Cover Letter
Date: June 17, 2007
To Whom It May Concern:
Welcome to read my selected essays in Vera’s writing portfolio. This portfolio is an authentic record of my most important and representative works written for the Academic Writing Class of Fudan University in the spring of 2007. During this semester, I have finished reading a book entitled “The International Story: An Anthology with Guidelines for Reading and Writing about Fiction”, and tried my best to comprehend the writing methods introduced by the book. The majority of my essays pasted in this writing portfolio deal with my reflections on several short stories in this book. One of the most valuable lessons I have learned is that a perfect writer must be a penetrating reader, for time-honored reading material may not only evoke a person’s emotion, but also train a person into a critical thinker, thus providing glittering muses.
Since childhood, I have developed my love for writing and tasted an abundance of world-class literary works, with my several Chinese essays published. However, when speaking of writing in English which is not my mother tongue, I occasionally felt frustrated and discouraged, for I was not confident enough to interpret and convey my exact feelings in my second language. In addition, although I strived to enrich my vocabulary, sometimes I was at a loss with my diction. During this course of academic writing in English, my teacher, Mr. Corio, really provided me with many constructive comments and suggestions, and he helped me develop my English writing to a more understandable as well as coherent level. To be frank, the workload of this course was not light, for it always took me the whole afternoon of Saturday on average to sit in front of the computer, reviewing the information of the class in the Internet Classroom and racking my brain to type the assignment. However, I enjoyed the process to a great extent, while supplementing my essays with effective newly-learned writing strategies, savoring the highlights of the teacher’s lectures, adding replies on my peers’ works after earnestly reading them… Throughout the whole course, I have learned an abundance of writing skills, including creating a strong and clear thesis, incorporating quotations into my own idea, paraphrasing the original text properly, to name but a few. Thanks to this rewarding course, I have generally outgrown an immature and unconfident writer.
The first three drafts in my writing portfolio deal with my impressions created by the short story “The Necklace”, written by Guy de Maupassant. Having read the story intensively, I kept asking myself: what is the function of Maupassant’s ironic tone in the story? During the process of accomplishing my drafts, I consulted the particular book (“The International Story” ) about the definition of irony and other effective reading and writing strategies. I found it tough when completing the trial draft; fortunately, Mr. Corio’s professional comments and my peer’s critical suggestions motivated me to make improvements. I used to neglect some details, such as punctuating quotations and using the standard format, but I successfully revised my errors and refined the paragraphs. Moreover, I found proofreading a rewarding way to polish my essay and make it more persuasive. It is delightful to see my final draft completed, and now I have a deeper understanding of the original short story.
The final timed-writing is also enclosed in my writing portfolio. The routine practice of free writing was effective, which assisted me in developing a smooth flow of thoughts and alleviate my tension when accomplishing the three timed-writing tasks. After certain times of trainings, I realize that a peaceful mind and a positive attitude will help me perform the best of myself during a limited period of time. Furthermore, a logical way of thinking is a crucial factor to create a cohesive and unified essay.
The reading log is my favorite item in this writing portfolio. After reading the story “The Grass-Eaters” written by Krishnan Varma, I was deeply touched and regarded the story as a realistic portrayal of the poor people’s predicament. I believe that different people may hold diverse viewpoints on the same story due to their disparate backgrounds, prejudices, experiences and aspirations. I consider my reading log as the personal stage to release my initial reactions to the story, my deep and unique thoughts and my own world outlook.
Joining in the academic writing class this semester is sure to be one of my fruitful experiences. I cherish this writing portfolio, and I earnestly hope to share my viewpoints with you.
Sincerely yours,
Vera Zhang
Essay Draft Three
Date: June 16, 2007
The Function of Maupassant’s Ironic Tone in “The Necklace”
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Unfortunately, this household-known saying might only be regarded as a mythical cliché if we trace back to the nineteenth-century in France, when class distinctions remained to be the prominent integral of French society. With hierarchy being dominant in the social values, high social status inevitably represents virtue, which ultimately triumphs natural fineness, wit and wisdom and a conscientious mind.
