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NeighboursNeighbours by Tim Winton: Exam Summary
Tim Winton (b. 1960) is an Australian author who writes about life in Australia and its landscape. His novels include That Eye, the Sky, Dirt Music and Breath. This story is taken from Migrants of Australia, edited by Harwood Lawler. It is about a newly married couple in a multicultural and multilingual suburb. It shows that cultural and linguistic barriers cannot stop people from giving love and compassion.
When the young couple first moved in, they were wary of the neighbourhood. The street was full of European migrants, with a Macedonian family on the left and a Polish widower on the right. This made them feel like sojourners in a foreign land. Their house was small, but its high ceilings and paned windows gave it the feel of an elegant cottage. From his study window, the young man could see rooftops, used car yards and the Moreton Bay figs in the park where they walked their collie. The neighbours were cautious about the dog.
The couple had always lived in the outer suburbs, where good neighbours were "seldom seen and never heard." So the spitting, washing and early-morning watering shocked them. The Macedonians shouted, ranted and screamed, and it took six months for the couple to understand that they were not murdering each other, merely talking. In the beginning, the couple identified their neighbours by their nationality and strange habits. They saw the Polish man hammering nails into wood and pulling them out again. They saw the little boy with a shaved head and cobalt eyes, and the big woman with black eyes and butcher's arms. The young man looked at them with disgust and nervousness.
Relations stayed uncomfortable for months. The Macedonians raised their eyebrows at the late hour the couple rose. They also disapproved of the young man staying home to write his thesis while his wife went out to work. They were surprised because this went against their traditional ideas of family roles, in which the man earned and the woman did the household work. The same division showed later, when the men butchered and the women plucked ducks "as was demanded."
In autumn the couple cleared their yard and planted leeks, onions, cabbage, Brussels sprouts and broad beans. The neighbours came to the fence and gave advice about spacing, hilling and mulching. The young man resented the interference but still noted it carefully. His wife was bolder. She ran a hand over the child's stubble, and the big woman gave her a bagful of garlic cloves to plant. When the couple's henhouse fell down, the Polish widower slid through the fence uninvited and rebuilt it, though they could not understand a word he said. Later he brought a barrowful of wood scraps for their fire. The couple answered with cabbages and accepted gifts of grappa and firewood. These actions show that the neighbours had a positive, generous attitude. They also show that kindness crosses the language barrier through gestures and shared work.
By winter the couple were smiling back and walking with their eyes raised. In spring the Macedonians taught them to slaughter, pluck and dress ducks. Everyone sat on blocks and upturned buckets and told barely understood stories. This is the "fractured dialogue": broken, half-understood talk caused by the lack of a common language. Even so, the couple felt intoxicated and found themselves shouting like their neighbours. Their parents, however, cast shocked glances across the fence. This shows how the couple had changed while others still held prejudice.
Then came the pregnancy, which stunned the couple because their friends waited years to have children, if at all. The young man kept working on his thesis on the twentieth-century novel. Meanwhile, the Polish widower began building a two-car garage, though he had no car. The couple cursed him, and the young man even suspected he was deliberately annoying them. Yet the widower again surprised them with a barrowful of wood scraps. The whole neighbourhood soon knew about the pregnancy. People smiled tirelessly. The deli man gave the wife chocolates and the husband cigarettes. Italian women offered names. Greek women felt her belly and said it would be a boy. The woman next door knitted a suit, booties and a beanie. The young woman felt flattered, claustrophobic, grateful and peeved, so the neighbours' care was warm but also a little intrusive.
Labour came suddenly. The young man left his thesis for the telephone, and the midwife helped his wife. When he went outside for wood, he counted twelve faces at the fences, and the Macedonians waved and called out their best wishes. After a long night, the wife gave birth to a boy. When the baby cried, the young man went to the back door. A small queue of tired faces on the Macedonian side was cheering, and he began to weep.
He wept out of joy, relief and deep emotion. He was moved that the same people he had judged and resented were now sharing the biggest moment of his life. This moment shows his regret: he realised that his early disgust, resentment and suspicion were wrong. It also shows that he understood the true value of neighbours, who give support, love and a sense of belonging without needing a shared language. The last line reads "The twentieth century novel had not prepared him for this." He had studied novels, but books could not teach him real human warmth. Literature is distant and planned, while real relationships are emotional, spontaneous and unpredictable.
The main themes are community and belonging, multiculturalism and the movement from prejudice to acceptance. The Nepali proverb says "Neighbours are companions for wedding procession as well as funeral procession." It applies to the story because the neighbours shared the couple's work, worries and happiest moment, standing by them like family. The author gives no proper names, only labels like "the young man," "the Polish widower" and "the big woman." This makes them represent any couple and any neighbours anywhere, and it keeps the focus on human relationships, not on individuals.
Multiculturalism is a major issue today because people migrate for work, safety and education, and societies now contain many languages and customs. Misunderstanding can cause fear and discrimination, but respect and openness, as the story shows, can build peaceful and rich communities. If I were in the young man's place, I would feel grateful and a little ashamed of my early judgements, thank my neighbours warmly, and make an effort to stay close to them.
A Respectable Woman by Kate Chopin: Exam Summary
Kate Chopin (1851-1904), born Katherine O'Flaherty, was an American novelist and short-story writer. She grew up in St. Louis and lived in New Orleans after marrying Oscar Chopin. Her novels include At Fault (1890) and The Awakening (1899), and she wrote more than a hundred short stories. Her language is full of sexual connotations (hidden or suggested meanings), and The Awakening was condemned for its sexual frankness. After 1950 her works were reinterpreted, and she was praised for showing modern sensibility (modern way of thinking and feeling). This story comes from The Awakening and Other Short Stories. It is built around Mrs. Baroda's inner conflict and follows the classical pattern of exposition (the opening that introduces the characters and situation), rising action, climax and resolution.
The story begins when Mrs. Baroda learns that her husband Gaston has invited his college friend Gouvernail to stay on the plantation (a large farm) for a week or two. She is annoyed because the couple had entertained a lot during the winter and spent much time in New Orleans in mild dissipation (light, careless pleasure-seeking). She was looking forward to unbroken rest and quiet time alone with her husband. She had heard much about Gouvernail but had never met him. He was a journalist, not a society man or a man about town, and that is why their paths had not crossed.
Before meeting him, she imagined Gouvernail as tall, slim and cynical (always doubting and sarcastic), with eyeglasses and his hands in his pockets, and she disliked this imagined man. The real Gouvernail was different. He was slim, but not very tall or cynical, and he wore no eyeglasses and did not keep his hands in his pockets. She liked him when he first appeared, although she could not explain why. She found none of the brilliant and promising qualities Gaston had praised in him. Her opinion changed because his actual manner was courteous and gentle, and it did not match the cold figure she had pictured.
Gouvernail and Gaston are a clear contrast. Gaston is talkative, frank and generous with words and hospitality, while Gouvernail is quiet, mute and receptive (ready to listen). He is polite but makes no appeal for her approval or respect. He likes to sit on the portico under a Corinthian pillar (a tall, decorated column), smoking a cigar and listening to Gaston talk about sugar planting. He says "This is what I call living," makes friends with the big dogs, and shows no interest in fishing or shooting grosbecs (a kind of bird). He is a lovable, harmless man, reserved (quiet, keeping feelings private) only because of his moods, not because he is shy or self-conscious.
Gouvernail's personality puzzles Mrs. Baroda, and after a few days she is piqued (mildly annoyed). First she leaves the two men alone. Then, since he does not mind, she forces her company on him, joining his idle walks to the mill and along the batture (the raised bank of the river). She wants to break through his reserve (his quiet, closed manner) and draw him out of his solitary habits. She even asks, "When is he going?" and says he tires her. Gaston disagrees with her view. He says Gouvernail gives no trouble, is clever, and is only run down (tired and weak) by overwork, which is why he was invited to rest. He tells her she is full of surprises and is making a commotion (a fuss) over a man who expects none. She answers that Gouvernail was said to be a man of ideas but is not interesting, and she plans to leave for her Aunt Octavie's until he is gone.
That night, sitting alone under a live oak tree, she feels confused and sure only that she must leave home in the morning. This is the climax (the turning point of highest tension). Gouvernail comes with a cigar and brings her the scarf Gaston sent. He recites a line about the night and then talks freely about his college days with Gaston, their old ambitions, and his present calm acceptance of life. She hardly follows his words. She is only drinking in his voice and feels a strong wish to touch his face or lips and whisper close to his cheek, as she might have done if she had not been a respectable woman. The stronger this impulse grows, the further she draws away. She leaves as soon as she politely can.
The cause of Mrs. Baroda's conflict is her sudden attraction to her husband's friend, which clashes with her loyalty to Gaston and her sense of being respectable. Her respectability (behaving in a morally proper way) makes her resist, run away and stay silent. She is tempted to tell Gaston, who is also her friend. But she does not, because she is sensible and knows that some battles in life a person must fight alone. Telling him would also hurt their trust and make a small, private folly (foolish act) into a problem. She takes the early train the next morning and stays away until Gouvernail leaves.
The line "Before she reached the house, Gouvernail had lighted a fresh cigar and ended his apostrophe to the night" (an apostrophe is a speech to something that cannot reply, here the night) points to a contrast. In my view, it suggests that there is no real conflict in Gouvernail's mind. He is calm and unaware of her feelings, since his words were meant for the night, not for her. The storm is only in Mrs. Baroda.
The last part brings a twist (a sudden, unexpected turn). Over the summer Gaston wants Gouvernail back, but his wife strongly opposes it. Before the year ends, she herself suggests inviting him again. Gaston is surprised and delighted, because he thinks she has finally overcome her unfair dislike for his friend. She replies with a long kiss that she has "overcome everything" and will be very nice to him this time. In my view, she may mean that she has overcome her dislike, her confusion and her fear of her own feelings. Her words are also ambiguous (open to more than one meaning), so they may hint that she still wants to see him. This ending leaves the reader unsure, and that is what gives the story its depth.
A Devoted Son by Anita Desai: Exam Summary
Anita Desai (b. 1937) is an Indian novelist, short-story writer and children's author. Her mother was German and her father was Indian, so she grew up with German, Hindi and English. Her novel Fire on the Mountain won the Sahitya Academy Award, and her novel In Custody was made into a film in 1993. This story is taken from The Complete Short Stories. It is a realistic story about a middle-class Indian family. It shows how parents dream big for their children and how a son should do his duty towards them.
The story begins on the morning Rakesh's exam results appear in the newspapers. He checks them at the garden gate, barefoot and in his pajamas. Then he goes to his father and touches his feet. He has come first in the country. The whole family shouts and dances for joy. Visitors fill the small yellow house at the end of the road all day, and it feels like a festival, with garlands, halwa, party clothes and gifts such as fountain pens and watches. People call Rakesh a Wunderkind (a very gifted young person). The father proudly tells everyone that Rakesh touched his feet first. Women wipe their tears, and men praise such a respectful son.
His success is talked about so much because Rakesh is the first son in the family to get an education, and his parents gave up a lot to send him to school and medical college. His family is poor. Varma's father sold vegetables, and Varma himself never went to school and worked forty years at a kerosene dealer's depot. Rakesh's mother spent her life in the kitchen. They live in a shabby colony where rubbish is dumped near their gardens. Some neighbours complain about the sweets and say Varma is showing off. Still, there is more envy than bitterness in their voices. The author also makes fun of Varma's pride. He teaches his family to say "the USA" instead of "America", which the ignorant neighbours say, so that he sounds important and well informed.
