property and the division of labor represent the beginning of moral inequality. Property allows for the domination and exploitation of the poor by the rich. Initially, however, relations between rich and poor are dangerous and unstable, leading to a violent state of war. As an attempt to escape from this war, the rich trick the poor into creating a political society. The poor believe that this creation will secure their freedom and safety, but in fact it merely fixes the relations of domination that existed before, creating laws to establish inequality. Inequality is now more or less unrelated to man's original nature; physical inequality is replaced by moral inequality. Rousseau's account of the operation of society focuses on its various stages. Beginning with the trick played by the rich, he sees society as becoming more and more unequal, until its last stage, which is despotism, or the unjust rule of everyone by one man. This development is not inevitable, but it is extremely likely. As wealth becomes the standard by which men are compared, conflict and despotism become possible. For Rousseau, the worst kind of modern society is that in which money is the only measure of value. Rousseau's conclusions to the Discourseare clear: inequality is natural only when it relates to physical differences between men. In modern societies, however, inequality derives from a process of human evolution that has corrupted man's nature and subjected him to laws and property, both of which support a new, unjustifiable kind of inequality, termed moral inequality. This is an unacceptable situation, according to Rousseau, but he gives few clues about how it can be improved.

Ivanhoe

by: Sir Walter Scott It is a dark time for England. Four generations after the Norman conquest of the island, the tensions between Saxons and Normans are at a peak; the two peoples even refuse to speak one another's languages. King Richard is in an Austrian prison after having been captured on his way home from the Crusades; his avaricious brother, Prince John, sits on the throne, and under his reign the Norman nobles have begun routinely abusing their power. Saxon lands are capriciously repossessed, and many Saxon landowners are made into serfs. These practices have enraged the Saxon nobility, particularly the fiery Cedric of Rotherwood. Cedric is so loyal to the Saxon cause that he has disinherited his son Ivanhoe for following King Richard to war. Additionally, Ivanhoe fell in love with Cedric's high-born ward Rowena, whom Cedric intends to marry to Athelstane, a descendent of a long-dead Saxon king. Cedric hopes that the union will reawaken the Saxon royal line. Unbeknownst to his father, Ivanhoe has recently returned to England disguised as a religious pilgrim. Assuming a new disguise as the Disinherited Knight, he fights in the great tournament at Ashby-de-la-Zouche. Here, with the help of a mysterious Black Knight, he vanquishes his great enemy, the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert, and wins the tournament. He names Rowena the Queen of Love and Beauty, and reveals his identity to the crowd. But he is badly wounded and collapses on the field. In the meantime, the wicked Prince John has heard a rumor that Richard is free from his Austrian prison. He and his advisors, Waldemar Fitzurse, Maurice de Bracy, and Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, begin plotting how to stop Richard from returning to power in England. John has a scheme to marry Rowena to de Bracy; unable to wait, de Bracy kidnaps Cedric's party on its way home from the tournament, imprisoning the Saxons in Front-de-Boeuf's castle of Torquilstone. With the party are Cedric, Rowena, and Athelstane, as well as Isaac and Rebecca, a Jewish father and daughter who have been tending to Ivanhoe after his injury, and Ivanhoe himself. De Bracy attempts to convince Rowena to marry him, while de Bois-Guilbert attempts to seduce Rebecca, who has fallen in love with Ivanhoe. Both men fail, and the castle is attacked by a force led by the Black Knight who helped Ivanhoe at the tournament. Fighting with the Black Knight are the legendary outlaws of the forest, Robin Hood and his merry men. The villains are defeated and the prisoners are freed, but de Bois-Guilbert succeeds in kidnapping Rebecca. As the battle winds down, Ulrica, a Saxon crone, lights the castle on fire, and it burns to the ground, engulfing both Ulrica and Front-de-Boeuf. At Templestowe, the stronghold of the Knights-Templars, de Bois-Guilbert comes under fire from his commanders for bringing a Jew into their sacred fortress. It is speculated among the Templars that perhaps Rebecca is a sorceress who has enchanted de Bois-Guilbert against his will; the Grand Master of the Templars concurs and orders a trial for Rebecca. On the advice of de Bois-Guilbert, who has fallen in love with her, Rebecca demands a trial-by-combat, and can do nothing but await a hero to defend her. To his dismay, de Bois-Guilbert is appointed to fight for the Templars: if he wins, Rebecca will be killed, and if he loses, he himself will die. At the last moment, Ivanhoe appears to defend Rebecca, but he is so exhausted from the journey that de Bois-Guilbert unseats him in the first pass. But Ivanhoe wins a strange victory when de Bois-Guilbert falls dead from his horse, killed by his own conflicting passions. In the meantime, the Black Knight has defeated an ambush carried out by Waldemar Fitzurse and announced himself as King Richard, returned to England at last. When Athelstane steps out of the way, Ivanhoe and Rowena are married; Rebecca visits Rowena one last time to thank her for Ivanhoe's role in saving her life. Rebecca and Isaac are sailing for their new home in Granada; Ivanhoe goes on to have a heroic career under King Richard, until the king's untimely death puts an end to all his worldly projects.

Ulysses

Alfred, Lord Tennyson It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades For ever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Treasure Island

Robert Louis Stevenson An old sailor, calling himself "the captain" but really called Billy Bones, comes to lodge at the Admiral Benbow Inn on the English coast during the mid 1700s, paying the innkeeper's son, Jim Hawkins, a few pennies to keep a lookout for "seafaring men." One of these shows up, frightening Billy (who drinks far too much rum) into a stroke, and Billy tells Jim that his former shipmates covet the contents of his sea chest. After a visit from another man, Billy has another stroke and dies; Jim and his mother (his father has died only a few days before) unlock the sea chest, finding some money, a journal, and a map. The local physician, Dr. Livesey, deduces that the map is of an island where the pirate Flint buried a vast treasure. The district squire, Trelawney, proposes buying a ship and going after the treasure, taking Livesey as ship's doctor and Jim as cabin boy. Several weeks later, Trelawney sends for Jim and Livesey and introduces them to Long John Silver, a Bristol tavern-keeper whom he has hired as ship's cook. They also meet Captain Smollett, who tells them that he does not like the crew or the voyage, which it seems everyone in Bristol knows is a search for treasure. After taking a few precautions, however, they set sail for the distant island. During the voyage the first mate, a drunkard, disappears overboard. And just before the island is sighted, Jim overhears Silver talking with two other crewmen and realizes that he and most of the others are pirates and have planned a mutiny. Jim tells the captain, Trelawney, and Livesey, and they calculate that they will be seven to nineteen against the mutineers and must pretend not to suspect anything until the treasure is found, when they can surprise their adversaries. But after the ship is anchored, Silver and some of the others go ashore, and two men who refuse to join the mutiny are killed — one with so loud a scream that everyone realizes there can be no more pretense. Jim has impulsively joined the shore party, and now in running away from them he encounters a half-crazy Englishman, Ben Gunn, who tells him he was marooned here and can help against the mutineers in return for passage home and part of the treasure. Meanwhile Smollett, Trelawney, and Livesey, along with Trelawney's three servants and one of the other hands, Abraham Gray, abandon the ship and come ashore to occupy a stockade. The men still on the ship, led by the coxswain Israel Hands, run up the pirate flag. One of Trelawney's servants and one of the pirates are killed in the fight to reach the stockade, and the ship's gun keeps up a barrage upon them, to no effect, until dark, when Jim finds the stockade and joins them. The next morning Silver appears under a flag of truce, offering terms that Captain Smollett refuses, and revealing that another pirate has been killed in the night (by Ben Gunn, Jim realizes, although Silver does not). At Smollett's refusal to surrender the map, Silver threatens an attack, and, within a short while, the attack on the stockade is launched. After a battle, the surviving mutineers retreat, having lost six men, but two more of the captain's group have been killed and Smollett himself is badly wounded. When Livesey leaves in search of Ben Gunn, Jim runs away without permission and finds Gunn's homemade boat. After dark, he goes out and cuts the ship adrift. The two pirates on board, Hands and O'Brien, interrupt their drunken quarrel to run on deck, but the ship — with Jim's boat in her wake — is swept out to sea on the ebb tide. Exhausted, Jim falls asleep in the boat and wakens the next morning, bobbing along on the west coast of the island, carried by a northerly current. Eventually, he encounters the ship, which seems deserted, but getting on board, he finds O'Brien dead and Hands badly wounded. He and Hands agree that they will beach the ship at an inlet on the northern coast of the island. But as the ship is finally beached, Hands attempts to kill Jim, and Jim shoots and kills him. Then, after securing the ship as well as he can, he goes back ashore and heads for the stockade. Once there, in utter darkness, he enters the blockhouse — to be greeted by Silver and the remaining five mutineers, who have somehow taken over the stockade in his absence. Silver and the others argue about whether to kill Jim, and Silver talks them down. He tells Jim that, when everyone found the ship was gone, the captain's party agreed to a treaty whereby they gave up the stockade and the map. In the morning Dr. Livesey arrives to treat the wounded and sick pirates, and tells Silver to look out for trouble when they find the site of the treasure. After he leaves, Silver and the others set out with the map, taking Jim along. Eventually they find the treasure cache — empty. Two of the pirates charge at Silver and Jim, but are shot down by Livesey, Gray, and Ben Gunn, from ambush. The other three run away, and Livesey explains that Gunn has long ago found the treasure and taken it to his cave. In the next few days they load the treasure onto the ship, abandon the three remaining mutineers (with supplies and ammunition) and sail away. At their first port, where they will sign on more crew, Silver steals a bag of money and escapes. The rest sail back to Bristol and divide up the treasure. Jim says there is more left on the island, but he for one will not undertake another voyage to recover it.

