...Do things you can’t see or understand make you distrusting or afraid? Some people fear the unknown. In fact, the unexplainable often puts irrational fear into the hearts of many. In “The Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Reverend Hooper causes discord by wearing a veil in front of his congregation. Never explaining his reasons, he continues to wear the veil every single day. His people begin to shun him, thinking it is strange and unseemly. He wears it the rest of his life, and upon his deathbed explains it is a symbol of the mask everyone is wearing to cover his secret sin. The author emphasizes obsession, isolation, and underlying guilt as aspects of man’s hidden sins by presenting the struggle between the concealed side of man and the ideals of society. The minister becomes obsessed with his pursuit of showing men’s inner identities. As his bride-to-be Elizabeth confronts him about removing the veil, his response is not to her liking. “Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity forever!” “Lift the veil but once, and look me in the face,” said she. “Never! It cannot be!” replied Mr. Hooper. “Then, farewell!” said Elizabeth. (417) The parson is so consumed with being an example for his community that he sacrifices his own happiness. He strives to be in the image of God and to share his true character, and implies his congregation should do the same. However, his withdrawal sets him apart from his people. Therefore, without that contact the minister loses...
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...references in many of his stories. More specifically, Hawthorne chose to examine how sin and obsession can isolate an individual from those around him. This separation that Hawthorne’s characters often face causes them to lose everything that was once precious to them. Goodman Brown and Minister Hooper successfully sever themselves from their loved ones and their communities because they can not accept or forgive the sins of others. Any moderately intelligent person understands that no human is infallible. No lack of intelligence exists when referring to Dr. Rappaccini or Dr. Baglioni. Both men have chosen to commit their time to expanding their knowledge. The pursuit of excessive intelligence leads to a man, void of emotion, who will sacrifice his loved ones to achieve greatness. The nightmare that Goodman Brown has about the dark forest creates an illogical paranoia that is soon followed by everlasting solitude. The story begins with Brown leaving his fiancé Faith and making a journey into the wilderness. The task he has set out to accomplish is unknown, but probably immoral....
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...meaning behind. He was waiting for a call from the President of a far distant country, and between wondering when the wretched man would telephone, and trying to suppress unpleasant memories of what had been a very long, tiring, and difficult week, there was not much space in his head for anything else. The more he attempted to focus on the print on the page before him, the more clearly the Prime Minister could see the gloating face of one of his political opponents. This particular opponent had appeared on the news that very day, not only to enumerate all the terrible things that had happened in the last week (as though anyone needed reminding) but also to explain why each and every one of them was the government's fault. The Prime Minister's pulse quickened at the very thought of these accusations, for they were neither fair nor true. How on earth was his government supposed to have stopped that bridge collapsing? It was outrageous for anybody to suggest that they were not spending enough on bridges. The bridge...
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...The White Tiger Summary The entire novel is narrated through letters by Balram Halwai to the Premier of China, who will soon be visiting India. Balram is an Indian man from an impoverished background, born in the village of Laxmangarh. Early on, he describes his basic story: he transcended his humble beginnings to become a successful entrepreneur in Bangalore, largely through the murder Mr. Ashok, who had been his employer. Balram also makes clear that because of the murder, it is likely that his own family has been massacred in retribution. In Laxmangarh, Balram was raised in a large, poor family from the Halwai caste, a caste that indicates sweet-makers. The village is dominated and oppressed by the “Four Animals,” four landlords known as the Wild Boar, the Stork, the Buffalo, and the Raven. Balram's father is a struggling rickshaw driver, and his mother died when he is young. The alpha figure of his family was his pushy grandmother, Kusum. Balram was initially referred to simply as “Munna,” meaning “boy," since his family had not bothered to name him. He did not have another name until his schoolteacher dubbed him Balram. The boy proved himself intelligent and talented, and was praised one day as a rare “White Tiger” by a visiting school inspector. Unfortunately, Balram was removed from school after only a few years, to work in a tea shop with his brother, Kishan. There, he furthered his education by eavesdropping on the conversations of shop customers. Balram feels that...
