The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

    Most men go through some form of midlife crisis. They want to do and achieve things that they would normally have conquered in their younger days. As they get older, things start to become slower as the world around them goes faster and faster. They begin to realize opportunities they have missed and begin to resent this. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock is describing the thoughts that go through the mind of an aging man who is disappointed in how his life has turned.
    During the first stanza of the poem, the narrator "Prufrock" comes across a woman that he is sexually attracted to. "Let us go  Let us go, through certain half-deserted street, The muttering retreats,Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels." He wants to do things "Of insidious intent" with her. Instead  of acting on these thoughts and talking to her, he decides  to not approach her at all. Each time he refuses to go up to the woman he repeats to himself "In the room the women come and go,Talking of Michelangelo." This may refer to how man women have come into his life that could have had a chance with had he pursued them, but instead he hesitated and nothing happened with them. Because of this continuation of failing to form a relationship with these women, he brings it upon himself to pretend that something did happen.
   He also goes on to imagine what would have happened if he had persuaded these women. "There will be time, there will be time, To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;". He continues to say this mantra of "there will be time, there will be time". There would be time for him to prepare himself before talking to these women and he would have had time to put together the right words and actions to use in those situations. Not only would there be enough time for him, but there would even be enough for the women as well. "Time for you and time for me,".

Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Wolfe

     In Mrs. Dalloway, each of the characters have something that has been hidden in their past. Some characters have feelings towards another character or towards an event that occurred and do not act upon them. Those characters just choose to hide their true intentions from others around them. They continue to keep appearances and hide their emotions. Virginia Wolfe's short story shows the consequences that suppressed feelings can have on people.
     Three characters in the story all are hiding some part of them selves. Peter is hiding his true feelings for Clarissa and the resentment that he holds for her rejecting his marriage proposal. He continues to think about er even after visiting her again. Instead of addressing this to Clarissa he hides these feelings of sadness and resentment and then goes on to stalk another girl in the park. He begins to form a relationship with this girl in his mind and later discovers this self induced relationship. He thinks to himself that the relationship is "made up, as one makes up the better part of life". Later on, he returns to Clarissa's house in order to attend the get together that she is throwing and is filled with joy once he sees her again.
     Clarissa herself is hiding feelings of others. She begins to become resentful over the her marriage. Her husband, Richard, cannot tell her that he loves her and this begins to trouble her. She begins to think on the day that she choose to marry Richard instead of Peter and wonders if she really did make the right decision. Not only this but she is also resentful over how her old friend Sally has changed. Sally is now a married woman with many children, much different from the Sally that Clarissa once knew. The relationship with Sally was one of complete love , the way "as men feel" for women. She thinks on this feeling after remembering a kiss that she once shared with Sally.
   

Walker Brothers Cowboy

    Sometimes children can hold grudges against the actions that a parent may choose to do. When families separate, the child for the time being cannot understand why these things are happening. they may just allow for one major even to overshadow all others. From then on out, an opinion of someone can change and nothing else from that point one mattered. In Alice Munro's Walker Brothers Cowboy, a young girl looks back on the memories that she had with her father and realizes that she did not give him enough credit for the things he did. She allowed for one significant event to change how she felt about him. In the story, Munro shows that memories one shares with another can mend any argument. 

    In Walker Brothers Cowboy, the father i said to have once raised foxes and sold their fur to others, but recently times have gotten tough and no one has been buying furs.Now he is a door to door salesmen. Her mother can be seen as more practical than her father doing day to day chores for the family and the house. During the story, the father encounters and old girlfriend by the name of Nora. The interaction that the two share makes a great impact on the father, making him increasingly happier. In one selection, the narrator says how the father never would drink whiskey, but she soon realizes that he not only drinks whiskey but "he drinks whiskey and talks of people whose names" the narrator never heard of before. After this conversation with Nora, the narrator notes that after this, the father is much happier. She gets a sense of the father's past and realizes that he wants to become the man that he wants was. This gives the narrator a new found respect for her father. 

The Moment before the Gun Went Off

     Racism has always been a turbulent issue in South Africa. Nadine Gordimer brings up this issue in her short story The Moment before the Gun Went Off. This tells the story of a man named Marais Van der Vyver who accidentally shoots and kills his laborer named Lucas. What the reader does not find out until the ending is that Lucas is actually Van der Vyver's son. This story's theme centers around the idea of separation and how it effects the lives of others. This also looks at how some separations connect others. 

