English 015 - Americans Abroad
Zac Milner
The Wrong Outlook
Category: 4E: O'Brien | Zac Milner
Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato and Paul Bowles’s The Sheltering Sky present two opposite characters coping with the effects of war. The difference between Paul Berlin in O’Brien’s novel and Port in Bowles’s can be seen in their responses to war. Port’s “war stories” reflect the idea that “one never...
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Posted by on December 16, 2003 at 04:17 AM
War Games
Category: 08B: Going After Cacciato | Zac Milner
Children often pretend to be soldiers, simulating war in their free time. In GAC, soldiers tend to play children’s games in real war time. Playing games helps calm the uncertainty and distress of the war; games serve as both a distraction from the horrific images surrounding the soldiers and a...
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Posted by on December 02, 2003 at 01:12 PM
A New Moon
Category: 3E: Bowles | Zac Milner
In Paul Bowles’s The Sheltering Sky, Kit attempts to completely alter her lifestyle after Port’s death. She consciously tries to let go of her unbreakable bond to Port, to lead a life in which there is no connection to her former husband. However, even after his death Port continues to...
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Posted by on November 25, 2003 at 02:21 PM
Love Handles
Category: 07B: The Sheltering Sky | Zac Milner
To avoid “falling off at the next bump,” (p. 101) Kit holds on to other people. As the narrator says on page 45, “other people rule [Kit’s] life…she allowed them to do it only because her superstitious fancy had invested them with magical importance regarding her own destiny, and never...
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Posted by on November 13, 2003 at 01:45 AM
A Sign of Things to Come
Category: 06B: The Sheltering Sky | Zac Milner
“We’ve never managed, either one of us, to get all the way into life. We’re hanging on to the outside for all we’re worth, convinced we’re going to fall off at the next bump,” Port says on page 101. As travelers, port and Kit are homeless, and this homelessness makes...
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Posted by on November 06, 2003 at 12:51 PM
Spending Power
Category: 2E: Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald | Zac Milner
At first glance, the members of the “in-crowds” in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and in Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited” appear to have formed meaningful relationships. Within their respective groups, Jake Barnes and Charlie Wales parade around Europe, going from exclusive bar to exclusive bar, laughing and chatting the whole...
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Posted by on October 30, 2003 at 02:18 PM
Paying the Price
Category: 05B: Babylon Revisited | Zac Milner
Sometimes people put so much effort into making a moment last that they lose sight of the true meaning of the moment. While in Paris, Charlie was willing to “toss” his not-so-hard-earned “hundred franc notes to a doorman,” all for the sake of “slower and slower motion” (p. 389). Paris...
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Posted by on October 23, 2003 at 12:07 PM
Gertrude and Jake
Category: 04B: Autobiography of ABT | Zac Milner
Both Jake Barnes and Gertrude Stein act confidently abroad, but the roots of their confidence are completely different. Jake is a real expatriate: he has “lost touch with the soil” (Hemingway, p. 120). Jake refutes his essential American traits, for he knows that in Spain “it was taken for...
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Posted by on October 14, 2003 at 12:25 PM
“Old Jake, the Human Punching-Bag”
Category: 03B: The Sun Also Rises | Zac Milner
“It’s no life being a steer,” (p. 145) Robert Cohn declares. With strong features and fiery looks, it is the bulls who steal the show, who mesmerize the audience. But in essence, the event would never happen without the steers. Their role is to absorb the blows from the...
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Posted by on October 06, 2003 at 09:02 PM
Comfort in Labels
Category: 1E: Twain, James, Wharton | Zac Milner
Zac Milner 10/2//2003 Americans Abroad Comfort in Labels Winterbourne, in Henry James’s “Daisy Miller,” and Mrs. Slade, in Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever,” are often polar characters. The former is, as Daisy might say, ever so quaint. He is a man who “ha[s] no enemies: he [is] extremely amicable and generally...
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Posted by on October 02, 2003 at 02:14 PM
Daisy and Alida
Category: 02B: Roman Fever | Zac Milner
It seems whenever a young American travels to that ever-attractive Italian city, she comes down with a case of Roman Fever. She doesn’t necessarily contract an illness. Rather, a fever invades her mind-state, causing her to do unthinkable things. A sense of romanticism, rule-breaking, and jealousy peaks out among the...
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Posted by on September 21, 2003 at 11:36 PM
A European Abroad
Category: 01B: Daisy Miller | Zac Milner
Although it takes place in Switzerland, the first two chapters of Daisy Miller focus on an “American watering-place” (3). With the exception of the Courier—who thrives on sucking up to Americans—every character in Daisy Miller is indeed from the States. Winterbourne, however, is completely out of touch with American...
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Posted by on September 15, 2003 at 03:53 PM
bloggin
Category: Zac Milner
Hey, this is Zac. Let's see... I just woke up and don't have anything to say so I'm gonna keep typing out of my ass until it becomes a paragraph long. I've seen really short paragraphs before so I'm sure this one is adequate. I'll leave it at that. Alright,...
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Posted by on September 10, 2003 at 05:04 PM