English 3H Semester 2 Exam
The Story of an Hour - Kate Chopin
About Mrs. Mallard's reaction to the sudden death of her husband. Dies when she finds out he's alive. Freedom v.s confinement.
a worn path - eudora welty
This is the tale of Phoenix Jackson's journey through the woods of Mississippi to the town of Natchez. The women's trip is spurred on by the need to obtain medicine for her ill grandson. Along the way, Phoenix encounters several obstacles and the story becomes a quest for her to overcome the trials she faces, which mirror her plight in society at large.
A Wagner Matinee - Willa Cather
In "A Wagner Matinee," the narrator, a young Bostonian named Clark, is notified that his aunt is coming to visit from Nebraska. Clark tells us that his aunt Georgiana once lived in Boston herself, long before Clark's birth; in her youth she was a music teacher, but she married a farmer and has had a difficult life. As Georgiana emerges from the train, she looks so shabby Clark is almost ashamed of her; but her shell-shocked expression evokes his pity. It becomes apparent that in her years on the prairie, Georgiana has put out of her mind all of the cosmopolitan things she loved, particularly classical music -- which, in these days before recordings, was completely inaccessible to her. Clark recalls an incident in his childhood when he was valiantly trying to "beat out" a classical piece on her little parlor organ; she told him that it was unwise to love anything that much, "or it may be taken from you. Oh, dear boy, pray that whatever your sacrifice may be, it be not that." Clark therefore concludes that Georgiana would enjoy going to the symphony to hear a performance of the music of Richard Wagner. She goes, in her black cotton dress, looking incongruous against the other women's opulent gowns in pastels and jewel tones. Yet she is moved much more deeply than any of the women who presumably form the symphony's regular "crowd." Cather describes each musical piece and the effect it has on Aunt Georgiana; Clark notices, for example, that during "The Flying Dutchman" -- the only piece Georgiana recognized by name -- she has started to move her fingers across her knee as if she is playing the piano, and by the intermission she has started to cry uncontrollably. When the concert ends at last, the other members of the audience applaud, murmur appreciatively, start to leave; the musicians rise from their seats, tapping the spit out of their woodwinds and brasses, putting their instruments into cases or slipjackets. Aunt Georgiana, however, does not move. Still sobbing, she tells Clark, "I don't want to go, Clark, I don't want to go!" It isn't merely that she doesn't want to leave the concert hall; she doesn't want to return to a gray and ugly world, where music has no part.
Luke Havergal - Edwin Arlington Robinson
"Luke Havergal" is an address to a lovelorn man, spoken by a seductive voice from beyond the grave to encourage him to rejoin a dead lover by taking his own life. He is told that he may find her through suicide. Although the poem might appear to display a faith in life after death, the intense desolation of his experience points, rather, to an expression of longing for death and an inability to endure more life in such grief-stricken loneliness.
i, too - langston hughes
In this short poem, the speaker begins by claiming that he, too, "sing America" (1). He goes on to note that he is "the darker brother" (2), referring to his skin color, and then makes reference to the fact that he is sent "to eat in the kitchen / when company comes" (3-4), as if he were a black slave in a white household. The oppression, however, doesn't stop him from laughing and growing strong. Then the speaker envisions a future in which he is no longer sent to the kitchen, in which no one would dare to call him unequal. They (presumably, the white majority) will see him as beautiful and "be ashamed" (17) at their previous prejudice. The poem concludes with the speaker asserting, again, that he (and, therefore, his race) is indeed American.
