English 015 - Americans Abroad
Tom Lakin
Cacciato: Enemy and Friend
Category: 4E: O'Brien | Tom Lakin
Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato is a psychological novel that explores the effects of the Vietnam War on the minds of its soldiers. The novel’s plot is based on the ruminations of Paul Berlin, a lone soldier on night watch, whose memories and imagination set the scene for a story...
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Posted by on December 15, 2003 at 04:17 PM
Tunnels of Death and Opportunity
Category: 08B: Going After Cacciato | Tom Lakin
Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato, images and ideas repeat themselves throughout the various sections of the novel. One of these repeating themes is tunnels, and their significance in the war. In the battle scenes, the VC tunnels are portrayed and dangerous areas which need to be destroyed to get rid...
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Posted by on December 02, 2003 at 02:03 PM
Only Death Can Save A Meaningless Life
Category: 3E: Bowles | Tom Lakin
Paul Bowles’s The Sheltering Sky is a book ripe with existentialist thought. The world presented by Bowles in the novel is bleak and meaningless, as are the lives of the two main characters, Port and Kit. Their lives are completely devoid of any meaning and definition, comprised only of unchanging...
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Posted by on November 25, 2003 at 04:56 PM
A New Birth
Category: 07B: The Sheltering Sky | Tom Lakin
After Port’s death, Kit is finally able to get “all the way into life” and live as an active participant in the world around her. Her immersion into active life is sparked by Port’s passing because, upon his death, she cannot merely follow him around any longer, as she has...
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Posted by on November 13, 2003 at 02:09 PM
The Promise of Pain
Category: 06B: The Sheltering Sky | Tom Lakin
“ ‘She’s a hysterical old hag, and the boy - ! He’s a real criminal degenerate if I ever saw one. He gives me the creeps’ ” (Bowles 65). Though there is no evidence that the Lyles are at all dangerous, they are disturbing to Port and Kit. This eerie...
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Posted by on November 06, 2003 at 02:14 PM
Disillusioned Dreams
Category: 2E: Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald | Tom Lakin
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises both examine American disillusionment abroad. Both use male main characters, the Sun Also Rises’ Jake and Babylon Revisited’s Charlie, as vehicles to explore the various ways in which a foreign environment can help spawn and manipulate a feeling...
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Posted by on October 30, 2003 at 01:20 PM
Pleasure's Pull
Category: 05B: Babylon Revisited | Tom Lakin
Babylon Revisted’s Charlie is completely unable to escape the paradise of vice which is Paris. For many at the time, Paris was a kingdom of the rich: a world of endless pleasure which was open to anyone with money enough to throw around. Charlie gets caught up in this lavish...
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Posted by on October 23, 2003 at 02:18 PM
Confidence Through Knowledge
Category: 04B: Autobiography of ABT | Tom Lakin
In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein is portrayed as extremely confident in her foreign surroundings, in much the same way as Jake Barnes is presented in The Sun Also Rises. Both assimilate comfortably abroad based on their knowledge of common foreign practices: bull fighting in Jake’s case,...
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Posted by on October 14, 2003 at 02:16 PM
Heroic Courage
Category: 03B: The Sun Also Rises | Tom Lakin
Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is not without a hero, though it seems so at times. Jake, although he is in no way typical, is the story’s quiet hero. He saves no lives, rescues no one, and is not even very productive in his behavior, yet his own personal...
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Posted by on October 07, 2003 at 02:06 PM
Comfort's Consequence
Category: 1E: Twain, James, Wharton | Tom Lakin
Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad and Henry James’s Daisy Miller both explore the ways in which Americans make themselves comfortable in foreign countries. Twain and James use their main characters as vehicles to identify these various methods of establishing security by depicting the ways in which they react to their...
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Posted by on October 02, 2003 at 02:13 PM
Sexual Freedoms and Tragic Fates
Category: 02B: Roman Fever | Tom Lakin
Edith Wharton’s Roman Fever and Henry James’s Daisy Miller resonate with each other in the way they explore the idea of sexuality in Italy. Both seem to warn against overtly public and uninhibited sexual behavior through the tragic consequences befalling those characters, Daisy and Mrs. Ansley, who do display this...
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Posted by on September 21, 2003 at 11:16 PM
Details
Category: 01B: Daisy Miller | Tom Lakin
Although both Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad and Henry James’s Daisy Miller deal with the experiences of Americans abroad, both contrast greatly in the area of character exploration. Twain focuses on group description, painting sweeping portraits of his collection of American compatriots while avoiding individualized character development. James, on the other...
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Posted by on September 16, 2003 at 10:40 AM
Toms practice entry
Category: Tom Lakin
Hey, this is Tom. I think I probably messed this up, but we will see. I am not exactly a computer wizard, and I am pretty confused with all this. Hopefully I got lucky and did this right. See ya...
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Posted by on September 09, 2003 at 04:58 PM