Derek Walcott’s poem “The Gulf”

Derek Walcott’s poem “The Gulf” provides a clue as to where the speaker is. The “airport coffee” indicates that the speaker is at an airport. The second line links to the speaker’s current condition. They come across as not too becoming. They’re described as “sour” and “unshaven.” The final line of the first stanza provides further insight into the speaker’s state. They have “racked nerves”; they’re anxious and perhaps restless.

The three lines in the second stanza seem to merge the speaker’s body with the body of the airplane. The “smoky, resinous bourbon” inside the speaker might also allude to the fuel inside the plane. The mention of the “body” in the second line and the “roar” in the third line reinforces the coupling of the agonized person and the tumultuous airplane.

In the third stanza, the “exhausted soul” in the first line, the “screeching” in the second line, and the image of the speaker’s friends fading away as the plane takes off add additional evidence that the speaker’s body and the airplane have formed some kind of propulsive union.

The fourth stanza, the speaker actually mentions a “divine union” in the first line. In the second line, the speaker arguably aligns themselves with the airplane again, as they’re both “created things” and in the air. The presence of “the Texan” in the final line of the fourth stanza appears to move the poem in another direction.

The mention of “all things” compels the speaker to consider other things, like history (Lyndon B. Johnson), philosophy (the Sophocles quote about not being born), and the beautiful and violent landscape that the speaker presumably notices from their airplane window.

Using this line-by-line explanation of the first four stanzas, as well as the review of some of the poem’s key themes, one should now have enough examples to explain the remaining lines and analyze them accordingly.

Like a Winding Sheet by Ann Petry

The unnamed protagonist wakes up late, close to four o'clock in the afternoon, as he works the night shift at a plant. His wife, Mae, is also getting ready for work in a different plant, and she remarks that the bed sheet looks like a winding sheet, a shroud wrapped around the dead, and that he looks like a "'huckleberry—in a winding sheet—.'" The protagonist notes how much his legs hurt, how much it feels like he hasn't really rested them since getting home early in morning from work. Mae notices that it's Friday the 13th, and he's late for work because he has to convince her to go to work and not just stay home out of superstition. The forewoman at the plant yells at him for being late and calls him "'nigger'"; he says she has a right to yell at him but that he won't let anyone call him that word. He wants to punch her in the face, but he refrains because he doesn't hit women, and he feels the tension in his hands for hours afterward.

On the way home, he sees coworkers inside a coffee shop and witnesses how the smell and taste of the brew seems to erase the fatigue from their faces. He goes in and waits in line, but when it's his turn, the blond girl serving coffee flips her hair and says, "'No more coffee for awhile.'" It's clear to everyone that she won't serve him because he's black. Again, he wants to hit her, but he will not hit a woman. The tension remains in his hands, even worse now than before. He cannot even grip a handhold on the subway.

By the time he gets home, Mae is there. She's in a good mood, but he is not. He snaps at her a couple of times about her gum, her hair, and so on, and she teases him, saying that he's "'nothing but a old hungry nigger trying to act tough.'" Suddenly, he punches Mae in the face without really meaning to; it just happens. And then he cannot stop, and he punches her over and over, feeling as though something inside is "binding him to this act," something like a winding sheet.

Night and moonlight by Henry David Thoreau

 Chancing to take a memorable walk by moonlight some years ago, I resolved to take more such walks, and make acquaintance with another side of nature: I have done so.

According to Pliny, there is a stone in Arabia called Selenites, “wherein is a white, which increases and decreases with the moon.” My journal for the last year or two, has been selenitic in this sense.

Is not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us? Are we not tempted to explore it — to penetrate to the shores of its lake Tchad, and discover the source of its Nile, perchance the Mountains of the Moon? Who knows what fertility and beauty, moral and natural, are there to be found? In the Mountains of the Moon, in the Central Africa of the night, there is where all Niles have their hidden heads. The expeditions up the Nile as yet extend but to the Cataracts, or perchance to the mouth of the White Nile; but it is the Black Nile that concerns us.