Rakesh rises step by step. His M.D. thesis brings him more fame. He wins a scholarship to the USA, where he works in the best hospital and earns encomiums (great praise) from his American colleagues. He comes back and again touches his father's feet. He becomes a director of the city hospital, then opens his own clinic, buys a sky-blue Ambassador car, and becomes the best and richest doctor in town. All this takes his whole life. He marries the girl his mother chose, not a foreign woman. His wife Veena is plump, uneducated, old-fashioned, calm and easy to please. She is pretty at first but grows fat after their first baby. Later she is shown as a "smiling, hypocritical pudding" who smirks at the old man and listens to film songs on her radio.
When Rakesh's mother dies, his father goes to pieces. She was his kind cook who gave in to his wishes. In my view, he would probably have stayed healthier if she had lived, because she would have fed him the food he loved and given him love. Now he is old, retired and lonely. He lies still to scare the family, then sits up and spits red betel juice at them. At a birthday party, he even stains his daughter-in-law's sari. After that, nobody cares. Only Rakesh does. He brings his father tea in his favourite brass tumbler, reads him the news, arranges his pillows on the verandah, and has his bed carried to the lawn on summer nights. This is how he tries to make his father's old age comfortable.
But as a doctor, Rakesh becomes very strict. He stops halwa and fried food, and soon everything his father enjoys. Meals shrink to dry bread and boiled food. He even weighs the cereal at 200 grams and gives him pills instead of natural food. The old man tries to bribe his grandchildren with coins to buy jalebis because he craves sweets and misses his wife's cooking. He is caught, the child is punished, and Rakesh scolds him for teaching a boy to lie and for risking cholera and typhoid. The old man complains to his neighbour Bhatia that his son is starving him. His opinion of Rakesh now takes a big turn. Skill becomes cold-heartedness and authority becomes cruelty. Pills, hospital rushes and the stomach pump leave him scared. Rakesh says, "I have my duty to you papa," and even laughs at his complaints. The old man cries, "God is calling me—and they won't let me go." The grandchildren laugh at him, and the grandson is used in his schemes, so there is little real closeness between them.
The old man is unhappy despite his son's care because the care takes away his food, freedom and dignity. It treats him like a patient, not a father. His complaints about his diet are partly fair, since his food is dull and small. But Rakesh is also right that rich food harms an old man, so he is a son torn between being a doctor and being a son. In my view, he could have allowed small, safe treats, spent time listening to his father, and asked what he wanted.
In the last scene, Rakesh comes home and tries to press his father's feet. The old man pulls them away and will not look at him. When Rakesh offers a new tonic, the old man knocks the bottle out of his hand and it smashes. The brown syrup splashes Rakesh's white trousers, and the household rushes around him. He lies down, points his chin at the ceiling like someone warning of doom, and groans, "God is calling me—now let me go." For once he gets attention.
Rakesh can be called an anti-hero (a main character who lacks the usual hero qualities). He begins as the perfect son but ends up looking cold and controlling in his father's eyes. This is irony (the opposite of what we expect). The title fits because Rakesh looks like a devoted son. He touches his father's feet, cares for him and keeps him alive. But it is also ironic because his care ignores what his father wants. In my view, he is devoted in duty, but not in feeling and understanding.
The Treasure in the Forest by H. G. Wells: Exam Summary
H. G. Wells (1866-1946) was an English writer. He was a novelist, journalist, sociologist and historian, and he is best known for science fiction. His first novel, The Time Machine (1895), was a big success. He also wrote The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds, and many short stories. This story is taken from his book The Country of the Blind and Other Short Stories. It is a dark adventure story about two men who look for Spanish treasure. Their greed stops them from thinking carefully. The story shows how greed for money and power ruins people. (The questions write "Evan", but the story says Evans.)
Two men, Evans and Hooker, are in a canoe near a tropical island. They have come to dig up treasure buried there. This is the expository scene (the opening that explains the place and situation). The bay opens up, and a gap in the white waves on the reef shows where a small river meets the sea. Thick green forest grows close to the beach. Far away, there are mountains. The sea is calm and the sky is very bright and hot. We know it is a tropical island because of the canoe, the coral reef, the palm trees, the strong sun and the thick forest. Hooker stops paddling and says the place should be near here.
The men look at their map. It is a rough sheet of yellow paper, so old and folded that it is falling apart. The pencil marks are faint. It shows the bay, the reef with a gap in it, a curved line for the river, and a star for the treasure. A dotted line runs from the gap in the reef to a group of palm trees, and the star is where this line crosses the river. There is also some Chinese writing and some small marks like a house plan, with dashes. The men do not understand these marks. These marks later turn out to be very important.
Evans is tired and very thirsty. They have paddled all night from the mainland with no food or water. He falls asleep and dreams. The dream takes us back to how they found out about the treasure. One night they heard three Chinese men talking by a fire in broken English. They said a big Spanish ship (a galleon) got stuck near the island, and its crew buried the treasure and never came back. A man named Chang-hi had found the gold bars (ingots) a year ago and buried them again. He kept saying they were very safe. Evans and Hooker were stranded, poor Englishmen, and they fought to get the map. In the dream, Evans holds Chang-hi by his pigtail. Chang-hi looks scared and sly, and then he gives a strange grin. Piles of gold appear, but they turn into a hot furnace, and a huge devil like Chang-hi feeds Evans burning coals. The dream is a warning that greed will bring punishment. Then Hooker shouts at him, and he wakes up at the mouth of the lagoon (the shallow sea water behind the reef).
Now they look for the spot. They line up the three palm trees with a group of bushes. They drink from the river, land on the beach and pull the canoe up. Evans takes a tool and Hooker takes the paddle. They go through the reeds and into the forest, which is cool and dark under tall trees. They walk in a straight line until they reach the river again. They have moved a little off the line, so they search along the bank for the pile of stones.
Then they see something blue. It is the body of a Chinese man, lying face down. His neck is swollen and purple, and his hands and ankles are swollen too. A spade lies nearby, with a scattered pile of stones and a fresh hole. At first Evans is angry, because he thinks someone has taken the treasure. But the gold bars are still in the hole. Hooker thinks a snake killed the man when he came alone to steal the gold before his friends. Hooker is scared and wants to bury the body. Evans does not care about the dead man. He only wants the gold.
They try to carry the gold by putting the bars on Evans's jacket and lifting it by the corners. Soon Evans's arms ache, and he gets angry for no reason. Then he groans, holds his throat and falls down. Small thorns had pricked his hand while he handled the gold. Hooker then feels a prick on his thumb and sees a thin two-inch thorn. He realises the thorns are poisonous, like those used in blowpipes. Now he understands the marks on the map, Chang-hi's talk of safety, and his grin. The gold was guarded by poisoned thorns.
Hooker tries to save himself by sucking the pricked spot hard to take out the poison. But soon his arms and shoulders start to ache and his fingers become stiff, so he knows it is no use. He sits by the gold and watches Evans twitch while the pain spreads to his throat. The story ends quietly with white petals falling in the silent forest.
It is a mystery story because the reader does not know what is wrong until the end. The unclear clues are the old map, the strange marks, the dead man, Hooker's fear, Evans's aching arms and Chang-hi's grin. Hooker puts them together only at the end. The two men became victims of their own greed because they ignored the warning signs and kept touching the gold. They took the risk because they were poor and stranded, and the treasure could change their lives. To succeed, they should have looked at the clues first, such as the dead body and Chang-hi's talk of safety.
The moral is that greed leads to destruction. The treasure stays, and the men die. The narrator can also be seen as racist. Evans says "All Chinamen are alike" and that a Chinese life is "scarcely sacred like a European's." He feels better than others because he thinks Europeans are more valuable and clever. But Chang-hi's trick defeats them both. Their pride is as foolish as their greed.
My Old Home by Lu Xun: Exam Summary
Lu Xun (1881-1936) is the pen name of Zhou Shuren. He came from a family with a strong Confucian (based on the teachings of Confucius, which value learning and duty) background. He is considered China's greatest writer of the 20th century and the "father of modern Chinese literature." He wrote short stories and essays and also worked as a translator (a person who changes writing from one language to another). He is known for his satirical (mocking, to show faults) view of early 20th-century Chinese society. "My Old Home" is taken from his short story collection Hometown. It is about the narrator Xun's memories from youth to middle age. The story shows the conflict between memories and reality, and its main message is that people should hope and work for a new and better life.
The story begins in the depth of winter. Xun is returning to his hometown, which is over six hundred miles and more than twenty years away. As his boat comes closer, the sky is gray, a cold wind blows, and the villages look drab (dull) and desolate (empty and lifeless). He feels a deep depression (heavy sadness) because the place is far less lovely than the one he remembered. Then he tells himself that the place was probably always like this and that his own mood has changed, since he is not coming back happily. He has come back only to say a final goodbye, because the old family house has been sold to people of another surname and the family must move to a faraway place where he now works. Next morning, he stands before the gate. Withered (dried and dead) vines tremble on the roof and the house is silent, since several branches of the family have already left. His mother and his eight-year-old nephew Hong'er meet him. His mother is happy but looks sad, and she has already packed and sold the heavy furniture.
When his mother says that Runtu will come, Xun becomes nostalgic (full of longing for the past). He sees a bright picture: a moon in a dark blue sky, a field of green watermelons, and a twelve-year-old boy with a silver neck ring and a pitchfork (a long tool with sharp points, used for stabbing or lifting). Runtu hunted a zha (a small, quick animal that bites into melons; the narrator never knew exactly what it was) by sneaking up on it with his pitchfork, but the animal, with its slippery coat, turned and ran between his legs. Thirty years earlier, Xun, then about ten, was a "young gentleman" in a fairly rich family. His family had to perform a sacrifice (a religious ceremony with offerings to the ancestors) that came only once in thirty-odd years. The helper, a busy-monther, suggested that his son Runtu guard the sacrificial vessels (the special containers used in the ceremony). There were three kinds of workers: "yearlongs" worked the whole year for one family, "short-timers" worked by the day, and "busy-monthers" (farmers who worked their own land) worked for a family only during festivals or rent collection. This shows that society was divided into classes and that poor people depended on rich families. Runtu's silver ring showed that his father loved him and had promised something to the Buddha (the religious teacher whose statues people worship) to keep him alive.
The two boys quickly became friends. Runtu told Xun about catching birds with snares (traps) in the snow, collecting shells, guarding melons and jumper fish. Xun learned that his town friends knew only "the square patch of sky" above their courtyard walls, while Runtu's mind was "a treasure-house" of strange things. When the month ended, both boys cried. Later Runtu sent shells and feathers. This early friendship was innocent, equal and unselfish, because neither boy wanted anything from the other. Hindu readers may remember Krishna and Sudama, because a well-off boy and a poor boy stay loyal friends and the poor friend offers a simple gift.
The visitor Second Sister Yang (called Mrs. Yang in the questions) now enters. She is fifty or so, with high cheekbones and thin lips. She stands with hands on hips and legs apart, looking like a pair of compasses (a drawing tool with two thin legs, used to draw circles). This funny picture of her also shows her sharpness. She was once called the "Beancurd (tofu) Beauty," but Xun does not remember her. She is angry and says he has become rich and proud. She wrongly claims he is a Daotai (a high government official) with three concubines (extra wives kept by a rich man). Mrs. Yang is greedy, rude, jealous and shameless: she hides gloves in her waistband, accuses Runtu of hiding plates in the ashes, and takes the dog-crazer (a wooden bowl with a lattice cover that lets chickens eat but keeps dogs out).
