The boken fountain

477 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: reflections on cultural awareness

The Broken Fountain

This story told about a man who travels to Naples, Italy. It is a first person narrative, almost like a diary of the person’s life in Italy. He was looking for a new society, and the reason for his travels is because he feels he should see how the people from that specific society live. He did not know anyone, or have anyone with him, nor did he speak the language. He doesn’t know where anything is or about the complicated customs. Even though in the beginning he didn’t understand these things, when he left, he had been molded into a new man.
The first few chapters are just describing the place he lived, and about a man he met who taught him Italian. He lived in a run down dirty apartment building with rates. He spent his first few days worrying about where he lived, and how he was going to adjust to his new life. He then talks more about the man who teaches him to speak, and how the man showed him around and introduced him to people in society.
He was introduced to Lorenzo and Stefano through this man. These two people quickly became the author’s friend, and they showed him how to survive in Italy. They were compassionate toward the fact that he was an outsider, and didn’t understand their culture. They were there to help him adapt to his new life, and to help him feel comfortable. They showed him the community where they lived, and how it was overall a bad group of people. People were always getting raped and robbed, and almost every night something else would happen. This was how people survived in this community. This made people unwelcoming of new people, and why it was hard fro him to meet people in the beginning.
He would occasionally travel to Europe, and observe the societies there. He wrote down lots of notes about the culture and the way of life. The people in Europe were welcoming of him, and it really made him think of his outlook on the people in Italy where he lived. He quietly observed a criminal who had been allowed to move in with him, because he did not want the thief to die.
At the end he opened his eyes and saw that the society was a complete mess.

Show More
Related

  • Use of Setting and Description in David Malouf's Johnno

    956 Words  | 2 Pages

    Malouf describes the house of Dante’s childhood with words of freedom, revealing the memories through the eyes of a child. The old house represented a freedom, a casual yet organized environment. The old house was described as mysterious, ‘a wilderness transformed into a suburban farmlet’

    Read More

  • The Impact of Family in Sonny's Blues

    612 Words  | 2 Pages

    The story begins with the narrator’s brother, Sonny, being arrested for using heroin. When the narrator discovers what has happened to his brother, he slowly starts to relive his past. Up to this point, the narrator had completely cut his brother and his childhood from his life. He disapproves of the past and does everything in his power to get rid of it. The narrator had become an algebra teacher and had a family who he moved to get away from the bad influences on the street. As a result, it is shown in the story that he has worked hard to maintain a good “clean” life for his family and himself. Readers can see that he has lived a good life, but at the toll of denying where he came from and even his own brother. For years, his constant aim for success had been successful. However, as the story progressed everything he knew started to fall apart.

    Read More

  • My Italian Immigration Experience

    701 Words  | 2 Pages

    Unless you are a wealthy Italian, you live a much humbler lifestyle. A lot of Italians homes are meager, and the material goods Americans want and vie for, aren’t as important to them. I realized how fortunate I was for all the belongings I took for granted. Some Italians would view the home I grew up in as a mansion compared to their own. They seemed so much happier and it was humbling to see them content by having a lot

    Read More

  • The Grateful Dead

    2222 Words  | 5 Pages

    throngs of people to seek a friendship with their surrounding world. He had a way

    Read More

  • I'm Not Scared by Niccolò Ammaniti

    2498 Words  | 5 Pages

    The elements at play in the novel and film are quite remarkable for their traditionally universal appeal.3 The fates of two adolescents, one jailed the other unwilling jailer, intersect and are soon bound together in a struggle for survival at the hands of unsuspecting enemies. The filmmaker's aim was to adopt a child's unadulterated point of view in referential opposition to the surrounding adult world. Given the suspenseful plot and the exploration of the young protagonists' fears at coping with a habitat they must disavow, such an aim and narrative scheme were expected to gather much attention.4 The pre-teens Michele, the novel's principal hero, and Filippo the kidnapped child are ultimately elevated from a pit of dirt and fear, the antechamber of death, chiefly by their own heroic praxis. Yet the problematic lack of any meaningful degree of depth in the novel and film seems to lie precisely with its overly schematic construction, tailored to safely weather the otherwise unpredictable market.

    Read More

  • The Dilemmas of Conscience in The Crucible

    2822 Words  | 6 Pages

    it related to his own life and the events going on around him at the

    Read More

  • Corruption In Serpico By Peter Maas

    582 Words  | 2 Pages

    The main character Frank Serpico is a long hair, bearded, short man that would dress laid back most of the time but if needed will dress up. In Chapter 1, it is known that he had just returned from a two-week vacation to meet the narrator to talk about his vacation. They sit down to drink and I noticed that it was mentioned that he wasn’t a big drinker and was very conservative. Although he does seem reserved that didn’t cover the fact that he did have a few relationships with a few women throughout his life. Serpico was the only sibling

    Read More

  • Elizabeth Gilbert's The Best Pizza In The World

    1199 Words  | 3 Pages

    The author writes “Pizzeria da Michele is a small place with only two rooms and one non-stop oven.” (Gilbert 176). That small section of text gives an almost complete picture of the place; it’s the rough equivalent of an American Ma and Pa family restaurant. It’s not a fancy place, and for the purpose it serves, it does not have to be a spectacular place cosmetically. The atmosphere of the pizzeria is what makes this place so special. Gilbert writes, “By 1:00 PM, the streets outside the pizzeria have become jammed with Neapolitans trying to get into the place, shoving for access like they're trying to get space on a lifeboat.” (Gilbert 176). This pizzeria gets busy early on in the day. Once can infer, based on that textual example alone, that the pizza this pizzeria serves is simply

