English 015 - Americans Abroad
Karen Tang
Food for Thought
Category: 4E: O'Brien | Karen Tang
In Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato, food helps the soldiers to alleviate the emotional pain from war. The soldiers’ purpose of war is not really to win the war, but to survive another day, and food crucially supports them. Besides the practical side of eating food, which is to...
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Posted by ktang on December 15, 2003 at 04:11 PM
The Moon
Category: 08B: Going After Cacciato | Karen Tang
The moon appears during the very long night at the observation post and on the road to Paris. It serves as a symbol for hope. “The moon gave light. It would be all right, he told himself. He was safe” (p.27). At the observation post, Paul Berlin gains peace...
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Posted by ktang on December 02, 2003 at 02:30 PM
True Traveler
Category: 3E: Bowles | Karen Tang
In Paul Bowles’s The Sheltering Sky, only Kit develops into a true traveler. A true traveler, according to Port, belongs “no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly, over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another” (p.14). Port and the Lyles never become...
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Posted by ktang on December 02, 2003 at 02:00 PM
Running Away
Category: 07B: The Sheltering Sky | Karen Tang
Kit never manages to "get all the way into life," because she constantly avoids facing her life. “Kit stared at the spurting white flame of the lamp, trying to conquer her powerful desire to run out of the room. It was no longer the familiar fear that she felt—it...
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Posted by ktang on November 13, 2003 at 02:29 PM
Creepy Appearances and Omens
Category: 06B: The Sheltering Sky | Karen Tang
The amorphous facial features the Lyles present give a sense of creepiness. Port describes Eric Lyle as a “heavy-looking youth with a formless face which was saved from complete non-existence by an undefined brown beard (p.53)” “Formless,” “non-existence,” and “undefined” suggest his ghost-like transparency. Kit also comments on his...
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Posted by ktang on November 06, 2003 at 11:29 AM
Disillusionment
Category: 2E: Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald | Karen Tang
“Disillusionment: destruction of pleasant but mistaken beliefs or ideals” (Oxford Dictionary). Even though destruction of dreams and beliefs brings depression, there is a positive aspect to disillusionment. It brings people to face reality instead of straying in fake imaginations, and facing reality lets people realize what is truly important...
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Posted by ktang on October 30, 2003 at 02:30 PM
Dissipation
Category: 05B: Babylon Revisited | Karen Tang
Paris is full of illusions. In Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited, Charlie wants to see the “blue hour spread over the magnificent façade, and imagine that the cab horns, playing endlessly the first few bars of Le Plus que Lent, were the trumpets of the Second Empire” (p.386). Paris is veiled...
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Posted by ktang on October 23, 2003 at 02:29 PM
Search
Category: 04B: Autobiography of ABT | Karen Tang
As an American Abroad, Gertrude Stein seems stunningly confident; however, she is not that confident really. Even though at the beginning of the book she categorizes herself as a genius, throughout the later developments in the book, we can tell that she is not that really confident in herself....
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Posted by ktang on October 14, 2003 at 02:28 PM
Romero the Hero
Category: 03B: The Sun Also Rises | Karen Tang
According to Oxford Dictionary, a hero is a person who is admired by many for his noble qualities or his bravery. In Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, the hero is the bull fighter, Romero. “The crowd wanted him. Several boys shouted at Brett. The crowd was the boys,...
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Posted by ktang on October 07, 2003 at 02:25 PM
Sentiment of Rome
Category: 1E: Twain, James, Wharton | Karen Tang
In Henry James’s Daisy Miller and Edith Wharton’s Roman Fever, we see American women struggling to find a mentally secure place in Rome. Rome, an unfamiliar land, has stimulated fear and uncertainty in the American women. The familiar people, food, language, and values have all vanished. They feel disconnected...
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Posted by ktang on October 07, 2003 at 12:21 PM
Photographer vs. Movie Director
Category: 01B: Daisy Miller | Karen Tang
The obvious difference between Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad and Henry James’s Daisy Miller is the point of view the author writes from. Mark Twain writes from the first person’s perspective, and Henry James writes from the third person’s perspective. Interestingly, at first we would assume that the novel written...
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Posted by ktang on October 07, 2003 at 11:12 AM
Pride
Category: 02B: Roman Fever | Karen Tang
Pride. From Henry James’ Daisy Miller and Edith Wharton’s Roman Fever, we can see that the Americans bring pride along with them to Italy. Being present at a foreign land seems to have made the Americans more confident, bold and proud. What Mrs. Slade and Daisy Miller have in common...
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Posted by ktang on September 23, 2003 at 10:40 PM