Then Runtu arrives. He is not the boy of Xun's memory. His face is gray and wrinkled, his eyes are swollen from sea wind, and his hands are cracked like pine bark. Xun wants to speak about old games, but the words get stuck. Runtu says, "Master!" He calls him Master because years of poverty and class difference have taught him that a poor man must show respect to a rich one. Xun feels a thick wall standing between them. Runtu brings his shy fifth son Shuisheng, who looks like young Runtu, and a gift of dried peas. Runtu is like a lifeless wooden figure because of too many children, famine (severe shortage of food), bad harvests, heavy taxes, soldiers, bandits (robbers), officials and rich landowners. Many poor farmers in Nepal also suffer from poverty, taxes and large families, so Runtu represents a large part of such people. Xun and his mother let him take what they would not carry: two long tables, an incense burner (a pot for burning sweet-smelling sticks during worship), candlesticks, a set of scales and the stove ashes, which are good fertilizer (something added to soil to help crops grow).
On the day of leaving, Runtu helps with the boat, and Mrs. Yang still comes to take things. On the boat, Hong'er asks when they will return because Shuisheng has invited him to play. Xun feels no regret, only a wall that squeezes his breath. He hopes that Hong'er and Shuisheng will not live separated lives like his generation, nor Runtu's poor life, nor a wasteful one. He had laughed at Runtu for worshipping idols (statues or objects people worship), but then he sees the two idols: Runtu's hope is close and practical, while Xun's hope is far away and unclear, so his own hope is also an idol he has made. The ending says that hope is like a path: it does not exist at first, but when many people walk the same way, it comes into being.
The lesson Xun learns is that time, money and class can break even the closest friendship, and that memory is often brighter than reality. The story suggests that China then was poor, unequal, and full of heavy taxes and unrest (trouble and fighting). The geography is a coastal river region, with a boat journey, mountains along the river banks, cold winters with snow, and sandy land by the sea where watermelons grow and shells lie on the beach. Childhood friendships are innocent and equal, but adult friendships are often changed by money and class. Hope for change must be built by many people working together.
The Half-closed Eyes of the Buddha and the Slowly Sinking Sun by Shankar Lamichhane: Exam Summary
Shankar Lamichhane (1928-1975) was born in Kathmandu but lived in Banaras with his uncle when he was young. He studied at Tri-Chandra College, took his first job at twenty-two, and worked for government and cultural institutions. Later he managed a handicrafts store (a shop selling handmade goods). He admired modern American fiction and often met foreign visitors to Nepal. His stories are full of symbolism (using objects to show deeper meanings), often have no regular plot, and read like essays, but his prose (ordinary written language) is rich and poetic. This story is taken from Himalayan Voices, translated and edited by Michael Hutt. It is made of two monologues (long speeches by one person), one by a foreign tourist and one by his Nepali guide. It uses the stream of consciousness technique (showing thoughts as they flow in the mind), so it records thoughts instead of actions, and this makes it different from conventional stories. The main idea is the gap between the tourist's romantic picture of Nepal and the guide's hard reality.
The tourist speaks first, while drinking. He is happy to step on Nepali soil because, as his Dakota (an old passenger plane) crosses the Four Passes, he sees a green valley with neat fields, red, yellow and white earthen houses, the smell of soil and mountains, and an age-old peace. Westerners live on plains or by the sea, where the wide horizon makes them feel small, so this valley surrounded by hills feels like a safe resting place. Even at the airport, the half-closed eyes of the Buddha seem to welcome him and give him calmness.
He says the West is indebted (owes thanks) to the East because Nepal has always given and never taken: religion, the Puranas (ancient Hindu holy books), brass images, ivory ornaments, palm-leaf manuscripts (old handwritten books), copperplate inscriptions (writing carved on copper), civilization, wisdom and jasmine garlands. He studied Nepal's history in libraries and imagines the valley filled with water and a lotus where Swyambhunath now stands. He also imagines Manjushri striking his sword at Chobhar (legend says it cut the cleft there), and monks and nuns receiving alms (food or money given to them) in Kasthamandap (an old wooden building in Kathmandu). He says the shaven-headed monks have a samyak gaze (pure sight that sees everything as it truly is), which nobody can meet. Between the lines, he keeps saying he will have "one more drink," which shows his romantic talk is half whisky.
He praises the temple-like houses and their carvings, and the artist whose wife poured Raksi (local alcohol) whose foam may have inspired the tiled roof. He thinks Nepali people are wonderful because Aryans, non-Aryans, Hindus and Buddhists all live together in harmony, because of their rich art and food (momos, or dumplings, and Newari dishes), and above all because of their welcoming smile full of wisdom. He imagines an old man telling stories about Princess Bhrikuti, whom King Amshuvarma sent to Tibet, and says such scenes are not found in books. Finally, he sees eyes everywhere: on windows, door panels, stupas (dome-shaped Buddhist monuments), in people and in the Himalayas, so Nepal is "a land of eyes" guarded by the half-closed eyes of the Buddha. He asks to see the sunset reflected in the Buddha's eyes.
The guide replies and takes him to a remote hill at Chobhar, where few tourists go. There he shows a rock with a village boy's drawings of birds and a temple with no mention of its religion. He also shows the Adinath temple, with a Shiva shrine, Buddha images and prayer wheels (spinning drums with holy words). The tourist calls Adinath a living example of Nepali tolerance and coexistence (living together peacefully), where children play without caring about different gods. But the guide says the tourist has already understood such things, so he takes him to a poor farmer's house instead. There is no smoke, no momos and no talk of Bhrikuti, because the family works hard and pays half its crop to someone in the city. Their child has polio (a disease that makes the body powerless) and cannot move, speak, chew or even spit. Only his eyes are alive.
The guide says he is not showing the child as a symbol; he is only giving the tourist the eyes he asked for. He says the child's gaze is empty and without samyak. He uses the tourist's earlier words about the East giving, saying this child can neither give nor take anything. He adds bitterly that such silent endurance without complaint can only be found in an Easterner. He shows poverty to correct the tourist's one-sided view and to make him see the "pulse of our reality" (the real heartbeat of Nepali life). He has also lied to the parents that the tourist is a doctor. The innocent couple trust him like a saviour, with kindness and gratitude, and welcome him with the same smile, but it will vanish when he leaves and they will sink back into darkness.
The child has a sister whose body works. She crawls, touches everything, feels pain, learns from experience and learns words. A flash of wish to copy her shows in his eyes, then goes. Through his gaze he says that falling, pain, crying and learning would be sweet to him. The sister carries history, language, culture and the future, while in the child the chain of human growth ends and the future is broken. The guide ends by saying that these eyes welcome and build, but they also hide the end of life, and they are as beautiful as the setting sun reflected in the Buddha's eyes.
The eyes join the two parts into one whole. They include the monks' eyes (pure perception), the carved window and door eyes (watching and culture), the Himalayas' eyes (friendly, curious) and the villagers' welcoming eyes. The boy's eyes mean emptiness and the end of life. The Buddha's half-closed eyes mean calm, but also half-seeing, since the tourist misses poverty. The sinking sun means decline: Nepal's glorious past is fading, just as the child's future ends. The historical and legendary references (Manjushri, Bhrikuti, Amshuvarma, Adinath, Kasthamandap) show the tourist's bookish love of the past, which contrasts with the present reality. The author places Kathmandu's places first and the child last to show the contrast between beautiful culture and cruel poverty. Both views show Nepal's good qualities: culture, harmony, hospitality, patience and endurance. The tourist knows books and the past, but the guide knows today's reality, so each knows differently.
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Exam Summary
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014) was a Colombian-born Spanish American journalist, novelist and short story writer. He was called the "literary volcano" of the 1960s and is famous for magical realism (a style where real and magical things, natural and supernatural, are shown side by side as equally normal). His best-known novel is One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). This story was first published in 1955. It examines how people treat those who are weak, dependent (needing others) and different. The theme is human curiosity, greed and cruelty, and how people exploit (use unfairly) the weak.
The story opens in the exposition (the opening part that sets the scene) with three days of rain. So many crabs have come into the house that Pelayo throws them into the sea. His newborn child has a fever, and they think it is because of the stench (bad smell). The sea and sky are one ash-gray thing, and the beach, which glimmers like powdered light in March, is a stew of mud and rotten shellfish. The weather is dull, dirty and sad, and it prepares us for a strange and unhappy event. In the weak light, Pelayo finds a very old man lying face down in the mud, unable to rise because of his enormous wings.
He is dressed like a ragpicker (a person who collects rubbish), has a few faded hairs and very few teeth, and looks like a drenched great-grandfather. His huge buzzard (a large bird of prey) wings are dirty, half-plucked and stuck in the mud. He speaks in an incomprehensible dialect with a strong sailor's voice. Pelayo and his wife Elisenda first take him for a castaway (a survivor of a shipwreck). Then a wise neighbor woman, who knows "everything about life and death," says he is an angel who came for the child but was knocked down by the rain. People gather quickly. Pelayo and Elisenda do not have the heart to kill him, so Pelayo locks him in the chicken coop with the hens. When the child's fever goes, they feel magnanimous (generous) and plan to put the old man on a raft with food and water. But the crowd is already treating him like a circus animal and tossing him food.
Father Gonzaga, a former woodcutter, arrives. He greets the old man in Latin, but the old man does not understand. He also sees that the old man smells bad, has parasites (small insects living on the body) in his wings, and has none of the proud dignity of an angel. He suspects an imposter (a fake) and warns people that the devil uses carnival tricks, and that wings alone do not prove a person is an angel, just as wings do not make a hawk and an airplane the same. He writes to his bishop, who must write to the Pope for a final decision, but Rome answers slowly. Meanwhile, the crowd has strange ideas: making him mayor of the world, a five-star general, or a breeding male to make a race of wise winged men. Later, the doctor listens to the old man's heart and finds it whistling and his kidneys noisy, so it seems impossible that he is alive. The doctor finds the wings natural on his human body. These three people give three different views because each judges by his or her own background: the neighbor by folk belief, the priest by religion, and the doctor by science.
Elisenda then fences the yard and charges five cents to see him. Pilgrims come from far away: a woman who counts her heartbeats, a Portuguese man kept awake by the noise of the stars, and a sleepwalker who undoes at night what he did by day. A carnival arrives, but its flying acrobat is ignored because his wings are not an angel's. In a week, the couple's rooms are full of money. The crowd comes from curiosity, hope for cures and love of entertainment, and the couple use people's gullibility (readiness to believe anything) and whims to make money. The strange "miracles" are only mocking fun: a blind man grows three teeth, a paralytic almost wins the lottery, and a leper's sores sprout sunflowers.
The visitors also torment the old man: hens peck at him, the sick pull out his feathers to touch their sores, people throw stones to make him stand, and they burn him with a branding iron (a hot iron used to mark cattle). His only supernatural virtue is patience. When burned, he cries out and flaps his wings, causing a whirlwind, and people realize his calm is like "a cataclysm (huge disaster) in repose." He eats only eggplant mush.
The turning point comes when a traveling show brings the woman who was changed into a spider for disobeying her parents. She sneaked out to a dance, and a thunderclap and lightning bolt of brimstone (burning sulphur) turned her into a tarantula (large hairy spider) the size of a ram with the head of a sad girl. Admission is cheaper, and people may question her. Her sad story has a clear moral lesson and "human truth," so it beats the silent, proud-looking angel. The author shifts attention to show how fickle (changeable) the crowd is: it prefers a dramatic, easy-to-understand spectacle to a mysterious being. The angel's reputation is ruined, and the priest can sleep again.
