Book 1 Voices: A Reader
Unit: 1 Short Story
1. The empty Drum
2. A Tale
3. Amina
4. The Andhi Khola
5. The dog of Titwal
Unit: 2 Poems
6. New Year
7. In Just-
8. Dream Variations
9. The Brook
10. The Song
11. Now Light has Come
Unit: 3 The Play
12. The Sandbox(Play)
Unit: 4 The Essays
13. On Natural Death
14. A Change of the worlds
15. Hearts of Sorrow
16. Fundamentals of Scientific Management
17. The Green Frog Skin
18. The Right to Control One’s Learning
19. The myth of Sisyphus
20. The Enlightened Mind
BOOK:
2 Unlock level 4: reading and writing skills student book by Chris Sowton
Unit: 1 Short Story
"The Empty Drum published in 1891 but originally written in 1887" is a short story by Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. It is based on a folk story that reflects the Russian peasant's deep hatred of military service. It is based specifically on a folktale from the Volga region. A man named Emelian took a woman for his wife that the king of the country had an eye on. So the king decided to overwork the man till he died so he could then marry his wife. But each time the man completed his task on time. Even when the tasks were impossible like building a cathedral in a day or a river with ships in it by nightfall his wife assured him it would be done and it was as she said. But then the King came up with an extraordinary task. He asked the man to, "go there, don't know where and brings that, and don’t know what". The Empty Drum," in which a poor man marries a lovely woman. The king sees the woman and wants to claim her for his own, so hires the man and tries to assign him harder and harder tasks so that when he fails, he will be put to death and the king can be free to pursue the woman (who refused him). He meets every challenge until finally, he is asked to go "there, don't know where" and get "that, don't know what." That way, the king is advised, whatever he gets, the king can say it's the wrong thing. The man ends up following a path advised by his wife (we never quite completely understand her in this story.
Another way to sum up: Emelian is a worker who is put in danger of unimaginable tasks by a king. Emelian discovers an empty drum after being told to “go there, don't know where," and bring "that, don't know what.” He uses it to defeat the king and subdue the troops. A worker named Emelian once encountered a frog who later transformed into a lovely woman and became his wife. She caught the eye of a monarch who desired to steal her beauty. He made the decision to work Emelian hard until he died along with some servants. The worker did all tasks flawlessly with the help of his wife. The king then began to set impossible undertakings, such as paving a river in a single day or building a temple. Even this task was accomplished by Emelian with the aid of his magician wife. The servant must "go there, don't know where," and bring "that, don't know what," the monarch invents in his fury as the final challenge. Emelian decides to leave and goes back home. The wife, though, offers him superior guidance. He finds the elderly witch thanks to a magical tale ball. Emelian searches for and brings the king an empty leather drum after being directed to do so by her. Emelian starts to beat the drum after he declines. The entire army is now under his command. The laborer overthrows the king and wins back his wife.
3. A Tale by BP Koirala: “A Tale” is an ancient story written by Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala and later translated and edited by Shreedhar Lohani. It is a story of many years ago at the time of God’s existence. There are conflicts between gods and Demons and used to get support from a human. In those days, a man left his home, family, friends, village, and other happiness and went to the jungle to search for enlightenment. He started penance to get power like God. During his penance, in the winter season, he penances in the river, and in the summer season in front of the fire without eating and taking rest. The wild animals like rabbits, birds, deer, tigers and other animals are enjoying each other around him. After some time he got the power of God, however, he is still in his penance. Seeing this, God Indra feels jealous of enlightenment-him and makes the plan to destroy his penance. And God Indra sent a Nymph when he is in the river (water) that nymph also bathed there. Unfortunately, he opened his eyes and destroyed his penance. At the same time, he proposed to her, and both were involved in marriage. Again he started lining up domestic life. After passes of the years, they have two children. But their society’s people think that the nymph who destroyed his penance, they are looking at her in bad ways To sum up, this story may be trying to show us God’s jealousy while seeing others getting the same power God has. The pleasure of the enlightenment and pleasure of family is the same. To get spiritual happiness we have to sacrifice physical happiness. Also, it shows that a woman can steal and destroy anything that has if the man is attracted to that woman.
4. Amina by Shirley Saad: The main story Amina is written by Shirley Saad who is from Cairo, Egypt. Shirley Saad wants readers to reflect. In the story, I found that not only in China but also in other countries sons have a special social status in the community. The problem shown in the story made me classify China as the status of Arabia country although it is a developed country. The importance of a woman was to give birth to a baby boy for her family. If she fails to do so her social status would be diminished, be ridiculed by others, and put under great psychological pressure. The woman is expected to give birth until she gets a baby boy, apart from the issue of gender equality, why do women in the twenty-first century be used as a tool for procreation? This study is to analyze the patriarchal system and its impact on women through the women characters in Amina by Shirley Saad written in 1992. The theory used is the theory of patriarchy. The patriarchy issue found in the story actually has a lot of impact on women as the subordinate due to the social construction that considers women as inferior and men as superior. Because of that reason, men always perceive that they can control, dominate, and oppress women.