Being a son of minor aristocrats, Guy de Maupassant succeeded in challenging the merciless social system by his extraordinary literary works. Realism was a remarkable element of his published stories which are perfectly linked by irony of the realistic world and the frailty of human nature. His masterpiece, “The Necklace”, seeks to arouse the readers to think about the devastating effects that class distinction had on common people’s lives. In the story, the protagonist Mathilde was a good-looking middle-class woman, who irrationally longed for the extravagant upper-class life. It took her and her husband ten miserable years of hard work to pay for a lost necklace she had borrowed to attend a ball. Astonishingly, the original necklace turned out to be a paste. In the story, Maupassant uses an ironic tone not only to embody Mathilde’s character but also to express his own attitude toward the subject matter.
At the beginning of the story, Mathilde is depicted as a born blue-blooded woman who, “by a mistake of destiny”, was reduced to the middle-class. She appears as a fervent admirer of the upper-class’s delicacies and luxuries, which however, apparently disagrees with her ordinary social status. The fierce conflict between her vain character and the reality can be seen in the lines:“All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry.” (38) The writer delicately yet deliberately captures Mathilde’s frequent and over-romantic daydreaming moments in lengthy sentences, involving numerous enchanting things that are elaborate but superficially clever which would stand for Mathilde’s seemingly elegant but in truth frivolous taste:
When she sat down to dinner, before the round table covered with a tablecloth three days old, … she thought of dainty dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestry which peopled the walls with ancient personages and with strange birds flying in the midst of a fairy forest. (39)
To a great extent, these details reveal that only through boundless and unrealistic imagination is Mathilde able to get in touch with the upper class; however, pathetically, the deeper she is indulged in her unrealistic imagination, the more dissatisfied she is with the reality. The stage to release her grievance toward plain life and satisfy her expanding curiosity finally turns out to be the source of her stronger vanity and greedier desire! Here, the conspicuous incongruity and contrast of the protagonist’s expectation and reality is reflected, where the element of irony emerges and makes the personality of the protagonist more vivid.
The plot starts to thicken when Mr. Loisel notifies Mathilde of the ball. Mathilde is an over self-conscious woman, for what she only concerns is her appearance and dressing at the ball. She seems extremely fragile and sentimental when she feels at a loss what to wear at the ball: “Two great tears descended slowly from the corners of her eyes toward the corners of her mouth.” (40) Mathilde’s complicated and elusive feeling can be detected: she is not willing to let slip through her fingers the opportunity to show her fabulous and luxurious taste as well as her appealing glamour, nevertheless, she is equally afraid of being triumphed or even despised by the exalted and elevated ladies that may appear at the ball. This very situation exposes Mathilde’s paradoxical and ironic character: on the one hand, her beauty endows her with high self-esteem and makes her into an aggressive woman; on the other hand, her fragility and excessive vanity drive her to feel inferior to the upper-class ladies, thus crazily desires things that she does not possess.
Afterward, when Mathilde went to Mme. Forestier’s home to borrow the necklace, we can not neglect the writer’s penetrating description of Mathilde’s acts:
All of a sudden she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb necklace of diamonds, and her heart began to beat with an immoderate desire. Her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it around her throat, outside her high necked dress, and remained lost in ecstasy at the sight of herself. (41)
How ironic it is! Among all the superb jewels, Mathilde, with her “instinct for what is elegant” (38), did cautiously pick a fake necklace! Poor Mathilde, for she could not have predicted the hardship she would endure to pay for this alluring yet valueless necklace. Here, Maupassant might be teasing and ridiculing the individuals who blindly venerate the upper class and pretend to have the extravagant taste, or he might be indicating the fact that the so-called hierarchy is nothing but a paste. Another character, Mme. Forestier, a noble lady of the upper class, seems to be generous enough to allow Mathilde to choose whatever she likes; however, her conscience does drive her to lend Mathilde, a middle-class woman, a fake necklace! Is the writer suggesting the ornaments “of admirable workmanship” (41) in that large jewel box are all fake ones? That could be another ironic situation in this story. Probably, Maupassant depends on the hypocritical behavior of Mme. Forestier to unearth and criticize the nature of the upper-class people at that time: superficially charitable, but internally fake and mean.