The couple become rich. They build a two-story mansion with netting against crabs and iron bars against angels. Pelayo leaves his job and keeps rabbits, while Elisenda buys satin shoes and silk dresses. The old man, forgotten, becomes weaker. He plays with the growing child, and both catch chicken pox. He ends up weak, nearly blind and delirious, and Elisenda complains that her house is a hell full of angels. Yet he survives the winter, grows strong feathers and, one morning, makes clumsy first flights. Elisenda watches with relief, because he is no longer an annoyance but a dot on the sea's horizon. Her feeling shows that many modern people also see the weak and different as a burden, not as someone to care for.
The story is magical realism because magical events happen in a real setting and are treated as ordinary. Five examples are the winged man, the spider woman, the odd miracles, the heartbeat-counting woman and the old man's feather regrowth and flight. The community shows curiosity, greed and cruelty, but little compassion, so the story is a strong picture of abuse of the weak. It is a story of gullibility and exploitation.
A Day by Emily Dickinson: Exam Summary
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) is one of the most eminent (famous and respected) American poets of the nineteenth century. Her poetry was influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England (poets known for clever, deep ideas), by the Book of Revelation, and by her Puritan (strict and religious) New England upbringing. This gave her a Calvinist, orthodox (traditional) and conservative view of Christianity. She and Walt Whitman are seen as the founders of a uniquely American poetic voice. She wrote a great deal and often sent poems in letters to friends, but she was not publicly recognized in her lifetime. Her fame has grown through posthumously (after her death) published poems. In "A Day," she uses brilliant imagery (word pictures) and symbols (things that stand for deeper ideas) to describe a beautiful day. The poem leads children from innocence (childlike purity) to experience (knowledge gained with age).
The poem has two stanzas (groups of lines). The speaker begins, "I'll tell you how the sun rose," and the hyphen (dash) at the end of the first line creates a pause, so the reader waits for the story. The sun rises "a ribbon at a time," meaning slowly and gently, with bands of light spreading like ribbons across the sky. Church steeples (tall towers with a pointed top) "swam in amethyst" (a purple stone), which means they look purple, as if floating, in the early light. This is personification (giving human actions to non-human things).
The line "The news like squirrels ran" means the news of the sunrise spread quickly and playfully, like squirrels running. It is a simile (a comparison using "like" or "as"). Next, "The hills untied their bonnets" (hats tied under the chin) shows the hills uncovering themselves as the light touches them, as if waking up. Then the bobolinks (songbirds) begin to sing. Hearing and seeing all these signs, the speaker says softly, "That must have been the sun!" She is not watching the sun itself; she guesses it from its effects on the world. This gives a sense of wonder, as if the sun rose without her noticing.
In the second stanza, the speaker admits, "But how he set, I know not." Instead, she describes a vision. A purple stile (steps for climbing over a fence) appears, and little yellow boys and girls keep climbing it. When they reach the other side, "A dominie in gray" (a schoolmaster or clergyman) gently puts up the evening bars and leads the flock away. So the sun sets quietly, as the children climb the purple sky and the grey figure of evening leads them away. The yellow children can stand for the sun's last yellow rays, and the dominie for the gray, quiet dusk.
According to the speaker, a day is a journey from a lively, playful morning to a calm, mysterious evening, just like a life moving from childhood to the end. She knows sunrise better than sunset because she can see and hear its signs, while sunset is slow, quiet and hard to follow. Sunrise is compared to childhood because both are fresh, joyful and full of energy and play, like ribbons, squirrels and bonnets. The indications of experience come in the second stanza: the dominie in gray, the evening bars that end the play, and the speaker's own "I know not." They suggest that adult life brings order, limits and uncertainty.
The poem is lyrical (musical, like a song) and sonorous (rich in sound) because of its short lines, rhyme (begun and sun, stile and while, gray and away), repeated sounds, and bright images. It explores the beauty of nature through playful pictures of light, hills, birds and sky. Its target audience is mostly children, and anyone who can still see the world with a child's wonder, because the images are simple and playful. Adults may read it as a gentle picture of life itself, from the joy of childhood to the quiet end, with sadness and acceptance.
Every Morning I Wake by Dylan Thomas: Exam Summary
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) was born in Swansea, Wales. He is famous for his lyrical (full of feeling and music) and emotional poetry. He is seen as a link to Romanticism (a movement that gave importance to imagination, feeling and spontaneity). He is known as one of the greatest Welsh poets and is praised for his imaginative language and vivid imagery (word pictures). He started working for the BBC in 1945. His radio play Under Milk Wood (1953) was written in the last months of his life. It is set in a small Welsh town called Llareggub and covers one day in the lives of its ordinary characters. "Every Morning I Wake" is an extract from this play. In this short poem, Thomas prays to the magnificent (very great) God to have mercy on the ordinary people living under Milk Wood.
The poem begins with the speaker saying that every morning when he wakes, he makes "a little prayer" to the "Dear Lord." He prays early in the morning because it is the start of a new day, and a person needs God's care and blessing from the very beginning of it. He asks God to keep His "loving eye" on "all poor creatures born to die." The words "Thou" and "Thy" are old words for "you" and "your", and they show respect for God. The speaker's words also show God's greatness. God is loving, caring and all-seeing, and He watches over every living person.
The "poor creatures" are the ordinary people of Milk Wood, and in a wider sense all human beings. They are called "poor" because they are weak and helpless, they are born to die, and they cannot control their own lives. This is also why the speaker prays to God and not to a king, a billionaire or a scientist. These people are also creatures born to die, so they cannot save anyone from death. Only God is great enough to protect and bless everyone. For the same reason, the poet's prayer is for God and not for other creatures.
The speaker says he prays again every evening at sundown. This time he asks for "a blessing on the town." The reason is that nobody knows whether the people will live through the night or not. The speaker says it is always touch-and-go (uncertain and risky). So the speaker prays in the morning and in the evening. Life is uncertain, and people depend completely on God.
In the next four lines, the speaker says, "We are not wholly bad or good / Who live our lives under Milk Wood." This means the people of the town are a mixture. They have faults, but they also have goodness. Then he says, "And Thou, I know, wilt be the first / To see our best side, not our worst." The word "wilt" means "will". Here the speaker shows strong trust that God is kind and fair. God will notice the good side of people first and forgive their faults. This shows God's mercy. These lines also show the speaker's humble and honest attitude. He does not say people are perfect, but he hopes God will be gentle with them. About the name Milk Wood: it sounds like a type of wood, but it is really a place, the town where the people live.
The last four lines are about the night. The speaker prays, "O let us see another day! / Bless us all this night, I pray." He asks that everyone may wake up safely the next morning. Then he says that "to the sun we all will bow / And say, good-bye – but just for now!" The people bow to the setting sun to show respect and thanks for the day. They say goodbye only "for now" because they are full of hope and faith. They believe that, with God's blessing, they will wake up and see the sun again the next morning.
The poem is a simple and humble prayer (a way of talking to God and asking for His help). The speaker speaks directly to God, calls Him "Dear Lord", and asks for care, blessing and mercy. He does not ask for money or power for himself. He asks for the whole town. The poem is written in rhyming pairs of lines (wake/make, eye/die, sun-down/town, no/touch-and-go, good/Wood, first/worst, day/pray, bow/now). This is called the rhyme scheme (the pattern of rhyming sounds at the end of lines). The simple, regular rhyme makes the poem sound like an easy, sincere prayer, and this matches its humble and trusting message. Some rhymes, such as "eye" and "die", also remind the reader that life is short.
The main themes are faith in God, the uncertainty of life, human weakness, God's mercy and hope. The central message is that human life is weak and uncertain, so people should trust in a loving and merciful God, who sees their goodness and forgives their faults. The poet's picture of God as loving, merciful and all-seeing is easy to accept, because people facing an uncertain life need hope and comfort. Belief in God gives many people peace, courage and hope. However, belief in God is a personal matter and cannot be proved, so some people may not agree with it.
I Was My Own Route by Julia de Burgos: Exam Summary
Julia de Burgos (1914-1953) was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico. She moved to New York and worked as a journalist. Then she went to Cuba and studied at the University of Havana. After two years in Cuba, she returned to New York. She was a freedom fighter and worked as the art and culture editor of a progressive (in favour of change and new ideas) newspaper called Pueblos Hispanos. Her poems deal with women's liberation (freedom) and social justice. She is called a precursor (an early writer who came before others) of today's Latina/o writers. In the poem "I Was My Own Route", she shows how women are burdened with patriarchal ideologies (beliefs that men should rule and control women) from the past. She urges women to leave the past behind and find their identity inside themselves.
The poem starts with the speaker (the persona, or the voice in the poem) saying that she wanted to be like men wanted her to be. She tried to live the way men expected. But she calls this "an attempt at life" and not real life. She also calls it "a game of hide and seek with my being." This means she was hiding her true self and then searching for it, so she was never really herself. She tried to please men because women were under pressure from old patriarchal ideas.
Then she says she was "made of nows." This means she belonged to the present and not to the past. Her feet were firm on the "promissory earth," which means earth full of promise and a good future. Her feet "would not accept walking backwards," which means she refused to return to old customs and went forward, forward. She even mocked the "ashes" (the dead, finished past) to reach the "kiss of new paths" (the joy and welcome of new ways of living). The repeated word "forward" shows her strong wish and determination (firm decision not to give up).
The way was not easy. At each step forward, "my back was ripped by the desperate flapping wings of the old guard." The old guard are the people who protect the old ideas and customs of the past, especially the patriarchal ones. They grew desperate because she was leaving their way of life and they were losing control over her. Their "flapping wings" show their helpless anger. The ripped back shows the pain, insults and attacks she faced for choosing freedom. In the same way, the "whiplash" (sharp blows) of their attacks only pushed her further away from the "familiar horizons" (her old, known life). The poem says "the branch was unpinned forever," which means she was cut free from her old ties and could not go back.
Slowly, she found a change inside herself. Her face took "the expansion that came from within," which means a growing confidence that came from her own heart. She had "a feeling of intimate liberation," which means a deep, personal and inner freedom. This feeling came from the balance between her own life and "the truth of the kiss of the new paths." She felt free because she was living according to her own truth and not according to what others wanted. She says her course was now "set in the present." She felt like "a blossom of all the soils of the earth," soils "without history" and "without a future," and "without edges." To be free felt like having no limits of past, future or boundaries, and belonging to "all the men and all the epochs" (periods of time). She was complete: "I was all in me as was life in me." She prefers the present to the past because the past holds her in old rules, while the present gives her freedom, and she can build her own identity in it.
Near the end, the first lines come back again: she wanted to be like men wanted her to be, "a game of hide and seek with my being." But now she repeats that she was "made of nows." The heralds (messengers who announce an important person) announced her at the "regal parade of the old guard" (the royal show of the old powers). But her desire to follow men "warped" (became twisted and gone) in her, because she had found her own self and freedom. The "homage" (respect and honour) was "left waiting for me." She did not go to accept it, because she would not join the old order again.
The title means that the speaker did not follow a path made by others. She herself was her route, and she made her own way and her own identity. The route is a metaphor (a direct comparison without "like" or "as") for her life. Ashes, wings, whiplash and new paths are symbols, and the repetition of "forward" and "more and more and more" adds force. The central message is that women should break free from the past and from the control of men, and find their identity within themselves, even if the journey is painful. The main themes are women's liberation, identity, freedom and courage.
A leader of a local government should help women like Julia de Burgos by making sure that girls and women get education, jobs and equal rights. The leader should also stop discrimination and violence against women, run awareness programs against old, unfair customs and listen to women's problems. Donne says, "No man is an island entire of itself," which means people depend on each other. Burgos would agree only partly. She shows that a person should not live only to please others, but she also feels she belongs to "all the men and all the epochs." A balanced view is better: a person needs both freedom to be himself or herself and a healthy connection with others.