Hiroshima - John Hersey
On August 6, 1945, the American army decimates the city of Hiroshima with a bomb of enormous power; out of a population of 250,000, the bomb kills nearly 100,000 people and injures 100,000 more. In its original edition, Hersey's Hiroshima traces the lives of six survivors—two doctors, two women, and two religious men—from the moment the bomb drops until a few months later. In 1985, Hersey added a postscript that now forms the book's fifth chapter. In this chapter, Hersey reexamines these six individuals' lives in the forty years since the bomb. The Reverend Mr. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, a community leader and an American-educated Methodist pastor, is uninjured by the explosion. As fires spread around the city, he helps get people to safety at a small park on the outskirts of the city. Tanimoto is aided by Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a Jesuit priest. Despite his own illness, Father Kleinsorge consoles the wounded and brings water to those who need it. Many of the victims are too weak or wounded to move, and in the absence of any official help, people like Father Kleinsorge and Mr. Tanimoto are left to protect them from encroaching fires, whirlwinds, and the rising tide of the river. Among the victims they help are Mrs. Hatsuyo Nakamura and her young children. Miss Toshiko Sasaki is a young clerk whose leg is fractured in the blast. Her wound becomes terribly infected, and she receives no real medical help for weeks after the explosion. The bomb kills more than half the doctors in Hiroshima and injures most of the rest; Dr. Masakazu Fujii, for instance, is unable to help anybody but himself for a long while. Dr. Terufumi Sasaki, on the other hand, remains the only uninjured doctor on the staff of the Red Cross Hospital, and in the months after the explosion he barely leaves his post, trying to stem the tide of death rising around him. Weeks after the explosion, after Japan capitulates and Hiroshima begins to rebuild, a new terror strikes: radiation sickness. Victims become nauseated, feverish, and anemic; many people, such as Mrs. Nakamura, watch their hair fall out. The disease baffles everyone, and many, including Father Kleinsorge, never fully recover. Still, the people of Hiroshima try to return to their normal lives. In his added postscript, Hersey traces the lives of these six characters in the forty years after the atomic bomb. Father Kleinsorge and Dr. Fujii die from sudden illnesses years later. Mrs. Nakamura and Miss Sasaki scrape their way up from the bottom to become happy and successful. After working hard and supporting her family, Mrs. Nakamura lives comfortably on a pension and a government allowance, and Miss Sasaki becomes a nun. Dr. Sasaki and Mr. Tanimoto devote their lives to helping people. Mr. Tanimoto in particular plays an important role in trying to help the victims of the bomb—most notably the Hiroshima Maidens, whose burns are so bad that they require plastic surgery. He becomes a minor celebrity in America and somewhat unsuccessfully tries to spread a message of peace in a time of nuclear escalation. In the end, Hersey finds that the horrors of nuclear war are far from over—the citizens of Hiroshima still suffer from aftereffects, and nuclear escalation continues to threaten the entire world. Hersey also finds that these six people show, in the aftermath of the bomb and the war, remarkable feelings of good will, reconciliation, and pride.
this is just to say - william carlos williams
Poem, Modernism, he eats plums from an icebox, and asks for forgiveness while talking about how good they were
Richard Bone - Edgar Lee Masters
Richard Bone is an engraver who is paid to chisel words on epitaphs. Although he knows some of the epitaphs are lies, he is trapped into performing the job, and because he must work to survive, he ignores the truth. This poem uses metaphors to compare Richard Bone to an historian. An historian writes what he researches. However, in Bone's case, although he knows the truth, he has to hide it from the townspeople of Spoon River. His last name Bone symbolizes death. Death is his living. He works in a graveyard.
the great figure - william carlos williams
Sees a gold number 5 on a fire truck in the rain. Symbol for hope in a gloomy atmosphere; fleeting 5
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain
autobiography that described Twain's love for Steam Boats, as well as the Mississippi River -the steam boat brought life to the town -the boat is personified -one of the town boys started working on the steam boats and all the boys in the town became jealous -Twain sneaks away to try to became a pilot but fails and is comforted by his daydreams
the red wheel barrow - william carlos williams
so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.
stopping by woods on a snowy evening - robert frost
the poem describes the thoughts of a lone rider, pausing at night in his travel to watch snow falling in the woods. It ends with him reminding himself that, despite the loveliness of the view, "I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep."