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...Between Hawthorne's earlier and his later productions there is no solution of literary continuity, but only increased growth and grasp. Rappaccini's Daughter, Young Goodman Brown, Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure, and The Artist of the Beautiful, on the one side, are the promise which is fulfilled in The Scarlet Letter and the House of The Seven Gables, on the other; though we should hardly have understood the promise had not the fulfillment explained it. The shorter pieces have a lyrical quality, but the longer romances express more than a mere combination of lyrics; they have a rich, multifarious life of their own. The material is so wrought as to become incidental to something loftier and greater, for which our previous analysis of the contents of the egg had not prepared us. The Scarlet Letter was the first, and the tendency of criticism is to pronounce it the most impressive, also, of these ampler productions. It has the charm of unconsciousness; the author did not realize while he worked, that this "most prolix among tales" was alive with the miraculous vitality of genius. It combines the strength and substance of an oak with the subtle organization of a rose, and is great, not of malice aforethought, but inevitably. It goes to the root of the matter, and reaches some unconventional conclusions, which, however, would scarce be apprehended by one reader in twenty. For the external or literal significance of the story, though in strict correspondence with the spirit, conceals...
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...The White Tiger A Novel Aravind Adiga Free Press New York London Toronto Sydney FREE PRESS A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2008 by Aravind Adiga All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Free Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 FREE PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Adiga, Aravind. The white tiger: a novel / Aravind Adiga. p. cm. 1. Chauffeurs—India—Bangalore—Fiction. 2. Poor—India— Bangalore—Fiction. 3. Ambition—Fiction. 4. Business people— India—Bangalore—Fiction. 5. Bangalore (India)—Fiction. I. Title. PR9619.4.A35W47 2008 2007045527 823'.92—dc22 ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-6273-3 ISBN-10: 1-4165-6273-7 Visit us on the World Wide Web: http://www.SimonSays.com The First Night For the Desk of: His Excellency Wen Jiabao The Premier's Office Beijing Capital of the Freedom-loving Nation of China From the Desk of: "The White Tiger" A Thinking Man And an Entrepreneur Living in the world's center of Technology and Outsourcing Electronics City Phase 1 (just off Hosur...
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...NTRODUCTION: AN INVITATION TO BOMBAY The envelope was hand-delivered to our house in Golf Links, Tan enclave in New Delhi whose name captured the clubbable lifestyle of its leisured and propertied Indian residents, soon after we had arrived in the middle of a north Indian winter to begin a long assignment. It contained a large card, with a picture embossed in red and gold of the elephant-headed deity Ganesh, improbably carried on the back of a much smaller mouse. Dhirubhai and Kokilaben Ambani invited us to the wedding of their son Anil to Tina Munim in Bombay. In January 1991, just prior to the explosion in car ownership that in later winters kept the midday warmth trapped in a throat-tearing haze overnight, it was bitterly cold most of the time in Delhi. Our furniture had still not arrived-a day of negotiations about the duty payable lay ahead at the Delhi customs office where the container was broken open and inspected-and we camped on office chairs and fold-up beds, wrapped in blankets. The Indian story was also in a state of suspension, waiting for something to happen. The Gulf War, which we watched at a big hotel on this new thing called satellite television, was under- cutting many of the assumptions on which the Congress Party’s family dynasty, the Nehrus and Gandhis, had built up the Indian state. The Americans were unleashing a new generation of weap- ons on a Third World regime to which New Delhi had been close; its Soviet friends were standing by, even agreeing with...
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...NTRODUCTION: AN INVITATION TO BOMBAY The envelope was hand-delivered to our house in Golf Links, Tan enclave in New Delhi whose name captured the clubbable lifestyle of its leisured and propertied Indian residents, soon after we had arrived in the middle of a north Indian winter to begin a long assignment. It contained a large card, with a picture embossed in red and gold of the elephant-headed deity Ganesh, improbably carried on the back of a much smaller mouse. Dhirubhai and Kokilaben Ambani invited us to the wedding of their son Anil to Tina Munim in Bombay. In January 1991, just prior to the explosion in car ownership that in later winters kept the midday warmth trapped in a throat-tearing haze overnight, it was bitterly cold most of the time in Delhi. Our furniture had still not arrived-a day of negotiations about the duty payable lay ahead at the Delhi customs office where the container was broken open and inspected-and we camped on office chairs and fold-up beds, wrapped in blankets. The Indian story was also in a state of suspension, waiting for something to happen. The Gulf War, which we watched at a big hotel on this new thing called satellite television, was under- cutting many of the assumptions on which the Congress Party’s family dynasty, the Nehrus and Gandhis, had built up the Indian state. The Americans were unleashing a new generation of weap- ons on a Third World regime to which New Delhi had been close; its Soviet friends were standing by, even agreeing with...