Sunday Morning

Wallace Stevens It's a Sunday morning, and while many people are at church, a woman is sitting outside in her nightgown, eating a late breakfast and enjoying the morning. If not for all the beauty around her, including a pet tropical bird, she'd feel guilty about not being in church. But, when she starts to daydream, she has very serious thoughts about the death of Christ. She imagines herself traveling with a bunch of ghosts to Christ's tomb in Palestine. After this vision, she entertains skepticism about Christianity. She wonders why she only has thoughts about Christ when she is not thinking about other things. She likes the idea of heaven, but she believes that the natural world provides just as much comfort. She decides there is nothing divine apart from the emotions she experiences in nature. The poem compares Jesus Christ with Jove, the most powerful god in Greek and Roman mythology. Because Jove represented the sun and the sky, the poet thinks the worship of Jove is an expression of love for these and other natural beauties. Also, he thinks that the mythological gods fill a secret desire of the human imagination to praise nature. The poet wonders if the gods created by men will lead to paradise, or if earth is the only paradise. The woman thinks about how happy it makes her feel to see birds about to take off from a field, but she worries that, once the birds have left, the field won't feel like "paradise" anymore. The poet responds that the beauties of nature have lasted longer than any specific religious idea of paradise. The woman thinks that she needs to believe in a beauty and happiness that lasts forever. The poet responds that nothing beautiful could exist without change. Death causes change. But, even when death causes one thing to end, it brings about something new to take its place. The poet imagines a paradise without death or change, and he decides that it would be booo-ring - and maybe even a bit sad. It also wouldn't be that different from Earth, except more pointless. As luck would have it, some pagan guys show up. They're dancing in a circle and waving their hands in the air like they just don't care. The men are chanting to the sun, and the sounds of nature around them seem to add to the music. The men live in the present moment, and do not worry about the past or future. The woman hears a voice that tells her there are no spirits clustered around Christ's tomb, which is just a grave where a person is buried. The poet sums up the poem to the reader. Without real gods or the idea of a heaven, the world seems like chaos. We are alone, but we have freedom. Humanity is like an island surrounded by "wide water" on every side. We are surrounded by natural beings that live independently of us, and it is impossible to know their purpose or meaning. Complacencies of the peignoir, and late Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, And the green freedom of a cockatoo Upon a rug mingle to dissipate The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.

The Pilgrim's Progress, Part I

By John Bunyan Christian asks Hopeful if he knows of a fellow named Temporary, who was religious and who resolved to go on a pilgrimage as they are doing now. Hopeful knows of the man. Christian says that Temporary's resolve only lasted a short time, until he met someone named Saveself and stopped talking to Christian. Temporary's example leads Hopeful to ask that they discuss the causes of spiritual backsliding in general. Hopeful explains that fear, shame, and guilt are all causes for the devout to lose sight of their salvation. He lists some key symptoms of backsliders, including the abandonment of duties, association with loose people, and the shunning of Christian friends. Christian and Hopeful are told they face more difficulties. Two of the three Shining Ones encourage them onward. One difficulty soon appears before them: a river flowing between them and the city gate. There is no bridge, so when they try to cross, Christian feels himself start to sink, despairing of reaching his goal. He tells Hopeful he fears he will never see the land of milk and honey. Hopeful urges him on, but Christian tells him to go on without him. Then Hopeful mentions Jesus Christ, who wishes Christian well. The vision of Christ gives Christian new hope, and they emerge from the river. The Shining Ones lead them up to the gate of the City on a tall hill, where trumpeters greet them. Christian and Hopeful realize they have lost their mortal garments in the river. The Shining Ones beseech the king of the City to open the gate. The king announces that anyone who keeps God's truth may enter and commands that the gate open for Christian and Hopeful. They enter and are clothed in garments of gold. After watching Christian and Hopeful enter through the gate, the narrator wishes he were with them. Ignorance is shut out of the City because he is without a certificate of entry and is sent to hell. The narrator wakes up from his dream. In the conclusion, the narrator says that he has told his dream and invites the reader to interpret it. Though he warns of the dangers of interpreting his dream wrongly, the narrator also cautions against playing around with the obvious surface content of the tale, being entertained by it rather than instructed. He says that, just as no one throws away an apple to save the core, so too must no one throw away the essence of his story to save its inessential parts. Analysis Christian's discussion of Temporary displays his spiritual confidence near the end of his journey. Like his earlier tale about Little-Faith, his story about Temporary demonstrates that Christian possesses the certitude necessary to analyze cases of pilgrims who fail. In earlier chapters, he was not sure enough of his own success to make such judgments. After all, Temporary's story reveals the risk of Christian's own position, since Temporary also felt saved until he failed to follow through on his spiritual achievement. Christian could backslide also, at least theoretically. Temporary's fate could be his own. But he understands himself and his progress enough to trust that he will succeed where Temporary failed.

Vanity Fair

By William Makepeace Thackeray Amelia Sedley, of good family, and Rebecca Sharp, an orphan, leave Miss Pinkerton's academy on Chiswick Mall to live out their lives in Vanity Fair — the world of social climbing and search for wealth. Amelia does not esteem the values of Vanity Fair; Rebecca cares for nothing else. Rebecca first attempts to enter the sacred domain of Vanity Fair by inducing Joseph Sedley, Amelia's brother, to marry her. George Osborne, however, foils this plan; he intends to marry Amelia and does not want a governess for a sister-in-law. Rebecca takes a position as governess at Queen's Crawley, and marries Rawdon Crawley, second son of Sir Pitt Crawley. Because of his marriage, Rawdon's rich aunt disinherits him. First introduced as a friend of George Osborne, William Dobbin becomes the instrument for getting George to marry Amelia, after George's father has forbidden the marriage on account of the Sedley's loss of fortune. Because of George's marriage, old Osborne disinherits him. Both young couples endeavor to live without sufficient funds. George dies at Waterloo. Amelia would have starved but for William Dobbin's anonymous contribution to her welfare. Joseph goes back to his post in India, claiming such valor at Waterloo that he earns the nickname "Waterloo Sedley." Actually he fled at the sound of the cannon. Both Rebecca and Amelia give birth to sons. Rebecca claims she will make Rawdon's fortune, but actually she hides much of her loot, obtained from admiring gentlemen. When she becomes the favorite of the great Lord Steyne, she accumulates both money and diamonds. In the meantime innocent Rawdon draws closer to Lady Jane, wife of Rawdon's older brother, Pitt, who has inherited from the rich aunt. When Rawdon discovers Rebecca in her treachery, he is convinced that money means more to her than he or the son whom she has always hated. He refuses to see her again and takes a post in Coventry Island, where he dies of yellow fever. Because her parents are starving and she can neither provide for them nor give little Georgy what she thinks he needs, Amelia gives up her son to his grandfather Osborne. William Dobbin comes back from the service, reconciles old Osborne to Amelia, whereat Osborne makes a will leaving Georgy half of his fortune and providing for Amelia. Rebecca, having lost the respectability of a husband, wanders in Europe for a couple of years and finally meets Joseph, Georgy, Amelia, and William on the Continent. Rebecca sets about to finish what she started to do at the first of the book — that is, to ensnare Joseph. She does not marry him, but she takes all his money and he dies in terror of her, the implication being that she has, at least, hastened his death. At the end of the book Rebecca has the money necessary to live in Vanity Fair; she appears to be respectable. William has won Amelia. Rebecca has been the one who jolted Amelia into recognition that George, her first love, wasn't worthy. Little Rawdon, upon the death of his uncle Pitt and his cousin Pitt, becomes the heir of Queen's Crawley. Little George, through the kindness of Dobbin, has lost his distorted values obtained in Vanity Fair. The reader feels that these young persons of the third generation will be better people than their predecessors in Vanity Fair.