Richard Corey - Edwin Arlington Robinson
describes a person who is wealthy, well educated, mannerly, and admired by the people in his town. Despite all this, he takes his own life.
the tropics in new york - claude mckay
It's a poem about the mingled joy and grief that someone can feel far from home when he encounters something that reminds him of where he came from
The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County - Mark Twain
The narrator of the story is asked by a friend to call on old Simon Wheeler and ask about his friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley. The narrator now suspects that his friend never knew anybody named Leonidas W. Smiley, and that this was the pretext to get Wheeler to tell him about another guy named Jim Smiley. It turns out that Wheeler is a boring man who talks ad nauseam. The narrator begins to narrate the story of his meeting with Wheeler. The narrator finds Simon Wheeler taking a nap in a bar at a mining town called Angel's Camp. Wheeler is pudgy and bald and looks simple and gentle. So far, so good. The narrator tells Wheeler he's trying to find out some information about the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley who was once a resident at Angel's Camp. Simon Wheeler backs the narrator into a corner and traps him there. Throughout his tale, the narrator says, Simon maintained the utmost gravity, as if his story was the most important thing. Yet, the narrator says, it was an absurd story. Wheeler admits that he doesn't know a Leonidas Smiley, but one time there was a "feller" named Jim Smiley in '49 or maybe it was '50. Here begins Wheeler's story within the narrator's story. Jim Smiley is the sort of man who will bet on anything. If he suggests a bet and the person doesn't want to take it, he offers to bet on the other side. He just wants to bet, that's all. But he's lucky and almost always wins the bet. He bets on dog fights or horse races or even on the minister, Parson Walker. One time, Parson Walker's wife was really sick, and Smiley bet that she wouldn't get well. Clearly the guy doesn't have the best social graces. Smiley had a mare that the boys liked to call the "fifteen-minute nag." She seemed really old and slow, and she had asthma. She'd get a head start, then amble along until the end of the race, when she'd suddenly start bolting ahead like crazy, wheezing, until she would win, but barely. He also had a small "bull pup" named Andrew Jackson that didn't look like it could do anything, but as soon as somebody bet on him, he'd manage to beat any better-looking dog in a fight. He had a trick of catching the other dog's back leg in his mouth with a tight grip until the fight was over, and he'd won. This worked until Andrew Jackson ended up in a fight with a dog that didn't have back legs. Not knowing what to do, he gave Smiley a look like his heart was broken, then crawled away and died. (It was too bad, Wheeler comments. A dog like that probably had some "genius" in him - he hadn't had opportunities in life, and here he managed to come out on top. He must've had talent.) So one day, Smiley catches a frog and takes it home, saying he plans to educate the animal. For then next three months, he does nothing but sit in his backyard and "teach" that frog to jump. He gets the frog to jump so well that it looks like a doughnut whirling in the air - then the frog comes down "flat-footed" like a cat. Smiley teaches the frog to catch flies, to the point that the frog just needs to be able to see the fly and it's his. The frog's name? Dan'l Webster. The frog is "modest and straight-forward" despite his many gifts. When he's on level ground, he can jump higher than any frog you could ever see - that is his specialty, it's important to understand that. Smiley keeps Dan'l Webster in a box and every once in a while, he fetches the frog down for a bet. One day, a stranger in the camp asks what's in the box. Smiley grins and says it might be a parrot or a canary but actually, it's just a frog. The stranger eyes him and asks what the frog is good for. Smiley says he's good for one thing: he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County. That so, says the stranger. He looks at the frog, then says he doesn't see anything about the frog that makes him so special. Well, maybe you understand frogs and maybe you don't, says Smiley. But I'll bet forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County. So the man thinks about it, then says that if he had a frog, he'd bet against Smiley. Smiley offers to go get him a frog. He gives the other man the box and goes to get a frog. The stranger sits there with the box and waits. Soon, he gets Dan'l out, opens the frog's mouth, and begins to fill him full of quail shot. Then he sets him on the floor. Smiley comes back from the swamp with a frog and gives him to the stranger. They set the frogs side by side, and Smiley says, "One two three jump!" The stranger's frog jumps. Dan'l tries to heave upwards but can't budge. Smiley is surprised, and a little "disgusted," but he gives the stranger his money. The stranger starts to leave and, just to rub it in, he repeats what he said earlier - that he doesn't see anything special about Dan'l that should distinguish him from any other frog. Smiley scratches his head and stares down at Dan'l. Finally, he wonders aloud what the matter is. He picks Dan'l up and exclaims that he weights five pounds! He turns Dan'l upside down, and Dan'l belches out the quail shot. Smiley gets mad as hell. He runs out to catch the stranger, but the stranger has already gotten away. Here Wheeler's story ends. Wheeler hears his name called from the front yard and goes to see what's up. He tells the narrator to sit and wait, he'll only be gone a moment. The narrator is pretty certain that he's not going to find out anything about the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, so he starts to leave. At the door, he meets Wheeler, who starts back up with his story, telling the narrator about Smiley's yellow one-eyed cow that didn't have a tail and— The narrator interrupts, saying, oh-so-good-naturedly, that he basically doesn't give a hoot about Jim Smiley or his cow. He says goodbye to Simon Wheeler and leaves.
