T'ien-Hsin, Impersonal, Sudden Death is Best

 

Chu T’ien Hsin is a Taiwanese author  whose main topic of writing is what it means to be Taiwanese, “gradually moving from an emphasis on Chinese identity, expressing a nostalgic longing for a lost homeland”(Puchner, 1742).  In her story, “Man of La Mancha” however, she focuses on the idea that a sudden death is best if it happens in an impersonal and indescript manner.  This is the best way to avoid the shame that can come upon a person if they do not have their affairs in order when death come knocking at their door.  To further our understanding of her theme, T’ien Hsin writes on first person narrative from the perspective of a gay man, who shares with us his recent near death experience that causes him to revise his appearance.

The story begins where our narrator is working in a chain coffee shop on an essay he must compose for his work.  After he finishes, he realizes that he has way too many cups of coffee and the caffeine is doing a number on his heart.  He begins to feel the frightening and paralyzing “chill from my internal organs spreading out to my flesh and skin”(T’ien Hsin, 1744).  After our narrator manages to get himself to a doctor’s office for some IV fluids, he realizes how close he came to collapsing and public.  He begins to obsess over what would have happened if passer-bys  had to search his pockets, or see his underwear in the commotion that would follow an unplanned demise.  The results of his newfound obsession may seem ridiculous but they bring to light the fear of dying suddenly and embarrassing yourself by leaving behind secrets, whether they are dirty underwear or an untidy and boring wallet.

Although the story’s author is a woman, the narrator of the story drops hints that he is a gay man with a significant other through the subtle description of a fight they had over his new undergarments he purchased in case he were to drop dead in the middle of the street and someone had to see his underwear, “my significant other was all but convinced I had a new love interest, and we had a big fight over that”(T’ien-Hsin, 1749).  Is our narrator’s sexuality a secret in the sometimes stringent culture of the East?  Or is his lover the person he is trying to protect if he should die in a way that is embarrassing?

The author’s use of first person narrative serves her purpose of having us contemplate the narrator’s fear by putting us in his shoes.  How do we, as the reader, feel about the prospect of leaving behind our lives exposed to be judged by our survivors whether they be loved ones or family?  Is it better to leave behind an impersonal legacy instead of embarrassing ourselves?  The narrator purports at the conclusion of the story “death only visits us once in our lifetime, so we should make preparations for its arrival”(T’ien-Hsin, 1750).   However, the obsession with that preparation could rob us of a life worth living if we constantly worry about the legacy we are leaving behind.

Works Cited:

Ed. Pucher, Martin. "Chu T'ien-Hsin, born 1958." The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 1650 to Present. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 1742-1744. Print.

T'ien-Hsin, Chu. "Man of La Mancha." Ed. Pucher, Martin. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 1650 to Present. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 1744-1750. Print.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Death

Paul Celan was a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust whose poetry emotes feelings of grief and suffering. His experience in the death camps left him so scarred that he committed suicide by “jumping off a bridge into the Seine, in Paris”(Puchner, 1468). The themes of death and martyrdom that overshadowed Celan’s life are most evident in the poems “Deathfugue” and “Aspen Tree”.

“Deathfugue” was Celan’s first published poem and his most famous. Its title in Romanian is “Tangoul Morti” or “Tango of Death”(Puchner, 1468). In this poem, death constantly surrounds the prisoners, especially when they are digging their own graves while under the supervision and beating of the German Commandant. The repetition of “We shovel a grave in the air”(lines 4 and 14) and “You’ll then have a grave in the clouds”(line 24) are the beating drum of impending doom. The irony of the grave digging is a metaphorical one as they know they will not lie in a grave dug into the earth but rather “a grave in the air”(line 32) as their bodies will most likely be burnt to ash upon their demise. Martyrdom is presented in the languid movements of the prisoners doing a dance of death to appease the guard. The prisoners go through the motions he demands without resistance and are resigned to their fate.