The ball really earns Mathilde the unprecedented ecstatic feeling, with her “awakened desires” (41) satisfied by “the sense of complete victory” (41) which drives her into intoxication. Nevertheless, who can foretell the lost of the necklace? In the latter part of the story, although Mathilde is reduced to a miserable life, memory still leads her to fantasy, when she thinks of “that gay evening of long ago, of that that ball where she had been so beautiful and so feted.” (44) Such is the irony of fate, when a tragic but little moment changes a person’s whole life!
Attention must be paid on the name of the street where Mathilde and her husband live: “Rue des Martyrs [Street of Martyrs]” (41). The pathetic yet ignorant couple could never know that one day, they would also become certain kinds of “martyrs”. Naïve Mathilde, being a fervent follower of the upper class, regarded the pursuing of extravagant lifestyle as a noble deed, but she finally suffered greatly due to her beliefs. Isn’t she a ridiculous “martyr”? Here, Maupassant uses his forceful ironic tone to show the absurdity of Mathilde’s deed, while foreshadowing the miserable twist of fate of this couple, which is really thought-provoking.
The short story indicates the biggest irony. Mathilde, who has pulled through a decade’s hardship, while being severely traumatized, being deprived of her beauty and grace, her plain but peaceful life, her age of innocence, her romantic fancies which a woman deserves, finally reappears like “a woman of the people” (43) with her “proud and naïve” (44) smile. However, through her words with Mme. Forestier, it is easy to detect that it is still the same Mathilde, the same egoistic and fragile women whose real nature hasn’t been refined by a decade of wretched life. “[The] necklace was paste.”(44) What Mathilde has longed for and hysterically pursued just turned out to be a fake paste dream which can be easily broken in an instant. The art of irony reaches the peak here, where Maupassant suggests that the origin of such stubborn incongruity between expectation and reality as well as appearance and truth is the merciless and obsolete social system at that time, which is as breakable and worthless as a “paste” necklace.
Throughout the whole story, Maupassant uses his ironic tone and incisive attitude to provide the story with both staggering sensation and food for thought. The protagonist, Mathilde, may represent a slave of the upper class, a victim of excessive vanity, or a sacrifice of the cruel social system, a sufferer of irony of fate. To a certain extent, she is an exaggerated figure created by Maupassant, standing for the majority of the women at that time in France, when the balance of the society was upset by the unjustified social system, while the frivolous and the fake were blindly pursued and human nature was severely oppressed. The element of irony make this short story a time-honored one, which uncovers the brutal social condition, reveals the incongruity and drawbacks of the class distinction, and lashes out at the inequality of human being.
Work Cited
Maupassant, Guy de. “The Necklace.” 1884. Rpt. In The International Story: An Anthology with Guidelines for Reading and Writing about Fiction. Ruth Spack.
New York: St. Martins’s, 1994. 6-8.
Essay Draft Two
Date: May, 6, 2007.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Unfortunately, this household-known saying might only be regarded as a mythical cliché if we trace back to the nineteenth-century in France, when class distinctions remained to be the prominent integral of French society. With hierarchy being dominant in the social values, high social status inevitably represents virtue, which ultimately triumphs natural fineness, wit and wisdom and a conscientious mind.