Courage - Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton's poem says that when we think of 'courage' we often assume it is a big, heroic, public virtue. But really courage is more commonplace, and more private, than that. The first strophe says it takes courage simply to grow up. The first step you take was a risk, and an adventure. Later you needed courage to survive being punished, or bullying, or simply being socially excluded. The next strophe says that even public courage (as in a battle) is really a private thing. People have no choice but to be courageous in a battle (you can't stop a bullet by being afraid of it). And if people act selflessly in combat, that isn't courage - it is love. The next strophe says how it takes courage to face our own illnesses and failures, or to support other people as they face theirs. The last strophe says that no-one can get through life without being courageous in some way. We all have to face old age, sickness, and finally death. You can't call this true courage, nobody has any choice to avoid any of these things.
JFK Inaugural Address
As a president coming into power at the height of the Cold War, JFK's duty of both representing the United States as a force to be reckoned with while maintaining peaceful international relations was daunting, at the very least. It is this overarching goal of his presidential term that dominates his inaugural address. Kennedy highlights the newly discovered dangers of nuclear power coupled with the accelerating arms race, and essentially makes the main point that this focus on pure firepower should be replaced with a focus on maintenance of international relations and helping the impoverished in the world. [38] Based on these, it appears that Kennedy's main goal in the speech was to emphasize optimism and idealism in a time of constant panic and anxiety. Rhetorical elements[edit] The main focus of the speech can crudely be boiled down to one theme - the relationship between duty and power. [39] This is emphasized by Kennedy's strong use of juxtaposition in the first part of the speech. For example, he states in the second passage, "...Man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life," a clear calling-out of not only America, but also other nations of power for skewed Cold War priorities. He again employs the strategy in the fifth passage when he says, "United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative adventures. Divided there is little we can do," again appealing to the idea of refocusing of international values. [40] One of the main components of classical rhetoric, to prepon (the appropriate), is also extremely prevalent in this address. [41]Recognizing the fear and anxiety prevalent in the American people since the start of the Cold War, Kennedy geared his speech to have an optimistic and even idealistic tone as a means of providing comfort. He does this by quickly moving the time of the speech into the future, and invokes repetition of the phrase "Let both sides..." to allude to how he plans to deal with strained relations while also appealing to the end goal of international unity. He also phrases negative ideas in a manner so as to present them as opportunities - a challenge, appealing to innately American ideals. A great line to emphasize this is in the fourth from last passage, where he states, "In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger," a simple twist of words that challenges the American public rather than frightening them. Finally, one cannot discuss John F. Kennedy's inaugural address without mentioning his famous words, "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." This use of chiasmus can be seen even as a thesis statement of his speech - a call to action for the public to do what is right for the greater good.
