Author Archives: ZAIN REHMAN

Connecting my own life to Isabel Allende’s “And of Clay are We Created”, I feel like I can relate mostly to the pandemic. Covid-19 took all of us by surprise and there were no precautionary measures set until it was too late and like we always have, we panicked amid the pandemic, same thing happened in the story, they were aware of the volcanic eruption but underestimated it and suffered severe consequences. I came to New York for College, and everything was completely normal, the semester was going great, there were a few cases of Covid-19 so most of us were not taking it seriously at the time. But it spread so fast that within a week everything had to be shut down, I had to wrap everything up and go back to my family in Pakistan. Even in the story, everyone had to evacuate quickly, and many were not even able to evacuate and got stuck, same thing happened with flights as New York is so diverse, everyone wanted to go back to their country or to be there with their families. Everyone was panicking because in the start it did feel and look like the end of the World is upon us as there were so many cases and the death toll was rising fast. I didn’t even have time to take all my belongings with me but all I knew was that I needed to be with my family where I would feel safe being close to them. Even the media coverage was mainly about the number of cases and deaths and not about how many recoveries have been there, instead of giving us hope they were constantly spreading fear, I get that they had good reasons behind it but at the same time, there was enough panic as is. The politician, the government or other organizations assembled to react to pandemics like this one were not well prepared regardless of being informed well before everything hit rock bottom. There was no protocol set until the economic system of the world had all collapsed and everything had to be shut down, it could have been handled better, and some countries like New Zealand did handle it well. Media is good and bad for us at the same time, on one hand it keeps us aware of what’s happening now but at the same time it takes away hope and shows mostly the worst side of a story. It could have been a good tactic to keep people at home by frightening them through media outlets.

Lines 40-46

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In these lines, Prufrock talks about his insecurities. He feels like people care about his hair or how he dresses up. He talks about how he has everything in life, money and wealth yet he feels like people talk about his insecurities behind his back when no one does except for him. In this passage, he explains the reasons why he doesn’t approach the woman she likes. The lines where he says do I dare disturb the universe he feels like if goes out of his comfort zone to approach her, he will get an anxiety attack and won’t be able to do so or far worse, she will reject him because he is a middle-age bald, as soon as he thinks about approaching her, his insecurities come on his mind. He is seen as his own critique in this poem.

In the short story ‘Punishment’ by Rabindranath Tagore, he illustrates or describes an incident that actually occurs in many places around the world to this day, maybe not to this extent but it does. In this story, the husband, Dukhiram comes home from work tired and exhausted, when he founds out that his wife, Radha has not made any food for him and that instead of serving him with delicious meals, she is replying with sarcasm as to how he didn’t bring home anything to cook so how can she make any food for him. All this probably triggered the misogynist inside him and out of rage, Dukhiram plunges his knife in the head of his wife Radha. Then later on, in the story, the other brother, Chidam wants his wife to take the blame for a crime that his brother committed. I think this all connects to Mary Wollstonecraft excerpt. In that excerpt Wollstonecraft talks about how in that time, it was normal for men to think that women are there just to please men and that if they fail to do so, they shall be disciplined roughly. Wollstonecraft says in the excerpt, in that era, women were merely housewives and most of them were uneducated, the men would go out in the world, get education, make money, generate wealth while the women would stay at home take care of the children, the kitchen and do whatever pleases their husband. The same thing can be seen happening in this story when Dukhiram and Chidam order their wives around and expect them to do whatever pleases them, not caring about how they might have felt. They were selfish and stubborn like the men described in Mary Wollstonecraft’s excerpt. In both, the story and the excerpt, men are seen as independent while women are dependent on them.

Leo Tolstoy’s novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich carries a valuable lesson for mankind. It elaborates through details about how making a living and creating wealth cannot always be good for you but most of the time in the end it’s all worthless in the eyes of a dying person. He argues that all human beings are eventually going to die, and the wealth and money earned or created will be left in this world but the only thing that would matter is the memories they made with the loved ones or the adventures they went on. Ivan Ilyich surrounded himself with people who were just like him, only ambition being creating money and wealth. So, when he died, the only thing they cared about was that his death created a vacancy and chances of promotion, he did not create bonds with people who would actually miss him or grieve for him, and the people who actually did care about him, he pushed them away and instead went of focusing on his work. Life is too short to be spent in one direction. This story resonates with our society today as well, especially during these times of the pandemic. This pandemic has taught us that your life can take a drastic turn at any point so we should make sure that we enjoy our life as we go and for me personally, to not just spend all my time at work and in school but to go out a little, travel the world while I can. We are always going to make money and have many opportunities at different places but there are memories that can be made before we run out of time. Life is about living, how you live is on you, you can just survive or actually live.

I originally thought that if a slave owner lost their slave they would not be so cruel to look for them over the states and won’t let them go over several years. Such was the ego and cruelty of slave owners that even after escaping, one would have to look over their should all the time and keep running away to the end of time. For what I thought was that eventually slave owners would let the escaped ones go and consider them gone but no, they would keep looking for them as to teach them a lesson or to sell them away, they would not accept loss.