Kidnapped

Robert Louis Stevenson Tricked by the uncle who has stolen his inheritance, young David Balfour is kidnapped and bound for America. Or at least that was the plan, until the ship runs into trouble and David is rescued by Alan Breck Stewart, fugitive Jacobite and, by his own admission, a 'bonny fighter'. Balfour, a canny lowlander, finds an echo of some wilder and more romantic self in the wilful and courageous Highland spirit of Alan Breck. A strange and difficult friendship is born, as their adventures begin.

Alice in Wonderland

an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.[1] It tells of a young girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children.[2] It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre.[2][3] Its narrativecourse, structure, characters, and imagery have been enormously influential[3] in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre. Alice sits on a riverbank on a warm summer day, drowsily reading over her sister's shoulder, when she catches sight of a White Rabbit in a waistcoat running by her. The White Rabbit pulls out a pocket watch, exclaims that he is late, and pops down a rabbit hole. Alice follows the White Rabbit down the hole and comes upon a great hallway lined with doors. She finds a small door that she opens using a key she discovers on a nearby table. Through the door, she sees a beautiful garden, and Alice begins to cry when she realizes she cannot fit through the door. She finds a bottle marked "DRINK ME" and downs the contents. She shrinks down to the right size to enter the door but cannot enter since she has left the key on the tabletop above her head. Alice discovers a cake marked "EAT ME" which causes her to grow to an inordinately large height. Still unable to enter the garden, Alice begins to cry again, and her giant tears form a pool at her feet. As she cries, Alice shrinks and falls into the pool of tears. The pool of tears becomes a sea, and as she treads water she meets a Mouse. The Mouse accompanies Alice to shore, where a number of animals stand gathered on a bank. After a "Caucus Race," Alice scares the animals away with tales of her cat, Dinah, and finds herself alone again. Alice meets the White Rabbit again, who mistakes her for a servant and sends her off to fetch his things. While in the White Rabbit's house, Alice drinks an unmarked bottle of liquid and grows to the size of the room. The White Rabbit returns to his house, fuming at the now-giant Alice, but she swats him and his servants away with her giant hand. The animals outside try to get her out of the house by throwing rocks at her, which inexplicably transform into cakes when they land in the house. Alice eats one of the cakes, which causes her to shrink to a small size. She wanders off into the forest, where she meets a Caterpillar sitting on a mushroom and smoking a hookah (i.e., a water pipe). The Caterpillar and Alice get into an argument, but before the Caterpillar crawls away in disgust, he tells Alice that different parts of the mushroom will make her grow or shrink. Alice tastes a part of the mushroom, and her neck stretches above the trees. A pigeon sees her and attacks, deeming her a serpent hungry for pigeon eggs. Alice eats another part of the mushroom and shrinks down to a normal height. She wanders until she comes across the house of the Duchess. She enters and finds the Duchess, who is nursing a squealing baby, as well as a grinning Cheshire Cat, and a Cook who tosses massive amounts of pepper into a cauldron of soup. The Duchess behaves rudely to Alice and then departs to prepare for a croquet game with the Queen. As she leaves, the Duchess hands Alice the baby, which Alice discovers is a pig. Alice lets the pig go and reenters the forest, where she meets the Cheshire Cat again. The Cheshire Cat explains to Alice that everyone in Wonderland is mad, including Alice herself. The Cheshire Cat gives directions to the March Hare's house and fades away to nothing but a floating grin. Alice travels to the March Hare's house to find the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, and the Dormouse having tea together. Treated rudely by all three, Alice stands by the tea party, uninvited. She learns that they have wronged Time and are trapped in perpetual tea-time. After a final discourtesy, Alice leaves and journeys through the forest. She finds a tree with a door in its side, and travels through it to find herself back in the great hall. She takes the key and uses the mushroom to shrink down and enter the garden. After saving several gardeners from the temper of the Queen of Hearts, Alice joins the Queen in a strange game of croquet. The croquet ground is hilly, the mallets and balls are live flamingos and hedgehogs, and the Queen tears about, frantically calling for the other player's executions. Amidst this madness, Alice bumps into the Cheshire Cat again, who asks her how she is doing. The King of Hearts interrupts their conversation and attempts to bully the Cheshire Cat, who impudently dismisses the King. The King takes offense and arranges for the Cheshire Cat's execution, but since the Cheshire Cat is now only a head floating in midair, no one can agree on how to behead it. The Duchess approaches Alice and attempts to befriend her, but the Duchess makes Alice feel uneasy. The Queen of Hearts chases the Duchess off and tells Alice that she must visit the Mock Turtle to hear his story. The Queen of Hearts sends Alice with the Gryphon as her escort to meet the Mock Turtle. Alice shares her strange experiences with the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon, who listen sympathetically and comment on the strangeness of her adventures. After listening to the Mock Turtle's story, they hear an announcement that a trial is about to begin, and the Gryphon brings Alice back to the croquet ground. The Knave of Hearts stands trial for stealing the Queen's tarts. The King of Hearts leads the proceedings, and various witnesses approach the stand to give evidence. The Mad Hatter and the Cook both give their testimony, but none of it makes any sense. The White Rabbit, acting as a herald, calls Alice to the witness stand. The King goes nowhere with his line of questioning, but takes encouragement when the White Rabbit provides new evidence in the form of a letter written by the Knave. The letter turns out to be a poem, which the King interprets as an admission of guilt on the part of the Knave. Alice believes the note to be nonsense and protests the King's interpretation. The Queen becomes furious with Alice and orders her beheading, but Alice grows to a huge size and knocks over the Queen's army of playing cards. All of a sudden, Alice finds herself awake on her sister's lap, back at the riverbank. She tells her sister about her dream and goes inside for tea as her sister ponders Alice's adventures.

Letter to Lord Chesterfield

has been keyed out as literature's "Declaration of Independence". This was a personal letter from Johnson to the Earl of Chesterfield, Philip Dormer, wrote on February 7, 1755. After seven years from first meeting Johnson to go over the work, Chesterfield wrote two anonymous essays in The World that recommended the Dictionary.[5] He complained that the English language was lacking structure and argued: "We must have recourse to the old Roman expedient in times of confusion, and chose a dictator. Upon this principle, I give my vote for Mr Johnson to fill that great and arduous post."[6] However, Johnson did not appreciate the tone of the essay, and he felt that Chesterfield did not complete his job as the work's patron.[6] In a letter, Johnson explained his feelings about the matter: "Seven years, my lord, have now past since I waited in your outward rooms or was repulsed from your door, during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before. . . . Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind: but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not want it."[7] Chesterfield was not offended by the letter, but instead impressed by the language.[8]After receiving it, he displayed it on a table for visitors to read, and, according to Robert Dodsley, said "This man has great powers" and then he "pointed out the severest passages, and observed how well they were expressed."[8] Adams told Johnson what was said, and Johnson responded, "That is not Lord Chesterfield; he is the proudest man this day", to which Adams responded, "No, there is one person at least as proud; I think, by your own account, you are the prouder man of the two."[8] Johnson, finishing, said, "But mine, was defensive pride."[8] Years later, the two reconciled, and a letter from Chesterfield "melted the Heart of the Writer of that epistolary Philippic."

