Great Works MW 5:40 Spring 2013

Women’s thrive in literary, political and social arena triggered widespread male anxiety and repugnance.  The images constructed by men of what the woman should or should not be were still hunting women becoming a great obstacle toward their freedom.

Virginia Woolf  argues that capacity of women’s abilities was underestimated. Women were always viewed as inferior, they didn’t receive same education as men, thus they simply didn’t have a chance to try themselves if different professions. Virginia says that no one can know what a woman was capable of “until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill.”  In the eighteenth century it would hardly be possible, because every woman that showed any interest in science would be proclaimed a witch and burnt alive. Virginia in A Room of One’s Own confronts a bishop that stated that “it was impossible for any woman, past, present, or to come, to have the genius of Shakespeare.” She explains that it was so easy for a men to get  education, good job and succeed than for a woman. Men would laugh in her face and never let her even close to the stage. Today we can see that Woolf was right and there are women in every profession; women are in the government, they are in the military, women chiefs, women soldiers, women scientists. Women proved that they can be equal to men in every field.

In the short story “Death Constant Beyond Love” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez there is a constant and strong conflict between nature versus artificial life in general. As the story develops this concept translates into truth versus falseness which can be better interpreted as corruption, “spiritual or moral impurity or deviation from the ideal.” This story revolves around the senator but allows us to also encounter different aspects of his society. The senator represents the government, and then we meet the people of the place and learn about the economic system.  All these things appear as corrupted in addition to love, family, and work. Gabriel Garcia Marquez criticizes that society overall is corrupted.

At the beginning of the story we learn that the village is “an 
illusory 
village 
which 
by 
night 
was 
the 
furtive 
wharf 
for
smugglers’ ships, 
and
on 
the
 other 
hand, in
 broad 
daylight 
looked
 like 
the 
most 
useless
 inlet
 on
 the 
desert.” The setting of the story is set up as a place of deception. By night there is smuggling and day it looks “useless,” in other words the corruption happens in the night while daylight becomes the cover up to the corruption. The fact that the village defined as deceiving it foreshadows everything and everyone in this village will have two sides one of which is corruption.

Marquez continues to state “Then 
came
 the 
trucks 
with 
the 
rented 
Indians 
who 
were
 carried 
into 
the 
towns 
in
 order
to
 enlarge 
the 
crowds
 at 
public 
ceremonies.” This represents the government aspect of society whose corruption is emphasized by “rented Indians.” Like previously mentioned the senator is the representation of the government and the fact that Indians are used to enhance an illusion of a large “crowd” makes the senator as well as the government corrupted and deceiving.

Later in the story we meet Nelson Farina and we learn that “Ever 
since 
he 
had 
met 
Senator
 Onesimo 
Sanchez
 during
his 
first
 electoral 
campaign,
 Nelson 
Farina
 had
 begged 
for 
his 
help 
in
 getting
 a 
false 
identity 
card 
which 
would
 place
him
 beyond 
the
 reach
 of
 the
 law.” In this case, Nelson is the representation of the people and the fact that he wants a “false identity card” shows his desire to deceive the law. However, Nelson Farina represent more than just the people but also family. Nelson uses his daughter, Laura Farina, as means to an end. This becomes a corruption of the concept of family. Additionally this can also be seen as a deception of love due to the fact that it is not an act of love from the fathers side.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez portrays Rosal del Virrey and everything that composes the society in it with a deceiving side. This deception can be identified in the falseness of the people and the village itself. Going back to the title “Death Constant Beyond Love” I believe Marquez is trying to say that society can deceive one another except death. The death is the one thing that remains constant; the Senator was suppose die in six months and eleven days and at the end he does.

Death Constant Beyond Love by Gabriel Garcia Marquez presents a host of themes that include death, misery, seclusion, and inability. It also presents a lot of symbolism as well, mainly the rose. I will limit myself and focus on the theme of seclusion.

