The Hunter Gracchus

Summary

BY:Franz Kafka

In the harbour people are busy playing, drinking and selling fruits, etc. A death ship sailed to that place. The boatman anchored that ship with a rope. There was a corpse covered with the colorful silk cloth. No one was interested in that dead body. The boatman showed a great two-storied house on the left of the sea and they took the corpse to the door of that house. A small boy opened the door and they all entered. The door was shut. Flock of doves was delighted to fly around the house as if their food was inside. A woman on the boat gave some grains and the doves ate happily.  A gentleman came to the harbour and looked around gloomily. He knocked at the door. The boys opened the door and they welcomed him warmly. The boatman came there and led him to the first floor. The bearers were setting the candles on the head of the dead body. They lighted the candles but it did not give more light. The corpse looked like a hunter. The gentleman went near the corpse and put his hand on his forehead. he knelt down and started praying. All the bearers were sent out. The dead body opened the eyes suddenly and asked him who he was. The gentleman said that he was Burgomaster of Riva. The dead body said that he was hunter Gracchus. He had fallen down in the Black Forest of Germany long ago when he was hunting there. He had been dead since then. The ship missed the way and they were there. He struggled to climb the steps up to go to the heaven but all in vain. When he reached the door of the other world, he was awakened by the light and found himself on the boat. The wife of the boatman offered him the same wine. He stayed there on the wooden bed covered with a dirty shroud. His beard and hair were tied together. He heard the water hitting his ship.  The terrible fete came after his death. he was brought to a wrong place. He had performed his duty of hunter responsively before his death. It was not a fault, not a sin. No one helped him. The thought of helping him became a kind of illness that had to be cured by taking to bed. Therefore he did not ask for help in the end. Burgomaster asked him how he would stay with them in Riva. He answered that he knew nothing. The ship had last rudder and it was driven by the wind that blew in the undermost region of death.

What Is Poverty ?

Summary 
Jo Goodwin Parker

Jo Goodwin Parker in her realistic essay “What is Poverty” gives a real and graphic account of what being poor actually means on a daily basis. Parker stresses that poverty is more ugly, cruel and devastating than it is shown in newspapers.

She defines poverty as a lack – that is living without hope, better foods, medicinal care, proper sanitation and proper education. It is like an acid that destroys pride, honour, health and future. Parker’s main purpose is to show how shameful, humiliating and disgusting it is to be a poor. She wants to draw the readers’ attention to the pathetic state of poor people.

Poor people have to live a restless life looking at the dark future of their children. Poverty breaks relationships. Parker had three children. She divorced with her husband because he had lost his job and they couldn’t buy contraceptives to prevent unwanted birth. She had a job. Once she left the children under the care of their grandmother. She found her children under pitiable condition when she returned home. Her youngest son was covered with fly specks and his diaper had not been changed since morning. Her another child was playing with broken glasses and the oldest one was playing alone at the edge of a lake. She did not have enough income to admit them at a nursery school. She made 20 dollars a week and a nursery school cost 20 dollars a week for three children. Therefore she quitted her job.

Important Questions:

• How does Parker create a real and graphic account of what being poor actually means on a daily basis?
• Do you have anything more to add to her definition of poverty?
• Is “What is Poverty” a realistic essay? Discuss with reasons for your answer.
• Why did Parker quit her job?
• What is Parker’s purpose in defining poverty as she does?

The Time Factor

Summary 

Gloria Steinem

`The main thesis of Gloria Steinem’s essay “The Time Factor” is that our sense of time is partly a function of power or lack of it. Time-sense is always governed by power- either monetary power or social power. Planning ahead depends on class, sex and caste.

The rich and the middle class plan for the future generations while the poor plan for a week or a few days. Women also can not plan ahead as they are dominated by men. Even well-to-do women have to adjust their life according to the life of their husband and children. Females are powerless in the society so they also only plan for few days. They live in flux, present and uncertainty. Even some feminists only look at their painful past and do not focus on future. Women are limited to day to day existence. While men always live in dreamy future without living in the day to day present. The Blacks who are socially and culturally powerless also can not plan for the future. A black, successful journalist and critic also could not plan beyond one assignment.

Important Questions:

• How do you interpret Steinem’s thesis that your sense of time is partly a function of power, or the lack of it?”
• How does Steinem differentiate the future planning, which is ‘culturally masculine habit of planning’, to women’s plans for future in the essay?

The Day of The Dead

Summary 

BY: Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz in the essay “The Day of the Dead” presents the psychological and cultural motivations behind the popularity of fiestas in Mexico. The Mexican people celebrate fiestas with all the colors, strange costumes, dancing, fireworks, drinking, shouting and gathering together. By means of fiestas Mexican people free themselves from the monotony of life, solitude, order, rigidity, poverty and harsh reality. During fiestas, society frees itself from the laws, traditions, order and come out purified with new energy.

In certain fiestas, the very idea of order disappears, chaos comes back and sexual freedom rules. All the social, sex, caste and trade differences disappear. Fiestas are like revolution because individual dissolves in mass and forms a unity. The people reveal their hidden secrets and desires and free themselves from mental burden.

