Author Archives: TIANHUI LEI

In the wake of the recent rise of attacks on the Asian American Community, I felt as if I had watched too many incidents now to the point I have become desensitized. At first, my grandparents were instructed to try to stay at home. But now it is uncomfortably common in the news where I have to admit to myself, it’s shocking me less and less, it almost feels like a norm. Even my grandparents, prime targets for being a victim have disregarded their potential har. It also does not feel real to me since all I have been doing is reading about it, but I know it’s real and it’s happening all around me. But because even though it is in my community, the screen I have been reading it from has enhanced my distance to any single event. I know that if it were to happen to me or my family, I would feel a different way about it. If I had experienced these incidents first hand, perhaps I can truly understand what’s happening to the victim and their family. I also want to note that while media is important to spread awareness, I cannot help think that media also helped enhance the problem. Putting Asian hate crime in the spotlight might give the potential perpetrator the green light to also do it. But the silver lining in this rise of these events is that politicians and government have acted swiftly following it. This is where it differs from “And of Clay We Create”, in the text the politicians have acted for selfish needs, going to the volcanic site just to show their face on television but not doing anything to save the dying people. In contrast, the recent administration has acknowledged the problem and has acted upon it, passing bills and executive orders.

What do you think Tayeb Salih’s story is ultimately saying about the relationship between tradition and modernity?

The relationship between tradition and modernity does not need to be either or. As the elder suggested “ what all these people have overlooked is that there’s plenty of room for all these things”(pg 824). There is room for both tradition and modernity, it’s just a matter of the needs of the people. I think that the elder is suggesting that it takes time when it comes to advancing towards a modern society and that it’s inevitable. The elder suggests that when tradition does not hold the same amount of values for the people, they will eventually leave the tradition behind. Tradition provided value for the people by giving people that needed them, such as old beliefs and faith. But perhaps for the generations to come such as the elder’s son, those beliefs and faith loses its value. It is then when modernity’s value increases, such as science. But ultimately we do not need to force people to convert necessarily, we just have to provide enough time for them to come around. Eventually with enough time what was once modern will become traditional and the cycle begins again.

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

I think the most surprising thing I’ve learned is that some camp prisoners are allowed to have different kinds of food, specifically kinds of food looted from new prisoners. On page 696, the prisoner is in the middle of “unwrap the bacon, the onion, we open a can of evaporated milk.” I had always thought that the prisoners were either fed with inhuman food or starved to death. Even though prisoners are allowed to eat looted food, somehow it makes the already egregious act of concentration camps more vile. I can’t imagine what the prisoners are feeling but it feels like they are being conditioned to be happy when new prisoners are arriving at these camps because it means they get to have decent meals. It is one thing to commit genocide by killing but it is another when they strip these prisoners of their humanity.

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

There seems to be some element of irony in the title. If we did not know any better, we would think that dying by suffocation in a gas chamber is the worst possible ending for a precious human life. But for these prisoners it’s actually eerily comforting, knowing that they will not have to suffer any more in the concentration camp. The last thing the prisoners will know is that they think that they are taking a shower. All the people who are sent directly to the gas chambers will know no more evil. They all have suffered immensely by being dragged from their houses, crammed into a train like they are livestock going to the slaughter house. The gas chambers will free them, they will not have to be slaves, they will not have to starve, they will not have to walk around naked, and most importantly they will not have to be stripped of their humanity anymore. 

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

Gregor’s family didn’t start out with disdain but rather with detachment. However I do think that the three different chapters shows that the detachment feeling slowly starts to change into disdain for each individual family member. It starts out with an outright rejection by Gregor’s father when Gregor first shows himself in chapter one. On page 219, we can see that the father grabs a cane and newspaper to drive Gregor back into his room and even hisses at him. This obviously shows how much a disgust his father had for him. On the contrary, even though his mother and sister, still in shock, don’t actually find Gregor repulsive but continue to care for him throughout the rest of the story. However towards the end of chapter 2, his sister also starts to show hatred towards Gregor. In the moment when Gregor startles his mother, we can see his sister’s patience grow thin. “Ooh Gregor! Cried his sister, brandishing her fist and glowering at him”(pg, 229). His sister starts out with detachment and passivity in the beginning of the story but is now filled with hatred and disgust for Gregor. By the end of chapter three, we can still see Gregor’s mother’s hope for his son to return and even tries to clean Gregor’s room. Then when Gregor ruins the dinner, she gives up on him too. She finally breaks and says “ I can’t do it any more either” (pg 238). 