In “Aspen Tree”, Celan mourns his mother who “was shot when she was no longer capable of working” within the camps (Puchner, 1467). Images of nature such as wood, dandelions, rain clouds and stars are the juxtaposition of the poem within the poem which mixes the living with the lament of the dead mother. Celan remarks how “My mother’s hair never turned white”(line 2) in the same breath of remarking on the Aspen tree’s “leaves glance white in the dark”(line 1). The living wood brings to mind that fact that life goes on after his mother’s death.

Works Cited:

Celan, Paul. "Aspen Tree." Ed. Puchner, Martin. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 1650 to Present. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 1470. Print.

Celan, Paul. "Deathfugue." Ed. Puchner, Martin. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 1469. Print.

Martin, Puchner. "Paul Celan, 1920-1970." THe Norton Anthology of World Literature, 1650 to Present. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 1467-1469. Print.

Neruda

             Pablo Neruda was an author of mixed Indian and Spanish ancestry who became one of Latin America’s most important twentieth century poets (Puchner, 1421).  He used his voice to publicize social problems in his home country Chile such as poverty as well as everyday life and politics.  In his poem “Walking Around”, he tells the tale of a man who is tired of his life and the everyday.

 A view of the city as a captor emerges in Neruda’s poem.  It appears to trap him with its shops, its people and its narcissistic trappings.  He feels the constant need to become “impenetrable” to its smells and ugly sites.  The poet describes the life of the person in the poet as someone who lives in a city of excess which drives him to the brink of madness and perhaps murder when he says “it would be delicious to scare a notary with a cut lily or knock a nun stone dead with one blow of an ear”(lines 12-14). The narrator feels a hate that manifests itself through physical symptoms, the main being exhaustion, mental and physical.  He states “I am tired of being a man” (line 1), “tired of my feet and nails” (line 9).  He views his death as an escape when he says “It would be beautiful to go through the streets with a green knife shouting until I died of cold” (lines 15-17).

Neruda portrays the city as something that needs to be escaped in order for him to find the beauty in his life.  While Baudelaire mixed the wonders of the big city with its hidden underbelly or seediness and death, this poet shows the city as the aftermath of a party that has left him hung over and used.   He wants to “weep with shame and horror” (line 32) just as the clothes on the line which “weep slow dirty tears” (lines 44-45).  If the city is not escaped, it will swallow a person up in its materialistic and disgusting waste.

Works Cited:

Neruda, Pablo. "Walking Around." The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 1650 to Present. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 1423-1424. Print.

"Pablo Neruda, 1904-1973." Puchner, Ed. Martin. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 1650 to Present. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 1421-1422. Print.

 

 

Gender

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, known as Machado, is considered one of Brazil’s greatest writers. Being black in a time when slavery was still legal in Brazil, Machado had little formal education, except for “listening in to lessons at a girls’ school where his stepmother worked in the kitchen” (Puchner, 910). In his short story “The Rod of Justice”, he tells the story of a young man, Damiao, who has run away from the seminary where he was placed by his father, to the home of Sinha Rita. Sinha Rita is a powerful woman who has the ear of the boy’s godfather and the one person he believes can save him from a horrible life in the seminary.

Sinha Rita uses her female gender and sexual power to become the most impressive character in “The Rod of Justice”. Her power over the men in the story is mental, preying on their need for both a mother figure and a temptress. Sinha Rita considers herself a contender among these men while she deems the only other female characters in the story, her slaves, to be the least worthy of her consideration until it is time for her to inflict physical distress upon them. While it is never fully explained why she holds so much power of the men in this story, Sinha Rita is loved and feared by them all.

Damiao fears his father and has determined his godfather to be “a soft muttonhead”. While both of these men in the story exude some power over the young man, his godfather’s mistress “who is eager to show her power over both her lover and her slaves” (Puchner, 911) proves to be the most formidable. Sinha Rita is wealthy and owns many female slaves, including a sickly young girl Lucretia, who she constantly threatens with the rod. The mistress asserts her authority over the men with her words and threats of snubbing them; Sinha Rita affirms her supremacy over the slave girls with threats of violence.