Anna Karenina

is a realistic fiction - novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger. THis novel is commonly thought to explore the themes of hypocrisy, jealousy, faith, fidelity, family, marriage, society, progress, carnal desire and passion, and the agrarian connection to land in contrast to the lifestyles of the city After having an affair with a handsome military man, a woman kills herself; russion, 1970s, psychological novel. The Oblonsky family of Moscow is torn apart by adultery. Dolly Oblonskaya has caught her husband, Stiva, having an affair with their children's former governess, and threatens to leave him. Stiva is somewhat remorseful but mostly dazed and uncomprehending. Stiva's sister, Anna Karenina, wife of the St. Petersburg government official Karenin, arrives at the Oblonskys' to mediate. Eventually, Anna is able to bring Stiva and Dolly to a reconciliation. Meanwhile, Dolly's younger sister, Kitty, is courted by two suitors: Konstantin Levin, an awkward landowner, and Alexei Vronsky, a dashing military man. Kitty turns down Levin in favor of Vronsky, but not long after, Vronsky meets Anna Karenina and falls in love with her instead of Kitty. The devastated Kitty falls ill. Levin, depressed after having been rejected by Kitty, withdraws to his estate in the country. Anna returns to St. Petersburg, reflecting on her infatuation with Vronsky, but when she arrives home she dismisses it as a fleeting crush. Vronsky, however, follows Anna to St. Petersburg, and their mutual attraction intensifies as Anna begins to mix with the freethinking social set of Vronsky's cousin Betsy Tverskaya. At a party, Anna implores Vronsky to ask Kitty's forgiveness; in response, he tells Anna that he loves her. Karenin goes home from the party alone, sensing that something is amiss. He speaks to Anna later that night about his suspicions regarding her and Vronsky, but she curtly dismisses his concerns. Some time later, Vronsky participates in a military officers' horse race. Though an accomplished horseman, he makes an error during the race, inadvertently breaking his horse's back. Karenin notices his wife's intense interest in Vronsky during the race. He confronts Anna afterward, and she candidly admits to Karenin that she is having an affair and that she loves Vronsky. Karenin is stunned. Kitty, meanwhile, attempts to recover her health at a spa in Germany, where she meets a pious Russian woman and her do-gooder protégée, Varenka. Kitty also meets Levin's sickly brother Nikolai, who is also recovering at the spa. Levin's intellectual half-brother, Sergei Koznyshev, visits Levin in the country and criticizes him for quitting his post on the local administrative council. Levin explains that he resigned because he found the work bureaucratic and useless. Levin works enthusiastically with the peasants on his estate but is frustrated by their resistance to agricultural innovations. He visits Dolly, who tempts him with talk of reviving a relationship with Kitty. Later, Levin meets Kitty at a dinner party at the Oblonsky household, and the two feel their mutual love. They become engaged and marry. Karenin rejects Anna's request for a divorce. He insists that they maintain outward appearances by staying together. Anna moves to the family's country home, however, away from her husband. She encounters Vronsky often, but their relationship becomes clouded after Anna reveals she is pregnant. Vronsky considers resigning his military post, but his old ambitions prevent him. Karenin, catching Vronsky at the Karenin country home one day, finally agrees to divorce. Anna, in her childbirth agony, begs for Karenin's forgiveness, and he suddenly grants it. He leaves the divorce decision in her hands, but she resents his generosity and does not ask for a divorce. Instead, Anna and Vronsky go to Italy, where they lead an aimless existence. Eventually, the two return to Russia, where Anna is spurned by society, which considers her adultery disgraceful. Anna and Vronsky withdraw into seclusion, though Anna dares a birthday visit to her young son at Karenin's home. She begins to feel great jealousy for Vronsky, resenting the fact that he is free to participate in society while she is housebound and scorned. Married life brings surprises for Levin, including his sudden lack of freedom. When Levin is called away to visit his dying brother Nikolai, Kitty sparks a quarrel by insisting on accompanying him. Levin finally allows her to join him. Ironically, Kitty is more helpful to the dying Nikolai than Levin is, greatly comforting him in his final days. Kitty discovers she is pregnant. Dolly and her family join Levin and Kitty at Levin's country estate for the summer. At one point, Stiva visits, bringing along a friend, Veslovsky, who irks Levin by flirting with Kitty. Levin finally asks Veslovsky to leave. Dolly decides to visit Anna, and finds her radiant and seemingly very happy. Dolly is impressed by Anna's luxurious country home but disturbed by Anna's dependence on sedatives to sleep. Anna still awaits a divorce. Levin and Kitty move to Moscow to await the birth of their baby, and they are astonished at the expenses of city life. Levin makes a trip to the provinces to take part in important local elections, in which the vote brings a victory for the young liberals. One day, Stiva takes Levin to visit Anna, whom Levin has never met. Anna enchants Levin, but her success in pleasing Levin only fuels her resentment toward Vronsky. She grows paranoid that Vronsky no longer loves her. Meanwhile, Kitty enters labor and bears a son. Levin is confused by the conflicting emotions he feels toward the infant. Stiva goes to St. Petersburg to seek a cushy job and to beg Karenin to grant Anna the divorce he once promised her. Karenin, following the advice of a questionable French psychic, refuses. Anna picks a quarrel with Vronsky, accusing him of putting his mother before her and unfairly postponing plans to go to the country. Vronsky tries to be accommodating, but Anna remains angry. When Vronsky leaves on an errand, Anna is tormented. She sends him a telegram urgently calling him home, followed by a profusely apologetic note. In desperation, Anna drives to Dolly's to say goodbye, and then returns home. She resolves to meet Vronsky at the train station after his errand, and she rides to the station in a stupor. At the station, despairing and dazed by the crowds, Anna throws herself under a train and dies. Two months later, Sergei's book has finally been published, to virtually no acclaim. Sergei represses his disappointment by joining a patriotic upsurge of Russian support for Slavic peoples attempting to free themselves from Turkish rule. Sergei, Vronsky, and others board a train for Serbia to assist in the cause. Levin is skeptical of the Slavic cause, however. Kitty becomes worried by Levin's gloomy mood. He has become immersed in questions about the meaning of life but feels unable to answer them. One day, however, a peasant remarks to Levin that the point of life is not to fill one's belly but to serve God and goodness. Levin receives this advice as gospel, and his life is suddenly transformed by faith. Later that day, Levin, Dolly, and Dolly's children seek shelter from a sudden, violent thunderstorm, only to discover that Kitty and Levin's young son are still outside. Levin runs to the woods and sees a huge oak felled by lightning. He fears the worst, but his wife and child are safe. For the first time, Levin feels real love for his son, and Kitty is pleased. Levin reflects again that the meaning of his life lies in the good that he can put into it.

Faust, Part 1

the first part of the tragic playFaust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and is considered by many as the greatest work of German literature. It was first published in 1808. The first part of Faust is not divided into acts, but is structured as a sequence of scenes in a variety of settings. After a dedicatory poem and a prelude in the theater, the actual plot begins with a prologue in Heaven, where the Lord bets Mephistopheles, an agent of the Devil, that Mephistopheles cannot lead astray the Lord's favorite striving scholar, Dr. Faust. We then see Faust in his study, who, disappointed by the knowledge and results obtainable by science's natural means, attempts and fails to gain knowledge of nature and the universe by magical means. Dejected in this failure, Faust contemplates suicide, but is held back by the sounds of the beginning Easter celebrations. He joins his assistant Wagner for an Easter walk in the countryside, among the celebrating people, and is followed home by a poodle. Back in the study, the poodle transforms itself into Mephistopheles, who offers Faust a contract: he will do Faust's bidding on earth, and Faust will do the same for him in Hell (if, as Faust adds in an important side clause, Mephistopheles can get him to be satisfied and to want a moment to last forever). Faust signs in blood, and Mephistopheles first takes him to Auerbach's tavern in Leipzig, where the devil plays tricks on some drunken revelers. Having then been transformed into a young man by a witch, Faust encounters Margaret (Gretchen) and she excites his desires. Through a scheme involving jewellery and Gretchen's neighbour Marthe, Mephistopheles brings about Faust's and Gretchen's liaison. After a period of separation, Faust seduces Gretchen, who accidentally kills her mother with a sleeping potion given to her by Faust. Gretchen discovers that she is pregnant, and her torment is further increased when Faust and Mephistopheles kill her enraged brother in a sword fight. Mephistopheles seeks to distract Faust by taking him to a witches' sabbath on Walpurgis Night, but Faust insists on rescuing Gretchen from the execution to which she was sentenced after drowning her newborn child while in a state of madness. In the dungeon, Faust vainly tries to persuade Gretchen to follow him to freedom. At the end of the drama, as Faust and Mephistopheles flee the dungeon, a voice from heaven announces Gretchen's salvation.

