MODERNISM- Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway

Hills Like White Elephants

Summary:

How It All Goes Down

The story opens with a description of the view of the river Ebro, and the white hills (mountains) beyond it, from a train station in Spain. An American man and a woman are having some beers outside the station bar as they wait for the train to Barcelona.

As the couple drinks, the woman tells that man that the hills in the distance remind her of "white elephants." This sparks a little argument between them, which the woman sidesteps by pointing out that something has been painted on the beaded curtain that hangs over the doorway of the bar. The painting advertises a liquor called Anis del Toro, which they decide to try.

Their conversation remains tense, and soon the man begins trying to convince the woman, Jig, to have an abortion, but only, he says, if she wants to. She wants to know if this will solve their problems, and get their relationship back on track. He tells her that their relationship is on track, but that he is distracted because of his "worry" over the pregnancy. She agrees to have the abortion, but says she is only agreeing because she no longer cares about herself. The man says she shouldn’t do it for that reason. 

She expresses despair over the situation and a feeling that all is now lost. The man tries to reassure her that this is not the case, and finally tells her (without actually saying it) that he is willing to marry her instead, but makes it clear he would prefer that she have the abortion. She becomes anxious and asks him to stop talking. He responds by saying he doesn’t want her to have the abortion if she doesn’t want it. Jig threatens to scream.

The woman who has been serving their drinks tells them that the train will soon arrive, and the man gets up and takes their luggage over to the train stop. Then he goes into the bar and has another Anis del Toro. When he gets back to Jig, sitting at the table outside, she gives him a smile. He asks her if she "feel[s]" better," and she responds by insinuating she never felt bad in the first place. And that’s the end of the story.

The Theory:

             Modernism display a relatively strong sense of cohesion and similarity across genres and locales. Furthermore, writers who adopted the modern point of view often did so quiet deliberately and self consciously. Indeed, a central preoccupation of the modernism is with the inner-self and consciousness.

Criticism:

           Hills Like White Elephants is a short story by Ernest Hemingway which is about a young couple drinking liquor and contemplating on an abortion while waiting for a train. The short story is a good example of a modern literature that expresses many of it's characteristics. One of its characteristics is the questioning of the traditional value referring to the abortion. Another characteristic that solidifies that the story falls under the theory of modernism is the experiments on how the story is told referring to the usage of dialogue. by the characters.The story also lacks happy ending. Hills Like White Elephants uses tools and characteristics common to Modern literature.

ARCHETYPAL LITERARY CRITICISM- Goddess of Spring (Walt Disney) directed by Wilfred Jackson

Summary:

In the world of long, long ago, the animals and flowers of the forest enjoy perfect weather all year 'round, courtesy of the beauteous, redheaded Goddess of Spring. Persephone, seated on a throne while animals and flowers dance happily around her and birds place a floral coronet on her head. At this point Pluto, God of the Underworld ascends from beneath the earth on a rotating platform and, as his demons chase away Persephone's friends, declares that he will make her his wife. He takes her to the Underworld, where the demons celebrate; some dance around fires while another plays a hellish organ. Though she is given gold and jewels, Persephone is deppressed, causing the world above to become an icy wasteland. She pleads to return to the earth, and is allowed to do so once a year, provided she returns. This differentiates the seasons, spring and summer taking place while Persephone is allowed on earth.

The Theory:

               Archetypal criticism argues that archetypes the form and function of the literary work that a text's meaning is shaped by cultural and psychological myths. Archetypes are the unknowable basic forms personified or concretized in recurring images, symbols and patterns.

Criticism:

            The Goddess of Spring is a Silly Symphonies animated Disney short film. It falls under the theory of Archetypal Criticism simply because of the usage of mythology as the central theme of the story. The recognizable effects god and Goddesses was also being used and particularly concerned in making the story full of fantasy.