The village of Rose del Virrey where the main character, Senator Onesimo Sanchez has stopped to deliver his campaign speech is described as “illusory 
village, furtive 
wharf 
for 
smugglers’
 ships,  and useless 
inlet 
on 
the 
desert. Most importantly, we are told that this village is secluded by the following, “so 
far 
from
 everything 
no 
one 
would 
have 
suspected 
that 
some one 
capable of
 changing 
the 
destiny 
of 
any one 
live 
there.” (First paragraph). Later on in the story we find out that the village is very poor which further isolates it from the neighboring villages .

The Senator secludes himself because of his pending death. In the first sentence of the story we find out that he his six months and eleven days to live. No one knows this besides him and his doctors. He carried it like a great secret. He migrated through his campaign without his wife and kids, which whom he detached himself from after he found out about his pending death. Nelson Farina has constantly requested a fake ID, to which the Senator has ignored, but when he offers his daughter, Laura Nelson, the Senator is all ears. The scandal involving her would be the point that puts him in a deep seclusionary state.

Nelson Farina lost his wife and also, another woman who was nameless. He ran away from Devil’s Island and ended up in Rose del Virrey. He didn’t have an ID, so he begged Senator Sanchez for a fake one to no avail. So, to avoid getting caught, he had to go into seclusion. He uses his own daughter as a bargaining tool which is a sign of a desperate man.

Laura Farina seems to just be a collateral piece that gets used. Her father sees her as an instrument of persuasion. The Senator sees her as a sexual object. It’s seems she becomes entrenched in a scandal that is not of her own doing. I wouldn’t necessarily say that she is secluded, but I think she is burdened by her father’s and the Senator’s isolation issues.

The theme of seclusion is strong through out the story. It ties the three characters together through a single scandal which is the climax of the story.

Van Phillips

“Death Constant Beyond Love” – themes of pride, dishonesty, loneliness and the inevitability of death

Gabriel Garcia Marquez published “Death Constant Beyond Love” in 1970.  It is the story of Onesimo Sanchez a jaded politician who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Rather than spend his remaining time with his family, Onesimo Sanchez tells no one of his illness (“not because of pride but because of shame” ) and instead chooses to carry on with a re-election campaign which takes him to a poor town in his district.   The town is arid and dry but ironically named Rosal Del Virrey.

Sanchez is a very cynical politician. In his speech in Rosal del Virrey, Sanchez promises unattainable prosperity to the townsfolk, employing well practiced circus-like tricks to captivate and sway the more uneducated people.  Yet later that same day, he meets with the “important” people of the Rosal del Virrey and tells them achieving such prosperity would be a bad thing for Sanchez and these “important” people who make money off the current situation of “stagnant water and Indian sweat”.  Sanchez provides enough small favors to the poor townspeople to generate some good publicity but does not do anything to help the town achieve any real progress.

While Sanchez is apparently a happily married man he chooses not tell anyone about this illness and instead suffers his fate by himself.   If he is a happily married man, why would he not want to spend the remaining time with his family?  Is he really honest with himself about his relationship with his family?

As Sanchez continues his campaign in Rosal del Virrey, he meets Laura Farina, the beautiful daughter of an escaped French convict named Nelson Farina and a Surinamese woman.  For many years, Laura’s father has been lobbying Sanchez to provide him with fake identification that would allow him to live as legitimate citizen. Up to now, Sanchez has never granted this wish.  However, Nelson sees how Sanchez is smitten with his daughter and proceeds to offer Laura to Sanchez in exchange for identification papers.

Driven by desperate loneliness, Sanchez agrees to the bargain but seems driven more by a desire for human contact rather than sexual desire for Laura.  He is obviously very afraid of death but has too much pride to admit this fear to anyone but Laura.  At the end of the story, we are told that Sanchez dies six months and eleven days later, “debased and repudiated because of the public scandal with Laura Farina and weeping with rage at dying without her”.    The scandal must have been a great blow to Onesimo Sanchez’s pride and dignity, as his standing in the community was very important to him.  Yet, he seems even more hurt by not being with Laura Faurina at the time of his death. It is not clear what has happened.  Did he reject Laura due to the public scandal, only to regret this action later?