The Awakening Age by Ben Okri: Exam Summary
Ben Okri (born 1949) is a Nigerian poet, fiction writer and essayist. He won the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Famished Road. He spent his early childhood in London. His writing is shaped by folk tales and dream logic, and it also deals with his family's experience of the Nigerian civil war. He once said that Africans have a tradition with more dimensions (sides) of reality, such as legends, myths, ancestors and spirits. He also said that everyone's reality is different, so different ways of seeing reality need a different language. In "The Awakening Age", as in his other works, he shows the hardships of African people. He also calls for unity, peace and solidarity (standing together and supporting each other) among human beings from different parts of the world. The poem is a sonnet (a poem of fourteen lines).
The poem begins by speaking to "ye who travel the meridian line." A meridian line is an imaginary circle around the earth that passes through the North and South Poles. The people who travel the meridian line are the people who move across the world from one place to another, such as travellers and migrants. The poet wishes that "the vision of a new world within you" may shine. The "new world" is a better world that people carry inside their minds and hearts. It is a world of hope, truth, unity and peace, where people are not judged by their poverty. He also wishes that eyes that "have lived with poverty's rage" may "see through to the glory of the awakening age." "Rage" means violent anger. People have lived with poverty's rage because poverty brings hunger, suffering and hardship, and it is a harsh and painful life. The "awakening age" is a time when people wake up to a new understanding and see the truth, hope and unity beyond their pain.
In the next lines, the poet says, "we are all richly linked in hope, / Woven in history, like a mountain rope." This is a simile (a comparison using "like" or "as"). A rope is made of many threads twisted together, and so it is strong. In the same way, people are connected to each other through shared hope and shared history, and together they are strong. He adds that "together we can ascend to a new height, / Guided by our heart's clearest light." This means that when people unite and follow their kind hearts, they can rise to a better stage in life. This is why the poet appeals for solidarity. Unity gives people the strength to move upward together.
The poem then talks about changing perceptions (the way people see and understand things). The poet says, "When perceptions are changed there's much to gain, / A flowering of truth instead of pain." When people change the way they see others and themselves, there is a lot to gain. Truth blossoms like a flower, and it takes the place of pain. He then says, "There's more to a people than their poverty; / There's their work, wisdom, and creativity." This means a people should not be judged only by their poverty, because they also have skills, knowledge and creative power. We benefit from new people for this reason. New people bring their work, wisdom and creativity, and when we accept them, we all grow together. This idea is also useful in the case of migrants. When migrants return home, they often show changes in their views and behaviour. They may be more open-minded and respectful of other cultures, and they may bring new skills and ideas.
The last two lines are a wish: "Along the line may our lives rhyme, / To make a loving harvest of space and time." Here, the poet compares human lives to rhyming lines. He hopes that people's lives will fit together in harmony, as rhyming words do. A "harvest" is the act of cutting and gathering crops. A "loving harvest" means a good and caring result for all people, in every place and every age.
The poem is a sonnet of fourteen lines. It is made of seven couplets (pairs of rhyming lines), and its rhyme scheme (the pattern of rhyming sounds at the end of lines) is aabbccddeeffgg. The pairs are line/shine, rage/age, hope/rope, height/light, gain/pain, poverty/creativity and rhyme/time. The rhyming pairs show the kind of life the poet wants, one in which people come together and live in harmony, just as the lines join in matching sounds. The word "rhyme" is also used in the last lines for this reason.
The poet presents migration in a positive light. He sees the movement of people across the world as a chance for people to meet, share ideas and build unity. At the same time, he knows that poverty and pain are part of the story. The central message is that people from every part of the world are linked together, and if they change their way of seeing each other and unite, truth and hope will replace pain and poverty. The main themes are unity, hope, poverty, changing perceptions and the value of every human being.
Soft Storm by Abhi Subedi: Exam Summary
Abhi Subedi (born 1945) is a poet, playwright and critic, and one of the well-known writers of Nepal. He was born in Sabla village of Terhathum district. His plays include Dreams of Peach Blossoms (2001) and Fire in the Monastery (2003). His poetry collections include Manas (1974), Chasing Dreams: Kathmandu Odyssey (1996) and Shabdara Chot (1997). He taught at the Central Department of English, Tribhuvan University, for about 40 years. In "Soft Storm", he looks at the senseless things that happen in noisy and violent times, and he writes about them with kindness and pity.
The poem begins with the line "I became soft." The speaker repeats this line again and again. Each time, he tells us what made him soft. First, he became soft after he heard the tumult (loud noise and confusion) and then fell into a strange, scary silence. On the same night, the sky grew like flowers over stones, and the moon slid down the walls and spoke the language of posters, politics, rituals and reasons. This means that people around him were busy with slogans, show and empty talk.
Next, the softness grew strong, like a strong wind, and tore off his roofs. The moon sang about lampposts and gutters "in this seamless city." A seamless city is a city with no gaps or breaks. Good and bad things lie side by side, so its problems are found everywhere.
After that, he became soft when he saw "homeless children in Thamel" crying with hunger under the trees of Kesharmahal. These children have no home, no food and nobody to care for them. The poet shows them to point out poverty and the way society ignores its weakest people. Then he returned from a wild, confused crowd where "ceremony dances with mad steps / on the unwedded gardens of history." The unwedded gardens of history means a history that is not joined with sense, peace or good values. Empty ceremonies walk over it madly and spoil it.
Then he turned alone to "you" and left "deep dents of words on these white sheets." This means he wrote down his feelings. He shows his anger at injustice and wrong practices through words and not through violence.
From here, his softness becomes a soft storm. First, he sees a very sad and lonely child with a transistor radio (a small radio) around his neck. The child runs around crying to find his mother "in the corridors of violent history." The child is wailing because he has lost his mother in a time of violence. Then he sees a man beaten cruelly in front of his family "for no reason," by "nobody," "in no sensible times." The repeated word "no" shows how senseless the cruelty is. Next, he sees a blood-stained shirt "speaking in the earth's ears with bruised human lips," in a far corner under the moon, while history and dreams play hide and seek "in open museums of human times." The shirt stands for a victim of violence. It cries out silently to the earth, but nobody listens. The museums show that the violence is open for everyone to see, like things in a museum, and yet nobody does anything about it. He also became soft because "you gave words / but did not listen," and gave storms but did not wait to see their "Leela" (playful dance).
Then the poem becomes calmer. He says that crocuses (small flowers) have grown over the stone. The storms have wandered in the narrow lanes where he too walked alone, thinking deeply, in "rain tears and little chuckles of sun laughter" that rose and then melted like a rainbow. Next, he says his soft storm rages over silent pages, silent stones, silent sad shirts that carry memories of war, and the broken houses of the gods, where dances and songs lie buried under helpless broken pieces. This shows that even holy places and old traditions are damaged.
After that, he says to the listener that "soft is what you saw." He calls the present a "mad time." It is mad because of violence, senseless beatings and poverty, and also because of strange changes in nature. Stone grows in a flower, history rushes over land where trees have been cut down, birds sing over the warming earth and rhododendrons bloom in winter. Mother earth tells of these troubles through the songs of sad birds. All these things together have created this soft gale.
At the end, he says that in these hard times he wants to melt his soft storm like a rainbow in the listener's tiny sky. His soft storm dances in the ripples of the listener's "uneasy lake." This means he wants to share his feelings gently and bring peace to troubled minds.
The title "Soft Storm" is an oxymoron (two opposite words used together). A storm is harsh and violent, but "soft" means gentle. The soft storm is the speaker's strong pain and protest, shown in a gentle way, through kindness and words. The poet also uses an ironic tone (saying things in a way that shows the opposite of what is normal), as in "soft gale" and "ceremony dances with mad steps". This makes the madness and cruelty of the time stand out more, and it shows that gentleness can also be a strong protest. The speaker's attitude to his time is sad and critical, but also full of pity. He is not a violent rebel. He is a caring person who protests against injustice with his words, so he can be called a gentle rebel. The main message is that violence, poverty and cruelty hurt innocent people, and a kind person should answer them with pity and honest words and should not stay silent. The main themes are kindness, the suffering of innocent people, violence and the madness of the times.
On Libraries by Oliver Sacks: Exam Summary
Oliver Sacks was born in London in 1933 and studied at the Queen's College, Oxford. He did his medical training in San Francisco and at UCLA, and then moved to New York, where he met the patients he later wrote about in Awakenings. He was a neurologist (a doctor who treats problems of the brain and nerves) for almost fifty years. His case studies of patients with rare disorders became best-sellers. His other books include The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, Hallucinations and his memoir On the Move. The New York Times called him "the poet laureate of medicine." He died on 30 August 2015. "On Libraries" is a personal essay about his life with libraries. It praises intellectual freedom (freedom to choose and follow your own ideas), community feeling and the joy of serendipitous (lucky and unplanned) discoveries.
Sacks begins with his childhood home. His favourite room was the library, a large oak-paneled room (with wooden walls) with bookcases on all four walls and a solid table in the middle for writing and studying. His father, a Hebrew scholar, kept his special library there, along with Ibsen's plays, because his parents had met in a medical students' Ibsen society. There were also poems by young poets of his father's time, many killed in the Great War, and adventure and history books of his three older brothers on the lower shelves. There he found The Jungle Book, felt close to Mowgli and used his adventures for his own fantasies. His mother kept her books in the lounge: Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray, Shaw, Kipling, Shakespeare and Milton. His parents loved books, and the house was full of them, so he grew up surrounded by reading and learning. The library was the quietest and most beautiful room, and he would curl up in a chair and lose all sense of time. When he was late for lunch or dinner, he could be found in the library, deeply absorbed in a book. He learned to read at three or four, and books and the library are among his first memories.
For him, the Ur-library (the first, original library that all later ones copy) was the Willesden Public Library, a five-minute walk from his house. He spent many of his happiest hours there and received his "real education." He disliked school. Sitting in class and being taught made information go in one ear and out of the other. He could not be passive. He had to be active, and learn what he wanted in his own way. So he says he was not a good pupil, but he was a good learner. In the library, he roamed the shelves, chose any book, followed what interested him and "became himself." He felt free to look at thousands of books, to walk around and to enjoy the quiet company of other readers, who were all on their own quests (searches).
As he grew older, he became more interested in science, especially astronomy and chemistry. At St. Paul's School, at twelve, the Walker Library was good but mostly had history and politics books, so it could not give him the science and chemistry books he was hungry for. With a letter from a teacher, he got a ticket to the Science Museum library, where he read huge chemistry books such as Mellor's and Gmelin's.
At Oxford, he used the Radcliffe Science Library and the Bodleian, a great general library going back to 1602. In the Bodleian, he found the forgotten works of Theodore Hook, a man admired in the early nineteenth century for his wit and his ability to make music and plays on the spot. Sacks became so fascinated that he decided to write a biography, or "case-history," of him. Only the Bodleian or the British Museum Library had the materials, and the quiet place was perfect for writing. But he loved his own Queen's College library most. The building was designed by Christopher Wren, and below it was an underground maze of heating pipes and shelves full of books. He appreciated it because he could hold very old books in his hands for the first time, such as Gesner's book with Dürer's rhinoceros drawing, and see Darwin's works in their original editions. He also fell in love with Sir Thomas Browne's magnificent language, and found Swift, Johnson, Hume, Pope and Dryden. These books were freely on the shelves and not locked away. There he gained a sense of history and of his own language.