DARWINISM- The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins

Summary:

In his choice of the title for this book, Dawkins refers to the watchmaker analogy made famous by William Paley in his book Natural Theology. Paley, arguing more than fifty years before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, held that the complexity of living organisms was evidence of the existence of a divine creator by drawing a parallel with the way in which the existence of a watch compels belief in an intelligent watchmaker. Dawkins, in contrasting the differences between human design and its potential for planning with the workings of natural selection, therefore dubbed evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker.

In order to dispel the idea that complexity cannot arise without the intervention of a "creator", Dawkins uses the example of the eye. Beginning with a simple organism, capable only of distinguishing between light and dark, in only the crudest fashion, he takes the reader through a series of minor modifications, which build in sophistication until we arrive at the elegant and complex mammalian eye. In making this journey, he points to several creatures whose various seeing apparatus are, whilst still useful, living examples of intermediate levels of complexity.

In developing his argument that natural selection can explain the complex adaptations of organisms, Dawkins' first concern is to illustrate the difference between the potential for the development of complexity as a result of pure randomness, as opposed to that of randomness coupled with cumulative selection. He demonstrates this by the example of the weasel program. Dawkins then describes his experiences with a more sophisticated computer model of artificial selection implemented in a program also called The Blind Watchmaker, which was sold separately as a teaching aid (open source implementations are currently available, as are more advanced versions of the idea).

The program displayed a two dimensional shape (a “biomorph”) made up of straight black lines, the length, position, and angle of which were defined by a simple set of rules and instructions (analogous to a genome). Adding new lines (or removing them) based on these rules offered a discrete set of possible new shapes (mutations), which were displayed on screen so that the user could choose between them. The chosen mutation would then be the basis for another generation of biomorph mutants to be chosen from, and so on. Thus, the user, by selection, could steer the evolution of biomorphs. This process often produced images which were reminiscent of real organisms for instance beetles, bats, or trees. Dawkins speculated that the unnatural selection role played by the user in this program could be replaced by a more natural agent if, for example, colourful biomorphs could be selected by butterflies or other insects, via a touch sensitive display set up in a gardenIn an appendix to a later edition of the book (1996), Dawkins explains how his experiences with computer models led him to a greater appreciation of the role of embryological constraints on natural selection. In particular, he recognized that certain patterns of embryological development could lead to the success of a related group of species in filling varied ecological niches, though he continued to maintain that this should not be confused with the ideas associated with group selection. He dubbed this insight the evolution of evolvability.

After arguing that evolution is capable of explaining the origin of complexity, near the end of the book Dawkins uses this to argue against the existence of God: "a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution ... must already have been vastly complex in the first place ..." He calls this "postulating organized complexity without offering an explanation."

In its preface, Dawkins states that he wrote the book "to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence."

The theory:

               Darwinism integrate literary concepts with a modern evolutionary understanding of the evolved and adopted characteristics of the human nature. It suggests that all knowledge about human imagination can and should be subsumed within the evolutionary perspective.

Criticism:

                The Blind Watchmaker is a book that presents an explanation and argument for the theory of Evolution by means of natural selection. It falls under the theory Darwinism because the novel itself represents an evolutionary perspective. it is about the contrasting differences between human design and workings of the natural selection. It is also a theory that in principle can solve the mystery of human existence.

TERRITORIALISM- A sky so close by Betool Khedairi

Summary:

The narrator, whose name we never learn, is a victim of sorts. Not of her own oppressive government; not of neighboring Iran or even the United States, though war-time violence will certainly affect her life; but of the constant culture-based battling of her parents. The narrator's mother, who insists that she attend the School of Music and Ballet and forbids her to play with the shoeless neighbor children, is English. Her father, with whom the narrator identifies more (she refers to him as "you," as though writing the story to and for him), is Iraqi. The narrator is constantly pulled first in one direction then another, never knowing which language she should speak to stop her parents' yelling; aware as she matures that she is somehow a pawn in their east-meets-west conflict. It is a struggle Khedairi must be familiar with, as her own mother is from Scotland and her father is from Iraq.