The Life You Save May Be Your Own - Flannery O'Connor
As the story begins, and old woman and her thirty-year-old, mentally handicapped daughter, both named Lucynell Crater, are sitting on their porch. Tom Shiftlet, a wandering one-armed man, approaches them and comments on the beautiful sunset. The elder Lucynell Crater thinks he is a tramp. He notices their unused car and asks them whether they drive; the elder Lucynell Crater answers that the car hasn't run in fifteen years, since her husband died. They continue to talk, and when she asks him who he is and where he comes from, he asks how she'll know he isn't lying when he does tell her. He reveals that he is a carpenter, and she offers to give him a place to stay and food to eat if he will do some work for her; he'll have to sleep in the old, unused car. The elder Lucynell Crater asks if he is single or married, and though he doesn't answer the question, he indicates that he is unmarried because he cannot find a woman innocent enough. In his first week of work, Tom Shiftlet makes a lot of progress, and teaches the younger Lucynell, a deaf-mute, to say a few words. Her mother suggests that he teach her to say, "sugarpie," and it is obvious that she hopes they will get married. He decides that he is going to make the old car run again, and the elder Lucynell agrees to give him the money he needs to fix it. The next day, he has it running, and drives it out of the garage. That night, the elder Lucynell Crater makes explicit her offer of her daughter as a wife. At first, Tom Shiftlet says he cannot get married because he has no money. But she argues that her daughter doesn't know the difference, and says that she will pay to paint the car by Saturday so that they can drive to the courthouse and get married. She also offers to give him money for a modest honeymoon, and he is convinced. That Saturday, the three of them drive to the courthouse and the younger Lucynell Crater and Tom Shiftlet are married legally. But Tom Shiftlet says he is unsatisfied with the wedding, since "that was just something a woman in an office did, nothing but paper work and blood tests." They drop the elder Lucynell Crater off at the house, and she is clearly pained to say goodbye to her daughter since they have never been separated before; however, she expects to see them again after two days. After driving one hundred miles, Tom Shiftlet stops at The Hot Spot, a restaurant. Lucynell promptly falls asleep on the counter. He buys her a plate of food and tells the boy working at the counter to give it to her when she wakes up; he explains that she is a hitchhiker and that he can't wait since he has to make it to Tuscaloosa. As he drives away, he sees the occasional sign reading, "Drive carefully. The life you save may be your own." Soon, he picks up a boy wearing overalls who is hitchhiking with a suitcase. Tom Shiftlet begins to talk to the boy, who is unresponsive at first. He talks about his mother, whom he praises as "the best old mother in the world," and muses that the worst day of his life was when he left her. This is clearly making the boy uncomfortable. As Tom Shiftlet begins to tear up from talking about his angelic mother, the hitchhiking boy tells him, "You go to the devil! My old woman is a flea bag and yours is a stinking pole cat!" and throws himself from the passenger door. A storm cloud descends and it starts to rain as Tom Shiftlet continues to drive toward Mobile.
Cuttings and Cuttings (later) - Theodore Roethke
Cuttings Sticks-in-a-drowse droop over sugary loam, Their intricate stem-fur dries; But still the delicate slips keep coaxing up water; The small cells bulge; One nub of growth Nudges a sand-crumb loose, Pokes through a musty sheath Its pale tendrilous horn. Cuttings (LATER) This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks, Cut stems struggling to put down feet, What saint strained so much, Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life? I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, In my veins, in my bones I feel it,— The small waters seeping upward, The tight grains parting at last. When sprouts break out, Slippery as fish, I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.
winter dreams - f scott fitzgerald
Dexter Green works as a caddy and is skiing across the snowed in golf course. He meets a young girl who wants him to be her caddy. Upon his refusal, she throws a fit and hits her nurse with clubs. When his manager orders him to work for her, Dexter quits. He moves on to college and starts the most successful laundry chain in the Midwest. After selling the chain, he moves to NYC. We learn more about his climb to success... he fell in love with Judy, became engaged to another woman named Irene, and eventually betrays Irene with Judy. Things do not work out with Judy either. Exasperated, he sells the business and enlists in the military. After fighting in WW1, he returns to the city and discovers that Judy has married a man who cheats on her and leaves her at home to tend to the children. Dexter also learns that she has lost her beauty. Dexter mourns this loss as the final disconnection from his childhood.
a few don'ts - ezra pound
Ezra Pound's rules for how to write modern poetry (Use no superfluous word, no adjective, exc.)