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...This eBook has been published by: [pic] Publishing Date: 2004 ISBN# 1-59547-129-4 Please see my website for several e-books created for education, research and entertainment. Most eBooks are available in paperback. Specializing in rare, out-of-print books still in demand. Contact: sales@nuvisionpublications.com URL: http://www.nuvisionpublications.com The Age of Innocence By Edith Wharton (1920) Table of Contents Book I Chapter I. 5 Chapter II. 11 Chapter III. 16 Chapter IV. 22 Chapter V. 27 Chapter VI. 35 Chapter VII. 41 Chapter VIII. 47 Chapter IX. 54 Chapter X. 64 Chapter XI. 73 Chapter XII. 80 Chapter XIII. 91 Chapter XIV. 97 Chapter XV. 103 Chapter XVI. 112 Chapter XVII. 120 Chapter XVIII. 129 Book II Chapter XIX. 141 Chapter XX. 150 Chapter XXI. 160 Chapter XXII. 171 Chapter XXIII. 178 Chapter XXIV. 187 Chapter XXV. 192 Chapter XXVI. 200 Chapter XXVII. 210 Chapter XXVIII. 216 Chapter XXIX. 222 Chapter XXX. 229 Chapter XXXI. 238 Chapter XXXII. 249 Chapter XXXIII. 258 Chapter XXXIV. 271 Book I Chapter I. On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York. Though there was already talk of the erection, in remote metropolitan distances...
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...A Company of Swans Chapter One There was no lovelier view in England, Harriet knew this. To her right, the soaring towers of King's College Chapel and the immaculate lawns sloping down to the river's edge; to her left, the blue and gold of the scillas and daffodils splashed in rich abundance between the trees of the Fellows' Gardens. Yet as she leaned over the stone parapet of the bridge on which she stood, her face was pensive and her feet— and this was unusual in the daughter of a professor of classics in the year 1912— were folded in the fifth position. She was a thin girl, brown-haired and brown-eyed, whose gravity and gentleness could not always conceal her questing spirit and eagerness for life. Sensibly dressed in a blue caped coat and tarn o'shanter bought to last, a leather music case propped against the wall beside her, she was a familiar figure to the passers-by: to ancient Dr. Ferguson, tottering across the willow-fringed bridge in inner pursuit of an errant Indo-Germanic verb; to a gardener trimming the edges of the grass, who raised his cap to her. Professor Morton's clever daughter; Miss Morton's biddable niece. To grow up in Cambridge was to be fortunate indeed. To be able to look at this marvelous city each day was a blessing of which one should never tire. Harriet, crumbling bread into the water for the world's most blase ducks, had told herself this again and again. But it is not cities which make the destinies of eighteen-year-old girls, it is people— and...
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...1 EFFI BRIEST Theodor Fontane 1895 TRANSLATED AND ABRIDGED BY WILLIAM A. COOPER, A.M. Associate Professor of German, Leland Stanford Jr. University CHAPTER I 2 CHAPTER I In front of the old manor house occupied by the von Briest family since the days of Elector George William, the bright sunshine was pouring down upon the village road, at the quiet hour of noon. The wing of the mansion looking toward the garden and park cast its broad shadow over a white and green checkered tile walk and extended out over a large round bed, with a sundial in its centre and a border of Indian shot and rhubarb. Some twenty paces further, and parallel to the wing of the house, there ran a churchyard wall, entirely covered with a small-leaved ivy, except at the place where an opening had been made for a little white iron gate. Behind this arose the shingled tower of Hohen-Cremmen, whose weather vane glistened in the sunshine, having only recently been regilded. The front of the house, the wing, and the churchyard wall formed, so to speak, a horseshoe, inclosing a small ornamental garden, at the open side of which was seen a pond, with a small footbridge and a tied-up boat. Close by was a swing, with its crossboard hanging from two ropes at either end, and its frame posts beginning to lean to one side. Between the pond and the circular bed stood a clump of giant plane trees, half hiding the swing. The terrace in front of the manor house, with its tubbed aloe plants and a few garden chairs...
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...Salman Rushdie Midnight's Children First published in 1981 Excerpts from the Koran come from the Penguin Classics edition, translated by N. J. Dawood, copyright (c) 1956, 1959,1966,1968,1974. for Zafar Rushdie who, contrary to all expectations, was born in the afternoon Contents Book One The perforated sheet Mercurochrome Hit-the-spittoon Under the carpet A public announcement Many-headed monsters Methwold Tick, tock Book Two The fisherman's pointing finger Snakes and ladders Accident in a washing-chest All-India radio Love in Bombay My tenth birthday At the Pioneer Cafe Alpha and Omega The Kolynos Kid Commander Sabarmati's baton Revelations Movements performed by pepperpots Drainage and the desert Jamila Singer How Saleem achieved purity Book Three The buddha In the Sundarbans Sam and the Tiger The shadow of the Mosque A wedding Midnight Abracadabra Book One The perforated sheet I was born in the city of Bombay ... once upon a time. No, that won't do, there's no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar's Nursing Home on August 15th, 1947. And the time? The time matters, too. Well then: at night. No, it's important to be more ... On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came. Oh, spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of India's arrival at independence, I tumbled forth into the world. There were gasps. And, outside the...
