Random Citizen

The narrator finds himself in the small New England town of Starkfield for the winter. He sets out to learn about the life of a mysterious local named Ethan Frome, who had a tragic accident some twenty years earlier. After questioning various locals with little result, the narrator finally comes to learn the details of Ethan’s “smash-up”. Ethan and Mattie never consummate or even verbalize their passions, but their mutual feelings hang palpably between them. Catastrophe threatens when the cat shatters Zeena’s favorite pickle dish, which Mattie had taken out to celebrate their dinner together.

After supper, with Mattie busy at her sewing work, Ethan contemplates an outright demonstration of his affections but stops short of full disclosure. The next morning, Ethan remains eager to reveal his feelings to Mattie, but the presence of his hired man, Jotham Powell, and his own inhibitions prevent him from making a move. In a fit of nostalgia, Ethan decides to take Mattie on a sledding adventure they had once proposed but never undertaken. After a successful first run, Mattie suggests a second, but with a different purpose in mind. She asks Ethan to run the sled into the elm tree at the foot of the hill, allowing them to spend their last moments together.

In the wake of the collision, Ethan comes to consciousness dazedly, reaching out to feel the face of the softly moaning Mattie, who opens her eyes and weakly utters his name. Afterward, we find ourselves back in the narrator as he enters the Frome household and takes stock of the house’s squalid conditions.

Plato challenges us to picture the following situation in the Symposium: What do you people actually desire from each other, Hephaestus asks a pair of lovers who are tightly clasped together as he stands over them holding his repair tools? The confused lovers are then asked again: “Is it your heart’s wish for the two of you to merge into one and never part, day or night?” If you want to become one with me, I’d want to weld you together and make you a part of something larger. Wouldn’t this be everything that you want if you looked at your love and saw that this is what you want? Evidently, no one would assume that the lovers’ intense satisfaction in being together is due to simple sexual attraction. Each lover’s soul seems to yearn for something more, but it is unable to express what it is. The promise of something more than oneself is held out by the beloved, but lovers are unable to identify it.

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery sometime in 1817 or 1818. At the age of seven, he is given to Captain Anthony’s son-in-law’s brother, Hugh Auld. As he learns to read and write, Douglass becomes conscious of the evils of slavery. He resolves to escape to the North eventually. After the death of Captain Anthony Bottomley, Frederick Douglass is taken back to serve Thomas Auld, Captain Anthony’s son-in-law.

Auld rents Douglass out to Edward Covey, a man known for “breaking” slaves; Covey manages to whip all the spirit out of Douglass. The two men have a two-hour fight, after which Covey never touches Douglass again. At Freeland’s hands, Douglass begins educating his fellow slaves in a Sabbath school at the homes of free blacks. Soon after, he marries Anna Murray, a free woman he met while working in Baltimore, and they move to Massachusetts. There, he becomes deeply engaged with the abolitionist movement as both a writer and an orator. He eventually makes his escape from the U.S. but does not detail how he made it in order to protect future slaves who may attempt the journey.

Heart of Darkness centers around Marlow, an introspective sailor, and his journey up the Congo River to meet Kurtz. The cruelty and squalor of imperial enterprise contrast sharply with the impassive and majestic jungle that surrounds the white man’s settlements. Marlow eventually gets the parts he needs to repair his ship, and he and the manager set out with a few agents and a crew of cannibals. The ship is attacked by an unseen band of natives, who fire arrows from the safety of the forest. Marlow frightens the natives away with the ship’s steam whistle.

A beautiful native woman, apparently Kurtz’s mistress, appears on the shore and stares out at the ship. The Russian tells Marlow that Kurtz had ordered the attack on the steamer to make them believe he was dead in order that they might turn back and leave him. The Russian implies that she is somehow involved with Kurtz and has caused trouble before through her influence over him. Marlow falls ill soon after and barely survives. Eventually, he returns to Europe and goes to see Kurtz’s fiancée.

The Old Man and the Sea is one of Ernest Hemingway’s last works of fiction published during his lifetime. It tells the story of an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba. The novella was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953, and cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to their awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Santiago kills a great mako shark with his harpoon but loses the weapon. He makes a spear by strapping his knife to the end of an oar, and he clubs two more sharks into submission.

The trail of blood from the dead marlin attracts sharks. One of them measures 18 feet (5.5 m) from nose to tail. A pair of tourists at a nearby café mistake the dead fish for a shark. The Old Man and the Sea is Ernest Hemingway’s final work published during his lifetime. Written in 1951, it was published in book form in 1952 and featured in Life magazine on September 1, 1952. The novella received the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1953 and was cited when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

“The Old Man and the Sea” is considered one of Ernest Hemingway’s most influential works. Critics note that Santiago, the main character in the book, hails from the Canary Islands and that his Spanish origins have an influence on the novel. His biography has many similarities to that of Gregorio Fuentes, who many believe was an inspiration for Santiago. Joseph Waldmeir’s 1957 essay “Confiteor Hominem: Ernest Hemingway’s Religion of Man” is a favorable critical reading of the novel. It argues that the religious overtones of The Old Man and the Sea are not peculiar to that book among his other works.

Robert P. Weeks argued that the novel was an unexpected divergence from the typical, realistic Hemingways’ earlier works. The Old Man and the Sea is considered one of Ernest Hemingway’s most influential works. The novel has been adapted for the screen three times, including a 1958 film starring Spencer Tracy and 1990 miniseries. It inspired the 2012 Kazakhstani movie The Old Man, which replaces the fisherman with a shepherd struggling to protect his flock from wolves. The book was reportedly a favorite of Saddam Hussein.