Ultimately, what do you think Gregor’s metamorphosis means?  What does it mean to be transformed into a giant bug?

I don’t think it really mattered if it was he was a giant bug at all, it could’ve been any sort of permanent damage to the ability to provide for a family. The story could well portray the same effect if Gregor wasn’t transformed into a giant bug but instead got sick and was bedridden. His family’s hatred for Gregor is partially because he turned into a disgusting bug but it isn’t the main reason. It was because who was once the breadwinner of the family is now useless and needs to be taken care of. The question of whether someone’s worth should be determined by their ability to work and make money came up in class and it connects to this question. When all there is for a person is work all the time, what happens when they can’t? Well in Gregor’s family, they start to disdain him for the extra work even as far as trying to replace him by talking about a marriage for Grete at the end of chapter three. But what the family isn’t trying to do is move forward from the grief of losing Gregor but the loss of the income he provided.

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? … (Lines 70-73)

1. Alred Prufrock had just left a room full of women pondering to himself whether he should’ve approached them or not. In the lines I’ve chosen, Prufrock is walking down a street during the evening and sees lonely men smoking from their windows. I chose these specific lines because it was one of the few sections where I fully understood what was literally happening. But also I thought these lines were exceptionally ordinary. This is definitely a Literary Modernism trait, when there isn’t a why to it but rather as the professor said “A stream of consciousness”. These lines provided further evidence of isolation in the community because he didn’t just describe the men as men but as lonely men. With the added fact that the women were in one room and men were by themselves, I think that these lines could be how Prufrock felt about himself. He felt isolated since he didn’t approach the women in that room, and can also see himself as one of those lonely men. Although my passage was quite straightforward, I still want to know if there were specific reasons for his word choice. Why did he use dusk? Was there perhaps a connection between Prufrock’s state of mind and the specific time?

The connection that I chose is between Chandara and Harriet Jacobs. I want to mainly focus on the way they both want to make choices on their free will and not fall into someone else’s grasp. Whether it be the egregious act of slavery for Jacobs or the act of being opressed by his husband for Chandara. Both hate being controlled by a party which they can’t control. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacob is being pursued by her slave owner which she goes into hiding in an attic so small that she couldn’t even stand in. She continued to live there for several years “Yet I would have chosen this, rather than my lot as a slave” (Chapter 21). I was reminded of this audacious act when I was reading Punishment, Chandara was offered a way out of her death sentence if she would just listen to her husband. “Don’t worry- if you do what I tell you, you’ll be quite safe.” (pg 893) is what Chidam told Chandara, however despite that Chandara refuses to use his advice and much prefers death. We understood that there was previous tension between them causing them to have a fallout.  Chidam just like Dr. Flint required full control of their women, and felt that their pride was being attacked when their women were getting out of control. This led Chandara and Jacobs to build up pent-up rage inside of them and when they finally got the chance to get away, they seized it. In both texts, we see how extremely oppressed Chandara and Jacobs were. They were being suffocated in their relationships and when someone gets pushed to the edge, they were both happy with going with the choice that they felt like they were in control of. 

The Death of Ivan Ilyich was a novel that is very much relatable to the current world we are living in. Just as Ilyich is trying to climb up the corporate ladder, he is also trying to climb up the social ladder or pretending to be. Ilyich for the longer half of his life is obsessed with how he was presented to other people around him. He marries not for love but because of the connection he thinks his wife will provide. He gets a better job not because it’s fulfilling work to him but because he can show off his new and fancier apartment. It seems almost parallel to the world we are living in now. With the rise of social media, everyone is trying to take a snapshot of their life’s highlight in order to boast to their friends and families. But no one now talks about the behind-the-scenes and how most of it is a facade. It is incredible to see how easily someone can lose sight of what truly matters, not materials but meaningful relationships. Just like Ilyich who becomes isolated and ill, the world also gets isolated and ill due to the recent pandemic. During this quarantine, I certainly have realized that I lost sight of what really matters too. I too was caught up with the hustle and bustle and not realizing how I have been neglecting my meaningful relationships whether it be friends or family. However, I did find the lack of communications in the novel foreign. I understand it’s really easy to get sidetracked with your career especially when you have bills to pay and mouths to feed, but most of the conflict could’ve been avoided if Ilyich just spoke up. Perhaps because I am a “gen z” and feel entitled to speak up about how I feel, I think Ilyich should’ve spoken up about his distress and made his epiphany sooner.