4. The Andhi Khola- Daulat Bikram Bista(1926-2002): One of the Nepali famous writers, Daulat Bikram Bista who was born in 1926 in Bhojpur and died in 2002 in Kathmandu, has some novels and short stories; his short stories are published in Pradarshini (1996), Galako Lali (1968), Chhaya (1974) and Gaunka Satra Chakka (1978). Bista received many renowned Nepali awards like Mahendra Pragya Puraskar (in 2030 B.S. for the novel Chapaiyaka Anuharharu), Madan Puraskar (in 2045 B.S. for the novel Jyoti Jyoti MaJyotiti), Sajha Puraskar (for Ansu Tesai Tesai Chhachalkincha). His first novel is Manjari published in 2015 B.S. He raises social issues in his writings, and realistically describes the rural circumstances The story The Andhikhola translated by Michael James Hutt in English, shows Lahore who has had his own influence, uniqueness, status, and personality on Nepali society. Nepali youths have a passion for joining the armed forces, particularly British and Indian armies; the youths expect to be called Lahore. Some get opportunities to be in Lahore, but many cannot procure the status of Lahore and call themselves Chaure, ‘scrawny’ because they could not enlist in Lahore to earn money or social status. Some Lahore comes to villages on a sojourn and some live in villages being retired from their job. Nepali fiction writer Bista has picked up a character soldier from society and portrayed the soldier in this short story. The Andhi Khola, demonstrates the motivation, rationale, and intention of nature and village boys who wish to join army forces; their paramount intention is to pay off debts and earn bread and butter as well as social status in the village.
They paint an authentic picture of rural society or point out some undesirable feature of it, and a story in which events simply happen to take place in a village context. Best depicts the passion and enthusiasm of village boys to be Lahore, a lost Lahore on the battlefield, and his psychologically disturbed wife in the village, some young lads from the Andhi Khola are on their way down to Gorakhpur to enlist at the cantonment there. They follow the recruiting sergeant along the level path, singing as they come. Mother, mother, do not weep so, my letters will come to you time after time,/ Just like the sentries patrolling. The young village boys enthusiastically move to India to join the post of soldier. This story addresses the subject of Nepalis leaving their homeland to serve in foreign armies as Gurkhas and touches on the motives such men have for joining foreign armies. They do not worry about the hardship but see money and social status after being in Lahore. The young men are taking this chance to sell their lives and pay off their debts: the chance is born of the tension between India and China. The village boys exchange their youths and live with a certain amount of money to manage their shortcomings. By seeing those young boys, Gangi remembers her husband who was recruited “to join the war with the Germans twenty twenty-five and she has psychologically been disturbed due to his lost husband in the war. Gangi’s husband “was singing the same song when he crossed the pass and disappeared forever. When she gazes on the way to the mountain peak, “a strange uneasy feeling persists in her. It reveals how the family members suffer at home when Lahore gets lost in the war. Gangi dreams of her husband being returned and being with her. Although the village boys are honest and well-disciplined in the cantonment, their thought and psyche are not to protect the foreign country from the enemy, but to earn money to make their lives easier: The young men are off to earn their rice abroad and may be to throw their lives away. The Andhi Khola land was in a rich man’s hands; their livestock was all mortgaged. They were not prepared to wrestle with poverty every day of life. They do not move away from hardship because the war pays the salary that feeds their stomachs and pays off loans. Gangi remembers all these that her husband held. As her husband says, gradually, the young men vanish. There is only the empty path twisting up that fearsome slope. Gangi goes on watching. Gangi’s husband is not alone to vanish in the war. Many young Nepali boys have lost their lives in wars and their beloved family members like Gangi have been waiting for Lahures and have psychologically been tortured for years; Gangi represents “a touching picture of a faithful wife waiting for her husband to return. the third-person narrator reveals the motives and mentality of village young boys who are enlisted in the Indian army. Their intention is to earn enough money to pay the loan and run their lives smoothly. Lahore sells his life for a well-paid salary. They have the life force, Jung says it is anima that causes village boys to fight in ferocious wars.