The Faerie Queene: Cantos 2

Edmund Spenser Once morning is approaching, the various evil spirits go back to Archimago and explain their failures. Archimago, angry, returns to his magic books. He decides to make one of his other spirits look like a young knight, and has the spirit that looks like Una get in bed with him. Archimago then wakes Redcrosse up and claims that Una is in a compromising situation with some young upstart knight. Shocked and angered, Redcrosse follows the magician who shows him what he thinks is Una indeed sleeping with someone else. Redcrosse is extremely jealous and would have killed the young "man" if the magician hadn't stopped him. So, Redcrosse returns to bed, is unable to sleep, and finally, once morning comes, leaves with the dwarf immediately. Soon after, the real Una wakes up and, astounded to find Redcrosse and her dwarf gone, waits until she realizes they must have gone, and tries to follow them on her donkey. Unfortunately, she can only go very slowly (poor donkey!) and Archimago watches with delight as the companions end up separated from each other. But evil Archimago is not satisfied with this, and plots further ways to harm Una... since, apparently, he hates her. He decides he needs to disguise himself—since that's pretty easy for him being a magician and all—as Redcrosse. He does such a good job that even though he's a cowardly magician, he looks just like the knight. Meanwhile, the real Redcrosse, who we now learn is St. George, is simply wandering, trying not to think about Una or his own jealousy. As he's wandering, he runs into a Saracen (someone Islamic) who is traveling with a beautiful and well-dressed woman in red. She's flirting with her companion until she sees Redcrosse coming and asks her knight to challenge him as a sign of his affection. When they see each other, they rush at one another with violence and are both amazed at the strength of the other, just like two rams in a violent fight. The two continue to fight hand-to-hand, but still neither wins, and the Saracen curses Redcrosse's red cross, which the Saracen believes is protecting him. He lunges at Redcrosse, cutting away some of his protective armor, which in turn makes Redcrosse so filled with virtuous anger that he kills the Saracen. The lady in red takes off, but Redcrosse overtakes her and once she's caught, she begs him for mercy. He assures her she has nothing to fear and asks to know who she is. Crying, she tells him that she's the daughter of an Emperor and that she was engaged to a wonderful prince. Unfortunately this prince died and she's been wandering ever since, full of sorrow. She accidentally met the Saracen, who she says forced her to accompany him but that they never slept together. He's one of three no-good brothers: his name is Sans foy, the eldest, the youngest is named Sans joy, and the middle brother is named Sans loy. Her name is Fidessa and she begs Redcrosse to take pity on her. Redcrosse, who's been more busy checking out her beauty rather than listening to her story, assures her she is safe and promises to protect her, and so off they go together. They had been traveling a while, and the afternoon was hot so when they come across a couple of shady—maybe too shady—trees they decide to stop for a rest. They sit and chitchat. Redcrosse thinks she's so pretty he makes her a little crown of branches. But all of a sudden, the tree starts speaking—go figure—and begs them not to hurt him. He urges them to leave this place immediately, warning them that the same horrible thing that happened to him and his lady could happen to them. Stunned for a moment, Redcrosse asks who this ghost is. The tree-person responds that he is in fact a man named Fradubio who has been turned into a tree by a witch. Redcrosse urges Fradubio to tell his story, since telling a story can often be a source of comfort. Fradubio explains the witch is named Duessa and that he met her while he was traveling with his own ladylove. Duessa was traveling with another knight, who fought with Fradubio over whose lady was better, and once Fradubio killed him, Duessa came under his protection. Fradubio was at a complete loss as to which of these two ladies was more beautiful and Duessa, determined to win, cast a spell over his lady, Fralissa, to make her look ugly. Fradubio, being a real stand-up guy, immediately got rid of Fralissa. Fradubio and Duessa spend some quality time together until one night, Fradubio sees Duessa not in-disguise but as she really is and realizes she's a horrible monster/old woman. He tries to run away, but Duessa catches him and turns him into a tree where Fralissa has been trapped all along. Redcrosse wants to know how he can help poor Fradubio, but Fradubio says that the only way to lift the spell is for him to be "bathed in a living well" (running water) (I.ii.43). As it turns out, Fidessa, Redcrosse's new companion, is actually Duessa in another disguise and she's heard Fradubio's whole story. In order to distract Redcrosse, she pretends to be dead, so that he ends up trying to revive her. When she wakes up, they're both so relieved that they make out.

The Faerie Queene: Cantos 1

Edmund Spenser We meet a young and gentle knight riding through a plain. He's wearing armor that has clearly seen action, but he must have just acquired the armor since he himself is inexperienced. He seems like a good-humored kind of guy, definitely ready for some fighting. On the breastplate of his armor, and on his shield, a bloody cross is painted, out of respect and adoration for Jesus and his crucifixion. (Hint: this also tells us this guy is probably the Mr. Redcrosse Knight named in the title.) Redcrosse is a very faithful and loyal knight, devoted to Jesus Christ, but he also seems a bit sad. We learn that he's about to begin an exciting adventure given to him by Queen Gloriana, the queen of Faerie land, but also a reference to Elizabeth I. He really, really wants to impress the queen and keeps hoping something exciting will happen so that he can prove his worth. The quest he's been sent on is to slay a fearsome dragon. Riding next to him, on a white donkey, is a lovely lady, also very white but whose face is hidden under a black veil. She looks deeply sad, and by her side walks a milk-white lamb. The lady is just as virtuous as the lamb, and she's from a formerly great and powerful royal family. But, sadly, that family has been ruined by the terror of one scary dragon, and it's to help her and her family out that Redcrosse has taken up this quest. Pulling up the rear is a dwarf, who's going kind of slowly, which makes sense since the poor guy is in charge of carrying all her stuff. As they walk, it gets very cloudy and suddenly breaks into a terrible storm. The rain falls so severely that they all realize they need to find cover. As luck would have it, a nice shady grove happens to be nearby. They think it might be a good place to rest since it's very, very dark and full of windy paths leading into the forest (hint: this does not actually sound like a good place to rest). In they go, and happily they can hear some birds chirping, who must also be hiding from the storm. The birds certainly are happy about how many wonderful trees there are here: Pine; Cedar; Elm; Poplar; Oak, Laurel, Fir, Willow, Birch, Myrrh, Beech, Ash, Olive, Plantane, Holme, Maple (so, pretty much every tree ever). They wander around this tree-filled area until the storm passes, but, surprise-surprise, they've gotten lost; there are just so many different ways to go, they begin to doubt themselves and become completely confused. Finally, they just choose the one that looks most used and figure that's a good sign. Soon, they get to a cave in the thickest part of the forest and Redcrosse dismounts to investigate. The lady warns him to be careful, reminding them that they have no idea where they are and that danger can lurk anywhere, sometimes emerging without any prior notice. Good warning. Redcrosse says it would be cowardly not to investigate, and besides, he's a good person, and good people prevail even through darkness. Not really, says the lady. In fact, she actually now knows where they are (terrible timing!) and it's such a bad place she would rather have Redcrosse be a bit cowardly than face it. But it's too late! She goes on to explain that they have arrived in "Errours den" and that Errour is a horrible monster. The dwarf recommends they leave immediately. We agree. But Redcrosse doesn't listen and in he goes into the cave and sees the monster: half-serpent, half-woman. Her tail is huge, and full of knots and stingers, and takes up most of the cave. She has thousands of little monster babies, also weirdly shaped, who were feeding off her but after seeing Redcrosse, jump into her mouth. Weird. Errour is not happy to see Redcrosse, and rushes toward him but is momentarily put off by the shine of his armor, since she hates light. Redcrosse takes advantage of this and attacks her, forcing her not to leave, and strikes her shoulder. She's momentarily dazed by the blow, but then becomes even angrier, rushes on top of Redcrosse and wraps him up with her tail. The lady, seeing that things are not going well, urges Redcrosse to strangle the monster before the monster strangles him. Redcrosse manages to free one of his arms and grabs the monster by the throat, which loosens her hold on him, but also causes her to vomit out disgusting poison, that not only smells horrible but is also filled with books, papers, frogs, and toads. This vomit is just like when the Nile River in Egypt inundates, and out of its slush a bunch of weird creatures are born. Brain bite! The Nile is the major river in Egypt and every year it inundates, or overflows, onto its banks providing much-needed irrigation for the soil. While there is certainly diverse wildlife near the Nile, there aren't any strange monsters. The smell of the poisonous vomit is so bad that Redcrosse loses his strength. Seeing this, the monster then unleashes all her little offspring on him. They're annoying, but don't really seem able to hurt him. Redcrosse feels just like a shepherd, who, when the sun sets, gets attacked by gnats. They don't hurt, but they sure are annoying and hard to get rid of. Redcrosse is now really angry, and afraid not so much of dying but of the shame of not winning, so he vows to win and rushes at her with god-like strength... and cuts off her head. Her children freak out when she dies and run over and start drinking her blood, "making her death their life" (I.i.25). Redcrosse is pretty grossed out by this and watches as each little monster, after drinking up his mother, actually bursts apart and dies. Redcrosse thinks they deserve their death and is happy that these gross little enemies killed themselves without any help from him. The lady sees Redcrosse's victory and congratulates him, saying that he has shown himself to be worthy of armor and that he has won a great victory—she hopes many other great victories are in his future. They then find their way out of the forest by sticking to one path and following it to the end, and continue on their journey looking for adventures. After a long time, they come across an old man with bare feet, a long grey beard, and a book hanging from his belt. He seems extremely sad, perhaps repenting for something he's done. Redcrosse greets him and asks if he knows any super cool adventures in the area that he could begin. The old man, pretty reasonably, asks Redcrosse why in the world an old hermit (who doesn't know anything about the world but just sits and repents) would know something like that. However, he can tell them all about an evil man who has done terrible things to the country they're in. Redcrosse responds that he would love to hear about someone like that, since that's the kind of person who knights just live to kill. The old man responds that this evil person lives in a far away wilderness that no living soul goes to. The lady interjects and reminds Redcrosse that he's pretty worn out from his last adventure and that he might want to rest that night before embarking on another fight. The old man chimes in and agrees with the lady, and Redcrosse is convinced. They all spend the night with the old man. The old man lives in a hermitage (a secluded holy place), far away from anyone else, with an adjoining chapel where he frequently prays. Even though the old man's house isn't the most happening spot, they all enjoy resting and hearing the stories the old man tells. Night falls and they all sleep very heavily... maybe too heavily. The old man turns out to be a magician and casts spells on them to give them nightmares. Bummer. He casts spells that call up the wife of the god of the dead, other terrible magicians, and evil spirits from the underworld, one of whom he sends off to carry a message, another to stay with him and help with his evil mischief. The messenger spirit heads straight for Morpheus, god of sleep, who lives deep in the earth. Even though the gates to Morpheus's house are locked, the spirit easily goes in and finds Morpheus. But he's fast asleep, lulled by soft noises from his cave, completely oblivious to the spirit's presence. The spirit tries everything to wake him up, finally mentioning the dreaded name of Hecate, a fearful witch, which at once rouses the sleeping Morpheus. The spirit explains that he has been sent by a magician named Archimago (the old man) and that Archimago wants Morpheus to give Redcrosse, the lady, and the dwarf false dreams. Morpheus agrees and finds a strange dream to give the spirit. The spirit then takes the dream back with him to Archimago. Meanwhile, Archimago has been busy. He's turned the second spirit into a woman who looks exactly like the lady, who we only now find out is named Una. When the spirit returns with the dream, Archimago sends it to Redcrosse and teaches the second spirit to imitate Una perfectly. Redcrosse ends up being cursed with sexually charged dreams of Una, which, once he wakes up, seems to be true since someone who looks like Una (the second spirit in disguise) is lying seductively next to him. At this, he gets very upset, since Redcrosse thought she was a pure and shy virgin... sadly, this was a typical expectation men had of women in Spenser's time. He decides to test her, since she's behaving so out-of-character. She pleads with him, explaining that he can't blame her for loving him, since God has made her do it. And if she can't be with him, she'd rather die. Surely, she says, he must understand that she has trusted herself to him and worries about him. Redcrosse, for some reason, doesn't seem to quite get it, and asks her again why she's bothering him. She bluntly explains (again) that she loves him and it's been keeping her awake all night long. Redcrosse, who has never heard a lie before, is becoming a bit more convinced. He apologizes that he's causes her pain and responds, somewhat noncommittally, that her love is very important to him and reminds her that he's promised to never leave her. The spirit, defeated by Redcrosse's conciliatory response, leaves him alone for the time being. Redcrosse, still uneasy about Una's behavior, finally falls again into a trouble, and sexualized, sleep. But soon his dreams leave him in peace, realizing they aren't working their evil magic.

