Reading Responses 6 - Essay Example

Isaac Bashevis Singer “The Lecture” – “The Lecture” is about a on his way to deliver a lecture at a college in Montreal. He dresses too warmly for his trip and complains to himself about the levity of those around him – as if “they knew nothing of the existence of world problems or eternal questions” (489) – which makes the reader think the professor thinks about these things himself a lot. The train is delayed, the man drinks, and upon his late arrival in Montreal, only one elderly woman and her daughter are still waiting for him, with the rest of the academics having gone home.

We quickly learn that the two women are Holocaust survivors, and with all his references to “old Poland,” I start to think the professor is too. The professor awakes in the middle of the night, panicked because he realizes he has lost his lecture notes. Far worse is that the old woman has died, and her daughter Binele’s first response is that her mother should not have gone to the train station that night in the cold. The professor takes this to mean he is responsible for her death. The professor is terrified to be alone with the body.

He thinks irrationally – most likely due to the misery he suffered in the Holocaust. He wonders if he still has a life in New York? Did he dream it all? Is death coming for him? He stares at the seal on his citizenship papers, and thinks “these are also inanimate, without life, but they symbolized order, a sense of belonging, law” (503) – in short all the things he did not have back in Poland. When Binele returns to her mother’s body, hysterical, the professor promises to look after her and be her family forever.

David Leavitt “Gravity” – Theo is dying and being cared for by his mother, Sylvia. Even though he is a grown man, she still tends for him the way a mother would a child – protecting him from the horrified looks he gets when people see his “thinness and the cane” (742) that comprise his appearance. Theo tries to lighten the mood with humor, mentioning that with him disabled, his mother always gets a good parking space. “You live and learn,” she tells him once and he replies, “You live.” (743) During a hilarious outing to buy an extravagant wedding gift, Sylvia out of nowhere throws the heavy crystal dish at her son in a friendly game of catch.

Despite being very thin and weak, Theo catches it without trouble, nearly stopping the hearts of everyone in the gift shop – including Theo. As they drive back home, Theo realizes why his mother did it, thinking “Was it the assurance that he was there, alive, that he hadn’t yet slipped past all her caring”(745). I think what could have been a terribly sad story is instead one of triumph.David Sedaris “Us and Them” – This is a hilarious story about when the author, David, was a kid and had next door neighbors who didn’t own a TV.

This fact became the talk of the neighborhood and led to David peeping in their windows at night to see what they did with their non-TV time. As Sedaris says dryly, “Because they had no TV, the Tomkeys were forced to talk during dinner.” Young David becomes so fascinated with the family that when they go away on vacation, “It felt as if my favorite show had been cancelled.” His interest in the family turns to petty dislike on Halloween and the day after Halloween. First, the Tomkeys are gone on Halloween and leave unwrapped gum drops for the trick-or-treaters.

Then to make things worse, the Tomkeys show up in oddly made costumes on November 1 for trick-or-treating. Mrs. Sedaris – who is polite to a fault – insists her children give up their candy, causing her kids to run to their rooms and hide. David actually resorts to stuffing his face with the chocolate he knows will make him sick and he doesn’t even like, rather than give his strange neighbors even one piece of name brand, quality Halloween candy. His mother insists he “take a good look at himself,” which Sedaris does while watching TV with his family and sees himself as a selfish pig.

But then he adds, “Were this the only image in the world, you’d be forces to give it your full attention, but fortunately, there were others. This stagecoach, for instance, coming round the bend with a cargo of gold. This shiny new Mustang convertible…..one picture after another, on and on until the news, and whatever came on after the news.”is