5. The dog of Titwal by Saadat Hasan Manto: The story, The dog of Titwal, is written by a Pakistani writer Saadat Hasan Manto who was born in 1912 and died in 1955 in Pakistan. The characters are a soldier in the Pakistani army, Bashir sings the song, Jhun Jhun is a dog, trusting and very friendly, Subedar Himmat Khan is a Pakistani Army, Indian soldier Singh who finds Jhun Jhun in the bushes and gives him a name, Indian army, Ganda Singh, and Indian army, Jamadar Harnam Singh is the first character introduced in the story. This is a very powerful story and has the same impact as Manto’s other story Toba Tek Singh’. Here the main character is a dog called Chapad Jhunjhun. It is caught between two armies - India and Pakistan. It does not belong to either, and in their anxiety to drive it away, the soldiers shoot it down. The hand that fed the dog -Corporal Harnam Singh, fires the last shot. This is irony.
The story takes location simply after the partitioning of India and when India and Pakistan went to war. What is fascinating about the placements is Manto offers every side a voice. The reader is given get entry to each of the Indian and Pakistani camps that are fighting in opposition to one some other and the extremely good aspect is that there is very little distinction between any of the guys in the camp particularly when it comes to their remedy of Jhun Jhun. It is as though he is handled as a trophy in each aspect until he no longer will become beneficial and is shot using Singh from the Indian Camp. Rather than viewing Jhun Jhun as a pet, each side uses him as a toy to promote their personal desires and ideals. The identical dreams and beliefs have prompted the warfare in the first place with each aspect thinking about themselves and their way of existence as higher than the different side. Though the war between each facet is described as being a waste of time at levels there is additionally a farcical component to the hostilities between every side. So shut to every different are they in proximity but no man is killed. The sole sufferer in the story is Jhun Jhun. The issue between those who participated in the battle used to be their religion. Manto additionally seems to be the usage of nighttime day to symbolize the blindness of each side. As predicted, one would locate it tough to see at night time. However, the killing of Jhun Jhun takes place in the daytime. All men and women on all facets use of Jhun Jhun, as a symbolic device to promote their nationality. Jhun Jhun symbolizes the lack of awareness of each side. Today even after over six decades after his death, his work seems so modern and admissible. The characters are largely relatable to the people we come across daily. His genius lies in the fact that with each passing day, his work seems more and more relevant.
When Jhun Jhun comes around the hill where the Pakistani is fixed, it seems to be angry Subedar Himmat Khan. He shoots at the dog, hitting some stones. Jhun Jhun continues to run toward him, and Subedar Himmat Khan continues to shoot at the dog. Meanwhile, Harnam Singh fires. The two opposing soldiers enjoy scaring the terrified dog until Harnam Singh wounds the dog. Still, Subedar Himmat Khan will not let Jhun Jhun return to the Pakistani camp. Khan tells the dog he must continue going toward the enemy camp. It is clear that, in Subedar Himmat Khan’s mind, fanaticism has overcome any rationality. When the wounded dog drags himself toward Harnam Singh, Jamadar Harnam Singh shoots and kills him. While the Pakistani Subedar Himmat Khan compares the killing to martyrdom, Harnam Singh says that Jhun Jhun “died a dog’s death.
6. New Year by Bisnu Kumari Waiba (Parijat): “New Year” is a nostalgic poem composed by Nepalese writer Parijat and later translated by Padma Devkota. Here, when the speaker sees the wind that races March away and the sun which climbs up the hill, she realizes the arrival of the new year. She pre-assumed nightingale flying, and speaking in the forest is the symbol of New Year’s arrival. She gives an example of Mason Wasps returning lazily to the same old nest, which is in the dark and dirty ceiling of her house at the time of the New Year. Seeing this she feels like painting the entire nature afresh. This poem tells us that we do not have to be too delighted due to the arrival of the New Year because our condition is the same. It is just like a normal day, it comes and goes. It also interprets that, human life is so busy with the arrival of the new year condition is the same because we have to follow our old routine, face old problems, and attend old classes so no need to be too much excited along with the new year. Also, Everyone is excited about the new day hoping that it brings new things but in reality, we have made our new day beautiful ourselves.
7. In Just by e. e. Cummings: The poem “in Just” is written by Edward Estlin Cummings who was born in1894 and died in 1962), he often writes in all lowercase as e e Cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. He wrote approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays, and several essays. He is often regarded as one of the most important American poets of the 20th century. "In Just" by E. E. Cummings is a poem about children losing their innocence before they were ready through various means. He writes ‘In Just' in free-verse form. Free-verse is a poetic form that has no rhyme scheme or metrical pattern. By referring to the balloon man as "goat-footed," Cummings is drawing a comparison between the balloon man and gods of chaos, such as Pan or Satan. This makes it seem like Cummings is warning his reader not to grow up too soon. The poem delves into themes of spring, rebirth, and innocence, and indicates a darker theme of corruption. The poem takes the reader through a few, confusing, and spring-like images. He speaks about the mud that suddenly appears everywhere and then later, the puddles/pools of water. Among all this are children playing. They stop what they’re doing and run or dance to the side of a whistled balloon man. The poem concludes with the man continuing his whistling and the speaker alluding to more children coming to his side.