Penrod

a collection of comic sketches by Booth Tarkington that was first published in 1914. The book follows the misadventures of Penrod Schofield, an eleven-year-old boy growing up in the pre-World War I Midwestern United States, in a similar vein to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.[1][2] In Penrod, Tarkington established characters who appeared in two further books, Penrod and Sam (1916) and Penrod Jashber (1929). The three books were published together in one volume, Penrod: His Complete Story, in 1931. Chapters 1-6: Penrod, against his will, is cast as "The Child Sir Lancelot" in the local production The Pageant of the Table Round. Chapters 7-11: After seeing a movie about the Evils of Drink, Penrod uses the film's plot as an excuse for daydreaming in class. Chapters 12-14: It's the Annual Cotillion for Penrod's Dancing Class, and Penrod, who's known as "The Worst Boy in Town", has to find a female partner. Chapters 15-17: It's summer vacation. After meeting Herman and Verman, the children of a local black family, Penrod and Sam set up a show which becomes even more popular by the addition of the son of the most socially prominent family in town, which by coincidence shares the same last name as a notorious convicted murderess. Chapters 18-20: A dollar, given to him by his sister's boyfriend to leave them alone, proves Penrod's undoing. Chapters 21-23: Penrod meets a local tough kid and falls victim to hero-worship of the same. Chapters 24-25: Penrod hates to be called a "Little Gentleman", and the local barber's urging other children to keep calling him that leads to an explosive and very sticky situation. Chapters 26-27: Penrod, Sam and other local boys' discussing what they want to be when they grow up leads to some interesting, not to say embarrassing, results. Chapters 28-31: It's Penrod's twelfth birthday, and the arrival of a pretty new girl from New York turns his party into an occasion no one in town may ever forget

Dubliners

a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. "The Sisters" - After the priest Father Flynn dies, a young boy who was close to him and his family deals with his death superficially. "An Encounter" - Two schoolboys playing truant encounter a middle-aged man. "Araby" - A boy falls in love with the sister of his friend, but fails in his quest to buy her a worthy gift from the Araby bazaar. "Eveline" - A young woman weighs her decision to flee Ireland with a sailor. "After the Race" - College student Jimmy Doyle tries to fit in with his wealthy friends. "Two Gallants" - Two con men, Lenehan and Corley, find a maid who is willing to steal from her employer. "The Boarding House" - Mrs Mooney successfully manoeuvres her daughter Polly into an upwardly mobile marriage with her lodger Mr Doran. "A Little Cloud" - Little Chandler's dinner with his old friend Ignatius Gallaher casts fresh light on his own failed literary dreams. The story also reflects on Chandler's mood upon realising that his baby son has replaced him as the centre of his wife's affections. "Counterparts" - Farrington, a lumbering alcoholic scrivener, takes out his frustration in pubs and on his son Tom. "Clay" - The old maid Maria, a laundress, celebrates Halloween with her former foster child Joe Donnelly and his family. "A Painful Case" - Mr Duffy rebuffs Mrs Sinico, then, four years later, realises that he has condemned her to loneliness and death. "Ivy Day in the Committee Room" - Minor politicians fail to live up to the memory of Charles Stewart Parnell. "A Mother" - Mrs Kearney tries to win a place of pride for her daughter, Kathleen, in the Irish cultural movement, by starring her in a series of concerts, but ultimately fails. "Grace" - After Mr Kernan injures himself falling down the stairs in a bar, his friends try to reform him through Catholicism. "The Dead" - Gabriel Conroy attends a party, and later, as he speaks with his wife, has an epiphany about the nature of life and death. At 15-16,000 words this story has also been classified as a novella. The Deadwas adapted into a film by John Huston, written for the screen by his son Tony and starring his daughter Anjelica as Mrs. Conroy.

Danse Russe

William Carlos Williams If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,— if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: "I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so!" If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades,— Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?

Light in August

a novel by William Faulkner that was first published in 1932. Lena Grove, a pregnant teenager, has made her way to Mississippi in search of her baby's father. She hitches a ride into the small town of Jefferson, which is home to a planing mill. One of the workers at the mill, Joe Christmas, is a brooding, racially ambiguous man who appeared suddenly at the mill one day in search of a job. After gaining employment, he was soon joined at the mill by another man named Joe Brown. The two formed a partnership, making and selling liquor illegally, and eventually quit their jobs. Another of the mill workers, Byron Bunch, is intrigued and unsettled when Lena Grove suddenly appears at the mill one day. He tells the town's disgraced former minister, Reverend Gail Hightower, of his efforts to care for the girl. Soon, Lena comes to realize that the man she seeks—her baby's father, Lucas Burch—is really Joe Brown. Upon Lena's arrival in town, Brown is being held in the town jail after the murder of a local woman, Joanna Burden, and the burning of her home. Joe Christmas, Miss Burden's occasional lover, is the chief suspect. The narrative then shifts to explore several of the characters' pasts. As a young minister, Gail Hightower secures a church in Jefferson to feed his obsession with his grandfather, a Confederate cavalryman who was killed in the town during the Civil War. Hightower's young wife is unfaithful and grapples with mental health problems. She eventually dies in a fall from the window of a Memphis hotel room where she is staying with another man. A scandal ensues, and the Jefferson parishioners turn on Hightower, who is forced to step down. As a child, Joe Christmas is left on the steps of an orphanage. When the facility's dietician mistakenly believes that Joe has overheard her having sex with a young doctor in her room, she worries she will lose her job. To eliminate this risk, she threatens to expose young Joe's biracial background and thus have him transferred to an orphanage for black children. She discusses the plan with the orphanage's janitor, who kidnaps Joe and takes him to Little Rock, where he is found and returned, only to be adopted two weeks later by a sternly religious man, Mr. McEachern, and his wife. Joe's new foster father subjects him to regular beatings. As Joe grows and enters puberty, he eventually crosses paths with Bobbie, a prostitute who works as a waitress in the nearby town. When Mr. McEachern catches his son at a dance with Bobbie, a fight erupts, and Joe kills his foster father by smashing a chair over his head. Abandoned by Bobbie and her cohorts, Joe embraces a life on the run and wanders for more than fifteen years, eventually making his way to Jefferson. In Jefferson, Joe Christmas stays in the cabin on Joanna Burden's property, and the two quickly become lovers. Their relationship is marked by passion, violence, and long periods in which they ignore each other. Miss Burden wants a child and claims to be pregnant, but Joe is strongly opposed to the idea. After a time, Joe Brown comes to live with Joe Christmas in his cabin. Miss Burden tries to help Joe Christmas financially, but her meddling only provokes his ire. One night, he savagely attacks and kills her with a razor after she tries to fire a pistol at him in an apparent attempt at a murder-suicide. Miss Burden's nephew in New Hampshire offers a $1,000 reward for the capture of his aunt's killer. Search parties with bloodhounds comb the countryside for the fugitive Joe Christmas, who eludes capture for days, running to the point of hunger and exhaustion. Lena, meanwhile, moves into the cabin that the two Joes had shared in order to prepare for the birth of her baby; Byron Bunch stays in a tent nearby. Joe Christmas is apprehended on the streets of nearby Mottstown. His biological maternal grandfather, Uncle Doc Hines, makes his way through the crowd to curse Joe and call for his death. When the officials from Jefferson arrive to take charge of the prisoner, Mrs. Hines breaks through the crowd as well, hoping to see the face of the grandson who her husband told her died as a child. The Hineses then take the train to Jefferson together. Byron and the Hineses arrive at Hightower's house and reveal that Joe Christmas's father was a circus worker who tried to run off with the Hineses' daughter before Uncle Doc shot and killed him. Eventually, Uncle Doc placed the baby in the orphanage in Memphis where he worked as a janitor. Byron wants Hightower to lie and claim that Joe Christmas was with him, at his house, on the night of Joanna Burden's murder. Hightower becomes angry and asks them to leave. Lena goes into labor, but by the time Byron arrives with the doctor, Hightower has already delivered the baby. Assisting in the delivery is Mrs. Hines, who mistakenly believes that Lena is her long-dead daughter, Milly, and that the newborn is her grandson, Joe Christmas. Byron arranges to have Joe Brown sent to Lena's cabin; upon arriving, Brown is shocked to see Lena holding his newborn son, slips out a back window, and runs away. Byron sees Brown escape and tries to stop him, but the much larger man beats Byron soundly and escapes on a passing train. Joe Christmas, meanwhile, escapes from his captors as well, while he is being led across the town square. Before long, he is tracked down, shot, killed, and castrated in Hightower's kitchen by a bounty hunter named Percy Grimm. Afterward, the aging Hightower muses on his past and prepares for his own death. After a road trip, a local furniture mover near Jefferson recounts to his wife how he gave a ride to a curious couple—a woman with a newborn child accompanied by a man who was not the child's father. The couple—Lena and Byron—was halfheartedly in search of the baby's biological father, as the man drove them deeper into Tennessee.