In 1965, Sacks came to New York and lived in a horrid, tiny apartment with almost no place to read or write. He even wrote part of Migraine on top of the refrigerator. He longed for space, and the library at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he worked, gave it. It had large tables and plenty of shelves. His impression was that it was spacious and full of unexpected treasures and lucky finds. Though quiet, people whispered in the stacks (rows of shelves) and made friends. Everyone read their own books, yet there was a sense of community. Handling, sharing and passing books, and seeing the names of earlier readers and the dates they borrowed them, added to this friendship.
By the 1990s, things began to change. Students stopped using the shelves, because they could get what they needed on their computers, and the books seemed unnecessary. So the college decided to throw the books away. This was happening in college and public libraries all over the country. A couple of months before writing, Sacks visited and was horrified to find the once overflowing shelves nearly empty. Most books had been thrown out with little objection. He felt that a murder or crime had been committed, the destruction of centuries of knowledge. A librarian assured him that everything "of worth" had been digitized (changed into computer form). But Sacks does not use a computer, and he feels a physical book is irreplaceable, because of its look, smell and heft (weight). He remembered that libraries once valued old books and kept a special room for them. In 1967, in the stacks, he found an 1873 book, Edward Liveing's Megrim, which inspired his own first book.
The essay compares two kinds of libraries: the physical library and the digital library. The physical library is more impressive. It gives freedom to roam and choose, a quiet place, a feeling of community, lucky discoveries and the touch of real books. The digital library lacks all these. The proverb "Nothing is pleasanter than exploring a library" applies fully, because Sacks enjoys exploring shelves in every library of his life. The main message is that physical libraries are places of freedom, discovery and friendship, and losing their books means losing knowledge and a way of learning that cannot be replaced. Libraries could also add e-books and quiet study rooms beside the physical books.
Marriage as a Social Institution by Stephen L. Nock: Exam Summary
Stephen L. Nock (1950-2008) was a researcher, author and Commonwealth Professor of Sociology (the study of society) at the University of Virginia. He wrote a great deal about the role of marriage in society and worked as a consultant on American family policy at the Federal Department of Health and Human Services. He studied privacy, unmarried fatherhood, cohabitation (living together without marriage), commitment, divorce and marriage. His book Marriage in Men's Lives won the William J. Good Book Award in 1999. This essay is an extract from his study of marriage. It looks at the national marriage debate and at the social changes that have changed the role of marriage and the family. The main idea is that marriage is a social institution (an established system with rules that society accepts), and not only a private relationship between two people.
Nock begins by saying that marriage is much more than the sum of two spouses. It is a relationship defined by legal, moral and conventional (based on common custom) assumptions. Many kinds of close relationships can join two adults, but the kinds of marriage are much fewer, because marriage is an institution. It is an institution because it is culturally patterned and joined with other basic institutions such as education, the economy and politics. Marriage has rules that come from outside any one couple. These rules make "soft boundaries" around the relationship, which are the common limits of behaviour that separate marriage from all other relationships. Because of these rules, marriage is different from other networks of relations. Married couples are heirs to a huge system of understood principles that help them organize and support their lives.
Next, Nock explains why marriage matters to men. This is an old idea, first suggested about a century ago by Emile Durkheim, who showed that marriage protects against suicide. Durkheim said that in modern societies, food, housing and clothing are mostly available, so people's desires turn to comfort, luxury and prestige (high social position). But sooner or later, the appetite for such rewards is satisfied. So one of the central problems of modern society is setting proper limits on such desires, and Durkheim believed only social institutions like marriage can do this. Marriage is better for men because it controls their uncontrollable impulses (sudden urges) and gives their lives structure and direction. Durkheim said that marriage ties a man to one woman, gives his need for love a fixed object, and creates a state of "moral equilibrium" (a balance in life). It also teaches him to find happiness in his own lot (the life he has).
Nock then compares marriage with cohabitation. Two people can live a happy life without marriage. Growing numbers of Americans believe cohabitation gives freedom from the rules of marriage, because there are no widely accepted boundaries around it. Cohabiting partners must decide everything for themselves, such as how to deal with each other's parents, whether to take vacations together, and whether to pool money or keep separate accounts. Their parents also have little guidance on how to treat them. Married couples have a pattern, or "template", to follow for most things in domestic life, and cohabiting couples lack it. They are also free from the many norms (accepted rules of behaviour) and laws of marriage.
A husband can say to his wife, "I am your husband. You are my wife," and promise faithfulness, commitment to children and duty to relatives. These are not only personal promises. They are enforceable, because laws, religion and customs support them. The simple sentence "I would like you to meet my wife" says a great deal. For a cohabiting partner, there is no word to complete "I would like you to meet my ...". This lack of a word shows that cohabitation is not governed by convention, so it is not an institution.
Nock then says marriage is a form of capital (a valuable resource), like any other resource. Quoting Coleman, he says that physical capital is tangible (can be touched), human capital is skill and knowledge, and social capital exists in relations among persons. Social capital consists of large networks of people linked by trust. Through marriage, husbands and wives become connected to new kin (relatives). These ties are full of obligations, so in times of need, one can call on relatives for help. Such networks also pass on valuable knowledge and information, and they are kept going by social norms and sanctions (such as honor and status). Social capital cannot be separated from the institutions and communities that give it meaning. So marriage is an individual asset. It is intangible (cannot be touched), but it is just as important as other assets and harder to build and keep, because it exists only in relationships with others.
Finally, Nock says that the soft boundaries make marriage different in quality from all other relationships. So the rules that define it must be understood. He repeats the six dimensions of normative marriage (the standard or ideal kind of marriage) in America. Marriages are entered into voluntarily, by mature adults, who are heterosexual (a man and a woman). Husbands are expected to be the main earners, both partners are expected to be sexually faithful, and married partners are expected to become parents. Many marriages do not follow these ideals, but they remain the core of normative marriage in law, religion and custom. Normative marriage is a form of social control. It guides behaviour and hopes in the right direction, and it is stronger than the individuals because it represents the collective feelings (shared feelings) of others. Much of the meaning of marriage in men's lives is found in these rules.
Marriage is a social institution because it has rules, laws, customs and expectations that come from society and not from the couple alone. The main message is that marriage is different from every other relationship, because it gives structure, social support and shared rules to a couple's life. This view is easy to agree with, since marriage brings relatives, duties and social support that other relationships lack. At the same time, some people may disagree, because they think a relationship should be a private matter and not controlled by social rules. Marriage also differs from culture to culture. In many cultures, such as Nepal's, families and the community play a bigger part in marriage, while the essay stresses that the couple enters marriage voluntarily.
Knowledge and Wisdom by Bertrand Russell: Exam Summary
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) was a British thinker, writer and social critic. He is best known for his work in mathematics and logic (the rules of correct thinking). In his essay "Knowledge and Wisdom", he explains that these two things are different. According to Russell, knowledge is collecting facts and information, while wisdom is using that knowledge in a practical way to create value. This means wisdom comes from learning and real experience, not from memorizing alone. The main message of the essay is that knowledge can become harmful if it is not joined with wisdom.
Russell starts by saying that our age has far more knowledge than any earlier age, but wisdom has not grown with it. Most people agree on this. However, they do not agree on what wisdom is or how to promote it. For this reason, he first asks what wisdom is, and then asks how it can be taught.
The first factor of wisdom, according to Russell, is a sense of proportion (the ability to see all the important parts of a problem and give each its right importance). A sense of proportion helps a wise person see the whole problem and not only one part of it. Today this is harder than before because technicians (experts in one technical field) must learn a huge amount about their own small area. To explain this, Russell gives two examples. First, a medical researcher is so busy with his work that he has no time to think about its wider effects. As a result, modern medicine lowered the number of babies dying in Asia and Africa, but it also made food short and lowered the standard of living in crowded parts of the world, without anyone meaning it to. Second, a scientist studied what the atom is made of, only out of curiosity, and in doing so gave mad but powerful people the means to destroy the human race. These examples show that the search for knowledge becomes harmful when it is not joined with wisdom, because experts do not always have a wide view. This is also why comprehensiveness (looking at the whole picture) is important for a wise man.
However, looking at the whole picture is not enough by itself. For this reason, the second factor is an awareness of the real aims of human life. Russell shows this through history. Many famous historians did more harm than good because they saw facts through their own strong feelings. For example, Hegel's view of history covered a very long time, so it was wide enough. Even so, he mainly taught that Germany had been the most important nation and the leader of progress since 400 AD. From this, Russell adds that wisdom must include feeling and not only thinking. Some men have wide knowledge but narrow feelings, and such men lack wisdom.
Next, Russell says that wisdom is needed in private life just as much as in public life. It helps a person choose the right goals and become free from unfair personal opinions. A goal that cannot be reached is a foolish one, even if it is good. For instance, many men in the past wasted their lives searching for a magic stone that turns metal into gold and a magic drink that gives life without end. He then gives a simple example of Mr A and Mr B, who hate each other and end up destroying each other. Each gives a list of the other's faults, partly true and partly false. If someone patiently shows each that the other says the same things, and that the other has only the normal share of human badness, that person has given them a little wisdom.
After describing these factors, Russell tells what wisdom really is. He says the essence (the most important part) of wisdom is freedom, as far as possible, from the control of the here and now. This is because our senses and feelings start from ourselves. For example, a baby feels only its own hunger or discomfort. As a person grows, his thoughts and feelings become wider and less selfish, and so he gains wisdom. No one can be completely impartial (fair and not taking sides), but one can move closer to it. One can gain wisdom by knowing things that are far away in time or place, and by giving them their right importance in our feelings.
Then Russell asks whether wisdom can be taught, and he answers yes. He also says that teaching it should be one of the aims of education. To explain why, he refers to the story of the Samaritan (a group people once hated), which says we should love our neighbour. Since we no longer hate Samaritans, we miss the point of the story. Today we should put the word Communist or anti-Communist in its place. Some people say it is right to hate those who do harm. Russell disagrees. Hatred makes us equally harmful, and it rarely makes the evil person change. In fact, hating evil keeps a person tied to evil, so the way out is understanding. He does not say we should never resist evil. Instead, resistance should use the most understanding and the least force. Some think this view makes people weak in action, but history shows otherwise. Queen Elizabeth I of England and Henry IV of France lived among people with extreme, blind beliefs on both the Protestant and Catholic sides. Both stayed free from these mistakes, and yet they did good and effective work. In the same way, Abraham Lincoln fought a great war without losing wisdom. These three leaders mixed knowledge and wisdom soundly.
Finally, Russell explains how wisdom should be taught. He wants more thinking and reasoning than the usual lessons on good behaviour. While giving knowledge, teachers can point out the bad results of hatred and closed minds. So knowledge and good values should not be kept too far apart. Expert knowledge should also be supported by wider studies that show where it fits in human life. The aim is that even the best technicians should also be good citizens of the world, not of one group or nation. This is needed because as knowledge and skill increase, they give us more power to achieve our purposes, and also more power to do evil if those purposes are unwise. Therefore, the world needs wisdom more than ever before, and even more in the future if knowledge keeps growing. A reader can fairly agree that wisdom is more important than knowledge, because knowledge without wisdom can destroy people, while wisdom guides knowledge towards good use.
Humility by Yuval Noah Harari: Exam Summary
Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, philosopher and bestselling author of Sapiens, Homo Deus and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. He co-founded Sapienship, an organization that works for global responsibility, and he teaches history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In this essay, humility (not thinking of oneself as better than others) means giving up false ideas of being superior. The main message is that no nation or religion is the centre of the world, and that morality, art, spirituality and creativity belong to all humans equally.
Harari begins by saying that most people believe they are the centre of the world and that their culture is the most important one in history. For example, many Greeks believe that history began with Homer, Sophocles and Plato, and that all important ideas were born in Athens, Sparta, Alexandria or Constantinople. In reply, Chinese nationalists (people who are very proud of their own nation) say that history really began with the Yellow Emperor and the Xia and Shang dynasties, and that whatever Westerners, Muslims or Indians achieved is only a weak copy of original Chinese discoveries.