in a station of the metro - ezra pound
Ezra Pound-compares pedals on a leaf to faces in a crowd; "The apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black bough."
in another country - ernest hemingway
It is about an ambulance corps member in Milan during World War I. Although unnamed, he is assumed to be "Nick Adams" a character Hemingway made to represent himself. He has an injured knee and visits a hospital daily for rehabilitation. There the "machines" are used to speed the healing, with the doctors making much of the miraculous new technology. They show pictures to the wounded of injuries like theirs healed by the machines, but the war-hardened soldiers are portrayed as skeptical, perhaps justifiably so. As the narrator walks through the streets with fellow soldiers, the townspeople hate them openly because they are officers. Their oasis from this treatment is Cafe Cova, where the waitresses are very patriotic. When the fellow soldiers admire the protagonist's medal, they learn that he is American, ipso facto not having to face the same struggles in order to achieve the medal, and no longer view him as an equal, but still recognize him as a friend against the outsiders. The protagonist accepts this, since he feels that they have done far more to earn their medals than he has. Later on, a major who is friends with the narrator, in an angry fit tells Nick he should never get married, it being only a way to set one up for hurt. It is later revealed that the major's wife had suddenly and unexpectedly died. The major is depicted as far more grievously wounded, with a hand withered to the size of a baby's hand, and Hemingway memorably describes the withered hand being manipulated by a machine which the major dismisses as a "damn thing." But the major seems even more deeply wounded by the loss of his wife.
old age sticks - e.e. cummings
Talks about how old age protests youth, but youth becomes old age; uses parentheses, the typographical sign for and --&, unusual spacing within words and between words
To Build A Fire - Jack London
Tells of a man and a dog in the Klondike. The 2 are traveling on foot from one place to another in weather that is 75 degrees below zero. The man doesn't listen to an elder who warns him and dies from hypothermia. His dog makes it safely to their planned destination. The man learns that human technology is not as useful as the dog's intuitive, ancestral understanding of how to stay alive in very cold weather. The story is a tragic reminder of mankind's frailty in facing nature alone
chicago - carl sandburg
The poem begins when the speaker addresses the city of Chicago with five short lines. He calls Chicago a series of names—it's a "Hog Butcher" and a "Tool Maker" and a "Stacker of Wheat" (and a bunch of other things too). The Chicago that the speaker personifies is burly and tough. Then, in longer lines, the speaker describes the life of the city. A mysterious "they" tells the speaker that Chicago is "wicked," "crooked," and "brutal," and the speaker agrees with all of these judgments. He has seen prostitutes, killers, and starving families. But the speaker responds to this "they" and pronounces Chicago is "so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning." It's a vibrant and dynamic city, and the speaker finds beauty in it, despite its dark corners. The speaker then describes Chicago again in a series of short lines. Chicago is constantly "building, breaking, rebuilding." This is the life cycle of the city. Then the speaker describes Chicago even further. The city almost becomes the very people who inhabit it (freaky, right?). The city feels the pulse and the "the heart of the people." In the last line of "Chicago," the speaker repeats the first few phrases of the poem. He once again calls Chicago "Hog Butcher" and "Tool Maker," and he says that the city is proud to have these names. Chicago, you rock, the poem says.
Lucinda Matlock - Edgar Lee Masters
The poem is an epitaph of a dead woman narrating the story of her life from the other world. She tells a sad story of a tough life, but she does not complain. She remembers the dances of her youth and a drive by the moonlight of June when she met her husband. They were married and lived together for seventy years: working, enjoying, and raising twelve children. They lost eight of them before she reached the age of sixty. She did the house work and worked in the garden, she cared and lived for her family. She enjoyed life. She recalls how she was shouting and singing when she was out on the field and gathering herbs. At ninety-six she has just lived enough and retired to death. She hears talks of discontentment and addresses the "degenerate sons and daughters" who think life is too hard, urging them to live through this message of hers. Finally she confesses that "It takes life to love Life."