    Read More

  • Elizabeth Gilbert's The Best Pizza In The World

    1628 Words  | 4 Pages

    Their quirky and eccentric ways are part of what makes Naples so unique in Gilbert’s eyes and Gilbert’s first experience with the people of Naples is what really brings this point home. Gilbert writes, “…That punk little grammar school girl on the back of her older cousin's motorbike, who flipped me the finger and a charm' ing smile as she drove by, just to make me understand, ‘Hey, no hard feelings, lady. But I'm only seven, and I can already tell you're a complete moron, but that's cool-I think you're halfway OK despite yourself and I kinda like your dumb-ass face. We both know you would love to be me, but sorry-you can't. Anyhow, here's my middle finger, enjoy your stay in Naples, and ciao!’” (Gilbert 175). This Neapolitan girl makes a gesture that in any other context would be considered offensive but Gilbert understands and embraces the girl’s gesture. Gilbert understands it well and she is welcoming of the curt openness of the Neapolitans. The author writes, “The accent in Naples is like a friendly cuff on the ear. It’s like walking through a city of short-order cooks, everybody hollering at the same time” (175). One can conclude from this that the people of Naples are loud and short while talking to anyone. Oddly enough Gilbert seems to like their curt way of speaking. This description gives the reader a good idea of what interactions with the people of Naples is

    Read More

  • Creation of a Sense of Place in 12 Edmondstone Street

    1753 Words  | 4 Pages

    When presenting ‘A Place in Tuscany’ the perspective changes to that of a young man. Compared to the house in Brisbane, more use is made of the conversation and there is a more sophisticated and advanced vocabulary and knowledge of the area. This gives the reader a more adult insight into the area.

    Read More

  • Bread And Wine Sparknotes

    1052 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ignazio Silone’s Bread and Wine became one of the most controversial as well as influential novels in Italy during the early twentieth century. Bread and Wine is set in rural impoverish Italia countryside under the Catholic and fascist control. It begins with Don Benedetto, an elderly priest and his aged sister are waiting for visitors to come celebrate his birthday. These visitor’s are some of his favorite students who have grown up and moved away. In their reminiscing, Don Benedetto begins to ask how other student lives have turned out after all these years. Including his favorite pupil, Pietro Spina. The former students explain that Pietro Spina had become a communist revolutionary and was exiled from Italy, and is on the run from police who are hunting him. Don Benedetto asks the student to aide Pietro in his return to Italy. At this point the novel begins to focus on Pietro Spina and his return to Italy. Pietro aided by his childhood friend Nunzio dons the disguise of a Catholic priest called Don Paolo Spada. However, Pietro Spina has abandoned the religious beliefs and ideas of becoming a saint that he once had as a child and now in his adult life is considered to be a fervent atheist making; this disguise quite ironic. While in disguise, Spina becomes exasperated with the strong catholic beliefs and superstitious ideas which are the basis of thought of the peasants he is trying to influence. This brings about the continuous theme of socialism and Christianity as well as the question surrounding all the characters within the novel, “How can a decent person act in a terrible time?”1 Silone uses this questions to explore how the political views of fascism within the Catholic church effects uneducated peasants withi...

    Read More

  • Rappaccini's Daughter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

    947 Words  | 2 Pages

    At the beginning of the story, a young man named Giovanni Guasconti is introduced to the readers as a typical homesick student from Southern Italy. He is at once attracted to the beautiful garden next door belonging to the mysterious scientist, Dr. Rappaccini. Not only is he fascinated by the scientist and his garden, but he is instantly enchanted by Rappaccini's beautiful daughter, Beatrice. The second time Giovanni sees Beatrice from his window overlooking the garden, he notices several unusual things. First, he believes that he sees a lizard die suddenly at Beatrice's feet. Then a swarm of insects appear to die from he...

    Read More

  • The Characters Of I'm Not Scared

    1426 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the end of the novel, Michele has matured. Initially when he meets Filippo he is repulsed by the notion of touching him, however in the end of the text Michele embraces Filippo when they are both ‘shivering with cold' (pg. 211).

    Read More

  • The Koran

    701 Words  | 2 Pages

    He was inspired to preach what he had learned and over time, he gained much support as

    Read More

  • Rene Descartes Essay

    1509 Words  | 4 Pages

    .... People wanted to hear what he had to say. People respected him as a person and his knowledge so much that Queen Christina of Sweden wanted to know what he knew. Sadly she wanted the study sessions to be held at five a.m. These study sessions eventually led to his death in 1650 of pneumonia. He probably could’ve lived a lot longer and had a bigger influence of more people if he didn’t die in 1650. As a mathematician he invented and perfected analytical geometry. As a scientist he told everyone about light reflection and refraction. He also talked about space, the moon, the stars and Earth. As a philosopher he inspired people he never even knew with his wise sayings. He gave people a new view on how everything worked. He described the mind being separate from matter simply because it could think. He was truly a great thinker and a great influence to everyone today.

    Read More

More about The boken fountain

Open Document