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After Us

AAFTER US In this poem, the poet uses a surplus of imagery to allow the reader to fully see what she is trying to get us to picture. In the first line, she talks about how rain, which can be destructive or helpful, is seeping into a room where books and other material things reside. In the lines to follow, she writes about how everything that flourished under the sun, turned away to try and find the light that they so desperately need. This shows the destructive side to rain because it paints the picture of a dark day with rain falling and silencing all activities that happen during the day. In the second paragraph, the poet writes about a portrait, which has sketches of boats and barns and this creates the image of a perfect utopia where everything is peaceful and nothing has disturbed it. The paragraph that follows this peaceful picture, is where the foreboding and evil rain begins to make its appearance again. She writes about how everything that was ever thought of or invented or t...

ANGLE OF REPOSE

AANGLE OF REPOSE  Written by Wallace Stegner and released in 1971, Angle of Repose is a novel about Lyman Ward, a wheelchair-bound historian who decides to write about his frontier-era grandparents, particularly his grandmother, Susan Burling Ward. He hopes that their experiences will help him deal with his present situation. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1972 and is based on the letters of Mary Hallock Foote, which were later published as A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West. A bone disease forces Lyman to live confined to a wheelchair after having his leg amputated. While Lyman was in the hospital convalescing, his wife, Ellen Hammond Ward, left him for Lyman's surgeon. To pass the time, Lyman moves into his old family home and begins to study his family’s history, charting his grandmother Susan's emergence on the New York high society scene before she meets and marries Oliver Ward, a mining engineer. Lyman originally plans to write a novel about Susan...

THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH

TTHE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH  Augie March is a Jewish-American boy growing up fatherless and poor in Depression-era Chicago. He seeks a "special destiny", although his circumstances seem to position him for a uniquely disappointing life: his family consists of a simple-minded mother, a brother and "grandmother" who prove to be Machiavellian in their intentions, and an "idiot" youngest brother, Georgie. In the absence of the father, Grandma Lausch offers Augie and his brother, Simon, lessons in how to survive and succeed. She teaches them first and foremost that respect is superior to love. After some time, Grandma Lausch suggests that the family place Georgie into a home for the impaired. The shock of losing Georgie, an embodiment of pure love, destabilizes the very foundation of the household. Grandma Lausch loses her tyrannical sway over the family, and, in an ironic twist, Simon contacts Grandma Lausch's real sons, who arrange to have her placed i...

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED

BBRIDESHEAD REVISITED  Toward the end of World War II, Captain Charles Ryder has fallen out of love with the army. However, when his company is stationed at an old country manor called Brideshead Castle, he becomes overwhelmed with nostalgia. The manor belongs to the Marchmains, the family of his dear friend from Oxford, Lord Sebastian Flyte. Charles remembers his history with the family and how they shaped his life. During his first year at Oxford, Charles develops a friendship with Sebastian that completely transforms his values. While he was initially studious and tended toward conventional, modern aesthetics, Sebastian brings a love of beauty and pleasure into his life. Throughout his first year at Oxford, he and Sebastian eschew responsibility and drink joyfully. However, Sebastian doesn’t want Charles to get to know his family. Although Anthony Blanche, a European student in their circle, tries to convince Charles that Sebastian is silly and insipid, Charles’s infatuation wit...

A ROOM WITH A VIEW

 AA ROOM WITH A VIEW Lucy Honeychurch, a young upper middle class woman, visits Italy under the charge of her older cousin Charlotte. At their pension, or guesthouse, in Florence, they are given rooms that look into the courtyard rather than out over the river Arno. Mr. Emerson, a fellow guest, generously offers them the rooms belonging to himself and his son George. Although Charlotte is offended by Mr. Emerson's lack of tact and propriety, she finally does agree to the switch. Lucy is an avid young pianist. Mr. Beebe, watches her passionate playing and predicts that someday she will live her life with as much gusto as she plays the piano. Lucy's visit to Italy is marked by several significant encounters with the Emersons. In Santa Croce church, George complains that his father means well, but always offends everyone. Mr. Emerson tells Lucy that his son needs her in order to overcome his youthful melancholy. Later, Lucy is walking in the Piazza Signoria, feeling dull, when she...

KIM

KKIM  Kim by Rudyard Kipling was first published in McClure's Magazine and then Cassell's Magazine before finally being published as a book by Macmillan and Co. Ltd. in October 1901. Kim is set during the period of conflict between Great Britain and Russia in Central Asia, called The Great Game, after the second Afghan War but before the third one. The term “The Great Game” became popular because of the novel. The book has been praised for its detailed portrait of people, culture, and religion in India. Kipling was able to include such detail in the book because he was born and raised in India until being sent away to England at the age of six. Kipling then returned to India at the age of 17 and remained there for a decade before marrying his wife and moving away. When in India as a young man, Kipling secured a job writing for a newspaper and used it as an excuse to dive back into the culture of India, the beloved country of his early childhood. Kipling's experiences in Ind...

FINNEGANS WAKE

FFINNEGANS WAKE  Book 1 Like the cycles of history adapted by James Joyce from the ideas of Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), Finnegans Wake is divided into four parts or books. Book 1 begins midsentence in the middle of a dream by a Dublin tavern keeper, or publican, who is apparently (and appropriately) named Porter. The tavern keeper and his family sleep above his pub in the suburb of Chapelizod. It is near Phoenix Park, a large park that lies just north of the river Liffey. During the night as his dreams unfold, Porter morphs into many different characters, primarily Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker or other variations of the initials HCE, such as Here Comes Everybody. In the dream world God announces "the Fall" with a crack of thunder. The Fall represents the fall of giants of religion and mythology. They include Irish hero-warrior Finn MacCool and Tim Finnegan, subject of the popular street ballad called "Finnegan's Wake." Earwicker has his own...

THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE

 TTHE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE Considered a modern classic and having been adapted for both television and film, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a short novel written by Muriel Spark published in 1961. It tells the story of the charismatic Scottish school teacher Miss Jean Brodie and her influence on the lives of six impressionable students at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the 1930s. The story opens in 1936 as Miss Brodie comes upon The Brodie Set, the name given to the group of students the teacher selected six years ago from the junior class to become “the créme de la créme,” the best of the best, through lessons often having little to do with academics. Supremely confident in her views of the world, Miss Brodie expands their ideas and knowledge while also manipulating their growing perceptions to remain as much in alignment with her own as possible. Still, it’s known Brodie’s girls are the brightest in the school, and now, at sixteen and in thei...