8. Dream Variations by Langston Hughes (901-1967): The American poet Langston Hughes originally published "Dream Variations" in his 1926 collection titled The Weary Blues. The poem's speaker dreams of dancing through the "white day" before resting at night, which is as "dark" as the speaker himself. The speaker’s "dreams" can be read as a metaphor for Black joy and Black survival: through his dancing, the speaker finds joy and freedom despite white society’s oppressive gaze, as well as a sense of belonging, safety, and shared identity in the Black community. I dream of spreading my arms wide, right in front of the sun. I would dance, spin, and spin some more until the short day was over. I would rest in the dimly lit evening underneath a big, slender tree. Then night would gently arrive, a night that is Black just like I am. “Dream Variations’ Themes are: Struggling with Racist Oppression, & Black Art, Joy, and Survival. The speaker’s dancing symbolizes joy and freedom. The Tree, the speaker imagines resting under simply symbolizes the natural world. Alone under this tree, the speaker is free from the social constructs that lead to segregation and racism. The setting of “Dream Variations” is the speaker’s dream. The speaker imagines finding a place in "the sun” where he can open his arms wide in a gesture of freedom. He imagines dancing in the sunlight until the “white day” is over and then resting underneath a “tall tree” in the evening. Finally, the night arrives, and it is "Dark" and “Black” as he is, offering the speaker comfort and relief.
9. The Brook by Laxmi Pd. Devkota (1909-1959): The poem “The Brook” is composed by the famous Nepali poet Devkota, which is an onomatopoeic poem in English whose melody surpasses/is better than that of “The Brook (1886)” by Alfred Lord Tennyson, a British Poet. In the brook of Devkota, there are 17 stanzas, whereas Tennyson has 12 stanzas. Devkota explains in the poem the brook, or stream starts a long and winding journey across from the Mountain where the medicine serpentine and roots fall on it to join up with a large river. Pushed inside this apparently sweet poem about a little stream are darker, more poignant themes of death, human impermanence, and nature's indifference to humankind, though the poem also emphasizes nature's sheer beauty. The poem captures both the fleetingness/shortness of human life and the faithfulness of nature. The speaker says the brook seems like the silver over the stone that makes the fine music and it carries pebbles and beautifully sings the song way. In this way, this poem is the explanation of natural resources cum human life. The poet speaks in the voice of a brook, or a small stream, and tells us about the journey it goes through to finally merge with the river.
Downlines of pine and eglantine
Serpentine in my falling
I touch the woodbine and the vines
Mellifluously/silently calling.
Calling on links of ripply winks
To ocean anemone
On silver kinks that pass through chinks
Of mountain chalcedony.
On stones of silver tones, I ring
Make music of the mountain
Intonating notations fine
To make his sonant fountains.
I linger as a singer
Gingerly in my saree
Of silver threads and leap adown
Singing my charivari.
I wobble on my ripples
In which the sunbeams dabble
I double as I babble on
And on the pebbles babble.
I rally all my ripples
And make a sparkling sally
And dally down to daffodils
Into a dappled valley.
My silver bells a-jingle
Mingle upon the shingles
I jangle as a wrangle on
Illuming little ingles.
I titter as I glitter
Beneath the blossom's Twitter Twitter
I fritter fairy jewels
Borne on my silver litter.
I murmur, murmur merrily
A marine funny funny
Remembering my marine home
Byrumorsumours running.
By pleasant haunts of pheasants
And rainbow wings aflutter;
By peewit-haunted woodlands
I spurt, I race, I sputter.
I wander, wander as I run
Meandering in meshes
I squander all my music
Philandering my cresses.
I wield my water chisel
Rounding the angled boulder;
And carve my fretted bank curves
Singing a fairy molder.
On earth's incline, I wind and twine
Upon her pull I scurry;
To find her random wrinkles
Romances in my hurry.
Liquidly skidding scud I down
Love's path divinely fretted
The sunshine on the tears of life
In lovely lays all netted.
I purl and whirl and twirl my kinks
A girl in woodlands merry
I swirl, my silver scarves unfurl,
Curl fairy pearls to the ferry.
By kindling briar blooms I flow
Spindling on brindled gravel
I scintillate on diamonds
As down the thorps I travel.
I murmur, murmur, murmur on,
Remembering my ocean;
For life is flow, the reaching slow,
But quick is quick emotion.
10. The Song by Balkrishna Sama (8 February 1903 - 20 June 1981): This poem “The Song” is composed by a Nepali poet Balkrishna Sama who was born in 1903 and died in 1981. It has three stanzas.