Why do you think Hedda kills herself?  What evidence can you find in the text to support your response?

Hedda Gabler has shown to be a manipulative person since the beginning of the play. From the way she lied about Miss Tessman’s hat just to rouse her up or convince Lovborg to go ahead and drink fully knowing he is a recovering alcoholic. I think this trait stems from a strict upbringing since she’s probably been repressed both because she’s a woman and raised by a militant father. She longs to set herself free to do what she wants and be the puppet master instead of being the puppet. We start to see a break in her character in Act 3 when Lovborg confronts Mrs. Elvsted and Hedda about destroying his life’s work. Hedda is seen in the text physically holding back her grin and smiles. Up until this point Mrs. Elvested has been the anchor in Lovborg’s life since he rehabilitated and Hedda hates not having control of everyone she knows. So when Mrs. Elvested and Lovborg’s relationship gets stirred up and starts to go south, Hedda is proud of herself for causing this. She so wants to be the puppet master but when Judge Brack gets a hold of her Achilles ankle, she kills herself. We can see this when Hedda tells Judge Brack “The on cock of the walk” and Judge Brack agrees with her meaning that he also wants to be puppet master. He wants Hedda to do whatever he wants and when he finally has that power over Hedda, she can’t stand it. Her whole upbringing has already been repressive, so she so wants to live freely and act to her accordance. And when that is taken away from her, she might as well not live anymore.

One of the first things I noticed that was interpreted differently in the film is when Hedda Gabler first enters the scene. We can see Hedda hesitates entering the room when she first sees Aunt Julie suggesting Hedda is not really fond of seeing Aunt Julie. This small detail wasn’t described in the text. Although a small change, it was not a trivial one in my opinion. This small incident helps set the tone that Hedda does not really like Tesman and his family. In my personal experience, we only dodge interaction with people close to us for two main reasons. Either they intimidate us or we don’t like them and I’m sensing the latter is true here. The next thing I noticed that was different is the whole slippers scene was curtailed from the film. This whole sequence in the book certainly tells me that Hedda doesn’t really care for Tesman all that much. So when the film curtailed it with the part of his aunt embroidering it for him, it seems to me that the film is trying to further ingrain the idea that Tesman’s family does not matter at all to Hedda. The last small detail I noticed that was different in the film is when Hedda herself suggested to call Juliene Tesman auntie whereas in the text it was George Tesman who suggested it. To me, in the film it seems like Hedda might’ve felt bad for the hat situation she fabricated to get on Aunt Julie’s nerves. The moments when Hedda was the only one in the room, her face seemed to be of stress and regret whereas in the book the mood was set to be a little bit more vile.

Incidents in Life of a Slave Girl although sets the same tone with how they view slavery as Narritive of the Life of Fredrick Douglas, Harriet Jacobs had vastly different experiences. Jacobs unlike Douglas was not only subjected to physical abuse due to manual labor but also subjected to sexual abuse due to her gender. Jacob describes her experience in an extremely harsh way that hiding and living practically lying down for seven years in a hole with no light nor air is far better than going back to live with her master. Another way Jacobs differed with Douglas is how Jacobs had a kid, Benny. For the years she was hiding in her small dark hole, the laughter of her children is what kept her going, what gave her the power to stay hidden. However combined with Douglas’ experiences, it truly paints a picture, an egregious one for me about what being a slave really was like. Being a slave is not just about white men owning African Americans, but also the mentaly and physically tormenting them for decades, even after the Emancipation Proclamation which was suppose to set them free.

The first important thing I found about modern slavery is how broad the definition is, I knew forced labor and sexual exploitation is considered slavery but I didn’t know that forced marriages is also under the umbrella of slavery. Being someone who is an Asian American immigrant, I have heard multiple stories throughout my life whether it was my own family lineage or my friends family lineage about how common forced marriages were. I would have never guessed that it was considered a form of slavery. Another interesting fact I came to learn is that 1 in 4 people trapped in a form of modern slavery are children, most of them are force to do labor and even join children militias across the world. The last thing I found is that, slavery is not only prevalent in developing countries, but even in first world countries too, like many of countries in Europe. It’s a such a big problem that modern slavery in developed countries made an esitmate of almost 50 billion dollars in 2014.