The Sound and the Fury

a novel written by the American author William Faulkner. It employs a number of narrative styles, including stream of consciousness. Attempting to apply traditional plot summary to The Sound and the Fury is difficult. At a basic level, the novel is about the three Compson brothers' obsessions with the their sister Caddy, but this brief synopsis represents merely the surface of what the novel contains. A story told in four chapters, by four different voices, and out of chronological order, The Sound and the Fury requires intense concentration and patience to interpret and understand. The first three chapters of the novel consist of the convoluted thoughts, voices, and memories of the three Compson brothers, captured on three different days. The brothers are Benjy, a severely retarded thirty-three-year-old man, speaking in April, 1928; Quentin, a young Harvard student, speaking in June, 1910; and Jason, a bitter farm-supply store worker, speaking again in April, 1928. Faulkner tells the fourth chapter in his own narrative voice, but focuses on Dilsey, the Compson family's devoted "Negro" cook who has played a great part in raising the children. Faulkner harnesses the brothers' memories of their sister Caddy, using a single symbolic moment to forecast the decline of the once prominent Compson family and to examine the deterioration of the Southern aristocratic class since the Civil War. The Compsons are one of several prominent names in the town of Jefferson, Mississippi. Their ancestors helped settle the area and subsequently defended it during the Civil War. Since the war, the Compsons have gradually seen their wealth, land, and status crumble away. Mr. Compson is an alcoholic. Mrs. Compson is a self-absorbed hypochondriac who depends almost entirely upon Dilsey to raise her four children. Quentin, the oldest child, is a sensitive bundle of neuroses. Caddy is stubborn, but loving and compassionate. Jason has been difficult and mean-spirited since birth and is largely spurned by the other children. Benjy is severely mentally disabled, an "idiot" with no understanding of the concepts of time or morality. In the absence of the self-absorbed Mrs. Compson, Caddy serves as a mother figure and symbol of affection for Benjy and Quentin. As the children grow older, however, Caddy begins to behave promiscuously, which torments Quentin and sends Benjy into fits of moaning and crying. Quentin is preparing to go to Harvard, and Mr. Compson sells a large portion of the family land to provide funds for the tuition. Caddy loses her virginity and becomes pregnant. She is unable or unwilling to name the father of the child, though it is likely Dalton Ames, a boy from town. Caddy's pregnancy leaves Quentin emotionally shattered. He attempts to claim false responsibility for the pregnancy, lying to his father that he and Caddy have committed incest. Mr. Compson is indifferent to Caddy's promiscuity, dismissing Quentin's story and telling his son to leave early for the Northeast. Attempting to cover up her indiscretions, Caddy quickly marries Herbert Head, a banker she met in Indiana. Herbert promises Jason Compson a job in his bank. Herbert immediately divorces Caddy and rescinds Jason's job offer when he realizes his wife is pregnant with another man's child. Meanwhile, Quentin, still mired in despair over Caddy's sin, commits suicide by drowning himself in the Charles River just before the end of his first year at Harvard. The Compsons disown Caddy from the family, but take in her newborn daughter, Miss Quentin. The task of raising Miss Quentin falls squarely on Dilsey's shoulders. Mr. Compson dies of alcoholism roughly a year after Quentin's suicide. As the oldest surviving son, Jason becomes the head of the Compson household. Bitterly employed at a menial job in the local farm-supply store, Jason devises an ingenious scheme to steal the money Caddy sends to support Miss Quentin's upbringing. Miss Quentin grows up to be an unhappy, rebellious, and promiscuous girl, constantly in conflict with her overbearing and vicious uncle Jason. On Easter Sunday, 1928, Miss Quentin steals several thousand dollars from Jason and runs away with a man from a traveling show. While Jason chases after Miss Quentin to no avail, Dilsey takes Benjy and the rest of her family to Easter services at the local church. A Note on the Title The title of The Sound and the Fury refers to a line from William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Macbeth, a Scottish general and nobleman, learns of his wife's suicide and feels that his life is crumbling into chaos. In addition to Faulkner's title, we can find several of the novel's important motifs in Macbeth's short soliloquy in Act V, scene v: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle. Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. (V.v.18-27) The Sound and the Fury literally begins as a "tale / Told by an idiot," as the first chapter is narrated by the mentally disabled Benjy. The novel's central concerns include time, much like Macbeth's "[t]omorrow, and tomorrow"; death, recalling Macbeth's "dusty death"; and nothingness and disintegration, a clear reference to Macbeth's lament that life "[s]ignif[ies] nothing." Additionally, Quentin is haunted by the sense that the Compson family has disintegrated to a mere shadow of its former greatness. In his soliloquy, Macbeth implies that life is but a shadow of the past and that a modern man, like himself, is inadequately equipped and unable to achieve anything near the greatness of the past. Faulkner reinterprets this idea, implying that if man does not choose to take his own life, as Quentin does, the only alternatives are to become either a cynic and materialist like Jason, or an idiot like Benjy, unable to see life as anything more than a meaningless series of images, sounds, and memories.

