Jorge Luis Borges's "Ficciones"

Analyses of three of the stories in Jorge Luis Borges’s collection
Ficciones 
By Isaiah Cabanero 

           The three stories “The Library of Babel”, “The Theme of the Traitor and Hero”,  and “Three Versions of Judas”, all by Jorge Luis Borges, are chosen to be analyzed and/or reflected upon in this analytical paper purely because of the intriguing interests and powerful impressions each of the title exudes upon first reading.

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Tonight, One Quote

"The life of a man, male or female, if, say, compared to a complete sensible sentence, can, or at some point must, have commas within it for pauses or separation of ideas and, by the end of the thought, be punctuated with a period to declare the end. This is man’s life in a sentence, or his “life sentence”."

Nadine Gordimer's "Six Feet of the Country" & Wole Soyinka's "Telephone Conversation"

A Critical Paper of Nadine Gordimer's and Wole Soyinka's

 Six Feet of the Country and Telephone Conversation

By Isaiah Cabanero

“The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow,

he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.”

- Dr. Eric Berne

The natures of the relationships the African population had, in general, with the other populations of the world, particularly the ones they had with the population of the whites, who first came to settle in for trade and agriculture, then eventually to colonize, the southern portion of the African continent in the decades past have had very significant impacts in world relations and literature. Most especially during the Apartheid period^*, when the natures of these relationships were at their gravest, the African population suffered grievous separation policies of the ruling white government not only racially, but also economically, socially, and educationally. This is both the subjects being presented and tackled in Nadine Gordimer’s short story “Six Feet of the Country” and Wole Soyinka’s poem “Telephone Conversation”.

In “Six Feet of the Country”, a white couple living in their farm in the countryside, just ten miles outside the city of Johannesburg, is faced with a situation involving them and their young African farm boy and his brother, who illegally immigrated to Johannesburg to find work but got severely sick along the way, lied ill in his brother’s hut for days, and then died, inside the premises of the couple’s farm. The couple now is thrust with the responsibility to take care of and bury the dead young man’s body. The conflict arose when the young African farm boy’s dead brother’s body is handled by the authorities differently than what he, in coherence with his family’s tradition, had hoped for.

In “Telephone Conversation”, an African is on the phone, calling up to a landlady in some location far away in order to get himself some space to stay in upon his arrival there after his journey. He confessed to her that he is an African, and then their conversation over the telephone went from negotiating the price of the space he’d want to stay in upon his arrival to negotiating the lightness or darkness of his complexion. Their conversation soon ended with the landlady hanging up her receiver on the other end of the line.

The two selections, “Six Feet of the Country” and “Telephone Conversation”, though one is a short story and the other a poem, can be creatively analogized to the elements of the foremost-mentioned quotation by Dr. Berne; taking one of the two as the jay and the other as the sparrow. Concerning oneself much of which selection is which from the other, as what is followed-up by the quotation, forfeits oneself of seeing the essence of the selections or the messages they preach. With this kind of reasoning in mind, the two selections can be analyzed together, as one, as if in an overlapping or super-imposing manner, with the lines of the poem tried to be weaved harmoniously into the mesh of the short story’s paragraphs. Some of the lines of the poem are further chopped into composite sensible phrases, and are weaved not necessarily chronologically into the sequence of the paragraphs of the short story, but more soundly into the most comparable and most parallel ones. This kind of literary approach is part-Deconstruction, part-New Criticism, part-New Historicism, part-Structuralism, and part-Semiotic Criticism. ...

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A Harry Potter prequel written by J.K. Rowling

An Account of One of James's and Sirius's Adventures:
 
