English 2850: Great Works of Literature II

How is Gregor’s family transformed in the wake of his metamorphosis ?

Gregor before he became an insect worked as a salesman, and he was stuck with that job because his family was in debt. As a salesman he wouldn’t make enough money due to him getting a commission from anything he sold. However, he was the head of household before he became a giant insect. After Gregor’s metamorphosis, his family became worried because they knew that they were not financially stable and the only person with a sufficient income was Gregor. The story states “ They had been good times, and they had never returned, at least not in that magnificence, even though Gregor went on to earn so much money that he was able to bear, and indeed bore, the expenses of the whole family.” (224) The family relied on Gregor so for them this change was not something they had sympathy over as much for Gregor than the sympathy they had for themselves. Before the transformation the family had a maid and because they did not have much money to afford to pay her they replaced her with a cleaning lady. His family started to not care about him, and started to focus on themselves which was a selfish move on their part because after Gregor worked a very challenging job in order to pay their debt, it’s hard for Gregor to see that his family slowly started to give their backs to him. Gregor needed comprehension and acceptance from his family even though it was a bit creepy but if he took care of them as long as he could, they were not willing to do the same for him when he needed it. 

Gregor emerges from his room one last time when he hears his sister playing her violin for the lodgers. What is the significance of this scene? What meaning does music hold for Gregor here?

 When Gregor steps out to listen to his sister play violin, he starts to feel pain. He feels the sadness of the moments he had with her while he had his human body. He knew that after his transformation those moments were not going to be possible anymore. Even though Gregor was mostly working to pay off the family’s debt, he had a goal which was to send his sister to school, because she loved to play violin and she loved music. The story states, “ Only his sister had remained close to Gregor, and it was his secret project to send her, who unlike himself loved music and played the violin with great feeling, to the conservatory next year, without regard to the great expense that was surely involved, and that needed to be earned, most probably in some other fashion.” (224) As a sibling, you want the best for your sibling, and you would do whatever it takes to make them happy, especially if he or she is your only sibling. Gregor knew that now since he was no longer in a human body his secret project would not be a success. The violin represents feelings, when you listen to it you reminisce moments, you get touched by the beautiful sound. Violin also has a sound of sadness, and in this case Gregor was injured due to his father hurting him, as an insect once it’s hurt it’s chances of still living are low, so this represented his farewell, he felt that he wouldn’t live long because of his injury.

Hi Everyone,

The Reader Response Site that you contributed work to is up and running.  I am told that they are still uploading works to the site, so it’s possible that your work is not yet there, but I took a quick peek at the site and saw lots of work I recognized, so congratulations to all of you!

We have been invited to a Zoom call this Thursday, May 21st at 11:30 a.m. which will introduce the site and demonstrate how it works. I have pasted the information below, but in the meantime, you can check out the site and look for your work here:

blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/readgreatworks

I will be on the call, so perhaps I will see some of you there.  I am busy reading your final papers and excitedly awaiting your final exams!!!

Be well,

Professor Sylvor

English 2850 KMWC

Professor Jennifer Sylvor

Spring 2020

FINAL EXAM

Please compose your response to this exam as a Word document and upload it to turnitin.com. Your exam must be uploaded by Tuesday, May 19^th at 5pm. Late submissions will receive no credit.

 Read the instructions in their entirety before you begin to work on this final exam. You are welcome to consult your notes from the course and all the texts we’ve read, but you are NOT allowed to do any internet research while completing this project. Use of outside sources will result in a grade of F on the exam.

 Plan to spend 2-3 hours on this exam (including thinking time). Be sure to proofread your work carefully before uploading it to turnitin.com. If you have questions about any part of this exam, please email me at [email protected].

Final Exam: Propose a Mini-Course

Your task is as follows:

Drawing on the list of works we’ve read this semester (available on your syllabus), please design and propose a “Mini-Course”.   This mini-course will bring together a selection of readings from our syllabus, but will focus on a particular topic or theme that is of interest to you. Coming up with your theme will be the key step in completing this assignment. You will need to identify some component or issue that you have encountered at several different points in your reading for this course and construct your proposal around this idea. [Your idea might be a particular element you’ve noticed in your reading (i.e. railroad travel) or a persistent question (i.e. what happens when we die?) I have deliberately chosen examples that wouldn’t work for our particular reading list because I don’t want to render any ideas off-limits, but I hope you get the idea!]  Your course proposal must contain the following components:

–Course Title: Your course title should be creative and inviting and should let us know what the focus of your course is.

–Course Description: In this one paragraph course description, articulate the subject that your mini-course will explore and lay out the central questions that you will be exploring in the course.