Next, Hindu nativists (people who believe their own native culture is the best) reject these Chinese claims. They argue that even airplanes and nuclear bombs were invented by ancient wise men of the Indian subcontinent, long before Confucius, Plato, Einstein and the Wright brothers. As proof, they say that Maharishi Bhardwaj invented rockets and aeroplanes, that Vishwamitra invented and used missiles, that Acharya Kanad was the father of atomic theory, and that the Mahabharata describes nuclear weapons accurately. Harari presents these claims with a mocking tone, asking "Did you know...?", to show how silly they are.
Then he moves to religion. Pious (very religious) Muslims think all history before the Prophet Muhammad is mostly unimportant, and that all history after the Quran was revealed revolves around the Muslim community. The exceptions are Turkish, Iranian and Egyptian nationalists, who say their own nation was the source of everything good even before Muhammad, and that their people kept Islam pure and spread its glory afterwards. In the same way, British, French, German, American, Russian, Japanese and many other groups believe that humankind would have stayed cruel and ignorant without their nation. Some groups even tied their own customs to the laws of nature. For instance, the Aztecs firmly believed that without their yearly sacrifices, the sun would not rise and the whole universe would fall apart.
After listing these claims, Harari says clearly that they are all false, because they mix deliberate ignorance of history with a hint of racism. None of today's religions or nations existed when humans spread across the world, tamed plants and animals, built the first cities, or invented writing and money. Therefore, morality, art, spirituality and creativity are universal human abilities, embedded (fixed deeply) in our DNA, and they began in Stone Age Africa. This is why one is not the centre of the world: these abilities are older than any nation, so no single people can own them. It is crass egotism (very selfish pride) to place them in a recent time and place, such as China under the Yellow Emperor, Greece under Plato, or Arabia under Muhammad.
Harari then turns to his own people, the Jews, to show that he is not blaming only others. He says they also think they are the most important people in the world, and they quickly claim credit for any invention. Because he knows them closely, he is sure they sincerely believe this. To prove it, he tells of a yoga teacher in Israel who said that yoga was invented by Abraham, and that the basic yoga postures come from the shapes of Hebrew letters. For example, the posture trikonasana copies the letter aleph, and tuladandasana copies the letter daled. The teacher said Abraham taught these postures to the son of one of his concubines (secondary wives), who went to India and taught the Indians. When Harari asked for proof, the teacher quoted Genesis 25:6, where Abraham gave gifts to these sons and sent them east. By asking "What do you think these gifts were?", Harari uses irony (saying one thing to show the opposite) to make the claim look ridiculous.
Although this idea about yoga is unusual, Harari adds that mainstream Judaism makes an even bigger claim. It says the whole universe exists only so that Jewish rabbis can study their holy books, and if they stop, China, India, Australia and even distant galaxies will be destroyed. Orthodox Jews hold this as a central belief and call anyone who doubts it an ignorant fool. Secular Jews are more doubtful, but they still see Jews as the main heroes of history and the main source of human morality, spirituality and learning. Harari says Jews make up for their small numbers and little real power with chutzpah (boldness and cheek).
Finally, Harari explains why he chose his own people as the example. He prefers to criticise his own people because it is more polite than criticising foreigners. By showing how ridiculous the Jewish claims are, he shows how ridiculous all such self-important stories are. He then asks readers around the world to puncture the hot-air balloons inflated by their own tribes. This is a metaphor: false pride is like a balloon that looks big but is full of air, and it must be burst. The reason is that every group has such false pride, and people can only become humble when they honestly question their own group first.
In the end, all these examples lead to one clear conclusion. The Chinese and Hindu claims cancel each other out, because both are proud boasts with no real evidence, so neither can be accepted. In fact, every group makes such claims, and this is why history is so much disputed today. History shapes a group's pride, identity and power, so every nation wants to show itself as the most important. Harari's answer to this problem is humility. Since morality, art, spirituality and creativity began in Stone Age Africa and belong to all humans, no group can claim them as its own. The lesson of the essay is that all human beings share the same origin and the same abilities, so no group has the right to call itself superior.
Human Rights and the Age of Inequality by Samuel Moyn: Exam Summary
Samuel Moyn is a professor of law and history at Harvard University. He has written books such as The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, Christian Human Rights and Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World. In this essay, he shows that the human rights movement does not fit the problem of inequality. Human rights are needed, but they can only add to the fight against inequality; they cannot replace it. The main message is that the human rights movement is not equipped to challenge global inequality, because it protects a minimum level of life but does not limit the gap between rich and poor.
Moyn begins with a parable (a short story with a lesson). He asks us to imagine that one man owns everything. He calls him Croesus, after an ancient king who, according to Herodotus, was wonderfully rich. This modern Croesus is far richer, but he is also very generous. He wants everyone to be free from terrible poverty, so he sets up a floor of protection (a minimum level of life for everyone), and he pays for health, food, water and even paid holidays. He also hates cruelty, torture, police states and the horrors of war, so he respects civil liberties (basic freedoms). Compared with today's world, where few people enjoy these benefits, this is a utopia (a perfect imagined world). It is the utopia of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), whose goal is to list the most basic things that humans deserve simply because they are human. This declaration was the first human rights declaration adopted by the United Nations. Its importance to an individual is that it protects basic dignity, such as food, health and freedom from cruelty.
However, Moyn then says that Croesus's world has a serious fault. The Declaration does not include distributive equality (a limit on the wealth gap between rich and poor). Its first article says all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights. This status equality (equal standing as human beings) was revolutionary after racism and genocide, but it means nothing more. Therefore, nothing in human rights rules out Croesus's world, where one man holds absolute power as long as the floor of protection exists. This thought experiment (an imagined situation used to test an idea) shows that even perfectly respected human rights can exist with extreme inequality. Moyn asks whether we should keep admiring such a world while we make our own world more like it every day.
Next, Moyn explains the history through two big stages. The first was the age of national welfare states (states that look after their people's basic needs) after World War II. At that time, human rights were only a small part of a wider agreement on welfare that united even the Cold War enemies. The capitalist West also supported social and economic rights, partly because of its own experience of misery. These countries even aimed at a ceiling on inequality (a limit on how unequal society can become), not only a floor. Human rights were a modest first step, which is why people mostly ignored them as the final goal. The second stage is the later rise of the international human rights movement, which spread basic protection across the world.
Moyn then discusses Franklin Roosevelt's call for a "second Bill of Rights". He says three facts about it have been missed. First, it showed America's late and cautious entry into a North Atlantic agreement that already existed. Second, the promise of freedom from want actually understated the real aim of welfare, which was a more equal society, and Roosevelt's highest promise was the end of special privileges for the few, which is a ceiling. Third, the plan was to be organized nationally, not internationally. In the same way, the Declaration was international in form but worked as a template (a model) for nations. An economist, Gunnar Myrdal, said the welfare state is nationalistic. As a result, equality succeeded only inside nations, mostly in North Atlantic countries, and only partly. Later, global basic protection came almost as a reward for giving up local equality. Decolonization did not change this, because the new states copied national welfare but the Global South could not succeed at it, so the gap between rich and poor countries remained.
Moyn then asks whether another kind of human rights movement could fix this, and he doubts it. Human rights are valuable against political cruelty and war violence. However, their main tool, naming and shaming (publicly exposing wrongdoers), does not work for economic justice. Human rights also share an individual-focused, anti-state view with market fundamentalism (the belief that free markets alone should decide everything), so they offer no real alternative to it. He compares this to a man with only a hammer who treats everything as a nail. This is why Croesus's world is safe. In Herodotus's Histories, Solon's shaming only humbled Croesus a little, and only Persian armies actually brought him down. The truth is that justice needs pressure from the rich to the poor, which shaming alone will never achieve.
History supports this. Inequality fell in the mid-twentieth century only because of fear: a strong workers' movement and the communist threat. This was a reformism of fear (change that comes because rulers are afraid), and it also came with great violence. The human rights movement rightly opposed that violence, but it has never created a replacement for that fear. So a global welfare system will need a movement, but not one like today's. Human rights work, such as that of Amnesty International, is still valuable if it is not selective. However, the essay does not give a way to stigmatize (publicly mark as shameful) inequality. It says advocates do not know how to do it, and a new political economy would be needed. A new movement might be possible, but it would be so different that it would be unrecognizable, so activists must choose between reinventing themselves and waiting until a real opponent of inequality rises. Until then, Croesus's world is our common fate.
In the end, Moyn's ideas lead to a few clear conclusions. Another kind of human rights movement is necessary, because the present one cannot create the pressure needed to reduce inequality. Civil liberties must be protected in every country, because any fair government must keep people free from torture, cruelty and police abuse, as Croesus himself agrees. In the same way, child rights need a floor of protection such as food, health and water, because children are the most helpless in unequal societies.
A Matter of Husbands by Ferenc Molnár: Exam Summary
A Matter of Husbands is a one-act play (a short play with only one part) by Ferenc Molnár, translated by Benjamin Glazer. Molnár (1878–1952) was a famous and often controversial writer from Hungary. He wrote mainly to entertain people, so he turned his own life experiences into plays. Among his many works, The Devil, Lilion, The Guardsman, The Swan and The Play's the Thing are still seen as classics. During World War II, he left Hungary for the United States to escape the cruel treatment of Hungarian Jews, and later he became an American citizen. His plays are still performed all over the world, and A Matter of Husbands, published in 1923, is one of them. The play is about the basic work of an actor, which is to make the audience believe in an illusion (something that looks real but is not). It shows this through only two characters, the Famous Actress and the Earnest Young Woman.
The play begins when the Earnest Young Woman goes to the apartment of the Famous Actress to ask for her husband back. She has to wait a long time for the actress, so she is very nervous. When the actress finally comes, the young woman begs her, "Give me back my husband!" This is the favour she asks from the actress. The actress is surprised, so the young woman explains who her husband is. He is Alfred, a short, fair man with spectacles, and he is the lawyer of the actress's manager. The actress says she knows him only because he wrote her last contract, and she has seen him backstage once or twice. She also says she does not remember him wearing spectacles. The young woman replies that he takes them off to look his best for the actress, but he never does that for his wife.
Next, the young woman gives her proofs, because she wants the actress to admit the truth. First, flowers are sent to the actress's dressing room twice a week and charged to her husband, and she learned this at the florist's. Second, she found a letter on his desk, which says he cannot meet the actress at the theatre because of urgent business and sends "ten thousand kisses". The actress calls the story about the flowers a lie and says that someone is lying to the wife. At this, the young woman starts to cry and blames the actress for taking her husband. She adds that an actress has fine dresses, make-up, bright lights and an author's clever words to look beautiful and wise, while she herself has only a cheap frock and her own simple face. So the difference between an ordinary woman and an actress is that the actress creates a false beauty on the stage, while the ordinary woman stays natural.
After this, the actress becomes calm and calls it "a very interesting case". She asks whether the couple were once loving and have become cold lately. When the young woman says yes, the actress calls it a typical case, and this is the turning point of the play. She says the husband is playing a little comedy to make his wife jealous and win back her love. She explains that authors, composers, lawyers and even managers use actresses this way, because wives easily believe such stories and the actresses usually do not even know. According to her, the letter was left on the desk on purpose, since a clever lawyer never leaves things by chance. In the same way, the flowers were probably ordered by phone and cancelled later, and the lock of hair was taken by bribing her hair-dresser. This explanation about the letter and the other signs is what convinces the young woman. The actress adds that she never wrote him a love letter, although she would have done so gladly if he had asked her openly. Once she wrote ten such letters for a famous playwright, but his wife returned them all unread.
