Everything Will Be Alright

Rays of sunlight stream through the curtains, and, unable to ignore them any longer, I stretch and roll over in the plush white bed. At the sound of my waking, a uniformed butler comes over and offers me a choice of breakfasts. I select one (French toast and strawberries) and start to plan my day. I could go for a swim in the lake… or maybe just sunbathe on its shores. I could go into town later and browse through the shops. There’s a delightful ice cream place in the town square… I could stop by on the way back to the villa. They all sound wonderful, so I shall fit them all into my day. I climb out of my canopy bed and pull on my silk robe. As I head to the wardrobe to choose my clothing for the day, I hear an insistent knocking on my door. Irritated, I ignore it. To my chagrin, the knocking continues. A sense of foreboding grows in the pit of my stomach, though I do not know why. I do not want to open that door. I will just ignore it, I tell myself, but the knocking continues, and gets louder, and louder, until I am unable to ignore it, but still, I try, because if not…

I wake up to the beeping of oxygen machines as the nurse at the door calls out, “Caroline, can I come in?” All in a flash, the canopy bed is gone, the butler is gone, and the villa is gone. In its place are the cramped hospital bed, a too-chipper nurse, and the cracked plaster ceiling of the hospital. I close my eyes for a second more, longing to return to the life in which my biggest worry was my choice of breakfasts. Four months ago, I had no idea what a CT Scan was. Now I have learned that I have a tumor in my brain, and that I have only several months to live.

I do not want to die. I am scared to die. I am scared by the hushed whispers of the doctors outside of my room. It is very serious, they say. She does not have much time left.

I am momentarily overwhelmed by the rush of emotions, as I am every morning, and I struggle to control the rising panic in my chest. I take several deep breaths, and welcome the nurse in so she can administer the morning tests. However, I have not controlled myself as well as usual, and the nurse notices me shaking in her grasp.

“Don’t be afraid,” she tells me, “After this, everything will be alright.” She gives me several shots, and walks out of the room.

I sit thinking about what the nurse said. “After this, everything will be alright.” She was talking to me about my shots, but her words seemed to have much greater meaning. ‘This’ was not just the shot, ‘this’ was my life now. ‘This’ referred to the constant struggle and pain that I had experienced these past few months, the struggle and pain that had never appeared in my former life. After my life, everything will be alright. Suddenly, my fear of death evaporates. Though I am young, and would have had my whole life ahead of me, death would relieve me of my suffering. Death will claim all of us eventually, whether it is now or later, it doesn’t matter. Death would be just like sleeping, and God knows that I need a rest. My bones, my body, and my soul are weary. There is no sense in being afraid of Death. Death is just the last hurdle in the race of life, and afterwards, everything will be alright. So I close my eyes and wait for death to retrieve me.

Sorting Out His Thoughts

When I first started to read the book Waiting for the Barbarians, I was instantly entranced by its unique style. The book is told from the Magistrate’s point of view, and therefore the literary style is a reflection of the way that the Magistrate’s mind works. The book is distinguished by a very descriptive style, and the descriptions are not always positive. What I most noticed was the fact that the Magistrate described his experiences in what could sometimes be considered a brutally honest manner. He did not sugarcoat his impressions, even when they were about himself or his actions. When talking about the girl that he has taken into his household, he is particularly blunt with his descriptions. He mentions that, “I undress her, I bathe her, I stroke her, I sleep beside her- but I might equally well tie her to a chair and beat her, it would be no less intimate.”(42) This bluntness is indicative of his trying to figure things out for himself. He is confused about many things in his life, and he seeks to understand these things fully. The Magistrate’s uninfluenced descriptions are as much for his sake as they are for the reader’s sake. He describes things in as accurate a manner as he can, because his descriptions allow him to lay out his thoughts in a sensible manner. In his quest for understanding, he lays out all of the facts and then tries to make sense of them.

In the second section, the Magistrate seeks to understand more about the blind girl. Why is she blind, how was she tortured, why is he so entranced by her, what did she look like before the disfigurations- it seems like he wishes to know everything about this girl in order to achieve a deeper understanding of her essence. He mentions that he does not know why or even if he is attracted to her, saying that “she is ugly, ugly.” (46) Yet he still does not know why he is fascinated by her. His brusque descriptions show the reader of his deep confusion, and of his desire to know for certain the workings of the inner mind.