“Before he commenced whipping Aunt Hester, he took her into the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely naked. He then told her to cross her hands, calling her at the same time a d—-d b—-h. After crossing her hands, he tied them with a strong rope, and led her to a stool under a large hook in the joist, put in for the purpose. He made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook. She now stood fair for his infernal purpose. Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes. He then said to her, “Now, you d—-d b—-h, I’ll learn you how to disobey my orders!” and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor. I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a closet.”

This passage just demonstrates one of the incidents that got written down by Fredrick Douglass. This is just an incident that we have been told of, imagine how many people suffered the same fate. The slave owners did not care if they were whipping slaves in front of their children begging for mercy as that begging feeded the barbaric souls of the slave owners. This passage shows that this whipping and blood dripping had become a common practice for the slaves.

It reveals that at a young age he had to see these horrid scenes and by the time he got old he got accustomed to it. Seeing these things since childhood can affect a child in many ways, one of those ways could be for the child, in our case Fredrick Douglass would be to see these things happening to be normal. Yes he didn’t become numb but he knew it was inevitable so he wasn’t holding on to some false hope.

The way Douglass narrated this whole scene in his narrative shows that he was just writing about any other days as this passage lacks emotion. He describes this horrifying scene so casually cause for him it did become a normal thing. On top of that, he saw this incident as a kid and by the time he learned how to read and write, he had seen so many worse things happening to people that this incident just made it to the top but it was nothing out of the ordinary for him.

Why did they have to be so cruel when the work slaves were asked to do was done. Why did he have to torture her in front of a child. Where was human decency. And most importantly who came up with the idea of racism that oh because they are of a darker skin they don’t get to have rights, who started all of this. And so many more questions cause this whole narrative is so troubling.

The poem I went with was “London” by William Blake. What drew me to this poem was that William Blake actually talks about a society we live in today. In the first stanza, the poem reads “I wander thro’ each charter’d street, “and in the picture we can see the old man is being guided by someone down a street because he is not familiar with the area which is why he uses the word wander in the line, fits perfectly with the picture. As he keeps walking, he looks around and sorrow follows. He talks about manacles which is a metal band or a chain that keeps someone tied down. He says in the second stanza “The mind-forg’d manacles I hear” and I think he means that if people stop following the same hard routine, they fear they might not have a successful or a comfortable future and that they might be destroyed, and in the picture above we can see a man trying to put out fire. This to me seems like that the man thinks if he keeps on the manacles tied onto him by society, only then will he be able to put out that fire and continue to live by. This poem is a part of songs of experience because throughout every stanza, he talks about a society when everywhere he looks, he sees the innocence of men, women and children being destroyed right before his eyes, the old man in the picture has closed eyes and the guy is looking at him wondering if he is exhausted from all the walking but little does he know that the old man has been withered down and can’t look into the place any further.

When I started to read the poem, it was somewhat difficult to comprehend the main idea of the poem but gradually I came to the understanding that Alexander Pope is trying to show us the relation between human and god in a philosophical manner. He explains to us that no one is imperfect in this world, each one of us have a role to play and that’s why we are who we are, it’s all part of the god’s plan, me might not understand or be able to see it yet, we just need to believe it as it is near impossible to seek perfection and to always seek perfection, it can be tormenting and exhausting. He says that it is not reasonable to complain against god as what we see is what is visible to our eyes but he see’s everything and all the different worlds with a completely different spectacle of perspective. He talks about angels, humans and god, and the relation between them. He says that all of us are connected and we can not replace each other as it would cause problems. Pope says in his poem that all human beings deserve to be happy, but most have a different opinion of happiness or what makes them happy, which is why through religion he has separated right and wrong. The one who follows the right path is a good human being and shall be happy in this life and in his immortal life in the hereafter. He further on says that God is not biased towards anyone or favors certain individuals. And he is the only one who knows that is going in someone’s heart which is why he is the only one who gets to judge us, we should not judge each other and just work on ourselves as on the day of judgement, every man is for himself. And by following the path set by god, one does not just achieve happiness but virtue as well. And to come to think of it, if we all mind our own businesses instead of judging each other, we can all be happy and help each other grow. And one is only good if does not expect rewards for doing good deeds instead understand the importance of having virtue in this world.

I think this picture directly corresponds with Akinari’s text as it shows a beautiful woman covering herself with an umbrella which has serpent on it. The umbrella is a nice touch as that is where it all started when Toyo-o offered his umbrella to Manago on the rainy day (634). History teaches us that men have been manipulated by women’s beauty and their sexual desires. Toyo-o had always been looked down upon by his father and his brother and he would even get scolded when he wasn’t at fault. Seeing how pretty and accepting Manago was to him, it might have been his first real connection to someone, and he got attached even though she is bewitching him. He was already intrigued by her beauty and the second day he met her, she confesses her love for him and proposes to him (635). However, at the same, it shows us how immature he is and how he dug his own grave. He was always told that he is not mature enough and maybe that’s why he acted the way he did. Without even getting to know Manago, he falls in love with her because of her beauty and not because of her intellect so can we really blame Manago for preying on Toyo-o because he is handsome.

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