For Ex. 12 (Discussions), read the following stories and poems. Choose one story or one poem, and write an answer to one of the following questions.

 

1. Short Fiction

 

Ernest Hemingway, “A Clean, Well-lighted Place”: https://www.wlps.org/files/page/4628/ernest_hemingway_a_clean_well_lighted_place_text.pdf

 

Write a paragraph (125-150 words) on 1 or 2.

1. Compare the attitudes of the older waiter and the younger waiter with reference to the old man.
2. What is meant by the title of the story?

 

or

 

Katherine Mansfield, “Miss Brill”:  https://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/assets/KM-Stories/MISS-BRILL1920.pdf

 

Write a paragraph (125-150 words) on 1 or 2:

3. Compare and contrast the way Miss Brill sees herself with the way she is seen by others.
4. What does the fox fur in the story symbolize?

 

1. Poetry

 

Richard Wilbur (1921-2017)

“Love Calls Us to the Things of This World”

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,

And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul

Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple

As false dawn.

Outside the open window

The morning air is all awash with angels.

 

Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,

Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.

Now they are rising together in calm swells

Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear

With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

 

Now they are flying in place, conveying

The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving

And staying like white water; and now of a sudden

They swoon down into so rapt a quiet

That nobody seems to be there.

The soul shrinks

 

From all that it is about to remember,

From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,

And cries,

“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,

Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam

And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”

 

Yet, as the sun acknowledges

With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,

The soul descends once more in bitter love

To accept the waking body, saying now

In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,

“Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;

Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;

Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,

And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating

Of dark habits,

keeping their difficult balance.”

 

Write a paragraph (125-150 words) on 1 or 2:

1. How is the image of the laundry, hung out to dry on a clothesline, used in the poem?
2. The soul makes two speeches in the poem (these are in quotation marks). What is the message of each?

The Beautiful Changes

Traveling through the Dark

Traveling through the Dark

William Stafford (1914-1993)

 

   “Travelling through the Dark” (1962)

 

Traveling through the dark I found a deer

dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.

It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:

that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

 

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car

and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;

she had stiffened already, almost cold.

I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

 

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—

her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,

alive, still, never to be born.

Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

 

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;

under the hood purred the steady engine.

I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;

around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

 

I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—,

then pushed her over the edge into the river.

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason–
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all–my only swerving—

then pushed her over the edge into the river.

 

 

Write a paragraph on 1 or 2 (125-150 words):

 

1. The poem tells a story. Summarize the story in your own words and devise a moral for it.
2. Describe the man in the poem and explain why he does what he does in the last two lines?