THE LILY WHITE BOYS SUMMARY

Summary

The couple finds they’re robbed after returning from Christmas party

This is a story happening on Christmas Eve. The couple, Dan Coleman and Celia Coleman attends a Christmas party which is held by wealthy Beth Follansbee. They walked home after the party, but it is when Dan Coleman tries to put his key into the lock that the door opens with a weird sound. As they enter the house, they know they get robbed. The burglar steals Celia’s jewelry, and other valuable things.


They are astonished but soon be calm. Celia says “in some way it is a relief.” They check everything as “the standard procedure”, and then call the police. After the police leave, Dan Coleman sees Celia trying evening suit when he is about to start up the stairs.


Theme


The dictionary meaning of lily-white is “pure white like the color of a lily”.Like many words,the expression also has both a positive and a negative connotation.On the positive side,it means “pure or spotless”;on the negative side,in the United States the term has come to imply a rich,segregated neighborhood in which white inhabitant are protected from other races and from the world of the underprivileged.

when it comes to the story,we are surprised to find the couple’s calmness towards the robbery of their house. However, the possession they had lost ,such as hi-fi, color TV,moonstone,diamond earrings,were all of high value.The couple just felt shocked,and didn’t urge the police to chase the burgler.How wealthy they were,and they may thanks to the robbery since it offerred them a good excuse to buy new valuables. So the word lily-white in the title ,implies the wealthy couple,who squander money without any hesitation and at the same time criticizes the broad gap between the wealth and the poor.

Nadine Gordimer’s "The Intruder"

“The Intruder,” which appears in Livingstone’s Companions, focuses on the decadence of an upper-class man of English descent. After shedding his last wife, hard-drinking, stay-out-late James Seago takes up with the beautiful teenage daughter of Mrs. Clegg, a woman of his age who affects a bohemian morality. Seago refers to the daughter, Marie, whom he uses sexually and enjoys having in his lap as he drinks, as his teenage doll, his marmoset, his rabbit. Because he has financial problems, Seago is plausibly able to postpone committing himself to her in marriage. Once they are married, Seago’s irresponsible life of nightly partying does not change. Having married his pet, however, he must live with her, and so they set up housekeeping in an unpleasant flat. Marie becomes pregnant. The arrival of a child will force changes in Seago’s way of life: For one thing, they will have to find living quarters more suitable for a child; for another, his wife-pet will have to give her primary attention to the child, not him. Arriving home early one morning after a night of partying, they fall into bed exhausted. A few hours later, Marie awakens hungry. She wanders out of the bedroom and finds the rest of the flat a wreck. All the kitchen staples have been spilled or thrown about; toothpaste is smeared about the bathroom. In the living room, on one of the sofa cushions, is “a slime of contraceptive jelly with haircombings—hers.” Gordimer only hints at the perpetrator. It seems more than likely, though, that it is James Seago, who again is rebelling at the prospect of being forced into a responsible mode of life.

The Bankrupt Man by John Updike (1983)

The bankrupt man dances. Perhaps, on other occasions, he sings. Certainly he spends money in restaurants and tips generously. In what sense, then, is he bankrupt?

He has been declared so. He has declared himself so. He returns from the city agitated and pale, complaining of hours spent with the lawyers. Then he pours himself a drink. How does he pay for the liquor inside the drink, if he is bankrupt?

One is too shy to ask. Bankruptcy is a sacred state, a condition beyond conditions, as theologians might say, and attempts to investigate it are necessarily obscene, like spiritualism. One knows only that he has passed into it and lives beyond us, in a condition not ours.

He is dancing at the Chilblains Relief Association Fund Ball. His heels kick high. The mauve spotlight caresses his shoulders, then the gold. His wife’s hair glistens like a beehive of tinsel above her bare shoulders and dulcet neck. Where does she get the money, to pay the hairdresser to tease and singe and set her so dazzlingly? We are afraid to ask but cannot tear our eyes from the dancing couple.

