In a coastal town frequented by tourists, we find the characters of Simon Collings’ story, “Do You Speak English?” in a derelict area. It is very important that the setting takes place in an area such as this to show the audience the cultural and monetary divide between the characters. Collings shows the division between the characters which are the wealthy tourists and the poverty-stricken boy as they interact with one another as told by a local onlooker named Manuel. Although Manuel bridged the language gap between the boy and the woman tourist, the social and cultural divide between the three isn’t so easily accomplished. The setting element used by Collings helps point out the gulf between the classes and how this rift is not able to be breached. Collings gives the reader great detail about the squalor of the area when describing “the floating garbage and the stream of brown, stinking waste which trickled from a pipe in the wall below” and it is within this setting that the tourists set foot in to provide the conflict within the story.
As the tourists continue to walk along the quay, the female tourist is oblivious to her surroundings as she is more concerned with the plight of the fish she sees in the road “[thrashing] helplessly in the gutter…gasping its last breaths” than the “barefoot and grubby” boy who was “marked with insect bites” fishing. While the setting is significant to the story, one must also look at the plot or storyline to understand why the characters act as they do. The female tourist is quite adamant about the safety of the dying fish and feels it should be placed back in the river for its survival. She gets no response from the fishing boy and turns to Manuel for his assistance. She looks upon Manu...
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...h. A blind eye has been turned to the truly needy even though help was given. Ten times the amount of the fish’s worth was paid, but there was really no resolution for anyone. The social and cultural gap was too wide to be bridged by neither the wealthy tourists nor Manuel, who could have explained the boy’s background making the wealthy sympathetic to his real needs. In Manuel’s hesitation, he too remains unsure of bridging the social gap. In the end everyone went about their daily lives with no consideration for one another. The wealthy may be blinded by their life of entitlements and unable to truly see those in need; however, those in need may want to reconsider their pride regarding their dire circumstances as they reveal them to others that bridge can be built to cross this social and cultural divide.
Works Cited
Collings, Simon. "Do You Speak English?".
Today's world is filled with both great tragedy and abundant joy. In a densely populated metropolis like New York City, on a quick walk down a street you encounter homeless people walking among the most prosperous. Unfortunately, nine times out of ten the prosperous person will trudge straight past the one in need without a second thought. A serious problem arises when this happens continually. The problem worsens when you enter a different neighborhood and the well-to-do are far from sight. Many neighborhoods are inhabited only by the most hopeless of poverty - ridden people while others downtown or across the park do not care, or are glad to be separated from them. Such is the problem in New York City today and in Mott Haven in Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace. I have lived in New York City all my life and I had no idea that these problems were going on so close to home. If I live about three miles away from Mott Haven and I am not aware of the situation there, then who is?
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In both Golding's Lord of the Flies and Marquez's "I Only Came to Use the Phone" emerges what is more than a simplistic story but instead an avocation for the author's beliefs. These authors use several techniques such as plot and dialectical choice to exemplify their distaste for savagery. Both main characters, Ralph and Maria, transition from an individual in a new and isolated environment to a savage who is a part of this place. When looking at Golding and Marquez's techniques of influential plot and dialectal choice, one can determine that these methods of writing are used to advocate civility.
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Introduction: The novel Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan follows the hapless journey of twelve Bay Area tourists destined for Burma, accompanied by the ghost of their dear friend Bibi Chen, who died under “mysterious circumstances” just before the departure. The journey continues in a downward spiral until eleven of the tourists go out on a misty lake one morning and disappear. Miss Chen, the omniscient voice of the book, is caught between two worlds and is along for this journey. It isn’t until the end of the book that readers realize many events that occur are actually a metaphor for human relations; and the central theme is that the line between reality and fantasy can be tricky to discern, and things can be vastly different from
With assertive shouts and short tempers, the prominent character, Ricardo, is characterized as a feisty townsman, doing nothing except trying to protect his town and its members from the judgments of the western world. For example, the characterization of the “‘…quaint’” man is exemplified through the simplicity of his life and the fact that he is “‘…employed’” and is full of knowledge, not a “‘cow in the forest’” (55, 29, 32). Ricardo desperately wants to establish the notion that he is not a heartless, feebleminded man, only an indigent, simple man striving to protect his friends and family from the criticisms of callous cultures. Incessantly Ricardo attempts to make it clear to the photographer the irritation elicited by his prese...