The first argument witnessed by the reader involves the narrator's enrollment in the School of Music and Ballet. Her father insists that she will become spoiled, to which her mother retorts: "But the schools here are so deprived." Although attending the school does awaken a love of dance in the narrator, at the age of six, all she cares about are the forbidden hours of play with her beloved neighbor and best friend, Khaddouja. For several years the troubled family continues life on the small farm, the mother becoming slightly more acclimated to life in Iraq and both parents placing more emphasis on their daughter's education. Then, a turning point: wading barefoot in a stagnant river causes Khaddouja to become critically ill. With the death of her best friend, her father's failing health, and the family's move into the city of Baghdad, the narrator begins to change from a girl into the person she will become.

As her father's health continues to decline and her mother spends more time with her English friend David, the adolescent narrator begins to learn her father's trade, which has to do with naming food flavorings and scents. Her mother drifts further from her family until finally her husband cannot handle her western indiscretions and begins trying to impose restrictions, claiming he's given her "too many liberties." One evening, after lessons, her father says: "My daughter, there's something very important you must know about." 

"You're getting a divorce?"

"No, a war with Iran has started." And so it begins, filling life with blackouts, supply shortages, "volunteering" toward the war effort, and the constant fear of bombing raids. Although many students at the School of Music and Ballet leave to attend "real" schools, art having become superfluous, the narrator stays to study with a ballet dancer referred to only as Madame. Madame becomes a mentor and driving force in the narrator's life, and even introduces her to a man who will become her first lover.

The third stage of the novel takes place after the narrator has gone to university and her father has died of a heart attack. Her mother, having lost her husband and her lover as well, is now sick herself, with breast cancer, and wants to return home to England. This is the point where the detached, impersonal tone of the writing begins to become, in my opinion, a flaw in what is otherwise a beautiful novel. The narrator moves to England to be with her mother in her illness, and it is clear that she is not content with the decision, though she never says why. We are left to guess at her motivations and feelings as her mother does not get any better and the United States begins bombing Iraq in the Gulf War, a conflict that this time the narrator is only aware of through news reports and Madame's sporadic letters. We do, however, absorb the feeling of melancholy and helplessness through the narrator's failed English trysts and friendships, and the relentless gray and rain of the country where her mother was born.

The Theory:

             Territorialism discusses how an individual tries to protect his/her possessions. it is creating a specific boundaries or markers on certain things.

Criticism:

             A Sky So Close by Betool Khedairi is a novel that falls under the theory of Territorialism. The story is about the young the young woman whose name was never mentioned recalls her childhood in a small village of Zafraniya, outside of Baghdad. The whole story was enclosed with a war between Baghdad and Iran claiming for a territory. The whole story rotates on how the war affect the lives of people and especially the girl's emotional and psychological aspect.

CULTURAL STUDIES- Apocalypto by Mel Gibson

Summary:

While hunting tapir in the Mesoamerican jungle, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), his father Flint Sky (Morris Birdyellowhead), and their fellow tribesmen encounter a procession of traumatized refugees. The group's leader explains that their lands were ravaged, and asks for permission to pass through the jungle. When Jaguar Paw and his tribesmen return home, Flint Sky tells his son not to let the refugees' fear infect him.

The next morning, after Jaguar Paw wakes from a nightmare involving the refugee leader, he sees warriors entering the village and setting the huts on fire. The raiders, led by Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo), attack and subdue the villagers. Jaguar Paw slips out with his pregnant wife Seven (Dalia Hernández) and his little son Turtles Run (Carlos Emilio Báez), lowering them by vine into a deep vertical cave, tying the vine off so they could climb out later. Jaguar Paw then kills a raider and returns to help the village. He is eventually subdued and a raider named Middle Eye (Gerardo Taracena), whom Jaguar Paw almost killed, slits Flint Sky's throat while the bound Jaguar Paw can only watch. Before the raiders leave with their prisoners, Snake Ink, one of the raider captains, notices Jaguar Paw staring toward the cave. Suspicious of the tied-off vine hanging into the cave, he cuts it, trapping Seven and Turtles Run. Jaguar Paw and the other captives are then led off into the jungle.