Born into an upper bourgeois family in France, Guy de Maupassant succeeded in challenging the merciless social system by his extraordinary literary works. Realism was a remarkable element of his published stories which are perfectly linked by irony of the realistic world and the frailty of human nature. His masterpiece, “The Necklace”, arouses the readers to think about the devastating effects that class distinction had on common people’s lives. In the story, the protagonist Mathilde was a good-looking middle-class woman, who irrationally longed for the extravagant upper-class life. Pathetically, it took her and her husband ten years of hard work to pay for a lost necklace she had borrowed to attend a ball. Astonishingly, the original necklace turned out to be a paste. The writer’s attitude toward the subject matter was arresting, especially the use of irony is prominent in this short story for the writer established a satirical tone when capturing several realistic details.
At the beginning of the story, Mathilde is depicted as a born blue-blooded woman who was, “by a mistake of destiny”, reduced to the middle-class. “She suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born for all the delicacies and all the luxuries… All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry.” Mathilde seems to have fabulous “instinct for what is elegant” and her luxurious taste to a certain extent thrills the readers. The writer delicately yet deliberately describes Mathilde’s frequent and over-romantic daydreaming, which involves numerous enchanting stuffs which are elaborate but superficially clever:
“She thought of the silent antechambers hung with Oriental tapestry, lit by tall bronze candelabra, and of the two great footmen in knee breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the heavy warmth of the hot-air stove…”(P39)
It is non-negotiable that the author’s lengthy depictions here are not nearly meaningless. These details reveal that only through boundless and unrealistic imagination was Mathilde able to get in touch with the upper class; However, pathetically, the deeper she was indulged in her imagination, the more dissatisfied she was with the reality. Obviously, the conspicuous incongruity of the protagonist’s expectation and reality is reflected here, which can effectively prove the effective function of irony in this story.
The plot starts to thicken when Mr. Loisel notifies Mathilde of the ball. The dialogue between the couple revealed their disparate character and attitude toward plain life. There is no doubt that Mathilde is an over self-conscious woman, for what she only concerns is her appearance and dressing at the ball. “Two great tears descended slowly from the corners of her eyes toward the corners of her mouth.”(P40)This is an important detail that cannot be neglected. It seems that Mathilde was a sentimental and fragile woman, but for what did she cry? Obviously the author here writes in an exaggerated way which may create a taste of sarcasm. It is easy to detect Mathilde’s complicated and elusive feeling: she is not willing to let slip through her fingers the opportunity to show her fabulous and luxurious taste as well as her appealing glamour, nevertheless, she is equally afraid of being triumphed or even despised by the exalted and elevated ladies that may appear at the ball.
Afterward, when Mathilde went to Mme. Forestier’s home to borrow the necklace, we can not neglect the writer’s penetrating description of Mathilde’s acts:
“All of a sudden she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb necklace of diamonds, and her heart began to beat with an immoderate desire. Her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it around her throat, outside her high necked dress, and remained lost in ecstasy at the sight of herself.”(P41)
How ironic it is! Among all the superb jewels, Mathilde, with her “instinct for what is elegant” (P38), did cautiously pick a fake necklace! Poor Mathilde, for she could not have predicted the hardship she would endure to pay for this alluring yet valueless necklace. Here, the writer might be teasing and ridiculing the individuals who blindly venerate the upper class and pretend to have the extravagant taste, or he might be indicating the fact that the so-called hierarchy is nothing but a paste.
Attention must be paid on the name of the street where Mathilde and her husband live: “Rue des Martyrs” (Street of the Martyrs) (P41). The pathetic yet ignorant couple could never know that one day, they would also become “martyrs”. Naïve Mathilde, being a fervent admirer of the upper class, regarded the pursuing of extravagant lifestyle as a noble deed, but she finally suffered greatly due to her beliefs. Isn’t she a ridiculous “martyr”? Here, the writer uses a brilliant sarcastic way to foreshadow the miserable twist of fate of this couple, which is really thought-provoking.