The bankrupt man buys himself a motorcycle. He is going to hotdog it all the way to Santa Barbara and back. He has a bankrupt sister in Santa Barbara. Also, there are business details to be cleared up along the way, in Pittsburgh, South Bend, Dodge City, Santa Fe, and Palm Springs. Being bankrupt is an expansionist process; it generates ever new horizons.

V.S. Naipaul`s ''Columbus and Crusoe''

 V.S. Naipaul`s ''Columbus and Crusoe'' (1967) is a persuasive example of the latter effect. Using Bjorn Landstrom`s book, ''Columbus,'' as his starting point, Naipaul argues that Columbus was a man of staggering ''banality'' in scope and motive. He wanted gold and wanted it with a hubris that made his name. And that`s pretty much all Columbus had to offer, Naipaul claims. The adventurer`s ''egoism is like an exposed deformity.'' To remedy it, ''romance is something we ourselves have to supply.'' Columbus` story conspicuously lacks a hero. Thus, he`s the substitute, the woeful stand-in. In a mere four pages, the buffet of Naipaul`s opinion is full and fierce. And in the wake of it, who could think about history in quite the same fashion?

Summary of "Meditation on the Moon" by Aldous Huxley

Huxley's essay is about the difference between the material and the spiritual, and he uses the moon as an example. His point is that the two ways of thinking about the moon are not mutually exclusive, but reinforce one another.

Huxley begins by criticizing the philosophy of "nothing but," a kind of reductionist, materialist view of the world that he calls "mean as well as stupid." Huxley instead advances the "not only, but also" view of the world, in which the material and the spiritual coexist. His central example is Socrates, who was accused as heretical for believing that the moon was a stone. Socrates defended himself by arguing that "all men" know the moon is a god. While it may be empirically true to say that the moon is a rock, Huxley argues that art and poetry provide similar empirical evidence that the moon is divine.

Huxley next defines the nature of this "divinity." Central to his explanation is the term numinous, which refers to a "peculiar kind of feeling" or sense of the supernatural. Because humans have numinous feelings, it follows that there must be gods that inspire those feelings. Moonlight inspires a number of emotions: awe, despair, love. Even if we believe that the moon is "only" a stone, it inspires feelings; meditating on the moon can make one
"feel most numinously a worm" and inspire a sense of man's smallness compared to the vastness of space.

Huxley concludes by arguing that man's ability to sense the numinous is evidence of his inherent spirituality and connection to a kind of higher, transcendent reality.

Summary of "Meditation on the Moon" by Aldous Huxley

Huxley's essay is about the difference between the material and the spiritual, and he uses the moon as an example. His point is that the two ways of thinking about the moon are not mutually exclusive, but reinforce one another.

Huxley begins by criticizing the philosophy of "nothing but," a kind of reductionist, materialist view of the world that he calls "mean as well as stupid." Huxley instead advances the "not only, but also" view of the world, in which the material and the spiritual coexist. His central example is Socrates, who was accused as heretical for believing that the moon was a stone. Socrates defended himself by arguing that "all men" know the moon is a god. While it may be empirically true to say that the moon is a rock, Huxley argues that art and poetry provide similar empirical evidence that the moon is divine. Huxley next defines the nature of this "divinity." Central to his explanation is the term numinous, which refers to a "peculiar kind of feeling" or sense of the supernatural. Because humans have numinous feelings, it follows that there must be gods that inspire those feelings. Moonlight inspires a number of emotions: awe, despair, love. Even if we believe that the moon is "only" a stone, it inspires feelings; meditating on the moon can make one "feel most numinously a worm" and inspire a sense of man's smallness compared to the vastness of space.

Huxley concludes by arguing that man's ability to sense the numinous is evidence of his inherent spirituality and connection to a kind of higher, transcendent reality.