–Annotated Reading List: Select 5 texts from the semester as the reading for your mini-course. Write a short paragraph for each text in which you explain your rationale for including this text, offer a quotation from the text that illustrates how the text is connected to the topic of your mini-course, and provide three discussion questions you might ask about the text in the context of your course. List your texts in the order you think they should be read for your course. You don’t have to follow our chronological organization.

–Wild Card: Add a 6^th text of your choosing to your reading list. This text should NOT come from our syllabus. It should be a text that you have encountered elsewhere that you think would work with your theme and be a good addition to your reading list. This text could be a written text or it could be a film, a tv show, a song, a painting, a photograph, a meme…. This is totally up to you. Don’t be afraid to be creative. Compose a paragraph in which you describe your wild card text and explain how it is connected to the subject of your mini-course.

–The Pitch: In the final paragraph of your course proposal, make a “pitch” for your course. What would you say to convince a fellow student to convince him or her take this course?

What aspects of this short story seem to you to be particularly modernist?

Lu Xun’s In The Wineshop is about the narrator revisiting a place he once lived in. This “revisiting,” to me, appears to be the representation of the modernist attack on old societal norms and cultural aspects. This is because the modernist movement is all about not caring about what the old is but rather what the new is supposed to be. As a modernist writer, Lu Xun brings to the table the old ways of doing things, such as the burial, and rejects it in the form of Wei Fu. Another modernist aspect that this story has, I believe, is the stream-of-consciousness writing in which we can particularly see the thoughts and emotions of the narrator.

The story’s narrator is revisiting  a place he once lived. Explain the significance that this “revisiting” has in relation to the themes of the story.

This “revisiting” thus also plays a significant role in relation to the nostalgic feeling that Lu Xun seems to evoke as well as the theme of change. Throughout the story, the narrator and his friend Wei Fu talk about how they used to be in the old days, and so they realize how much they have changed. The place and the characters themselves are no longer what they used to be.

1. A tall grey-haired woman who has just arrived on the “transport” whispers, “My poor boy,” to our narrator. What does she mean?

“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

With this line by Batman, I believe that the grey-haired woman seems to tell our narrator, Tadek, that it would be better to die a swift death than live with the guilt that he is responsible for the loss of the lives of many, especially the young children. With old age closing in on her, she probably thinks that there would be nothing left to lose. While this does momentarily keep Tadek alive, it doesn’t, however, prevent him from the guilt and experiences he had with the Jewish prisoners.

1. Describe an example of dehumanization in the text. What about this moment made a particularly strong impression on you? Why?

“In the corners amid human excrement and abandoned wrist-watches lie squashed, trampled infants, naked little monsters with enormous heads and bloated bellies. We carry them out like chickens, holding several in each hand” (705).

This, along with the depiction of humans eating raw brains due to severe hunger, particularly made a strong impression on me because it depicts how it doesn’t matter whether you are a child or not. Everyone will get the same treatment: death. Seeing dead babies is not that bad as it almost usually a common case for stillborn, but to “carry them out like chickens” and disregard human life? Pass.

1. What did you learn from this story that you did not previously know about the life in Nazi concentration camps?

Based on my previous knowledge, I have always thought that the Jewish prisoners in the Nazi camps during the Holocaust were all just sent straight to the gas chambers to be burned alive. In this story, however, I learn that there is more to it than that. Babies getting trampled, corpses thrown around like mere objects, and people being deceived about their deaths are definitely new to me, but they were really eye-opening.

The story, “And of Clay are We Created”, by Isabel Allende, is a story of a natural disaster caused by the volcanic eruption reinforces the fragility of life and the formidable power of nature. The reinforcement of fragility of life and the power of nature largely connects to our current reality in this global pandemic. Media has a large influence in unfolding the story of the global pandemic, like Rolf Carle has in Allende’s story. Everyday we hear or see the numbers of cases rise, vaccine developments, 24 hour deaths, stay-at-home orders, and/or business re-openings. Many of us have probably even heard of stories of the virus taking to lives of multiple family members of the same family. These stories make us appreciate the little things in life and value the connection we have with family and friends. The same can be said with Rolf, since after Azucena’s death, he is able to see things clearly. The narrator states, “I wait for you to complete the voyage into yourself, for the old wounds to heal.” Suggesting that Rolf needs to process Azucena’s death, and feels that he could have done better to save her. Many of us probably feel like reflecting on their past during this quarantine and valuing the things we take for granted. One thing media can do well is connect us to other’s sufferings, we are able to come together as a community to help individuals. Many of us have probably seen many charity organizations and events organized by celebrities to help individuals directly affected by the onslaught of the virus.