The short story ‘The lady with the Dog’ has been exceptionally written by Anton Chekhov who always considers the best writers of the short stories in history. Mostly at earlier stage he wrote for financial gain but as time porgresses he made own style which is nothing but evolution of the modern short story. As he describes the story The lady with the Dog, at the age 40, Dmitri Gurov is a Moscow banker, married with a daughter and two sons. Unhappy in his marriage, he is frequently unfaithful, and considers women to be of “a lower race”. As I first reading I realized he is a guy who has no respect for women and random relationship occurred few times for him which ultimately brings sorrows and pain for him but as the stories progress I feel that the story has dramatically turn to more intense situation which also makes him to understand that he is in real love. Dmitritch Gurov has been hanging out for about two weeks in Yalta, on the coast of the Black Sea, when he hears of the arrival of a new vacationer, known only as “the lady with the dog.” As he dislikes his wife and women in general, also has no objection about having affairs. He is troubled only when his lover forms some sort of emotional attachment to him. The lady with the dog soon becomes his next conquest.

Her name is Anna Sergeyevna who is married too, but her husband is absent. She and Gurov quickly become friends and then lovers. Afterwards, Anna considers that she is a fallen woman, and with shame assumes that Gurov will never respect her again. Gurov finds himself bored by her concerns. The affair continues, but ends shortly when Anna is called back home by her husband. At first their love goes is very general but as time progresses the love makes Gurov a kind lover even though when they first met Anna is nothing but a lady with the dog for him. On the other hand Anna is in deep love as they spent first night together but does this love creates any confrontation for Gourov’s character who always run away before relationship turn into solid bond ship.

Gurov embraces his old life, hoping and assuming that he will forget all about Anna. But this is not the case. Consumed with thoughts of her, confused by his feelings, and suspecting love, he travels to Anna’s house and seeks her out one night at an opera while her husband is outside smoking. Anna is surprised by his arrival and terrified that someone will see, but she admits that she hasn’t been able to stop thinking about him since she left Yalta. She begs Gurov to leave before someone come, and leaves him with the promise that she’ll come to see him in Moscow. He returns home, and Anna follows through on her promise. She begins visiting Moscow semi-regularly, where she stays in a hotel and carries on her affair, if intermittently, with Gurov. Visiting her in the hotel one day, Gurov realizes that he is in love with her, and that this is the first time he’s ever been in love. He has two lives, he concludes, one secret and valuable, the other public and worthless. It is true both of them took very quick decision when they married which ultimately push them in this situation. Now divorce can be a solution but are they enough brave or courage to take this attempt and establish their love.

Anna cries a lot when both understand they love each other but married different person so only thing they can do is to take more desperate attempt to establish their love or leave it. But how it is possible when their love is secretly played and perhaps no acceptance from the society. There is no further evidence to prove that what really happened after that because Anton Chekhov didnot disclose what finally happens to their life. But I am hoping their love will be established and that crazyness always be in the same. There is a saying that true love and feeling never goes wrong as Anna and Gurov truly love each other therefore only love can determine their destiny.

