...The Retreat from Reality In Doris Lessings “To Room Nineteen” and Willa Cather’s “Paul’s Case” we meet both characters as they try to exist in the lives their social environment deems acceptable. In their efforts they find happiness eludes them and escape to a reality they alone create. Both Paul and Susan’s journey to their self inflicted demises are very different, yet eerily similar. The protagonist, Susan, in “To Room Nineteen” lived a life deemed to be ideal by society. She worked, got married, got pregnant, moved to a lovely home and neighborhood, proceeded to have more children and stayed at home to raise them. Susan and her husband lived an enviable life. Yet she is not happy as there seemed to be something missing from their lives, a “certain flatness” (Lessing 868). Her life seemed to revolve around her home and family, yet intellectually she knew that this was not something your life should revolve around. The one thing she was sure of was her love for her husband Matthew. It was out of the love they had for each other that “this thing, this entity, all of it had come into existence” (Lessing 869). Still she was confused. Susan was unhappy but intellectually she should not be. Paul in “Paul’s Case” was provided a good life, but not the one he wanted. For Paul there was no confusion about what he wanted and hedid not want a middle class existence. As soon as he turned onto his street “he felt the waters close above his head”(Cather 239) and felt a...
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...“The Achievement of Desire” RICHARD RODRIGUEZ I stand in the ghetto classroom—"the guest speaker"—attempting to lecture on the mystery of the sounds of our words to rows of diffident students. "Don't you hear it? Listen! The music of our words. 'Sumer is i-cumen in… ' And songs on the car radio. We need Aretha Franklin's voice to fill plain words with music—her life." In the face of their empty stares, I try to create an enthusiasm. But the girls in the back row turn to watch some boy passing outside. There are flutters of smiles, waves. And someone's mouth elongates heavy, silent words through the barrier of glass. Silent words—the lips straining to shape each voiceless syllable: "Meet meee late errr." By the door, the instructor smiles at me, apparently hoping that I will be able to spark some enthusiasm in the class. But only one student seems to be listening. A girl, maybe fourteen. In this gray room her eyes shine with ambition. She keeps nodding and nodding at all that I say; she even takes notes. And each time I ask a question, she jerks up and down in her desk like a marionette, while her hand waves over the bowed heads of her classmates. It is myself (as a boy) I see as she faces me now (a man in my thirties). The boy who first entered a classroom barely able to speak English, twenty years later concluded his studies in the stately quiet of the reading room in the British Museum. Thus with one sentence I can summarize my academic career. It will be harder to summarize...
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...The Achievement of Desire RICHARD RODRIGUEZ Hunger of Memory, the autobiography of Richard Rodriguez and the source of the following selection, set off a storm of controversy in the Chicano community when it appeared in 1981. Some hailed it as an uncompromising portrayal of the difficulties of growing up between two cultures; others condemned it because it seemed to blame Mexican Americans for the difficulties they encountered assimilating into mainstream American society. Rodriguez was born in 1944 into an immigrant family outside San Francisco. Though he was unable to speak English when he entered school, his educational career can only be described as brilliant: undergraduate work at Stanford University, graduate study at Berkeley and Columbia, a Fulbright fellowship to study English literature in London, a subsequent grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In this selection, Rodriguez analyzes the motives that led him to abandon his study of Renaissance literature and return to live with his parents. He is currently an associate editor with the Pacific News Service in San Francisco, an essayist for the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, and a contributing editor for Harper's magazine and for the Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times. His other books include Mexico's Children (1991) and Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father (1993), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction. I stand in the ghetto classroom - "the guest speaker"...
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...Complex Systems in Education CSE ESSAYS COURSE Complex Course on Writing English and American Essays for Advanced Students English Language Programs Division Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Writing 2 United States Information Agency, Washington, D. C. 1999 2 3 How to Use this Complex Course Частные уроки Английского Языка 387-1231 MIND Speaks to MIND – Selected American Essays 4 Preface Some years ago, a visitor to our office, a professor of English at a large foreign university, asked if the English Language Programs Division had published a book of American essays for foreign students – especially students at the advanced level. Having to respond in the negative, I was, nonetheless, “intrigued” by the idea of a collection of essays that would form a source of stimulating ideas or thoughts that could be thoroughly examined in the EFL classroom, discussed and debated in free conversation, and perhaps, ultimately, lead to a significant growth in the exchange of information between cultures – via the printed page. From this rationale, then, there issues an explanation for the title, Mind Speaks to Mind, which itself is an “exchange of information” between the editor and Edward Hoagland in his essay, “On Essays”! And, readers are encouraged to study this essay first as a type of guideline concerning the nature/purpose of the essay. It is found on page 26. For ease of reference, the essays are presented in alphabetical order according...
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...and Other Stories Arthur Dobrin © 2010 2 Arthur Dobrin CONTENTS Passing Stranger — 3 Love the One You’re With — 19 Lemon — 40 Shila — 59 Ayew’s Last Letter — 73 Girls in Paradise — 80 The Coriolis Effect — 98 The Train to Amsterdam — 121 Black Ice — 134 (E)ruction (D)isorder — 154 Coral Fish — 169 In Treasured Teapots — 179 Deep Well — 196 The Harder Right — 210 Notes — 222 THE HARDER RIGHT 3 Passing Stranger A WOMAN. Perhaps that’s why. The first and still the only in the clergy association. Or maybe it is because of where she is from. No one from San Francisco had come to live here before. Occasionally an outsider moved to this town, in the northern tier of the state, but the flow is almost always in the other direction, away from, not into. And the few that do come to stay aren’t from California, a place that to this day, decades after it had long faded, is believed to be an incubator for radical lifestyles and subversive politics. 4 Arthur Dobrin Or perhaps her name—Ailanthus—a strange one, where here, if you are named after flora it is Rose or Violet or another sweet smelling flower that could be grown in the garden. It must be a name given to her by a hippie mother, a band given to bestowing peculiar names on their children. No one knows of a girl being named after a tree. They never heard of an ailanthus...
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...critical theory today critical theory today A Us e r - F r i e n d l y G u i d e S E C O N D E D I T I O N L O I S T Y S O N New York London Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN © 2006 by Lois Tyson Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business Printed in the United States of America on acid‑free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 International Standard Book Number‑10: 0‑415‑97410‑0 (Softcover) 0‑415‑97409‑7 (Hardcover) International Standard Book Number‑13: 978‑0‑415‑97410‑3 (Softcover) 978‑0‑415‑97409‑7 (Hardcover) No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data Tyson, Lois, 1950‑ Critical theory today : a user‑friendly guide / Lois Tyson.‑‑ 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0‑415‑97409‑7 (hb) ‑‑ ISBN 0‑415‑97410‑0 (pb) 1. Criticism...
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