Literature in Details - Essay Example

Jane Smith John Jones English Literature Final Take Home Exam December 8, Question One Confessions, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Widely regarded by many as one of literature’s first autobiographies, Rousseau was taking many risks in speaking of his somewhat bawdy life. Written in the waning years of French aristocracy, the Church wasn’t far removed from the Inquisition but fortunately for him, his book wasn’t published until after his death. The condensed version in the material is fairly clean but the complete version speaks graphically of lovers, lust for his nursemaid, thefts and placing the blame elsewhere. Even today, when people reach what they perceive to be the end of their life, they begin to question their actions. Those who have had training in religion, even if they don’t profess it currently, wonder if what they have done has earned them to a one way ticket to whatever place of torment their religion specifies for the damned. Rousseau is no different, for he speculates whether his life will send him to Hell. However, he also reasons with a copy of Confessions in hand, perhaps he can reason his way into Heaven. Throughout my life I have always questioned the same things he did. Have I done right? Have I done wrong? What consequences would happen if I decided to take the less moral or even illegal route? Like Rousseau I hope that I can make it to the end and pass through to what I also believe is my Paradise. Taking It, by Leonard Kriegel is a short story speaking of the author’s battle with infantile paralysis, or polio. Those of us in the Western world who were fortunate enough to take the miraculous vaccine have no idea what torture the author and millions like him endured, including a former president. But enduring the disease is exactly Kriegel’s point. For many years he wanted to fight polio, like it was an opponent that could be conquered. After all, women bore the illness, men were conditioned even by the doctors to rail against polio. Instead, though, later in life Kriegel learned to accept what he had and who he was, hence the story’s name. Kriegel, his illness, and his story are things we all can relate to in our own lives. We may not have a devastating illness but we do face obstacles. We likewise want to try to fight and cry out against those problems before finally realizing that some things aren’t winnable, but can at least be acceptable. Question Two What Is Our Life? This brief (ten line) poem by Sir Walter Raleigh demonstrates the author’s thoughts on the irony of life. For his time period Raleigh had just about seen it all and done it all. An explorer of the New World, the capital of North Carolina is named for the man. So he must have been extremely despondent to be imprisoned in the Tower and eventually face the executioner. It is no doubt that during this time of confinement that he wrote the poem. Raleigh symbolizes life as a play, a comedy with Heaven as its own spectator. “Only we die in earnest -- that’s no jest” is the writer’s realization of the finality of life and that is no joke. I’m nobody! Who are you? Emily Dickinson with this simple little poem speaks of the loneliness we all feel when faced with not being a member of the in crowd. One sometimes feels he can float through a crowd and not be noticed at all. She quite likes the idea and admonishes the other “nobody” she has met to remain quiet; two knowing each other cannot be nobodies any more and would therefore be told about as in line four. The poetess used the odd metaphor of a frog but I can understand why. Those “somebodies” like to croak loudly so they can be heard. It is said that the best writers are introverts and Ms Dickinson epitomized that by celebrating being a nobody! The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost is one of my favorite poems and uses the symbolism of a lonely country road to show that we face choices during our life. Do we choose the easy way out? But like the poet said, he had no way of telling what the outcome would be from either choice. Yet later in life he is content in knowing the choice he made was right. He can’t go back and do it again but has no regrets either. The differences in his life caused by his choice may be good or bad but the poem tells us he is content. Question Three Growing Up Hidden, by Linnea Due. The author touches on a subject very much in the news, a child being gay and having to portray themselves as something else. She doesn’t elaborate on what time period she grew up in but the story could very well have been written this afternoon. Ms Due evidently had the hardest time from the adults in her childhood. Maybe that has changed today; maybe not. But peer pressure, physical and mental pain, and the constant lying and making themselves something they are not has driven many young homosexuals to mental problems. Cutting their bodies and anorexia (male and female) are common, and the suicide rate is astronomical. That is a serious shame, for one never knows what that youth would have become. Maybe, like for Mr. Kriegel above, he or she would have been the next Doctor Salk. When will society cease worrying about who a person sleeps with? That should be in the same category as a person’s skin color, of no concern to anybody. At least the author was able to confront who and what she was and cease lying to herself and everyone else during her college years. Some have to struggle throughout their entire lives and endure disastrous heterosexual marriages just to fit narrow minded society’s mold of what a person should be. Ms Due also had to be “in the closet” throughout her teenaged years, acting a foreign role, but was finally at peace with herself by the end of the story. Those who had experimented with her perhaps were going through their own torments. Am I gay? Yet they left back to their heterosexual lives and although it cost her a degree from a prestigious university the author finally decided to quit lying to herself and the world around her. Question Four Vengeful Creditor written in the early 1970’s by Nigerian Chinua Achebe is a stark and violent tale of something Westerners take for granted, education for everyone. The poor, especially the girls, are denied even the most basic of education. When the country’s government does attempt to establish primary education for the children it is met with vast resistance by the wealthy. The plans for rudimentary education fall apart after one semester, publicly due to funding issues. Yet the underlying cause is the complaints from the upper classes. It is evident from the story that the differences between the haves and have-nots are extreme. The wealthy couple in the story has two new cars, one a Mercedes. Meanwhile the poor mother feeds her children palm fronds for their lunch, very little meat. They hire the woman’s ten year-old daughter as a babysitter for the paltry sum of five pounds for a year! This includes the promise the little girl will soon be allowed to attend school. Yet that doesn’t happen and the child is mistreated, waiting months and no word of school. In her frustration she lashes out at the baby, for even he has used her, expecting to be carried instead of walking. Having been told that red ink is poisonous; she tries to kill the child. Found out about, she is beaten severely and dumped at home. Realizing she and her daughter have been duped, the poor lady goes back home in despair, knowing change may never come. The story is powerful and Ms Achebe shows a glimpse of life in modern Africa, not far removed from the West in the 1800’s, where a country which such a vast differentiation between wealth and poverty can result in a disparity wherein the oppressed poor will eventually riot and overthrow the ruling classes, a situation we have seen all too frequently in Africa over the past few decades. Works Cited Read More