A short distance from the village they join another group of raiders who have captured the refugees Jaguar Paw met the day before. Later, Cocoa Leaf, a wounded captive tied to the same pole as Jaguar Paw nearly tumbles off a cliff, but Jaguar Paw and the others are able to pull him back up with incredible effort. Though Middle Eye, who is guarding them, is impressed by this show of brute power, he kills Cocoa Leaf by cutting him loose and pushing him off the cliff.

The raiding party march toward a Mayan city, encountering razed forests and failed maize crops, along with villages decimated by plague. A little girl dying of plague prophesies that there will be a solar eclipse and a man running with a jaguar will bring the raiders to those who will scratch out the earth and end their world. In the city's outskirts, where the prisoners come upon slaves working in lime quarries, the female captives are sold as slaves while the males are escorted to the top of a step pyramid. The high priest sacrifices several captives, including Jaguar Paw's friend Curl Nose (Amílcar Ramírez), by cutting out their beating hearts before beheading them. When Jaguar Paw is about to be sacrificed, a solar eclipse occurs. The high priest looks at the emperor and the two share a knowing smile while the people below panic at the phenomenon. The priest declares the god Kukulkan is satisfied with the sacrifices. He asks Kukulkan to let light return to the world and the eclipse passes. The crowd cheers in amazement and the priest orders that the remaining captives be led away and "disposed of".

Zero Wolf takes the captives to a ball court. The captives are released in pairs and forced to run the length of the open space within the ball court, offering Zero Wolf's men some target practice, with a cynical promise of freedom should they reach the end of the field alive. Zero Wolf's son, Cut Rock (Ricardo Díaz Mendoza), is sent to the end of the field to "finish" any survivors. The raiders target the runners with spears, arrows and large stones. The first pair are Jaguar Paw's last living friends, Smoke Frog and Blunted (Jonathan Brewer). Smoke Frog is struck by a heavy stone, then finished off by Cut Rock while Blunted is impaled through the stomach by a spear launched using a spear thrower.

Next up are Jaguar Paw and the refugee leader from the beginning. Although they almost make it, the refugee leader is shot through the head with an arrow. Jaguar Paw is shot in the waist with another arrow although he is able to break off the arrowhead. As Cut Rock approaches to finish Jaguar Paw, the not-quite-dead Blunted trips Cut Rock, buying Jaguar Paw time. Cut Rock gets up and savagely kills Blunted, then turns to finish off Jaguar Paw, who reaches up and slices through Cut Rock's neck with the broken-off arrowhead. Jaguar Paw then pulls the arrow from his back and stumbles away towards the jungle.

As Cut Rock bleeds out with Zero Wolf easing him into the next life, Jaguar Paw runs through a withered maize field and an open mass grave of sacrificial victims before finally reaching the jungle. The enraged Zero Wolf and his eight men pursue Jaguar Paw into the jungle and back toward Jaguar Paw's home. Eventually Jaguar Paw climbs a tree. The pursuers move past him, but a black jaguar who has made the tree its home is angered by him, and gives chase. The raiders see Jaguar Paw and the jaguar. At first they only see Jaguar Paw. They move to intercept him, but the jaguar kills one of the raiders. The raiders are forced to stay and kill the jaguar. They ponder this next fulfillment of the girl's prophecy.

Again in pursuit, another raider, Drunkards Four, is killed when a venomous snake bites his neck. Eventually, after running all night, Jaguar Paw finds himself caught between a high waterfall and the raiders and is forced to jump. He survives and declares from the riverbank below that the raiders are now in his homelands, echoing his father's challenge to the refugees at the beginning of the film.