“The Lady with the Dog” (‘Dama s Sobachkoi’) was written in 1899 when Chekhov was at the height of his career. It is an account of the extramarital affair between Dmitri Dmitrievich Gurov and Anna Sergeevna. Their casual affair gradually develops into a deep love, which transforms Gurov from cynical adulterer into a compassionate lover. Transformation did not occur momentarily, it was not the love at first sight. Gurov, a man in his late thirties began cheating on his wife long time ago. When he met Anna Sergeevna, she was just a lady with the dog for him, one of many he had charmed in the past. He had bad experiences with such affairs but couldn’t resist this interesting young woman, so innocent, so inexperienced and pure. He was a predator and she was his prey; he could already predict the scenario of their future affair. He knew “it would be sure to happen” as he knew that he would certainly meet her the next day in a restaurant or a board walk.  Gurov had no feelings for Anna Sergeevna and didn’t care if she had feelings for him; he thought of her “slender, delicate neck, her lovely grey eyes” and at the same time he thought that “there is something pathetic in her.”

It seemed “peculiar” to him that Anna Sergeevna took their affair so seriously. She was going through a profound emotional distress after their first night together, “as though it were her fall,” and he thought of her reaction as “strange and inappropriate.” It was inappropriate for a woman, he thought, to feel guilty for deceiving her husband as if a swift, fleeting love affair was part of the entertainment program in resort towns like Yalta. He was annoyed and bored. He cut himself a slice of watermelon, and began eating it without haste. This gesture suggest that he is not being sincere.  What was he thinking about in that moment? Could he share her experience? Could he reflect? Was he even capable of reflecting? Gurov was often unfaithful to his wife, spoke ill of all the women had been with and, because of his bitter experience, called them “the lowest race.”

Everything has changed after they parted ways. At first he was happy to be back in Moscow. He loved the city and he loved his fancy and comfortable life, restaurants, clubs, dinner parties, card games. But he could not enjoy himself anymore. He was torn between the dream and the reality.  He realized that all that surrounded him was fake; he was disgusted with “rage for card-playing, gluttony, the drunkenness, the continual talk always about the same thing.” Things that were previously appealing and joyful to him now became unworthy. And the worst was the fact that he could not open up to anyone.  A man, who was born and raised in this city, did not have a soul to share his innermost secrets with. His life was crushing like house of cards. The one thing he desired the most was the lady with the dog.

    Anna Sergeevna and Gurov were victims of the time. He was wed when he was very young and didn’t love his wife. She rushed into her marriage for the sake of change and wasn’t happy either, “it was as though they were a pair of birds of passage, caught and forced to live in different cages.” Two lonely souls, they “loved each other like husband and wife, like tender friends; it seemed to them that fate itself had meant them for one another.” Here they are, in the hotel room again; she is crying, he is sitting in a chair and thinking that it would come to an end one day. How long will they be able to live double life? Will Gurov find courage to abandon his wife and his kids? Will Anna Sergeevna handle the humiliation of divorce? Will they find strength to support each other when everyone else turned their backs on them? “…it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning.” Chekhov doesn’t tell us how the story ends, maybe because ambiguity gives birth to hope, hope that they will walk their road together till the very end, hand in hand.

“Diaries of A Madman”, by Lu Xun brought about strong emotions in me as I read it. My most prominent emotions were the feelings of sadness and guilt. Sadness when I put myself in the Elder brother’s place and guilt because I have been one of those green people with fangs. Although I hate to admit such a disgraceful and embarrassing fact, it is just that.

I can only imagine how the Elder brother must have felt watching, as his younger brothers mind slowly took him into a deeper and darker place. The Elder brother becomes the head of the house and then is thought of as a cannibal by his brother, who accuses him of joining the people who want to fatten him up so that they could eat him. Later on, the madman brother begins to “realize” that his brother and mother must have eaten their younger sister at the young age of 5 as well. Maybe even he too shared in the consumption of his sister’s flesh. Having to watch as his brother’s mind deteriorates, being able to do nothing except yell at the people who watch and laugh at him or keep him inside the house, having to hear his brother accuse him of wanting to eat him, these are some of the reasons why I felt sadness while reading the madman’s diary.