    During this period in time, in which the story takes place, there was a policy going around called apartheid. This is a policy that thrives on racism, separating European whites and the African blacks. They were not only separated by race but also by class. This policy was designed in order to keep the Europeans on top while leaving all others at the bottom, having to tend to the needs and wants of the whites. During this time, Van der Vyver begins to form a relationship with one of the blacks and this results in the birth of a son, Luke. Van der Vyver never acknowledges that Luke is his son and continues to treat him as he would his other laborers. After Luke's death, he pays for a lavish funeral service. In one moment of the story, Luke's mother can be seen looking at the grave at the exact same time as Van der Vyver. "The dead man' mother and he stare  at the grave in communication." They never speak a word to each other, but they both are feeling the same emotion of distress and sadness over the loss of their son. Even though the two were separated by the law, this boy was their only connection into each other's world. 

Death by Landscape by Margaret Atwood

     Grief is an emotion that each person must deal with at some point in time. Grief can be triggered by anything from the separation of parents to the death of  loved one. What if this grief could haunt a person so badly that the effects are psychological? What if this grief made one question their own ability to think an their own perception their memories? In Death by Landscape by Margaret Atwood, grief is shown as an emotion that never really leaves someone, but stay with them forever. The character, Lois, deals with grief on a day to day basis after the death of a friend at summer camp.
     While on a canoe trip with a group, Lois forms  very close friendship with a young girl named Lucy. Throughout the story, the narrator, Lois, talks about the association of Lucy going missing and the water. It is not said in the story whether or not the water has anything to do with Lucy's disappearance. The pivotal moment of the story comes when Cappie, the counselor of the camp tries to place the blame of Lois for Lucy's disappearance. Cappie is worried about how the news of the missing girl will ruin the business of the camp. "Were you mad at Lucy?" Cappie asks Lois in a voice that is almost encouraging her to go along with this story. This leaves Lois even more distraught, which confirms Cappie's theory. Ever since that even, Lois now can only remember bits and pieces of her life. She cannot even remember "having her two boys in the hospital". It seems that her memories keep taking her back to that moment at the lake because of other key points throughout the story. She seems to associate herself with the water from her paintings to the house where she lives now. From that moment, she has never been able to fully trust herself.

Philip Larkin

          In Philip Larkin’s poem, “Talking in Bed” he uses the theme, failures of love, to express his concern for a couple’s inability to communicate and ultimately leads to a failing relationship. Throughout the poem, Larkin questions why the subject’s (the couple) relationship and how it failed. “Talking in bed ought to be easiest, Lying together there goes back so far, An emblem of two people being honest.”  The narrator is expressing his concern about their relationship being based of dishonesty. Instead of the bed being a place where the spouses come back as one, it is symbolized as a place of detachment and lies. . The word "lying" has a twofold meaning in this poem; on one hand it means that the couple in assuming a horizontal position together, and on the other hand, it means that there is some untruthfulness or falsehood between the couple.  "Goes back so far" also has a double meaning: first, the couple has been "lying together" in their bed for years (they have been married a long time); and second, they have been dishonest with each other for years.            The poem is filled with ups and downs of the marriage and how it is subject for turmoil. Tensions build between the couple but neither party releases in concern so the problems continue unresolved. The narrator also uses words such a “isolated” to represent the couples growing apart “At this unique distance from isolation.” He later writes about how their marriage has grown so far apart that they don’t even talk anymore or how they used to talk/love each other at one point in time earlier in their relationship. “It becomes still more difficult to find, Words at once true and kind, Or not untrue and not unkind.” This poem represents people falling into silence and how communication of change can affect a relationship for the better instead of falling into a silence and never seeing any positive outcome of a relationship.

Salman Rushdie - The Prophet's Hair

      The Prophet's Hair tells the story of a string of events which occurs after a family comes into possession of a strange and powerful religious artifact, that artifact being a strand of hair from the prophet Muhammad. In Rushdie's The Prophet's Hair, the reader is allowed a glimpse into a world filled with greed and corruption. Each character has his own flaws as everyone does, but these flaws are brought out even more by this artifact.The author is conveying how valuable things can corrupt and change people. One character in particular seems to convey this message of greed more so than any of the other characters. 

       Each of the characters act on a major sin throughout the story, greed being the most prominent and most addressed sin. The character Hashim is shown as being consumed with greed after coming into possession of the strand. He was "fond of pointing out that while he was not a godly man he sat great store by living honorably in the world." This line is a sarcastic take on Hashim's true intentions and moral. In many parts of the story, he tries to justify his greed. He found that his "duty as a citizen was clear", he was going to return the hair to where it belonged. Instead of doing this keeps the hair telling himself that it is for the best. "And after all, the Prophet would have disproved of this relic worship." By saying this he believes that by him keeping the hair he is not only doing himself a favor, but others who also practice this religion. In this instance, Hashim puts himself in the place of Muhammad, thinking that he knows best for everyone else even though his intentions are solely based on his own wants and needs. We see this similar situation in the character in Porphyria's Lover.