In the
first stanza, the speaker explains the god Krishna of Mathura who plays the
flute charmingly there. In the second stanza, the melody of the flute makes the
cows stop eating grass, fish come out of the water, etc and in the third
stanza, he says the milkmaids have happiness and tears and listen to his tone,
everywhere there is peace and joy.
Krishna played on the
charmingly juicy flute.
In the town of Mathura,
In every house
In every room
In every fold of the
heart
The air began to
tremble in concord/harmony with the flute.
Krishna played on the
charmingly juicy flute.
"The grasses fell
down from the mouth of the cows,
fishshes came out of
the water.
The peacocks were lost
in meditation,
So they dropped down
their feathers on the Lord,
And the cuckoos and the
nightingales,
Tearing off their
breasts with their own nails
Fell down on the
branches of the trees in concord with the flute.
Krishna played on the charmingly juicy flute.
"The milkmaids
began to weep bitterly in happiness,
After some time like
the golden images they remained motionless,
The river of adoration
was profusely flowing,
And Krishna began to
smile,
The whole universe
dozed in ecstasy,
Heaven and the
Earth kissed each other,
The eyelashes of the
milkmaids began to be entangled in concord with the flute.
Krishna played on the charmingly juicy flute.
11. Now Light Has Come "Jyotiragat" The Rigveda: The Vedas are mankind’s oldest scriptures considered by Hindus to be a direct revelation of God. The Rig Veda is not the whole shruti, but it vocalizes the most central part of it and lays the foundations for all the rest. It is appropriate, then, to conclude this anthology with the final mantra of the Rig Veda, just as we opened it with the invocation of the first. Having passed through the long road of praise, praise, meditation, and sacrifice having journeyed through the upper kingdoms of the Gods and the underworld of the demons, having reached the loftiest peaks of mystical speculation and touched the lowest depths of the human soul, having gazed, as far as we could, upon the cosmos and upon the divine, we arrive at this last stanza, which is dedicated to the human world and is a prayer for harmony and peace among Men using the protection of Agni and all the Gods, but ultimately through the acceptance by Men of their human calling. The last mantra knows only Man's ordinary language and Man's own cherished ideas; it comes back to the simplicity of the fact of being human: a union of hearts and a oneness of spirit, the overcoming of isolating individualisms by harmonious living together, because Man as a person is always society and yet not plural. He is a unity with so many strings that they incur the risk of wars and strife, but also offer the possibility of marvelous harmony and concord.
Play
12. The Sandbox by Edward Albee (1926-2016 America man): The Sandbox” is a 15-minute act one-act Edward Albee that premiered in 1960. A companion piece to Albee’s “The American Dream,” the short play uses some of the same characters in an absurdist/ridiculous premise of Mommy and Daddy bringing Grandma to the beach to bury her in a sandbox and wait for her to die. “The Sandbox” considers some of the same themes that would undergird Albee’s later masterpiece, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” satirically commenting on the hypocrisy and emptiness of middle-class American life.
The stage is set up as a beach in broad daylight. The play opens with a muscular young man doing mostly arm-based exercises near a sandbox on the beach. In the stage directions, Albee specifies that his movements should look like wings flapping. A middle-aged couple, Mommy and Daddy, enter and begin to complain about the weather. The young man greets them in a friendly way. As they try to figure out where to put grandma, a musician comes out on stage and Mommy directs him to start playing. Mommy and Daddy drag Grandma on stage by dragging her under her elbows. She is unaffected and acts like a moody child. Deciding that a sandbox is a secure place, Mommy and Daddy position her in the sand and set up chairs facing her, only to have Grandma throw some of the sand in Mommy’s face. In annoyed and indifferent tones, Mommy and Daddy coldly discuss how burdensome it is to take care of Grandma. Suddenly, Grandma sheds her childish persona, tells the musician to stop playing, and chats with the young man. When she asks him his name, the young man nods – the movie studio where he is an actor hasn’t given him one yet. Grandma then speaks directly to the audience. She has no idea why her daughter has brought her to live in the city. After all, Grandma has spent her whole life on a farm where she got married at 17, was widowed at 30, and managed to raise Mommy and run the farm by herself. Now that Mommy has married the rich Daddy, they’ve brought Grandma to live with them in the big city, where they’ve given her space under the stove, an army blanket, and her own plate. The musician is again told to start playing and suddenly the lights dim to indicate that it is nighttime. A loud rumble is heard off-stage – something that Mommy and Daddy acknowledge not as thunder or some other in-world sound, but as a noise produced off-stage during the play that they are in. Nevertheless, they take the music, darkness, and noise to mean that it’s Grandma’s time to die. Mommy pretends to be deeply grief-stricken while Daddy compliments her on how bravely she is holding up.