Only when your neighbors problems affect you personally or instill a degree of emotion in you then do we begin to try to help them out. We see this when the narrator says that he despises Sonny’s friend. That Sonny’s friend only ever asked for money and that for some reason the narrator always gave in to his request and gave him a dollar or two. After the narrator talks to the friend about Sonny’s recent happenings he again asks the narrator for a dollar. The narrator makes a comment that he did not mind giving him what he had in his pocket this time because they both connected in a way because of Sonny’s situation. There was an invisible venn diagram in the narrator's mind that beforehand had nothing in the middle overlapping circle to connect him to the friend. Now, because of their both shared worries, the narrator begins to warm up to the friend. We see this again when the narrator points out that his own troubles made Sonny’s problems real. When Grace - the narrator’s daughter - dies, the narrator talks about the fact that he had written to Sonny in a long time. This simple action or the idea that my problems make me understand your problems also stems from a capitalistic society. In this day and age, how many companies and businesses make decisions that either push their own agendas or benefit their investors without regards for the good of the rest of their society? Sea world
... of language and education is the most important in this story and society. The make use of two different languages in a narrative, provides a reader a perplexing yet fascinating image of characterization and customs. Multilingual story telling pushes the reader to decelerate and acquire supplemental focus on the expressions which are in the small fragments, however as soon as the reader has figured out the foreign words, he or she acquires a priceless picture of the theme of this story. The panorama of native words and phrases, cultural perceptions, and class dispute taken from the incorporation of two different languages are helpful for the reader to obtain significance that he or she couldn't gain if exclusively one language was employed in the story. Just as the power of language is applied to unveil a society, a better comprehension is provided to the reader.
"The Loss of the Creature" starts off with the definition of beautiful, which is a key point throughout his essay. Next, he moves in to his example of a family of tourists, and their experience (through his eyes) at the Grand Canyon. He describes his theory of the sightseer, and the discoverer; "Does a single sightseer, receive the value of P, or only a millionth part of value P" (pg 1) Value P, being the experience, and the beauty in which that person collected. Following the sightseers was a couple who stumbled upon an undisturbed Mexican Village. The couple thoroughly enjoyed their first experience, but could not wait to return with their friend the ethnologist. When they did return with him, they were so caught up in what his reaction would be; there was a total loss of sovereignty. Due to their differences of interest in the village, the couples return trip was a waste. The second part of the essay includes a Falkland Islander who comes across a dead dogfish lying on the beach. Furthermore, he explains how a student with a Shakespeare sonnet, has no chance of being absorbed by a student due to the surrounding's or package of the class room. The two students are receiving the wrong messages, on one hand we have the biology student with his "magic wand" of a scalpel, and on the other hand the English student with his sonnet in its "many-tissued package". Both students are unaware of the real experience they could undergo, and the teacher might as well give the dogfish to the English student and the sonnet to the biology student because they will be able to explore and learn more within the different setting, and without the surroundings and expectations (pg 6).
...stic things in order to live a better, more sound, and overall healthier life. Juxtaposition makes the audience want to follow through with the purpose. Exemplification causes the audience to realize the extent of their materialistic nature. A definition of the average homeless person’s terms allows him to build his ethos and consequently allow the audience to believe and follow his purpose. A majority of people are a part of the middle class, and this majority tends to judge the poor for their lifestyle whether it be through Dumpster diving or begging on the streets. However, as proven by the essay, these people have no right to do so because the poor do, in reality, have a greater sense of self than these middle-class people, similar to the rich. The middle-class citizens must no longer act the victim; instead, they should be working on becoming more sentimental.
Short stories have particular settings to supplement their themes. The eerie catacombs during a carnival in “The Cask of Amontillado” supplement the themes of revenge, and deception, which the protagonist takes responsibility in; whereas in “Hills Like White Elephants”, the atmosphere around the Spanish train station emphasizes the themes of miscommunication between characters and their evasion of responsibilities.
In the excerpt “Rich and Poor” from Peter Singer’s book “Practical Ethics,” Singer critiques how he portrays the way we respond to both absolute poverty and absolute affluence. Before coming to this class, I have always believed that donating or giving something of your own to help someone else is a moral decision. After reading Peter Singer’s argument that we are obligated to assist extreme poverty, I remain with the same beliefs I previously had. I will argue that Singer’s argument is not convincing. I will demonstrate that there are important differences between being obligated to save a small child from drowning (in his Shallow Pond Example) and being obligated to assist absolute poverty. These differences restrict his argument by analogy for the obligation to assist in the case of absolute poverty.