Now the young woman is fully convinced, so she feels foolish, calls the actress kind and clever, and kisses her happily. The actress then advises her not to be fooled a second time, whatever she finds in his pockets. She also promises not to tell the husband about the visit, and she says she is angry with him for not asking her permission openly. Just after the young woman leaves, the actress calls to the room behind the curtain: "All right, Alfred. You can come in now. She has gone." This ending shows that Alfred was hiding in her private room all along, and that the actress and Alfred really are in love. The flowers, the letter and the lock of hair were therefore true signs of their love, but the actress made the wife believe the opposite. This is where she is really good at acting, because she stays calm and kind, pretends to be surprised, asks about the spectacles, and even acts angry with Alfred while he waits nearby.
Because of this double behaviour, the play is called a play of split personality (a person showing two different sides). In front of the wife, the actress is a kind and wise helper, but in truth she is the secret lover who is cheating her. The ending is also full of irony (the real meaning is the opposite of what it seems), since the wife thanks the very woman who has fooled her. The theatre setting adds to this idea, because the whole meeting is itself a performance. The actress uses her stage skills in real life, which shows that an actor's skill can be used outside the theatre.
From her words and actions, the actress seems clever, calm and quick-thinking, but she is also dishonest. A person would admire her skill, but would not respect her honesty. The young woman, on the other hand, is simple, loving and jealous, and she believes too quickly. Her case shows that jealousy and fear can make people believe false things, and appearances can be false. In the same way, the actress's argument that men use actresses to make their wives jealous is partly true, because such tricks can work. However, it is also weak, because here it was only a cover for a real affair, and it is unfair to the wife. An ordinary man or woman is the same inside as an actor, but an actor is trained to show feelings that are not real. The surprising ending teaches that a person should not judge by what is seen or heard without proof. Finally, the title shows that the problem of husbands is solved through acting and deception, and not through the truth.
Facing Death by August Strindberg: Exam Summary
Facing Death (1892) is a one-act play by August Strindberg (1849–1912), a Swedish writer, playwright and painter. He is ranked among the most important authors of Sweden. His works belong to two big movements, Naturalism (showing life as it really is) and Expressionism (showing the inner feelings of people). In his plays, he tries to create a perfect illusion (a false but real-looking picture) of reality, so he uses detailed sets, plain language like real people speak, and natural acting. His other notable plays are Miss Julie, A Dream Play and The Ghost Sonata. In this play, he shows the heroic sacrifice of a bankrupt father (a man with no money to pay his debts) for the sake of his daughters.
The play begins in the dining-room of a small hotel (pension) in French Switzerland, run by Monsieur Durand, who once worked for the state railroad. From the open door, one can see Lake Leman, the Savoy Alps, the French bathing-resort Evian and the churchyard cypress trees. Durand lives here with his three daughters, Adèle, Annette and Thérèse. He is unwell, so he sends the errand boy Pierre for bread. This annoys Adèle, who works hard in the kitchen, because the hotel has had only one guest, Lieutenant Antonio, for two months. The family is in deep trouble because the house is under mortgage (a loan taken against the house) and has lost its value since the railroad went east. Durand says he paid the fire insurance (money paid if the house burns), otherwise he could not have got the last mortgage. Soon Pierre returns without bread, because the baker will not send any until he is paid, and the baker, the butcher and the grocer send their bills to the house because Durand cannot pay. At the same time, Durand has bought candles for a mass (a church prayer) for his dead son René, whose death anniversary it is. He paid for them with his tips, because this memory is his only comfort. Adèle, however, blames him for wasting money and the daughters' dowry (money kept for their marriage).
Next, Durand tells Antonio that the house is bankrupt and must close. Antonio offers to help, but Durand refuses, because he believes hardship will teach his idle daughters to lead a useful life. He also recalls that an American guest once tried to kiss Thérèse and he did nothing, though he knows what to do next time. Antonio then asks if Durand was born in Switzerland. Durand answers "Yes" unsurely, which is a lie, because he does not want to admit he was born in France. After Antonio pays his ten-franc bill, Durand goes out to get bread.
While he is away, Thérèse comes in, and Antonio kisses her. Durand returns and sees it. Thérèse first denies it, and then attacks him by saying that he lies about being Swiss and that he was a deserter (a soldier who runs away from war), as her mother said. Angry, Durand challenges Antonio and breaks his stick, so Antonio leaves. Then the daughters blame their father for ruining the house.
After that, the daughters keep treating him cruelly. Thérèse takes his milk and matches, and they mock him for the cat's milk and the rats' bait. When they say he has often talked about shooting himself but never did, Durand replies that he stayed alive only to keep them from going into the lake. At last, when the wind begins to blow, he tells Adèle to put out the fire in the stove and says goodbye to the girls. He says he is going to get money from his life insurance (money paid when a person dies), and he tells Thérèse she may marry Antonio if he truly loves her. Thérèse, for the first time, asks his forgiveness, and he says he loved her most.
Left alone with Adèle, Durand explains his real plan in hidden words. He sold his life insurance long ago because someone became irritable (easily angry) when it was due. What he has is the fire insurance, and he gives her the papers. A pound of candles should have six, but only five are left. The sixth is placed high and near the ceiling, so in five minutes it will start the fire. He then tells the truth about his past. He was born in France, but he became Swiss to marry his wife, and in the war he fought as a sharpshooter against the Germans and never deserted. He says his wife ruined his inheritance through carelessness and foolish speculations (risky money deals), so he had to start the pension. Part of her inheritance went into bringing up the children. She lied even on her death-bed, hated him because she owed him, and taught the children to despise him. He asks Adèle to marry off Thérèse soon, to find Annette a teaching job, and never to speak badly of their mother. Then smoke fills the room and bells ring, and Durand takes poison and dies after asking if she has the insurance papers.
The circumstances behind his death are bankruptcy, no credit, tiredness, unpaid bills, his failing health and his daughters' unkindness. His wife was responsible for the crisis because she wasted money, lied to him and the children, and made them hate him. The mother's influence continues even after her death, because Thérèse repeats her words, and the daughters say "mother said". The relationship between father and daughters is one of love on his side and disrespect on theirs. Money largely decides their behaviour, since they respect him only when he can pay, and Thérèse asks how much money he can get. Yet money is not the only thing, because Durand's love for them is pure.
Durand is loving, patient, honest and self-sacrificing. His plan shows that he values his daughters' future above his own life. Still, a person in his place would feel trapped and hopeless. His act can be called appropriate as a sacrifice, but it is also wrong, because suicide and fire-setting are crimes and leave the daughters in guilt. If he had lived, the house would have been closed and the family would have had to work, take Antonio's help or find new jobs. Facing Death is a modern tragedy (a sad play about ordinary people, not kings) because it shows an ordinary father, money problems and realistic life. It also shows despair powerfully through bills, hunger and plain speech. The play shows that a parent's love is selfless, and that money troubles and lies can destroy a family.
The Bull by Bhimnidhi Tiwari: Exam Summary
The Bull is a one-act play by Bhimnidhi Tiwari (1911–1973), a well-known poet, story writer and dramatist from Nepal. He was also a keen social reformer, so in 1949 he started the Nepal Natak Sangh (Nepal Drama Society). Through it, he staged Nepali plays and encouraged Nepali writers to write plays. To keep the organization running, he wrote plays like Matoko Maya, Shilanyas and Sahansheela Sushila, and in 1970 he won the Madan Puraskar for literature. The Bull is set in the late eighteenth century, when Ranabahadur Shah, the grandson of Prithvi Narayan Shah, was king of Nepal. The king was very fond of bulls. Using this craze, the play makes a biting satire (sharp criticism through humour) on the feudal system (the old system of rule by kings and landlords), which dehumanizes people (treats them as less than human) so much that their lives depend on how well they serve a bull. The story also begins from a real background. The king had threatened the bull doctor, "You would get shaved if you came to tell me that a bull died", when his bull Male fell sick, and then the bull died.
The play begins early one morning in Ashwin, 1854 V.S., when the cowherds Jitman and Gore run to tell the bull doctor, Laxminarayan Dahal, that the bull Male has died. This is why they come to see Laxminarayan. Laxminarayan is a Subedar (an army officer) and a judge in the court, and he is at home shouting at his seven wives for his hookah. He is shocked, and he fears the king will get him shaved and have the cowherds beheaded. He remembers that the king once burnt his mouth for speaking loudly. The cowherds say the reason for the bull's death is the rich food it was given. According to them, a grass-eating animal cannot digest fine rice, lentil soup, bananas and sugarcane, while humans must sleep on straw and the bull gets a mattress and mosquito net. Laxminarayan orders them to stay in the cowshed and never say the bull is dead. Then he rides to the palace, since his many enemies may report the news before him.
At the palace, Laxminarayan bows low and begs politely. He tells the king that the bull will not wake, eat or move, but he never says it is dead. When the king asks, "Has he died?", he answers that the bull has not "passed away yet". Then he flatters the king by praising him as a great human and praises the bull as a strong, beautiful and brave fighter. After that, he suggests moving the bull to the hills for a change of climate, and the king agrees. However, the king soon changes his mind and decides to see the bull himself. He wants this because he thinks the bull may recover if treated at home and does not wish to trouble it without reason. The king sets out in a convoy (a line of attendants) with a palanquin (a covered chair carried by men).
Meanwhile, at the cowshed in Thulo Gauchar, the cowherds are afraid, and they see the convoy coming. Laxminarayan runs ahead of the convoy, because he wants to warn the cowherds and prepare a show before the king reaches them. He orders Jitman to massage the bull's hind feet and Gore to wave a fan, and warns them not to say the bull died. When the king arrives, Laxminarayan says they have served the bull since midnight. The king offers bananas, but the bull does not eat. Then the king himself notices the signs: the bull does not breathe or eat, its ears have drooped, its tail has loosened, and its eyes are still. So the king declares, "He has died."
As soon as the king says this, the cowherds start crying loudly. Jitman cries that he has become an orphan, so the king gives him a tip of four hundred rupees. Gore then cries even harder and says he will hang himself or be buried with the bull, so the king promises him five hundred. They cry like this because the king has said it himself, and now they must show loyalty so they can escape punishment and win rewards. Laxminarayan also pretends to cry, saying he gave up food and sleep, but the king scolds him and orders him to bury the bull and perform the funeral rites himself. At the end, the king leaves, and the cowherds say happily that they have survived.
This shows how Laxminarayan outsmarts the king. He never gives the bad news himself, but he flatters the king, delays the news and makes the king find out the truth on his own. Because of this skill, the king blames nobody, and even rewards the cowherds, so they escape the danger of death. The play shows chakari (serving and flattering powerful people to win their favour), and this practice is still seen today in offices and politics. Rulers who trust flatterers more than honest, hard-working people ruin the country. The late eighteenth-century society was ruled by fear. The king could punish people by shaving, burning or beheading, and ordinary people lived at his mercy. The king's pet gets food, comfort and tips, while the people sleep on straw, suffer from rising prices and fear for their lives. The feudal system makes human life less important than an animal's, and that is the satire.
Laxminarayan is clever, cunning, a flatterer and a good actor, but also selfish and fearful. His attitude to his seven wives, whom he scolds and curses, shows that women were treated as servants in that society. Today, the position of women has improved through education and laws, but some inequality remains. A person in his place would feel frightened and try to save his life, though a better way would be to tell the truth honestly. The play teaches that power without justice makes people lie and flatter, and an unjust ruler values animals above human beings.