Even
though Grandma is still talking to them – mocking their emoting and pointing
out that she refuses to die without her own say-so – Mommy and Daddy quickly
wrap up their mourning, talk about the importance of moving on, and leave.
Grandma realizes that she can no longer move. At this point, the young man
kisses her forehead and interrupts her chit-chat to tell her that he has an
important line to say because he is actually the Angel of Death. In a wooden
monotone, he says,, “I come for you.” Grandma warmly and reassuringly
compliments him on his delivery and then smiles and closes her eyes. The
musician begins to play again and the play ends.
Essays
1. On natural death" By Lewis Thomas (America 1913-19930 Categories: Death Psychology): The strategy of Lewis Thomas's "On Natural Death" is to invite the reader to a new way of thinking about death and pain. Many of us don't give it much thought, but the reality is that all living things will die. Although we have all been affected indirectly by death, we rarely consider the pain it causes, either physically or emotionally. Thomas intentionally develops a plan to ignite and sustain the reader's interest in his argument by presenting examples ranging from the most basic forms of life to the more complicated, us humans. He will raise more questions about why he believes in this way after he has the audience's attention.
Thomas starts off with a casual tone of information that he maintains throughout his speech. He says there are "so many new books about death" in the opening sentence. His initial impact was to picture how simple it would be to find them by putting them among the sex manuals, home improvement and health books, and home diet books. He wants the reader to consider how amazing dying has become and his ambivalent/dual feelings about it in the first paragraph, which has a mildly ironic sympathetic tone. However, he is luring us into his plot and is aware of his strategy. After his introduction, Thomas describes an Elm tree in his backyard that one day was a normal-looking elm, and the next weekend it was gone. He wants the reader to understand or just think, "Was this a natural death for the elm tree, or was a life taken from it?" He continues with a dying field mouse in the jaws of a housecat. In this paragraph, he introduces why he feels so angry about unnatural deaths. Obviously, he doesn't think that a field mouse in a cat's jaw is natural. He thought the evolution of cats through nature was disastrous. This one event as a young man really affected him and created some inner anger. With the current thoughts and experiments of death, Thomas has successfully instructed the reader toward his direction of thought. By using persuasive language and rhetorical writing style, he made his essay a convincing argument that death is a natural and exotic experience everyone is eventually faced with. The persuasive style of writing like parallel sentences, logos, ethos, and pathos draws the reader into the essay and makes him understand the idea of death. The reader gets the impression that natural death becomes an extraordinary and exhilarating experience all beings are destined to face.
2. A Change of Worlds by Chief Seattle (American man who talks about the accommodations of white settlers 1790-1866): Chief Seattle, a public leader, delivered the speech. He was also the chief of the Suquamish and Duwamish tribes of Native Americans (Red Indians). The speech was in response to the American government's treaty for purchasing Native Americans' land. The speech sheds light on White people's disregard for the environment. Furthermore, it emphasizes the degradation of ecological balance and a call to protect nature. As a result, the speech is highly regarded. Let us take a close look at Chief Seattle's Speech Summary. He was worried about environmental degradation and its probable effects on mankind if we do not take effective measures to protect nature. According to him, nature has assisted him and his races for a long time but lack of proper measures will put the future in great trouble. Then he tests his dependability by comparing his words to stars that never change. Likewise, he will not change his position in response to the land treaty. He also discusses his people's sad reality. Their population has declined over time, and they continue to be scarce, he mentions the help offered by the President if they agreed to the land treaty. Cultural differences between the two races, he claims, are to blame for their lack of mutual understanding. Chief Seattle's essay is filled with arguments in support of native land rights and environmental stewardship. He hopes, however, that their good father in Washington will protect them. His brave warriors would also prove to be great strengths.
3. Hearts of Sorrow by James M. Freeman (born 1936 American anthropologist): James Freeman, born in 1936, is an American journalist specializing in economics, assistant editorial page editor at The Wall Street Journal, and author. Freeman is a graduate of Yale College. After graduation, he served as an investor advocate at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The first-person narrative in this essay provides a glimpse into the personal lives of fourteen Vietnamese-Americans who were devastated by war and the refugee experience but who were able to create new lives in a new cultural environment. Vietnamese refugees and immigrants' story that cover their lives in Vietnam before the war, when they were ruled by the French, then the Communists, and finally the Japanese. There were stories told about the old, the young, men and women, those who had communist influences, those who did not, those who seemed to adapt and appreciate America, those who did not, the poor, and those who made money. Written by an anthropologist, he appeared to simply relate facts, but those facts are so compelling that you can't help but be drawn in. I gained a better understanding of the Vietnam War and the true failure of America's fight there.