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...Copyright Salman Rushdie, 1988 All rights reserved VIKING Published by the Penguin Group Viking Penguin Inc., 40 West 23rd Street, New York, New York 10010, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd. Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R 1B4 Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190, Wairau Road, Auckland ro, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Published in 1989 by Viking Penguin Inc. For Marianne Contents I The Angel Gibreel II Mahound III Ellowen Deeowen IV Ayesha V A City Visible but Unseen VI Return to Jahilia VII The Angel Azraeel VIII The Parting of the Arabian Seas IX A Wonderful Lamp Satan, being thus confined to a vagabond, wandering, unsettled condition, is without any certain abode; for though he has, in consequence of his angelic nature, a kind of empire in the liquid waste or air, yet this is certainly part of his punishment, that he is . . . without any fixed place, or space, allowed him to rest the sole of his foot upon. Daniel Defoe, _The History of the Devil_ I The Angel Gibreel "To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die. Hoji! Hoji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly. Tat-taa! Taka-thun! How to ever smile again, if first you won't cry? How to win the darling's love, mister, without a sigh? Baba, if you want to get born again...
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...I AM MALALA The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb Weidenfeld & Nicolson LONDON To all the girls who have faced injustice and been silenced. Together we will be heard. Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Prologue: The Day my World Changed PART ONE: BEFORE THE TALIBAN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 A Daughter Is Born My Father the Falcon Growing up in a School The Village Why I Don’t Wear Earrings and Pashtuns Don’t Say Thank You Children of the Rubbish Mountain The Mufti Who Tried to Close Our School The Autumn of the Earthquake PART TWO: THE VALLEY OF DEATH 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Radio Mullah Toffees, Tennis Balls and the Buddhas of Swat The Clever Class The Bloody Square The Diary of Gul Makai A Funny Kind of Peace Leaving the Valley PART THREE: THREE BULLETS, THREE GIRLS 16 17 18 19 20 The Valley of Sorrows Praying to Be Tall The Woman and the Sea A Private Talibanisation Who is Malala? PART FOUR: BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH 21 ‘God, I entrust her to you’ 22 Journey into the Unknown PART FIVE: A SECOND LIFE 23 ‘The Girl Shot in the Head, Birmingham’ 24 ‘They have snatched her smile’ Epilogue: One Child, One Teacher, One Book, One Pen . . . Glossary Acknowledgements Important Events in Pakistan and Swat A Note on the Malala Fund Picture Section Additional Credits and Thanks Copyright Prologue: The Day my World Changed I COME FROM a country which was created at midnight. When...
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...I AM MALALA The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb Weidenfeld & Nicolson LONDON To all the girls who have faced injustice and been silenced. Together we will be heard. Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Prologue: The Day my World Changed PART ONE: BEFORE THE TALIBAN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 A Daughter Is Born My Father the Falcon Growing up in a School The Village Why I Don’t Wear Earrings and Pashtuns Don’t Say Thank You Children of the Rubbish Mountain The Mufti Who Tried to Close Our School The Autumn of the Earthquake PART TWO: THE VALLEY OF DEATH 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Radio Mullah Toffees, Tennis Balls and the Buddhas of Swat The Clever Class The Bloody Square The Diary of Gul Makai A Funny Kind of Peace Leaving the Valley PART THREE: THREE BULLETS, THREE GIRLS 16 17 18 19 20 The Valley of Sorrows Praying to Be Tall The Woman and the Sea A Private Talibanisation Who is Malala? PART FOUR: BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH 21 ‘God, I entrust her to you’ 22 Journey into the Unknown PART FIVE: A SECOND LIFE 23 ‘The Girl Shot in the Head, Birmingham’ 24 ‘They have snatched her smile’ Epilogue: One Child, One Teacher, One Book, One Pen . . . Glossary Acknowledgements Important Events in Pakistan and Swat A Note on the Malala Fund Picture Section Additional Credits and Thanks Copyright Prologue: The Day my World Changed I COME FROM a country which was created at midnight. When...
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