There is no controversy that the end of the short story indicates the biggest irony. Mathilde, who has pulled through the torturing hardship for a decade, while being severely traumatized, being deprived of her beauty and grace, her plain but peaceful life, her age of innocence, her romantic fancies which a woman deserves, finally reappears like “a woman of the people” with her smile which is “proud and naïve”. However, through her words with Mme. Forestier, it is easy to detect that it is still the same Mathilde, the same egoistic and fragile women whose real nature hasn’t been refined by a decade of wretched life. “[The] necklace was paste.”(P44). What Mathilde has longed for and hysterically pursued turned out to be a fake paste dream which can be easily broken in a second. The art of irony reaches the peak here, which suggests that the origin of such incongruity is the merciless and obsolete social condition at that time, which is breakable and worthless just like a “paste” necklace.
Throughout the whole story, the writer’s sarcastic attitude and ironic tone really provided staggering sensation. Mathilde may represent a slave of the upper class, a victim of excessive vanity, or a sacrifice of the cruel social system, a sufferer of irony of fate. To a certain extent, she is an exaggerated figure created by Guy de Maupassant, standing for the majority of the women at that time in France. The element of irony make this short story a time-honored one, which uncovers the brutal social condition, reveals the incongruity and drawbacks of the class distinction, and lashes out at the inequality of human being.
Essay Draft One
Date: May, 6, 2007.
Title
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Unfortunately, this prestigious saying might only be regarded as a mythical cliché if we trace back to the nineteenth-century in France, when class distinctions remained to be the prominent integral of French society. With hierarchy being dominant in the social values, high social status inevitably represents virtue, which ultimately triumphs natural fineness, wit and wisdom and a virtuous and conscientious mind.
Born into an upper bourgeois family in France, Guy de Maupassant succeeded in challenging the merciless social system by his extraordinary literary works. Realism was a remarkable element of his published stories which are perfectly linked by irony of the realistic world and the frailty of human nature. His masterpiece, “The Necklace”, arouses the readers to think about the devastating effects that class distinction had on common people’s lives. In the story, the protagonist Mathilde was a good-looking middle-class woman, who irrationally longed for the extravagant upper-class life. She pathetically paid ten years of hard work for a lost necklace she had borrowed to attend a ball. Astonishingly, the necklace turned out to be a paste. The writer’s attitude toward the subject matter was arresting, especially the use of irony is prominent in this short story for the writer established a satirical tone when capturing several realistic details.
At the beginning of the story, Mathilde is depicted as a born blue-blooded woman who was, “by a mistake of destiny”, reduced to the middle-class. “She suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born for all the delicacies and all the luxuries… All those things, of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry.” Mathilde seems to have fabulous “instinct for what is elegant” and her luxurious taste to a certain extent thrills the readers. The writer delicately yet deliberately describes Mathilde’s frequent and over-romantic daydreaming, which involves numerous enchanted stuff which are flamboyant but superficially clever:
“She thought of the silent antechambers hung with Oriental tapestry, lit by tall bronze candelabra, and of the two great footmen in knee breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the heavy warmth of the hot-air stove…”(P39)
It is non-negotiable that the author’s lengthy depictions here are not nearly meaningless. These details reveal that only through boundless and unrealistic imagination was Mathilde able to get in touch with the upper class; However, pathetically, the deeper she was indulged in her imagination, the more dissatisfied she was with the reality. Obviously, the conspicuous incongruity of the protagonist’s expectation and reality is reflected here, which can effectively prove the gorgeous function of irony in this story.
The plot starts to thicken when Mr. Loisel notifies Mathilde of the ball. The dialogue between the couple revealed their disparate character and attitude toward plain life. There is no doubt that Mathilde is an over self-conscious woman, for what she only concerns is her appearance and dressing at the ball. “Two great tears descended slowly from the corners of her eyes toward the corners of her mouth.”(P40) It seems that Mathilde was sentimental and fragile woman, but for what did she cry? Obviously the author here writes in an exaggerated way which may create a taste of sarcasm. It is easy to detect Mathilde’s complicated and elusive feeling: she is not willing to let slip through her fingers the opportunity to show her fabulous and luxurious taste as well as her appealing glamour, nevertheless, she is equally afraid of being triumphed or even despised by the exalted and elevated ladies that may appear at the ball.