4. Fundamentals of Scientific Management by Frederick Winslow Taylor (American Engineer-1856-1915): Winslow, Frederick Taylor was a forerunner of the Scientific Management movement, and he and his colleagues were the first to conduct scientific research on the workplace. They looked into how work was completed and how this affected worker productivity. Taylor's philosophy was founded on the notion that forcing people to work as hard as they could was inefficient when compared to optimizing how the work was done. Taylor published The Principles of Scientific Management in 1909. In this, he proposed that increase by optimizing and simplifying jobs. He also advocated for workers and managers to collaborate with one another. This was very different from how work was usually done in businesses previously. A factory manager at the time had little contact with the workers and left them to produce the required product on their own. There was no standardization, and a worker's primary motivation was often to keep his or her job, so there was no incentive to work as quickly or efficiently as possible. Taylor believed that all workers were motivated by money, so he promoted the idea of "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work." While advancing his career at a U.S. steel manufacturer, he designed workplace experiments to determine optimal performance levels.
5. The Green Frog Skin by John Lame Deer (1903-1976-Am: The essay “The Green Frog Skin” is written by an American writer John Lame Deer. In this essay, he discusses money, which he sees as the major problem with American life. As a critic, he brings to the American consumer society a native Indian’s perspective on the meaning of life and wealth. His observations are true of all societies in the world based on money. “The green frog skin – that’s what I call a dollar bill,” he said. “In our attitude toward it lies the biggest difference between Indians and whites.” He added that “For the white man each blade of grass or spring of water has a price tag on it.” In fact, in the green frog-skin world everything has a price tag – but this world will not last. Visions were of vital importance to Lame Deer, and he compared visions to art and to the imagination: “The world in which you paint a picture in your mind, a picture which shows things different from what your eyes see, that is the real world from which I get my visions. I tell you this is the real world, not the Green Frog Skin World. That’s only a bad dream, a streamlined/updated, smog-filled nightmare/terrible.” I felt that Lame Deer was right, that the green frog-skin world cannot last. How can a civilization last, when its governing force is something so fleeting and artificial as money? And yet … this bad dream worlds power – the power to rip open the earth, build huge cities out of concrete and steel, power to down whole forests in weeks or months, to squadrons of planes to the far side of the world, and drop deluges of bombs? How can a society, which stupidly believes its price tags are the essential measure of value, still have the power to dance in both awesome and awesomely destructive ways?
In one form or another that question flickered through my mind for decades after I had abandoned the struggle to make sense of economics. Gradually, though, some pieces of a puzzle fell into place. My winding path led me, some 40 years later, back to a focus on economics – this time with the help of bio-physical economics and regrowth theory. With these ideas, I was able to understand the nature of power in the green frog-skin world and to understand further why the frog-skin world cannot and will not last. I hope how economics is connected to every aspect of daily life. Nearly fifty years ago, Lame Deer could see clearly that the human race was in trouble. His life had begun shortly after the era of the Ghost Dance. The Ghost Dancers, from many indigenous groups across the lowlands, danced in the hope of a sudden transformation: “The earth would roll up like a carpet with all the white man’s ugly things – the stinking/bad smell new animals, sheep, and pigs, the fences/barriers, the telegraph poles, the mines, and factories. Underneath would be the wonderful old-new world as it had been before the white fat-takers came.” This rolling-up of the world didn’t happen in the 1890s, and the memory of the Ghost Dance was nearly snuffed out by the massacre at Wounded Knee. In Lame Deer’s vision, though, it was still vital to hang on to the hope kindled by this dance: “I am trying to bring the ghost dance back, but interpret it in a new way. I think it has been misunderstood, but after eighty years I believe that more and more people are sensing what we meant when we prayed for a new earth and that now not only Indians but everybody has become an ‘endangered species.’ So let the Indians help you bring on a new earth without pollution or war. Let’s roll up the world. It needs it.” In 2020 it’s just as true and even more urgent: we need a new earth without pollution or war. The green frog-skin world, ruled by the price tag on each blade of grass and each spring of water, threatens the survival of thousands of species, us included. We need to bring a new dream into being, beyond the bad dream of the green frog-skin world.
6. The Right to
Control One’s Learning by John Holt (1923-1985 American):
Next, an example is given about giving drugs to a young one for child with learning disabilities to learn the material that may not wish to know but is forced to. This previous example brings me to the next aspect, the consequences of bad teachers. All the control teachers have on a child has a big impact on the kind of person that child will become the author mentioned that parents have an important role in the decision-making of the child. For example, the son of the author's friend decided to continue going to school even though he had a tough teacher. This is probably because the child's mother supported whether the child decides to attend class or not. The final argument the author uses to show that school is not a place where a child should feel safe and protected from the outside world. The setting of a school is just as bad, if not worst than that of the outside world. When comparing the setting of a school and that of work, school is a much tougher environment to be in. The jealousy and competitiveness between peers can make it a very difficult and stressful place to be for a child. Also, the pressure the teachers put on students to do better than the next on every assignment or test and being judged as less intelligent if this is not accomplished can be quite a lot to deal with for a child. Speaking about this, I do believe that general schooling is necessary; students can still achieve similar results without being forced into an unjust and strict environment. Holt provides various points, including students’ freedom of choice, school being too oppressive, and unnecessary teachings at school.