We Wear the Mask - Paul Lawrence Dunbar
The speaker opens the poem with the declaration that we wear masks that hide our true feelings. He goes on to emphasize the severity of the pain and suffering that these masks try to cover up. By the end we understand that all of the politeness and subdued emotions are just phony disguises of the painful truths that hide behind them. And those masks certainly aren't doing anyone any favors.
a rose for emily - william faulkner
The story opens with a brief first-person account of the funeral of Emily Grierson, an elderly Southern spinster. It then proceeds in a nonlinear fashion to the narrator's recollections of Emily's archaic and increasingly insane behavior throughout the years. Emily is a member of a family in the antebellum Southern aristocracy; after the Civil War, the family has fallen on hard times. She and her father, the last two of the clan, continue to live as if in the past; neither will consent to a marriage for Emily to a man below their perceived status. Her father dies when Emily is about thirty; she refuses to accept that he has been dead for three days, behavior written off by the community as part of her grieving process. After her acceptance of her father's death, Emily revives somewhat; she becomes friendly with Homer Barron, a Northern laborer who comes to the town as a contractor to pave the sidewalks. The connection surprises the rest of the community: the match would have been far below her earlier standards, and Homer had himself claimed that he was "not a marrying man." The town appeals to Emily's distant cousins; they are her closest remaining relatives, but they have been on bad terms with Emily and her father, and had not even been present at her father's funeral. The cousins arrive at Emily's house, but quickly gain a reputation even worse than that of Emily; the sentiment of the town rallies behind Emily in opposition to the cousins. Indeed, during this time, Emily buys arsenic from a druggist's shop without giving her reasons for needing it; neighbors believe that she means to poison herself with it. However, her relationship with Homer appears to solidify, and there is talk of marriage between the two. Homer leaves the area for a time, reputedly to give Emily a chance to get rid of her cousins, and returns three days after the cousins have left; one person reports seeing Homer walk in the house at night, which is the last contact the neighborhood has with either of them for a long time. Despite these turnabouts in her social status, Emily continues to behave haughtily, as she had before her father died. Her reputation is such that the city council find themselves unable to confront her about a strong smell that has begun to emanate from the house. Instead, they decide to send men to her house under the cover of darkness to sprinkle lime around the house, after which the smell dissipates. The mayor of the town, Colonel Sartoris, made a gentleman's agreement to overlook her taxes as an act of charity, though it was done under a pretense of repayment towards her father to assuage Emily's pride. Years later, when the next generation has come to power, Emily insists on this informal arrangement, flatly refusing that she owes any taxes; the council declines to press the issue. Emily has become a recluse: she is never seen out of the house, and only rarely accepts people into it; her black servant does all her shopping for her. The community comes to view her as a "hereditary obligation" on the town, who must be humored and tolerated. The funeral is a large affair; Emily had become an institution, so her death sparks a great deal of curiosity about her reclusive nature and what remains of her house. After she is buried, a group of townsfolk enter her house to see what remains of her life there. The door to her upstairs bedroom is locked; some of the townsfolk kick in the door to see what has been hidden for so long. Inside, among the possessions that Emily had bought for their wedding, lies the horribly decomposed corpse of Homer Barron on the bed; on the pillow beside him is the indentation of a head, and a single thread of Emily's now-gray hair.
