Monday 3 September 2012

Poem: The Clod and The Pebble by William Blake






"Love seeketh not itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care,

But for another gives its ease,

And builds a heaven in hell's despair."



So sung a little Clod of Clay,

Trodden with the cattle's feet,

But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:

"Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven's despite."


EST TURORIAL 3/9/12
QUESTIONS:
1.  What do the clod and the pebble symbolize?
ü  Both clod and pebble symbolize love. The clod symbolize a selfless love that only want to make others happy more than themselves and a self sacrificing nature of  love while the pebble symbolize a selfish love that does not want to see others’ happiness but themselves only.
2.  Identify 2 Literary Devices and how they enhance the poem?
ü  Contrast
a)  This poem uses contrast to show the differences between the clod and the pebble. In the first stanza, the clod said that if you love someone, it is about pleasing them not yourself, try to ease their burden and take away their burden. While the third stanza is what the pebble thinks about love. For the pebble, love is all about pleasing oneself and not the others, jealousy toward others’ happiness, a stepping stone to make us happy and there should not be other form of happiness but ourselves only. These two stanzas clearly contrast to one another and make us easily to understand the poem because it does not have hidden meaning.
b)  Another contrast between the clod and the pebble is the clod will build a heaven in hell’s despair while the pebble will build a hell in heavens’ despite. Other contrast words in the poem are between Selfless and Selfish, Clod and Pebble, Sung and Warbled, Humble and Prideful, Cattle and Brook.
ü  Personification
a)  Personification used in the poem to give us the idea between an innocent love and a selfish love. Blake has given the clod and the pebble human traits such as ability to love.
b)  The clod that is a lump of earth or clay is personified as a person who is willing to sacrifice himself to please the others (Love seeketh not itself, nor for itself hath any care), try to ease others burden and take away their despair (but for another gives it ease, and builds a heaven in hell’s depair).
c)  While the pebble is a stone which has the characteristic of being hard. Blake described pebble as a person who love had hardened him that he see the love is no longer a self sacrificing nature but rather a self centred love and pleasing oneself is much better than pleasing other (love seeketh only self to please, to find another to its delight). The pebble also dislikes to see others’ happiness but himself only and he promised to destroyed others’ happiness (Joys in another lost of peace, and builds a hell in heaven’s depite)


3.   Are you are a clod or a pebble?
a)   I think I am a pebble because I am not willing to sacrifice my needs and feeling for the sake of others. Unlike the clod that always willing to wait for the love, the pebble will let go of love when things did not working between them. Because love is mutual thing, so too much give like the clod and not taking any can bring a deep harm to our heart. The pebble is hard because inside it is very fragile so in order to protect itself the pebble choose to love itself more than anyone. This is not to say that the pebble did not love anyone but the love is more toward itself. It may sound selfish but that is the reality of the world, can we be truly love someone and be loved wholehearted by others?  On this basis it becomes clear that Blake is saying that only the dim-witted individual believes love is a holy thing, and that a person with any intelligence will know that love can be a cruel and destructive force. 
-gloria- 

Thursday 30 August 2012

Short Story: The Open Window by Saki








"My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel," said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; "in the meantime you must try and put up with me."

     Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing.

     "I know how it will be," his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat; "you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice."

     Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction came into the nice division.

     "Do you know many of the people round here?" asked the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion.

     "Hardly a soul," said Framton. "My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here."

     He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.

     "Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?" pursued the self-possessed young lady.

     "Only her name and address," admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.

     "Her great tragedy happened just three years ago," said the child; "that would be since your sister's time."

     "Her tragedy?" asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.

<  2  >

     "You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon," said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.

     "It is quite warm for the time of the year," said Framton; "but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?"

     "Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it." Here the child's voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. "Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back someday, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie, why do you bound?' as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window - "

     She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance.

     "I hope Vera has been amusing you?" she said.

     "She has been very interesting," said Framton.

     "I hope you don't mind the open window," said Mrs. Sappleton briskly; "my husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They've been out for snipe in the marshes today, so they'll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you menfolk, isn't it?"

<  3  >

     She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic, he was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.

     "The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise," announced Framton, who laboured under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. "On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement," he continued.

     "No?" said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention - but not to what Framton was saying.

     "Here they are at last!" she cried. "Just in time for tea, and don't they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!"

     Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with a dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.

     In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window, they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: "I said, Bertie, why do you bound?"

     Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall door, the gravel drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid imminent collision.

<  4  >

     "Here we are, my dear," said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window, "fairly muddy, but most of it's dry. Who was that who bolted out as we came up?"

     "A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel," said Mrs. Sappleton; "could only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of goodby or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost."

     "I expect it was the spaniel," said the niece calmly; "he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make anyone lose their nerve."

     Romance at short notice was her speciality.


Source:

Hyperfiction and Contributors. (2002-2010). The Open Window by Saki. Retrieved from


EST Tutorial 28.08.2012
Questions:
1.  Search for the Open Window by Saki on the internet. Read this short story thoroughly. Based on the short story:
a.  Identify 3 literary devices in the short story and their significant.
-      Symbolism
                            I.        The most significant symbolism in the story is the window itself because throughout the story symbolize the hope of Mrs. Sappleton that her husband and her two young brother come back from the hunting. Although at the beginning of the story, Mrs. Sappleton’s hope would never be fulfilled because we believed that the men are dead in the woods and Mrs. Sappleton is losing her mind. But in the end of the story, we found out that her hope is fulfilled as the men are returned from the forest and the story is a mere tell tale that Vera told Framton in order to scare him.
-      Irony
                            I.        Framton Nuttel is suppose to be relax and calm during his visit to the Sappletons but instead he got himself a panic attack by Vera’s story of Mrs. Sappleton’s tragedy three years ago and the return of Mrs. Spapleton’s husband and brothers.
                         II.        Vera Sappleton is a 15 years old girl that is expected to be an honest and innocent child. But she later on turned out to be a good and excellent manipulator.
-      Flashback
b. Framton Nuttel’s flashback on a conversation between him and his sister tells us more about the nature of Framton Nuttel like his nervous disease.
c.  Where is the climax in the short story? How is this achieved?
                    I.        When Mrs. Sappleton announced that her husband and brothers are back from bunting. This caused Framton Nuttel to panic attack and leave the house without saying anything.
d. Describe the setting of the short story?
                    I.        Time – early 20th century, introduction letter
                 II.        Place – England-based on the English name like Sappleton and Nuttel
               III.        Society – hunting – only been done in England during those period.
e.  What is the lesson that you can learned in this short story?
                    I.        The lesson that I learnt from the story is fears can override our feeling.
                 II.        The fears that Framton felt during the arrival of Mr Sppleton and his brother from the hunting caused Framton to get a panic attacked that leads him to dash off from the house.
               III.        The fear and nervousness consumed all the feeling. Fear can make not thinking straight and fear usually made our body to reflex and we tend to chose flight rather than fight.
f.   In the short story, does Vera shows hospitality to Frampton Nuttel? If Vera were Malaysia, would she have in like manner?
                    I.        Vera does not show hospitality to Nuttel because as a host of the house, Vera is expected to make Nutel   uncomfortable.
g. If you were Nuttel, would you trust every word Vera said? Why?
                 II.        If I was Framton Nuttel, I will trust every single word that Vera said because Vera is a very good liar and manipulator. She is able to make a very sound – believable tell tale to anyone that it is said that romance at a short time is her specialty after all. Plus combine with Framton Nuttel’s nervous disease is a perfect combination which made him an easy target for Vera’s Romance.