7. The myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus 1913-1960 French: The central concern of The Myth of Sisyphus is what Camus calls “the absurd/ridiculous.” Camus claims that there is a fundamental conflict between what we want from the universe (whether it is meaning, order, or reason) and what we find in the universe (formless chaos). We will never find in life itself the meaning that we want to find. Either we will discover that meaning through a leap of faith, by placing our hopes in a God beyond this world, or we will conclude that life is meaningless. Camus opens the essay by asking if this latter conclusion that life is meaningless necessarily leads one to commit suicide. If life has no meaning, does that mean life is not worth living? If that were the case, we would have no option but to make a leap of faith or to commit suicide, says Camus. Camus is interested in pursuing a third possibility: that we can accept and live in a world devoid of meaning or purpose. The absurd is a contradiction that cannot be reconciled, and any attempt to reconcile this contradiction is simply an attempt to escape from it: facing the absurd is struggling against it. Camus claims that existentialist philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Chestov, and Jaspers, and phenomenologists such as Husserl, all confront the contradiction of the absurd but then try to escape from it. Existentialists find no meaning or order in existence and then attempt to find some sort of transcendence or meaning in this very meaninglessness. Living with the absurd, Camus suggests, is a matter of facing this fundamental contradiction and maintaining constant awareness of it. Facing the absurd does not entail suicide, but, on the contrary, allows us to live life to its fullest. Camus identifies three characteristics of the absurd life: revolt (we must not accept any answer or reconciliation in our struggle), freedom (we are absolutely free to think and behave as we choose), and passion (we must pursue a life of rich and diverse experiences).
Camus gives four examples of the absurd life: the seducer, who pursues the passions of the moment; the actor, who compresses the passions of hundreds of lives into a stage career; the conqueror, or rebel, whose political struggle focuses his energies; and the artist, who creates entire worlds. Absurd art does not try to explain the experience, but simply describes it. It presents a certain worldview that deals with particular matters rather than aiming for universal themes. The book ends with a discussion of the myth of Sisyphus, who, according to the Greek myth, was punished for all eternity to roll a rock up a mountain only to have it roll back down to the bottom when he reaches the top. Camus claims that Sisyphus is the ideal absurd hero and that his punishment is representative of the human condition: Sisyphus must struggle perpetually and without hope of success. So long as he accepts that there is nothing more to live than this absurd struggle, then he can find happiness in it, says Camus. Camus appends/adds his essay with a discussion of the works of Franz Kafka. He ultimately concludes that Kafka is an existentialist, who, like Kierkegaard, chooses to make a leap of faith rather than accept his absurd condition. However, Camus admires Kafka for expressing humanity's absurd predicament so perfectly.
8. The Enlightened Mind by The Buddha: The English term enlightenment is the Western translation in 19th C of various Buddhist terms, most notably Bodhi and Bimutti which means the knowledge or wisdom, or awakened intellect, of a Buddha. The verbal root budh- means "to awaken," and its literal meaning is closer to awakening. Although the term buddhi is also used in other Indian philosophies and traditions, its most common usage is in the context of Buddhism. Vimukti is the freedom from or release of the fetters and hindrances.
a. It is proper to doubt. Don’t be led by holy scriptures, mere logic or inference/use, or by the authority of religious teachers. But when you realize that something is unwholesome and bad for you, give it up. And when you realize that something is wholesome and good for you, do it.
b. As a mother at the risk of her life watches over her only child, so let every one cultivate a boundlessly compassionate mind towards all beings.
c. When you see the unborn, uncreated, unconditioned, you are liberated from everything born, created, and conditioned.
d. A man walking along a high road sees a great river, its near bank dangerous and frightening, its far bank safe. He collects sticks and foliage/leaves, makes a raft/bundle, paddles across the river, and reaches the other shore. He takes the raft and put it on his head wherever he goes. Would he be properly using the raft?
e. Be a lamp yourself. Be your own confidence. Hold to the truth within yourself, as to the only truth.
In the end paddles these things matter most. How well did you love it? How deeply did you let go?
f. Behold, O monks, this is my last advice to you. All component things in the world are changeable. They are not last,. Work hard to gain your own salvation/rescue.