After listening to Jaguar Paw's challenge, Zero Wolf says they must pursue him over the waterfall, but Snake Ink says they will climb down around the side after Jaguar Paw. Zero Wolf stabs Snake Ink for his impudence. Zero Wolf then gives the order that he and his men will jump the falls. While most make it alive, one smashes his head on the rocks below and is killed. The remaining men swim to the shore and restart their pursuit. Jaguar Paw escapes a pool of black quicksand and, now camouflaged in black mud, resolves to become the hunter rather than the hunted. First he disables his pursuers by throwing a bees' nest into their midst. The coating of mud protects Jaguar Paw from the bees. Next, Jaguar Paw prepares poison darts with poison he extracts from a tree toad. The darts allow him to kill another raider. This leads to his showdown with the sadistic Middle Eye, whom Jaguar Paw bludgeons to death with the Mayan war club of the raider he just killed. Now, to add to Jaguar Paw's worries, it begins raining heavily. The cave where Jaguar Paw's wife and son are trapped is starting to flood. As Jaguar Paw rushes to save his family, Zero Wolf confronts him and shoots him again with an arrow. As Zero Wolf advances to finish Jaguar Paw, he blunders into Jaguar Paw's tapir-hunting trap from the opening scene; he is impaled and killed.

Following Zero Wolf's death, the two remaining raiders chase Jaguar Paw out to a beach where, much to the surprise of all three of them, they encounter conquistador ships anchored off the coast, with men making their way ashore. The amazement of the raiders allows Jaguar Paw to flee. He returns into the forest to pull his wife and son out of the flooded pit where they are hiding, and where Seven has just given birth to a second son. As the reunited family look out from the forest towards the Spanish ships, Seven wonders if they should go to them, but Jaguar Paw says they should return to the forest in search of a new beginning.

The Theory:

           Cultural studies is an academic filed of critical theory and literary criticism aiding cultural researches to theorize about the forces from which the whole of the humankind construct their daily lives. Cultural Studies is focused upon the political and its historical foundations, conflicts and defining traits.

Criticism: 

                Apocalypto is an American film that falls under the theory of Culture Studies. It is about the declining period of a Maya civilization, Apocalypto depicts the journey of a MesoAmerican tribesman who must escape human sacrifice and rescue his family and village. The film is about a certain cultural belief of a tribe and how they live based on this principles.

NARRATOLOGY - Safe by Susan Shaw

Summary:

          Safe. To Tracy, safe means having Mama close by. Years after her mother's death, Tracy still feels her presence. But the moment Tracy is forced into a car as she is walking home from school one day, safe is ripped away. In the aftermath of an unspeakable crime, thirteen-year-old Tracy must fight her way back to safety and find comfort in her mother's memory once again.

         Susan Shaw returns with a raw and moving story of a young rape victim's journey toward healing, empowered by poetry and music, family and friends.

The Theory:

                   Narratology in literary theory is the study of narrative structure. It looks at what way narrative have in common and what makes one different from another.

Criticism:

             An example of a narratology is the novel entitled Safe, written by Susan Shaw. In the story, the protagonist narrates about her suffering of being a rape victim and on how she recovered from such a horrific experience. Tracy was being attacked and raped but she never discussed in detail her whole experience. She suffered from a trauma and finds herself unable to go out of the house without her father. The story is not action packed but more on realistic view.The heart of this story is the recovery and reaching out. I like the ending on how Tracy emerged after a terrible experience.

ECO CRITICISM- The Land of Little Rain by Mary Austin

Summary:

East away from the Sierras, south from Panamint and Amargosa, east and south many an uncounted mile, is the Country of Lost Borders.

Ute, Paiute, Mojave, and Shoshone inhabit its frontiers, and as far into the heart of it as a man dare go. Not the law, but the land sets the limit. Desert is the name it wears upon the maps, but the Indian's is the better word. Desert is a loose term to indicate land that supports no man; whether the land can be bitted and broken to that purpose is not proven. Void of life it never is, however dry the air and villainous the soil.