Afterward when Mathilde went to Mme. Forestier’s home to borrow the necklace, we can not neglect the writer’s penetrating description of Mathilde’s acts:
“All of a sudden she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb necklace of diamonds, and her heart began to beat with an immoderate desire. Her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it around her throat, outside her high necked dress, and remained lost in ecstasy at the sight of herself.”(P41)
How ironic it is! Among all the superb jewels, Mathilde, with her “instinct for what is elegant” (P38), did cautiously pick a fake necklace! Pathetic Mathilde, for she could not have predicted the hardship she would endure to pay for this alluring yet valueless necklace. Here, the writer might be teasing and ridiculing the individuals who blindly venerate the upper class and pretend to have the extravagant taste, or he might be indicating the fact that the so-called hierarchy is nothing but a paste.
Attention must be paid on the name of the street where Mathilde and her husband live: “Rue des Martyrs” (Street of the Martyrs) (P41). The pathetic yet ignorant couple could never know that one day, they would become martyrs who suffer and make sacrifices greatly due to what they initially pursued and believed in. Here, the writer uses a brilliant sarcastic way to foreshadow the miserable twist of fate of this couple, which is really thought-provoking.
There is no controversy that the end of the short story indicates the biggest irony. Mathilde, who has pulled through the torturing hardship for a decade, while being severely traumatized, being deprived of her beauty and grace, her plain but peaceful life, her age of innocence, her romantic fancies which a woman deserves, finally reappears like “a woman of the people” with her smile which is “proud and naïve”. However, through her words with Mme. Forestier, it is easy to detect that it is still the same Mathilde, the same egoistic and fragile women whose real nature hasn’t been refined by a decade of wretched life. “[The] necklace was paste.”(P44). What Mathilde has longed for and hysterically pursued turned out to be a fake paste dream which is broken with a scream in an instant. The art of irony reaches to the peak here, and the origin of such incongruity is the merciless and obsolete social condition at that time, which is breakable and worthless just like a “paste” necklace.
Throughout the whole story, the writer’s sarcastic attitude and ironic tone really provided staggering sensation. Mathilde may represent a slave of the upper class, a victim of excessive vanity, or a sacrifice of the cruel social system, a sufferer of irony of fate. She is an exaggerated figure, standing for the majority of the women at that time in France. The element of irony make this short story a time-honored one, which uncovers the brutal social condition, reveals the incongruity and drawbacks of the class distinction, and lashes out at the inequality of human being.
Final-timed Writing
06309050056
Vera Zhang
June 21, 2007
Directions: If you were to create a filmed advertisement (a “trailer” ) for a movie based on The Grass-Eaters, which scene would you select? Why? Discuss ways in which you might film the scene.
The Grass-Eaters is the short story that has exerted one of the greatest influences on my world outlook. If I were a director to film the trailer for a movie based on this story, I would create an oppressing air, making it a shocking as well as thought-provoking one.
The characters are the heart and soul of a film. Throughout the trailer, I will employ the technique of montage to insert the faces of people from all walks leading the tortuous life in the countryside of India, along with the captivating yet outlandish landscapes in rural areas of India. After reading the story, the protagonist Ajit Babu’s complicated character to a great extent impressed me, which evokes me to get to know the psychological condition of the people suffering from penury, thus providing me with the muse of capturing people’s faces in the trailer. The highlight will be the facial expressions which reflect their psychological condition, rather than their appearances, through which the views will gain the access to the minds of these people by their careful observation. I believe that even people under similar circumstances will hold disparate world outlook, due to their different personalities or prejudices. In my trailer, the facial expressions of the faces will be prominent and easily detected: some are grievous and sorrowful, as if blaming the inequality of the society; some are paralyzed, for the critical condition drives such people to believe that there is no hope at all and the only practical thing is to accept the reality; some are resilient, which suggests such optimistic people firmly believe that perseverance will eventually triumph the hardship… Among the faces, Ajit Babu’s facial expression will be the most complicated and elusive: both hopeful and helpless. He seems to be philosophical and has his vistas of prosperity; however, he realizes the deep gap between expectation and reality, thus being melancholy.