The Outcasts of Poker Flat
The story takes place in a Californian community known as Poker Flat, near the town of La Porte. Poker Flat, some characters think, is on a downward slope. The town has lost thousands of dollars and morals seem to be going down as well. In an effort to save what is left of the town and reestablish it as a "virtuous" place, a secret society is created to decide who to exile and who to kill. The story begins November 23, 1850 with four "immoral" characters exiled from Poker Flat. First of these "immoral" people is a professional poker player, "John Oakhurst." He is among those sent away because of his great success in winning from those on the secret committee. On his way out of town, he is joined by "The Duchess," a saloon girl, "Mother Shipton," a madam, and "Uncle Billy," the town drunk and a suspected robber. These four set out for a camp a day's journey away, over a mountain range. But halfway to their goal and despite Oakhurst's protests, the rest of the party decides to stop for a rest at noon. While on their rest, the group is met by a pair of runaway lovers on their way to Poker Flat to get married. She, "Piney Woods" is a fifteen-year-old girl. Her lover, "Tom Simson," known also as "The Innocent", has met Oakhurst before and has great admiration for the poker player: when they met before, Oakhurst won a great deal of money from "Tom." Oakhurst returned the money and pressed upon Tom that he should never play poker again, as he really was a quite terrible player. So much for the low morality of Oakhurst. Tom is thrilled about coming upon Oakhurst on this day and decides that he and Piney will stay with the group for a while. They don't know that the group has been exiled and 'innocent' and 'pure' as they are, they think The Duchess is an actual duchess and so on. Decision is made to stay the night together and Tom leads the group to a half-butty cabin he discovered where they spend the night. In the middle of the night Oakhurst wakes up and finds a heavy snow storm raging. Looking about, he realizes that he is the only one up, but soon discovers that somebody had been up before him: Uncle Billy is missing with their mules and horses stolen. The group is now forced to wait out the storm with provisions that would only last another ten days. After a week in the cabin, Mother Shipton dies, having secretly and altruistically starved herself to save her food for young Piney. Oakhurst advises Simson that he will have to go for help and fashions some snowshoes for him. The gambler tells the others he will accompany the young man part of the way. The "law of Poker Flat" finally arrives at the cabin, only to find the dead Duchess and Piney, embracing in a peaceful repose. They both look so peaceful and innocent that one could not tell which was the virgin and which the madam. We next learn that Oakhurst has committed suicide. He is found dead beneath a tree with his Derringer's bullet in his heart. There is a playing card, the two of clubs, pinned to the tree above his head with a note: BENEATH THIS TREE LIES THE BODY OF JOHN OAKHURST, WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK ON THE 23rd OF NOVEMBER, 1850, AND HANDED IN HIS CHECKS ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.
The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner - Randall Jarrell
The title is the subject of the poem, told from the point of view of the dead gunner. Jarrell has provided a note to the poem which explains the ball turret gunner's tiny womblike enclosure in the plane and the kind of hose that would be turned on the plane to clean it; he has also commented on the "wet fur" as representing the inside of the gunner's jacket. The poem uses an image which is suggestive of abortion to comment on the waste of war. The young gunner, who comments, "From my mother's sleep I fell into the state," never awoke to life. Rather, he "hunched in the belly" of the plane, this new, state-provided death womb, until he woke only to die, amidst the "black flak and the nightmare fighters." His body was washed "out of the turret with a hose." Thus the sleep of childhood led directly to the sleep of death, and only with waking his realization of the imminence of that death. The image of the baby animal suggested by the wet fur, in the mechanical body of the death machine, is hard for the reader to escape. The five lines of irregularly rhymed verse close on an image of annihilation. It is the last poem of this collection, and in a sense serves as a commentary for it.
Mirror - Sylvia Plath
This poem is not a riddle, speaking with the voice of some mysterious "I" until the end, where the reader is shocked to find out that it's a mirror, and not a person speaking. Instead, the poem lets us know from the start that we're hearing from a mirror, with its title, "Mirror," and its first line, "I am silver and exact." The first stanza describes the mirror, which seems to be like one of those people who doesn't tell white lies - it's truthful and exact, but not cruel. As the first stanza personifies the mirror, showing us some of its human characteristics, we also find out a little about the mirror's life. Most of the time, it reflects a pink speckled wall, which could be found in any bathroom, but it also sees a lot of faces, and a lot of darkness. Jump into the second stanza, and the stakes have changed. The mirror is no longer a mirror, but a lake, which also shows reflections. And we get to see a whole new character: a woman. We saw faces in the first stanza, but now we focus on one face in particular. This woman, we find out, isn't very happy with her reflection in the lake, so she tries to find a kinder reflection under the light of a candle or the moon. When the lake reflects her faithfully anyway, she cries and gets upset. In the last two lines of this poem, we see why this woman is so upset: in her watery reflection, her past is drowning, and a horrible future is rising to meet her.