Guilt I felt, as mentioned before, because I have been one of the green fanged spectators. It’s not that I laughed at them necessarily,  but I have looked upon them with uncertainty and uneasiness. Although I realize that it is not in their control to be any different, I cannot help but feel a sense of fear. Fear because I don’t know how they will react to certain situations or if they will suddenly erupt in anger, as I have observed previously. However, “Diaries of A Madman” helped me to better understand why people like the man who is always in the Starbucks across the street from the VC building sits there all day talking to himself, cursing up a storm. They have their own scenarios in their minds, as many people do. Just like everyone else. It is simply that they have these conversations with their minds outloud.

It was an experience reading Lu Xun’s writing. It was frightful how hearing news of how another village killed and ate a bad man spun out of control in the mind of the younger brother. How it went from people in the village smiling at him with expressions that look like innocent smiles, but with the look of hidden agendas at the same time, to starting to believe that the whole village, including his own brother, was conspiring to have a feast with him as the main dish. Makes you realize that the mind is both a wonderful and dangerous place.

When I first began to read Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman, I read it in a very literal way and was a little bit confused. At first I asked myself questions like “Is he living in a poor society where people eat each other?” or “Is he crazy?” In the beginning, a man describes that he is visiting a friend who has been sick, but the illness is not identified. As I began to read deeper into the text, I understood that the man in the diaries suffers from paranoia. He is overwhelmed with hallucinations and fear of cannibalism. He is gripped by the fear that everyone, including his brother, his caring doctor and his neighbors are preparing to eat him. In the mind of the “madman,” he portrays his everyone in his neighborhood as heartless and cannibalistic. Despite the brother’s apparent genuine concern, the narrator still regards him as a big threat as any stranger, showing just how distrustful he has become.

For example, the second diary even begins with his obvious paranoia. “There were seven or eight other people who had their heads together whispering about me…A shiver ran from the top of my head clear down to the tips of my toes, for I realized that meant they already had their henchmen well deployed, and were ready to strike.”

It becomes more apparent in Diary four that the narrator is suffering from a mental-like illness (maybe schizophrenia), when the doctor comes to check on the narrator. The doctor says “Don’t let your thoughts run away with you. Just convalesce in peace and quiet for a few days and you’ll be all right.”

The idea of courage that repeats itself in the diaries. In the fourth diary, the narrator states “But the more courage I had the more that made them want to eat me so that they could get a little of it for free.”

I realized that there is a deeper meaning than the literal translation of these diaries. The text had to be referring to a broader picture or maybe an issue in the society at that time. I began to analyze the diaries as an attempt to describe the oppressive values in the Chinese society. It may even be referring to the corrupt government and upper-class people who fed off the work of the lower-class people while limiting their freedom. By using cannibalism, Lu Xun illuminates the problems of the society without an obvious assault on the corruption in China. Because the Chinese government was extremely oppressive especially when it came to freedom of speech, Lu Xun’s use of such metaphors to connect cannibalism to a critical issue in society worked very well. It also made it comprehensible for many people in society. Cannibalism referred to the outdated values that individuals held at that time, and the narrator is one of the few people who dares to counter those values. This brought me back to the use of the idea of courage. The narrator possessed courage which was rare trait at that time, so people wanted to eat him in order to gain some for themselves.

The narrator comes to the conclusion that his older brother ate his younger sister when she was a child, that perhaps he himself unknowingly consumed her as well, and that his mother either did not know or would not speak of the cannibalism because it was inappropriate to speak of such things.

He enforces his concern for the future generations and the children. His last plea is to “save the children…” He retains hope that maybe there are some children who still haven’t eaten human flesh. In other words, he hopes that the future will learn to stand up against oppression and gain the bravery and courage to speak their minds. Even in the beginning of the diaries, he says “But the children? Back when they hadn’t even come into the world yet. Why should they have given me those funny looks today?…That really frightens me. Bewilders me. Hurts me. I have it! Their fathers and mothers have taught them to be like that!” In other words, the narrator is saying that if the oppression and fear to speak up continues, parents will teach their children to be timid and lack courage.