          The speeding motorcycle took the sharp corner so fast in the darkness that both policemen in the pursuing car shouted ‘whoa!’ Sergeant Fisher slammed his large foot on the brake, thinking that the boy who was riding pillion was sure to be flung under his wheels; however, the motorbike made the turn without unseating either of its riders, and with a wink of its red tail light, vanished up the narrow side street.
          "We’ve got ‘em now!” cried PC Anderson excitedly. "That’s a dead end!”
          Leaning hard on the steering wheel and crashing his gears, Fisher scraped half the paint off the flank of the car as he forced it up the alleyway in pursuit.
          There in the headlights sat their quarry, stationary at last after a quarter of an hour’s chase. The two riders were trapped between a towering brick wall and the police car, which was now crashing towards them like some growling, luminous-eyed predator.
          There was so little space between the car doors and the walls of the alley that Fisher and Anderson had difficulty extricating themselves from the vehicle. It injured their dignity to have to inch, crab-like, towards the miscreants. Fisher dragged his generous belly along the wall, tearing buttons off his shirt as he went, and finally snapping off the wing mirror with his backside.
          "Get off the bike!" he bellowed at the smirking youths, who sat basking in the flashing blue light as though enjoying it.
          They did as they were told. Finally pulling free from the broken wind mirror, Fisher glared at them. They seemed to be in their late teens. The one who had been driving had long black hair; his insolent good looks reminded Fisher unpleasantly of his daughter’s guitar-playing, layabout boyfriend. The second boy also had black hair, though his was short and stuck up in all directions; he wore glasses and a broad grin. Both were dressed in T-shirts emblazoned with a large golden bird; the emblem, no doubt, of some deafening, tuneless rock band.
          "No helmets!" Fisher yelled, pointing from one uncovered head to the other. "Exceeding the speed limit by – by a considerable amount!" (In fact, the speed registered had been greater than Fisher was prepared to accept that any motorcycle could travel.) "Failing to stop for the police!"
          "We’d have loved to stop for a chat," said the boy in glasses, "only we were trying -"
          "Don’t get smart – you two are in a heap of trouble!" snarled Anderson. "Names!"
          "Names?" repeated the long-haired driver. "Er – well, let’s see. There’s Wilberforce… Bathsheba… Elvendork…"
          "And what’s nice about that one is, you can use it for a boy or a girl," said the boy in glasses.
          "Oh, OUR names, did you mean?" asked the first, as Anderson spluttered with rage. "You should’ve said! This here is James Potter, and I’m Sirius Black!"
          "Things’ll be seriously black for you in a minute, you cheeky little -"
          But neither James nor Sirius was paying attention. They were suddenly as alert as gundogs, staring past Fisher and Anderson, over the roof of the police car, at the dark mouth of the alley. Then, with identical fluid movements, they reached into their back pockets.
          For the space of a heartbeat both policemen imagined guns gleaming at them, but a second later they saw that the motorcyclists had drawn nothing more than -
          "Drumsticks?" jeered Anderson. "Right pair of jokers, aren’t you? Right, we’re arresting you on a charge of -"
          But Anderson never got to name the charge. James and Sirius had shouted something incomprehensible, and the beams from the headlights had moved.
          The policemen wheeled around, then staggered backwards. Three men were flying – actually FLYING – up the alley on broomsticks – and at the same moment, the police car was rearing up on its back wheels.
          Fisher’s knees bucked; he sat down hard; Anderson tripped over Fisher’s legs and fell on top of him, as FLUMP – BANG – CRUNCH – they heard the men on brooms slam into the upended car and fall, apparently insensible, to the ground, while broken bits of broomstick clattered down around them.
          The motorbike had roared into life again. His mouth hanging open, Fisher mustered the strength to look back at the two teenagers.
          "Thanks very much!" called Sirius over the throb of the engine. "We owe you one!"
          "Yeah, nice meeting you!" said James. "And don’t forget: Elvendork! It’s unisex!"
          There was an earth-shattering crash, and Fisher and Anderson threw their arms around each other in fright; their car had just fallen back to the ground. Now it was the motorcycle’s turn to rear. Before the policemen’s disbelieving eyes, it took off into the air: James and Sirius zoomed away into the night sky, their tail light twinkling behind them like a vanishing ruby.

Source: http://www.mugglenet.com/potterprequel.shtml

Hey Buddy,

Tonight is something.

Tonight my friend told me that her father has cancer. Stage two. Cancer, it's the most common torture of the time. I told her "it's okay" and we said our "good nights".

It wasn't. It was not okay as I walked back home to my place. I felt like every step I make hesitate to step on the ground, and as if my butt drags me back to where my friend and I said our "good night"s. God, it was an unknown pain inside I was feeling. I kept thinking of forgetting something. I felt a hug was missed. I felt bad. Seriously bad, it almost had sickened me as well as the share she'd told me.

I didn't know what exactly to do! Should I go back? Run back after her, and give her the hug I felt forgotten and missed? Or should I just... I don't know, don't mind the thought? I couldn't take it. It's so bad a feeling I felt really bad. Damn it! i say.

I ran back, rushed down my place and back outside. I rushed to her building as quickly as I can feel, damn it pushed the elevator up myself up to the ninth floor, rang the bell, her door opened, and gave her my hug. I told her "it's okay" though I know it's not. She told me "it's fine" and thought I left my bag at hers. I told her "it's okay" and told her "good night".

She to me is special, and she deserves the hug. I just want to let her know that I do care and that it's okay even if the world knows it's not at the moment. 

Tonight was a good night. Not doing what I had just done, I must have felt sickened by myself 'til morn. Destitution perils not only the destitute, but, sometimes, perils the one that destitutes more. 

I felt drunk. I regret not the hug.

Your buddy

Tonight, One Quote

 

"As common windows are intended only to admit the light, but painted windows also to dye it, and to be an object of attention in themselves as well as a cause of visibility in other things, so, while the purest prose is a mere vehicle of thought, verse, like stained glass, arrests attention in its own intricacies, confuses it in its own glories, and is even at time allowed to darken and puzzle in the hope of casting over us a supernatural spell."

 

Read more about it here.