Of Mice and Men

a novella by John Steinbeckthat was first published in 1937. Two migrant workers, George and Lennie, have been let off a bus miles away from the California farm where they are due to start work. George is a small, dark man with "sharp, strong features." Lennie, his companion, is his opposite, a giant of a man with a "shapeless" face. Overcome with thirst, the two stop in a clearing by a pool and decide to camp for the night. As the two converse, it becomes clear that Lennie has a mild mental disability, and is deeply devoted to George and dependent upon him for protection and guidance. George finds that Lennie, who loves petting soft things but often accidentally kills them, has been carrying and stroking a dead mouse. George angrily throws it away, fearing that Lennie might catch a disease from the dead animal. George complains loudly that his life would be easier without having to care for Lennie, but the reader senses that their friendship and devotion is mutual. He and Lennie share a dream of buying their own piece of land, farming it, and, much to Lennie's delight, keeping rabbits. George ends the night by treating Lennie to the story he often tells him about what life will be like in such an idyllic place. The next day, the men report to the nearby ranch. George, fearing how the boss will react to Lennie, insists that he'll do all the talking. He lies, explaining that they travel together because they are cousins and that a horse kicked Lennie in the head when he was a child. They are hired. They meet Candy, an old "swamper," or handyman, with a missing hand and an ancient dog, and Curley, the boss's mean-spirited son. Curley is newly married, possessive of his flirtatious wife, and full of jealous suspicion. Once George and Lennie are alone in the bunkhouse, Curley's wife appears and flirts with them. Lennie thinks she is "purty," but George, sensing the trouble that could come from tangling with this woman and her husband, warns Lennie to stay away from her. Soon, the ranch-hands return from the fields for lunch, and George and Lennie meet Slim, the skilled mule driver who wields great authority on the ranch. Slim comments on the rarity of friendship like that between George and Lennie. Carlson, another ranch-hand, suggests that since Slim's dog has just given birth, they should offer a puppy to Candy and shoot Candy's old, good-for-nothing dog. The next day, George confides in Slim that he and Lennie are not cousins, but have been friends since childhood. He tells how Lennie has often gotten them into trouble. For instance, they were forced to flee their last job because Lennie tried to touch a woman's dress and was accused of rape. Slim agrees to give Lennie one of his puppies, and Carlson continues to badger Candy to kill his old dog. When Slim agrees with Carlson, saying that death would be a welcome relief to the suffering animal, Candy gives in. Carlson, before leading the dog outside, promises to do the job painlessly. Slim goes to the barn to do some work, and Curley, who is maniacally searching for his wife, heads to the barn to accost Slim. Candy overhears George and Lennie discussing their plans to buy land, and offers his life's savings if they will let him live there too. The three make a pact to let no one else know of their plan. Slim returns to the bunkhouse, berating Curley for his suspicions. Curley, searching for an easy target for his anger, finds Lennie and picks a fight with him. Lennie crushes Curley's hand in the altercation. Slim warns Curley that if he tries to get George and Lennie fired, he will be the laughingstock of the farm. The next night, most of the men go to the local brothel. Lennie is left with Crooks, the lonely, black stable-hand, and Candy. Curley's wife flirts with them, refusing to leave until the other men come home. She notices the cuts on Lennie's face and suspects that he, and not a piece of machinery as Curley claimed, is responsible for hurting her husband. This thought amuses her. The next day, Lennie accidentally kills his puppy in the barn. Curley's wife enters and consoles him. She admits that life with Curley is a disappointment, and wishes that she had followed her dream of becoming a movie star. Lennie tells her that he loves petting soft things, and she offers to let him feel her hair. When he grabs too tightly, she cries out. In his attempt to silence her, he accidentally breaks her neck. Lennie flees back to a pool of the Salinas River that George had designated as a meeting place should either of them get into trouble. As the men back at the ranch discover what has happened and gather together a lynch party, George joins Lennie. Much to Lennie's surprise, George is not mad at him for doing "a bad thing." George begins to tell Lennie the story of the farm they will have together. As he describes the rabbits that Lennie will tend, the sound of the approaching lynch party grows louder. George shoots his friend in the back of the head. When the other men arrive, George lets them believe that Lennie had the gun, and George wrestled it away from him and shot him. Only Slim understands what has really happened, that George has killed his friend out of mercy. Slim consolingly leads him away, and the other men, completely puzzled, watch them leave.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn A wake-up call sounds in a Stalinist labor camp in 1951, on a bitterly cold winter morning. Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, a prisoner in Camp HQ, is usually up on time, but this morning he suffers a fever and aches, and yearns for a little more time in bed. Thinking that a kindly guard is on duty, he rests past the wake-up call a while. Unfortunately, a different guard is making the rounds, and he punishes Shukhov for oversleeping with three days in the solitary confinement cell, which the characters call "the hole." Led off, Shukhov soon realizes that the sentence is just a threat, and that he will only have to wash the floors of the officers' headquarters. Shukhov removes his shoes and efficiently completes the job, proceeding quickly to the mess hall, where he worries he has missed breakfast. He meets the sniveling Fetyukov, a colleague who has saved Shukhov's gruel for him. After breakfast, Shukhov heads to sick bay to get his fever and aches examined. The medical orderly, Kolya, tells him he should have been ill the previous night, since the clinic is closed in the morning. Shukhov's fever is not high enough to get him off work. Shukhov returns to the hut in time for the body search and body count, in which the prisoners are searched for forbidden articles and counted to make sure none have escaped. He carefully hides the bread he has taken at breakfast, sewing it into his mattress. The men undress in the freezing cold for the search. One inmate, Buynovsky, is wearing a flannel vest. He is sentenced to ten days in the hole for this infraction. Shukhov is happy not to have any forbidden things on him. He has neither food nor letters to his family, which he does not write anymore. He reflects on his wife's recent letter urging him to take up carpet-dyeing when he gets out of prison. But Shukhov is not interested in this opportunity, despite the easy money. After the search, Shukhov's group, Gang 104, is marched off for work at the Power Station, a building site in the open fields. At the site, Shukhov looks at his colleague Alyoshka, a devout Baptist who seems happy to slave away. Shukhov is filled with respect for his foreman, Tyurin, a big tough man with a decent soul. Though they are forbidden to do so, the men try to keep the wind out of the windows by covering them with tar paper. The teenage prisoner Gopchik fetches wire for piping, and asks Shukhov to show him how to make a spoon. They all rest a while. It is too soon before the noon meal to start laying bricks, as the mortar would only dry in the trough while they ate. At the noon meal, Shukhov sneaks a second helping of food. He is full after eating two bowls of gruel. The gang returns to the work site. On the way, Shukhov spots a bit of scrap metal in the snow, which he takes and hides in the hopes of making a knife out of it later. The prisoners stoke the stove. While preparing to work again, the gang hears Tyurin's tale of being imprisoned for having a rich peasant father. The men begin to mortar the wall. One of the deputy foremen, Pavlo, agrees to be on the mortar team, though, as an officer, he is not required to mortar. Pavlo's friendliness earns him the men's respect. The bricklaying begins. Shukhov works feverishly and makes no errors. A camp manager stops by to chide Tyurin for the tar paper illegally hung in the work site windows. He threatens to punish Tyurin, but Tyurin waves him off. Alyoshka works selflessly. Time passes quickly, and the men hear the meal signal. Shukhov continues working, even after his colleague Kildigs has stopped. He is late to lunch now, but he wants to hide his precious trowel, a tool that is hard to get, so that another man will not take it. He is nearly unable to join his gang, but catches up when the gang is delayed by preparations for another body count. The men discover that a man from Moldavia is missing from another gang. The man, who has fallen asleep at the site, is finally found. The other men are furious at him for delaying their meal. Shukhov remembers his earlier intention to go to sick bay but reflects that he would rather have supper. At the body search, Shukhov suddenly panics, remembering the bit of steel he has hidden in his mitten. He prays to God to be kept out of the hole. By a stroke of good luck, the guard does not discover the bit of steel. Shukhov returns to the camp. On the suspicion that a fellow inmate, Tsezar, has received a rich parcel of food, he offers to wait in line in the parcel room for Tsezar. Shukhov waits until Tsezar comes. There is indeed a package. Shukhov makes his way to the mess hall for supper, where the gangs are being admitted by twos instead of singly, creating a chaos inside. He manages to find his comrades, grab an empty tray, and bring their rations to the table. For his outstanding labor at the Power Station, Shukhov has been awarded 400 grams of bread. He eats in bliss, eyeing his extra rations to make sure no one grabs them. He takes Tsezar's ration to the hut, where Tsezar, in exception to the camp rules, is allowed to eat. Tsezar has displayed the contents of his parcel to everyone, and he allows Shukhov to keep Tsezar's supper ration. After the body count, Shukhov prepares to sleep, though the second count has not yet been completed. He revels in his abundance of bread. At the second roll call, Tsezar panics, unsure what to do with his parcel. Shukhov helps him guard it from the other prisoners. Tsezar rewards Shukhov with a couple of biscuits and a bit of sausage. Before sleeping, Shukhov thanks God for getting him through another day. Alyoshka hears Shukhov's prayer, and urges Shukhov to pray properly. He also encourages Shukhov to pursue the goods of the spirit and not, as Tsezar does, those of the flesh. Shukhov reflects on Alyoshka's sentiment. Suddenly, for no reason, he hands Alyoshka one of his biscuits. Shukhov meditates that his day has been almost happy. The narrator adds that this day has been just one of the 3,653 days of Shukhov's sentence

Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses

Mark Twain an 1895 essay by Mark Twain, written as a satire and criticism of the writings of James Fenimore Cooper.[1] Drawing on examples from The Deerslayer and The Pathfinder from Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, the essay claims Cooper is guilty of verbose writing, poor plotting, glaring inconsistencies, overused clichés, cardboard characterizations, and a host of similar "offenses". The essay is characteristic of Twain's biting, derisive and highly satirical style of literary criticism, a form he also used to deride such authors as Oliver Goldsmith, George Eliot, Jane Austen, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Twain begins by quoting a few critics who praise the works of Cooper: Brander Matthews, Thomas Lounsbury and Wilkie Collins. He then claims that they have never read the novels themselves, and that Cooper's work is seriously flawed: In one place in "Deerslayer," and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.[3] He goes on to list 18 separate literary rules he feels that Cooper does not follow, such as "The tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the "Deerslayer" accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air," and "The author shall use the right word, not its second cousin." Twain continues on with few positive things to say about Cooper's writing, citing several examples from Cooper's writing to illustrate the unbelievable excess of the style.[3]