Important Questions:

• What are the Mexican attitudes towards the celebrations of life and death?
• What are the factors which make fiestas so popular in Mexico and what are the psychological and cultural motivations behind them?

Duchoux

Summary 
Guy De Maupassant

Maupassant’s story “Duchoux” is about a self-centered old man named Barone Mardiane who values position more than family. This story implies that modern civilization has separated man from his true self or nature. Modern men only crave for comfort, money and sex. They have forgotten the values of family bonds and love.

Barone Mardiane, an aristocratic old bachelor is fed up of with his monotonous life. He feels lonely and sad because he is bored with the same friends, gambling and same activities. In loneliness, he is haunted by the memory of his illegitimate son. He wishes to spend rest of his life with him and his grandchildren. In his young age, he had a short romantic relationship with the wife of governor of a colony. A son was born secretly. The mother died of tuberculosis after three years. Baron had secretly arranged for the boy’s education and marriage. Barone goes to meet his son’s house. When he reaches there, he meets a boy, lifts him and tries to kiss him. But the smell of garlic coming out from his mouth prevents him. Barone notices that everything the son has does not suit his standard. The servants are dirty, the room is dark and dirty, his son Duchoux is bald headed, shabbily dressed and even daughter-in-law is dirty and shabbily dressed. The room is filled with the odour of garlic. Though Duchoux resembled in many ways with his mother, Barone dislikes him. When the boy comes and calls Duchoux ‘father’ in a Southern tone, Barone is struck by the word. He hates the rural and uncultured environment of his son’s house and returns to Paris.

Enemies

By Anton Checkov

"Enemies" is a story written by Anton Checkov. The story suggests that grief and misery do not bring people together to share, but force them apart. Pain is egoistic. 

Kirilov is a district doctor. His six-year old son has just died of diphtheria. He stands watching his unconscious wife near the dead body. The doorbell rings and a wealthy stranger Aboguin enters begging the Doctor to come to treat his wife who is in great pain. Kirilov says that he cannot possibly leave his wife at this time. Abogin requests to treat his wife in the name of humanity. Kirilov forgets his social responsibility as
a doctor and is observed in his own pain and grief. In the other hand, Aboguin thinks that his grief is worse than the doctor's. However, after much request Kirilov unwillingly goes with Aboguin in his carriage. But when they arrive at Aboguin’s house, his wife is not at home. She pretended to be ill in order to run away with her lover. Aboguin is sad and begins to complain to Kirilov. Kirilov is angry and he does not like to hear the grief of Aboguin. He thinks that Abguin played a joke with him. They scream at one another and the doctor returns home cursing the rich people like Aboguin and forming a deep-rooted enmity towards them. 

In unhappiness, both became selfish, wicked, unjust and unable to understand each other. Pain and anxiety made them egoistic and selfish. However, we sympathize with Dr. Kirilov because his loss is greater that Aboguin's.

THE VALIANT WOMAN

– J.F. Powers

Exclusive Summary:

Set in 1944, Valiant is a woodland pigeon who wants to become a great hero someday. When he hears they are hiring recruits for the Royal Homing Pigeon Service, he immediately sets out for London. On the way, he meets a smelly but friendly pigeon named Bugsy, who joins him, mainly to get away from clients he cheated in a game of find-the pebble, and helps him sign up for the war.

Complete Summary 

The Catholic priesthood was a favorite subject of J. F. Powers. In “The Valiant Woman,” he gives a sly and witty account of an ongoing struggle between a priest and his housekeeper. This small and ironic comedy is quite successfully set off against larger and darker issues involving human needs and limitations, and the theology that guides the characters.

Quite against his inclinations, Father Firman, a celibate priest, has “married” Mrs. Stoner by passively allowing her to assume the role of his domestic partner. Unlike the suggestion buried in his name, he has been anything but firm and has steadily dwindled into the role of a husband. Without asking for these responsibilities he has allowed them to overtake him, and he can no longer in good conscience back away. He cannot divorce her, just as his religion forbids divorce. In his fantasy, a Filipino housekeeper would give him the life of freedom he craves—not sexual freedom, but freedom from responsibility in his personal life. The priest is thrust into the commitment his theology teaches, and which he has no doubt preached to others.

Although the reader need not accept any particular religious view to appreciate its argument, the story is deeply rooted in its Catholic theology. None of the three characters has an unusual spiritual gift. With her garrulous and trivial nature, Mrs. Stoner is indeed a millstone around the neck of the priest. Father Firman, although conscientious in his duties, seeks only a comfortable and trouble-free life, an ideal that Father Nulty urges on him. The author thus creates limited human beings who are confused and frustrated by their needs and fantasies. On the surface, their religion is only a social framework into which they have fallen. However, the demands of that religion make Father Firman stand larger than he ever could on his own. Husbands, as well as priests, take vows before God. Father Firman finally begins to realize that his responsibility is not simply defined by the vows he took as a priest. In becoming a “husband,” he is bound by the spirit as well as the letter of the law.