In the story, the writer also depicts the darkest side of their poor life which involves numerous severe crimes, such as abandoning the infants, stabbing other people’s backs, robberies, to name but a few, and I will also convert them into a significant scene in my trailer. The purpose is that I want more people to be aware that poverty can not only ruin people’s lives as well as wreck a nation’s culture; it can also be the origin of vice through generally paralyzing people’s minds. The poorest region of a country is probable to be a den of iniquity, with numerous horrible crimes committed and masses of drug dealers found, which proves to be true in many areas of the world. That really rebels the human nature, and this is the reason why we should strive to eliminate poverty. Therefore, I regard this scene as a motivating device to evoke more people’s sympathetic feelings.
For the soundtrack, I will use Bach’s cantata to accompany the trailer, for Bach’s music involves a heavy scent of religion. The most people in India have their religion belief, but their life is still miserable. Shouldn’t religion exert ultimate care on people? Why do the people still taste the bitterest of life with the consolation of religion? I want my viewers to think about it.
Reading Log
Date: June 10, 2007
Reading log on “The Grass-Eaters”
When I first glanced at the title “The Grass-Eaters”, I wondered the identity of the protagonist of this story; I even imagined that the narrator might be a humble but prophetic cobra, creeping towards every corner of Calcutta, performing as an outsider and bystander of the Hinduism world, making critical comments occasionally. Obviously it was too naïve and romantic of me. Through the author’s prudent and moderate writing style, I am touched by the life of the people who are reduced to penury and suffering from extreme poverty gradually.
Speaking of the country of India, what I recall is the mysterious Hinduism religion, eccentric yet good-looking women wearing sari, outlandish villages filled with curry stands, and thrilling cobras creeping towards every corner of this time-honored country. Ajit Babu, the protagonist of the short story, lived in a pipe and was reduced to eating grass eventually. So far, my feeling towards this sensational short story is complicated and beyond words, for I can’t conjecture the protagonist’s complex attitude towards hardship through the author’s seemingly peaceful tone and the factual depiction of the people from below endows me with an unprecedented feeling.
I have heard of some traditions of the Hinduism religion, of which the value of reincarnation is the most prominent. Previously when watching some documentaries, I found that the Hindus firmly hold their philosophical attitudes towards the indigent life in spite of the poor living condition. There might be hundreds of millions of such people in India, who regard their misfortunes just as the destiny, endure the topsy-turvy reality with no complaint and pray to be reincarnated as a nobleman. However, as far as I am concerned, Ajit Babu is an exception. He works as a teacher in a municipal primary school, which obviously indicates that he could be counted as an intellectual. Unlike other people who are blindly allegiant to their religion, Ajit Babu is much more self-conscious and watchful about his own life. His description of life seems to be light-hearted, but I assert that he only camouflaged as a resilient person and was concealing his bitterness which is beyond words; He uncovered the serious problem of society, but it is paradoxical that he could do nothing about it, which would ultimately worsen his psychological bitterness.
Although the story is short, I believe that it has unearthed several problems of our world. I keep thinking that since the purpose of religion is to endow people with ultimate care, why are so many people, especially the uneducated follower of a certain religion, still enduring the bitterest of life? It’s also shocking to find the vicious circle of poverty in this story. I am in favor of the opinion that penury is the origin of vice, and the poorest place could be a den of iniquity. The darkest side of human life can be observed from the story – robberies, riots, abandonment of infants…Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank of Bangladesh and the pioneer of micro loans movement, once said: “We can put poverty into museums.” But is the elimination of poverty only a myth? None of us is a prophet, but I am sure that every one of us is facing the toughest battle against poverty and our deep sense of responsibility is needed.