Explain the significance of the story’s title, “This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.” What seems strange about it?

I initially thought the title was humorous because the way it is phrased reminds me of an = a carnival where one is leading someone to a game or ride. However, in reality it trivializes how serious the gas chambers were and what they meant for millions of Jewish men and women. This title fits the odd nature of the Holocaust fiction where the author has the leeway to change the tone of his subject and create some levity. The author’s choice of a seemingly humorous title creates an uncomfortable feeling for the reader who is about to experience the Holocaust through his voice and I believe that was his purpose due to the nature of the subject.

“Are we good people?” asks our narrator.  What is this exchange about? What do you think?

When the narrator asks this, it shows that he’s dealing with inner conflict. He has to listen to the Nazis and is tasked with making women take dead babies that aren’t even theirs. In this exchange, he questions whether he’s still the same person he was before the concentration camps. He thinks that the horrible things he’s doing is unforgivable and has changed him into an evil person. He is searching for hope that in his heart he is still a good person by asking his friend such a loaded question.

What did you learn from this story that you did not previously know about life in Nazi concentration camps?

With this story I learned that people being oppressed by the Nazi officials were oppressing people that had less power than they did. For example, in this story the Nazi officers were cruel to the people at the concentration camps but the people who were at the concentration camps were being cruel to the ones who were just arriving. That is horrifying to me because I did not think this was the case. I believed that the people already at the camp before new arrivals would be nice to the new people. It makes me question my previous views. This made me realize that they must have been so horribly oppressed that at that point, its “survival of the fittest”  and everyone for themselves.

Personally, I believe “The Metamorphosis”, by Franz Kafka is a great work of literature, What qualifies a work of literature to be a “great work” for me is its relevance to present time. I feel as though the protagonist, Gregor Samsa, resonates with many individuals in today’s society. Although a cockroach, Gregor’s drastic change of life and relationships provide much relevance today. Kafka shows Gregor to be a man who hates his job and wishes he can quit, but cannot because of financial priorities in his life. Personally, I have met many people in my life who despise their job, but they continue to work at their job to benefit the rest if their family financially. Now when Gregor wakes up one morning as a cockroach, his life drastically changes. His relationship with his family weakens and he becomes a burden to his sister, mother, and father. I relate this to when people make tough decisions in their life that their family members do not necessarily agree with. Although tough decisions are usually planned, unlike transforming into a cockroach, they still have an immense effect on relationships. An example that comes to mind is from my very own culture. As an Indian-American, parents expect their kids to get a degree and a job that is stable and secure. However, many kids fall into the trap of doing something for their parents rather than themselves. Thus, leading them to make tough drastic decisions that hurt their family relationships. Most of the time parents of Indian-American parents get aggravated when their son/daughter chooses to pursue something in life that is not “secure” like a career in the arts. Often times, parents then treat their kids in a despising way up until they finally accept it. This has some similarity to Gregor as he was drastically changed and completely treated differently by his entire family. Sadly, for Gregor his family could not accept him and decided that he must go. Although very uncommon, the same can happen for Indian-American households, where the parents never accept their son/daughter’s decision for their future life. The relevance of Gregor Samsa’s relationship with his family resonates with my culture in an unorthodox, but meaningful way.

I would compare Chandara and Hedda and how similar they really are. Chandara takes the fall for her husband because we see time and again after her husband blames his brothers death on her she chooses to go through with the consequences because she cannot bear to stay in her marriage. In Hedda’s predicament she does not enjoy her marriage with George  Tesman and is in a one sided relationship due to the reasoning that George is enamored with her , yet she is more preoccupied with the current whereabouts of her past lover Eilert Lovborg. Both Chandara and Hedda hold this same reasoning that death is better than staying in there current marriages forever and going through the sadness that it is to come to terms with  your own mortality  yet in this sense for both characters mortality is better than having the go through their current relationships with their husbands. As well as enduring more years of an unloving marriage and the falseness in the  emotions that they’re spouses hold towards them that we see throughout the story starts to falter . In Chandara’s case, her husbands feeling towards her start to falter the minute he chooses her over his brother to take the fall for her his sister in law’ death just shows how frail their marriage really was. Then in Hedda’s situation , in my understanding her marriage was more for coveniance and just because she was getting towards the marriage age at that time. She never had a successful marriage from the beginning because there weren’t any real feelings of both parties wanting to be in the marriage similarly to Chandara. Both marriages were based off of false feelings and convenience.