This is the nature of that country. There are hills, rounded, blunt, burned, squeezed up out of chaos, chrome and vermilion painted, aspiring to the snowline. Between the hills lie high level-looking plains full of intolerable sun glare, or narrow valleys drowned in a blue haze. The hill surface is streaked with ash drift and black, unweathered lava flows. After rains water accumulates in the hollows of small closed valleys, and, evaporating, leaves hard dry levels of pure desertness that get the local name of dry lakes. Where the mountains are steep and the rains heavy, the pool is never quite dry, but dark and bitter, rimmed about with the efflorescence of alkaline deposits. A thin crust of it lies along the marsh over the vegetating area, which has neither beauty nor freshness. In the broad wastes open to the wind the sand drifts in hummocks about the stubby shrubs, and between them the soil shows saline traces. The sculpture of the hills here is more wind than water work, though the quick storms do sometimes scar them past many a year's redeeming. In all the Western desert edges there are essays in miniature at the famed, terrible Grand Cañon, to which, if you keep on long enough in this country, you will come at last.

Since this is a hill country one expects to find springs, but not to depend upon them; for when found they are often brackish and unwholesome, or maddening, slow dribbles in a thirsty soil. Here you find the hot sink of Death Valley, or high rolling districts where the air has always a tang of frost. Here are the long heavy winds and breathless calms on the tilted mesas where dust devils dance, whirling up into a wide, pale sky. Here you have no rain when all the earth cries for it, or quick downpours called cloud-bursts for violence. A land of lost rivers, with little in it to love; yet a land that once visited must be come back to inevitably. If it were not so there would be little told of it.

This is the country of three seasons. From June on to November it lies hot, still, and unbearable, sick with violent unrelieving storms; then on until April, chill, quiescent, drinking its scant rain and scanter snows; from April to the hot season again, blossoming, radiant, and seductive. These months are only approximate; later or earlier the rain-laden wind may drift up the water gate of the Colorado from the Gulf, and the land sets its seasons by the rain.

The desert floras shame us with their cheerful adaptations to the seasonal limitations. Their whole duty is to flower and fruit, and they do it hardly, or with tropical luxuriance, as the rain admits. It is recorded in the report of the Death Valley expedition that after a year of abundant rains, on the Colorado desert was found a specimen of Amaranthus ten feet high. A year later the same species in the same place matured in the drought at four inches. One hopes the land may breed like qualities in her human offspring, not tritely to "try," but to do. Seldom does the desert herb attain the full stature of the type. Extreme aridity and extreme altitude have the same dwarfing effect, so that we find in the high Sierras and in Death Valley related species in miniature that reach a comely growth in mean temperatures. Very fertile are the desert plants in expedients to prevent evaporation, turning their foliage edge-wise toward the sun, growing silky hairs, exuding viscid gum. The wind, which has a long sweep, harries and helps them. It rolls up dunes about the stocky stems, encompassing and protective, and above the dunes, which may be, as with the mesquite, three times as high as a man, the blossoming twigs flourish and bear fruit.

There are many areas in the desert where drinkable water lies within a few feet of the surface, indicated by the mesquite and the bunch grass (Sporobolus airoides). It is this nearness of unimagined help that makes the tragedy of desert deaths. It is related that the final breakdown of that hapless party that gave Death Valley its forbidding name occurred in a locality where shallow wells would have saved them. But how were they to know that? Properly equipped it is possible to go safely across that ghastly sink, yet every year it takes its toll of death, and yet men find there sun-dried mummies, of whom no trace or recollection is preserved. To underestimate one's thirst, to pass a given landmark to the right or left, to find a dry spring where one looked for running water--there is no help for any of these things.

The Theory:

          Ecocriticism is the study of literature and environment from an interdisiplinary point of view where all sciences come together to analyze the environment and brainstorm possible solutions for the correction of the contemporary environmental solution. Ecocriticism is an intentionally broad approach that is known by a number of other designations.

The Criticism:

             The Land of Little Rain by Mary Austin falls under the category of Ecocriticism simply because it depicts interactions between the human and their natural environment. The story tackles about how the citizens handle their ecological predicament since their land suffers because of the little rain.