Changing Definitions

- The book Heart of Darkness is often a controversial text because of its alleged endorsement of racism
- However, one cannot call the book “racist” or “imperialist” without clearly defining what these terms mean and what they meant at the time of the book
- At the time that Conrad was writing the novel, the word “racism” did not exist, and although the phenomena of what we would call racism was definitely present, there was not a consciousness of racism as there is today
- People thought about the subject of race in very different terms than we do today
- One reason the word “racist” was not in existence was because, at the time, thinking in terms of race was so widespread that it was not considered to be irregular or negative. Therefore, a new word to define it was not needed
- However, words describing negative attitudes towards race were eventually created
- Early definitions of racism pertained to prejudices against different western countries instead of against African Americans
- This type of racism is very different from the “racist” attitudes today
- Conrad also did not consider his novel to be talking about what we would consider to be “imperialism”
- He never uses the word “imperialism” in the book, and the closest he comes is his usage of the word “colonist”
- Basically, meanings of the words “racism” and “imperialism” changed between Conrad’s time and our time
- Therefore, one needs to analyze Heart of Darkness in terms of the significance in its time, as opposed to analyzing it as compared to modern times

Jason is Always Right

Right before Quentin is discovered to be missing, the remaining members of the Compson family are sitting in the kitchen, eating breakfast. Although many may think that the following scene of Quentin’s escape is the most important event of the fourth section, I believe that the preceding scene tells us just as much about their character. Benjy, Dilsey, Mother, and Jason are the only remaining major family members, and their interactions over breakfast present a very detailed picture of how things work in the Compson household. Jason is, or course, the domineering “head of the household,” and everything that he says, goes. After all, who is going to stop him? Benjy is still not developed enough to feed himself, Luster is still a relatively young boy, and Mother, although she is older and could have authority over Jason, thinks that “it is neither [Dilsey’s] place or mine to tell Jason what to do. Sometimes I think he is wrong, but I try to obey his wishes for you all’s sakes” (278). This sentence really bothered me when I read it. If Mother thinks that something Jason does is “wrong”, why does she not try and help him do the right thing instead? And I somehow can’t see Mother doing anything that is truly for someone else’s “sake.” I just cannot understand how Mother can just completely submit her will to Jason’s. Jason even outright insults her, saying that if she cleaned the house, it would look like a “pigsty.” The fact that Mother does not even try to defend herself, and in fact seems to welcome the criticism makes her an even more infuriating character. What do you think is the true reason Mother so willingly submits to Jason? Is it for the sake of keeping the family together, or is it for her personal gain? Is she too feeble-minded to even realize what Jason is doing?

Taking a Different Approach

While researching for my article, I came upon an article called “Meaningful Images in the Sound and the Fury.” I vaguely scanned it, and was not hopeful at first. It seemed to be just another descriptive article about the motifs in the book. However, one sentence caught my eye; the article mentioned how after the three confusing and biased narratives, the fourth section is written in an unbiased manner. The article mentions then how the other three narratives serve to almost cancel each other out in a sense, so the reader can finally grasp what really happened. This struck a chord with me, because I had noticed that the first two narratives seemed to be approaching the same idea, but from opposite angles

• Meaningful Images in The Sound and the Fury

• Eben Bass
• Modern Language Notes, Vol. 76, No. 8 (Dec., 1961), pp. 728-731
• Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

A Mother's Love

So our class has been talking about how Quentin’s suicide may have been caused by Caddy, his father, his brother, and even Herbert Head. But what about his mother? A mother usually has a close bond with her children, and is almost always instrumental in shaping their child as a person, whether this is in a positive or negative manner. In Quentin’s case, Caroline’s mothering decidedly falls into the latter category. We do not even have to search for proof that Caroline was a bad mother to Quentin, as he often outright laments about how “if I’d just had a mother so I could say mother mother” (pg 172). Caroline was plainly never there to support Quentin, and his numerous references to his mother can lead us to conclude that Quentin was greatly affected by his mother’s lack of caring. However, there is a big difference between adversely affecting a child’s personality and driving them to commit suicide. How much of a part do you think Quentin’s mother played in developing his clearly dysfunctional personality? How do you think Caroline affected the rest of the family dynamics? Do you think she is ultimately to blame for Quentin’s death?

Short Story

While browsing the short story section in the library, I came upon a booklet titled “Interrupted Serenade” by James Hannaham. It was a random choice, but as I sat down at a nearby cubicle and started reading it, I knew that it was a fortuitous one. The story plotline focuses around the life of Lopey, a “almost ten year old” boy who lives with his father and stepmother in a middle class home. The story begins in a Police Station, where Lopey has been arrested for selling drugs. The first thing that struck me about the short story was the fact that, at nine years old, Lopey was regularly selling drugs on the street. This heavy involvement in drugs at such a young age concerns me as the reader and luckily, concerns his parents. On a side note, it is interesting that as far as I can see, Lopey himself is not a big drug user. He seems to only sell drugs and rarely, if ever, uses them. From what I have heard about drug dealers, this seems to be highly irregular behavior. Anyway, either way, this is not productive, positive behavior, so his father and stepmother send Lopey to live with his birth mother and her wealthy husband. One of the most striking pieces in the large house is a grand piano. Lopey begins to try to play by mimicking the sounds of a classical record that was playing. The family discovers that Lopey has a talent for playing piano, and they start to try and cultivate his talent.

The piano and the drug dealing represent opposing forces in Lopey’s personality, and their coexisting and clashing make up the majority of the story. I think that for my paper, I am going to talk about these opposing forces, and how this is a developmental story as well as a story about choices.