English 015 - Americans Abroad
Meg Gray
Desertion Sparks Retaliation
Category: 4E: O'Brien | Meg Gray
As portrayed in Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien, the Vietnam War is brutal and intense. The soldiers are constantly bombarded with images of violence, death, and cruelty. They live helplessly in horrifying conditions: “the rain fed fungus that grew in the men’s boots and socks, and their socks...
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Posted by on December 15, 2003 at 10:33 AM
Explosions
Category: 08B: Going After Cacciato | Meg Gray
The soldiers in "Going After Cacciato" are constantly on the move in both the reality of battle and the fantasy of the road to Paris. Then Paul Bowles uses the same event, an explosion, to break up the monotony of the trail in both settings. The effects of the...
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Posted by on December 02, 2003 at 01:36 PM
Sex in the Sahara
Category: 3E: Bowles | Meg Gray
From cover to cover, The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles is fixated on sex. The characters are always thinking about it, having it, or wishing they were closer to it. Surprisingly enough, the two main characters, Port and Kit Moresby, never actual have sex with each other. Kit and Port’s...
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Posted by on November 25, 2003 at 01:04 PM
Decisions
Category: 07B: The Sheltering Sky | Meg Gray
Kit becomes an active participant in life after Port’s death, instead of “hanging on to the outside” (p. 101) like she did before. “Life was suddenly there, she was in it, not looking through a window at it” (p. 246). Kit is transformed; she is no longer afraid. Her new...
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Posted by on November 13, 2003 at 01:42 PM
Threatened by the Unknown
Category: 06B: The Sheltering Sky | Meg Gray
Bowles’s physical descriptions of the Lyles are full of adjectives that impart a mysterious lack of definition in both appearance and personality. This creates a creepy unknown quality that surrounds the two characters. Eric Lyle is “a heavy-looking youth with a formless face which was saved from complete nonexistence...
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Posted by on November 06, 2003 at 01:20 PM
The Cost of Money
Category: 2E: Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald | Meg Gray
Snobbery in The Sun Also Rises and “Babylon Revisited” ultimately leads to Charlie and Brett’s self-destruction. They destroy their lives by putting too much faith in the power of money and overindulgent lifestyles. As Brett’s suitors slowly slip away from her and Charlie realizes he may never get his...
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Posted by on October 31, 2003 at 07:27 PM
Economy v Extravagence
Category: 05B: Babylon Revisited | Meg Gray
Paris is a city known for mouth-watering food, magnificent art, exciting people and, in general, pleasure. “Babylon Revisited” proved that these pleasures, both simple and extravagant, should not be measured in terms of cost. Charlie’s dissipation in Paris is a result of his belief that everything worth doing was...
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Posted by on October 23, 2003 at 01:29 PM
Staying Power
Category: 04B: Autobiography of ABT | Meg Gray
The characters in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and the characters in The Sun Also Rises appear surprisingly similar. They are all constantly moving about doing this and that. Yet there is a distinct contrast. When Gertrude Stein and company are having a good time they can stop,...
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Posted by on October 14, 2003 at 12:31 PM
The Dedication of Aficion
Category: 03B: The Sun Also Rises | Meg Gray
He wasn’t a main character. He was never loud or overbearing. He didn’t brandishing a sword in defense of a damsel in distress. But in The Sun Also Rises the innkeeper Montoya was a hero for the sport of bullfighting because of his dedication to the purity of the...
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Posted by on October 07, 2003 at 10:35 AM
Comfort: Americans at the Mercy of Their Surroundings
Category: 1E: Twain, James, Wharton | Meg Gray
Achieving comfort, a state of psychical and mental relaxation, in unfamiliar surroundings is often unnerving and sometimes very difficult. In Daisy Miller by Henry James and The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain, the characters consciously and unconsciously devise methods of establishing their own comfort while traveling abroad. However, because...
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Posted by on October 02, 2003 at 01:20 PM
Portrayal is Perception
Category: 02B: Roman Fever | Meg Gray
Daisy Miller and Grace Ansley both caught “roman fever” as a consequence of enjoying a rebellious late night escapade. Daisy died amidst the flurry of malicious gossip that surrounded her tryst at the Coliseum. Grace, who “was supposed to have gone to see the moon rise,” held on to...
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Posted by on September 23, 2003 at 11:01 AM
A Child's Plea
Category: 01B: Daisy Miller | Meg Gray
“An urchin of nine or ten” approaches an American in a foreign country with a plea. What reaction does the child get? Obviously, there are many different answers to this question. But Mark Twain and Henry James provide strikingly opposite possibilities in their writing, Twain in The Innocents Abroad...
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Posted by on September 16, 2003 at 11:18 AM
Meg's practice blog
Category: Meg Gray
I hate to be boring so here, but I'm going to be anyway. Here is an excerpt from the nearest book on my shelf, Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. " What the hell do I care if he's punished or not?" General Dreedle replied with surprise and irritation. "He's just...
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Posted by on September 09, 2003 at 07:38 PM