When Sinha Rita ask Damiao why he does not entreat his godfather, her lover Joao Carneiro, to approach his father about letting him leave the seminary, he tells her that he does not think he will pay any attention to him. In reply, she retorts “Well, I’ll show him whether he’ll pay attention or not…” (Assis, 913). Indeed she does show him when she meets with Joao. Assis writes “his chest heaved, the eyes he turned upon Sinha Rita were full of supplication, mixed with a mild gleam of censure” (Assis, 914). The mistress is brandishing her sexual power over Joao when she threatens “Joaozinho, either you rescue this boy, or we never see each other again” (Assis, 916).

The underlying theme in this story is Damiao’s fascination with the delicate and sickly slave girl, Lucretia. Early in the story, when he makes the silent vow to protect her from the rod of Sinha Rita, it is expected that he will become her champion. However, this hope is squelched when it is realized that Sinha Rita is the only one with any authority in “The Rod of Justice”. Damiao has to choose between defying her to save Lucretia, or Sinha Rita’s support contingent on his remaining in her good graces; he chooses the latter, not wanting to disrupt his chances for Sinha Rita’s assistance.  When Lucretia begs Damiao to save her from her mistress’s beating, “he reached the settee, picked up the rod, and handed it to Sinha Rita”(Assis, 916).  Sinha Rita’s power over all is uncontested.

Works Cited:

De Assis, Joaquim Maria Machado. "The Rod of Justice." The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 1650 to Present. New York: W.W Norton & Company, 2013. 911-916. Print.

Puchner, Martin. "Joaquim Maria Machado De Assis 1839-1908." The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 1650 to Present. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 910-911. Print.

 

 

Marti and Dario

Walt Whitman is considered the most influential American poet of his time. He “celebrated the most overlooked people, from slaves and prostitute to immigrants and prisoners” (Puchner, 646). Latin American poets Jose’ Marti and Ruben Dario, who were the Whitman’s of their time and place, found inspiration in the works of Whitman.  This inspiration allowed them to depict their own hardships  during their revolutionary eras through the uses of landscape and nature.

Jose Marti was a Cuban writer who “entwined his revolutionary political activities with his art” (Puchner, 680). In his poem I Am an Honest Man (Guantanamera), Marti uses the aspects of nature to define his emotions much like Whitman does in his poem “21”. Marti proclaims “In the mountains, I am a mountain” (line 8) and “the dark night, rain over my head, the pure rays of lightning of divine beauty”. The security of the landscape and tribulations of the weather are like the emotions he feels within his troubled soul.

Ruben Dario claimed his homeland as Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and the continent of Europe (Puchner, 689). Dario lived in troubled times in each of the countries, and the unsettled sentiments of his life carried over into the tone of his poetry. Like Whitman and Marti, he uses nature to reveal emotion. In Fatality, Dario describes “the tree is happy because it is scarcely sentient; the hard rock is happier still, it feels nothing” (lines 1-2). This line refers to a life of change making life eventful but sometimes to be hard of feeling keeps us from getting hurt. “To Roosevelt” mentions Whitman by name, assigning kudos to the poet.  Dario again utilizes nature and its elements. Dario compares life to a “fire” and “progress is an eruption” (line 16). Only when emotions overflow in people who can bear no more does change occur.

Works Cited

Dario, Ruben. "Fatality." The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 1650 to Present. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 695. Print.

Dario, Ruben. "To Roosevelt." The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 1650-Present. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 693-694. Print.

Marti, Jose. "I Am An Honest Man (Guantanamera)." The Norton Anthology of World Literature 1650 to Present. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 681-682. Print.

Puchner, Martin. "Joe Marti 1853-1895." The Norton Anthology of World Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 680-681. Print.

Puchner, Martin. "Ruben Dario 1867-1916." The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 1650 to Present. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 689-691. Print.

Whitman, Walt. "21." The Norton Anthology of World Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 650-651. Print.