1.
The following citation is from “Axolotl” by
Julio Cortázar. Please respond, taking
into consideration my prompt, in 600 words (approx.).
“And nonetheless they were close.
. . . The anthropomorphic features of a monkey reveal the reverse of what most
people believe, the distance traveled from us to them. The absolute lack of similarity between
axolotls and human beings proved to me that my recognition was valid, that I
was not propping myself up with easy analogies.”
The narrator here suggests that
the similarity between monkeys and humans discloses the distance between
the two animals. Conversely, the lack of
similarity between humans and axolotls reveals how close one animal is to the
other, hence how and why he, the narrator, is an axolotl. This idea has appeared in a number of the stories
read this semester; figures who are least like the main character prove to be
most like him or her. The absolute Other
emerges as the truth of the Self. For
instance, Sister Irene is most like Allen Weinstein in “The Region of Ice”;
Bartleby is most like the narrator in “Bartleby”; the blind man in “Cathedral,”
with acute senses of smell, touch, taste, and hearing but no sight, is most
like the narrator, endowed with sight, but with seemingly no other sensibility. Why is this idea, to wit, that the Self is
most like that which is absolutely different from the Self, important in any one
of the following stories? Choose from: “The
Gospel According to Mark,” “Afritude Sauce,” “Axolotl,” “TV People,” “The
Guest,” “The House Made of Sugar.”
2.
Please respond to the following in
approximately 900 words. The citation is
taken from James Joyce’s “The Dead,” just after Gabriel Conroy and his wife
Gretta have arrived at the hotel, following the Christmas party:
“He was trembling now with
annoyance. Why did she seem so abstracted? He did not know how he could begin.
Was she annoyed, too, about something? If she would only turn to him or come to
him of her own accord! To take her as she was would be brutal. No, he must see
some ardour in her eyes first. He longed to be master of her strange mood.
“When did you lend him the
pound?” she asked, after a pause.
Gabriel strove to restrain himself
from breaking out into brutal language about the sottish Malins and his pound.
He longed to cry to her from his soul, to crush her body against his, to
overmaster her.”
Gabriel,
here gripped by sexual desire, hopes to be the master of his wife Gretta; Gretta
is possessed, hence hardly the master of herself, by virtue of a song, which
reminds her of a lost love. The return
of this love (rather than the love itself), in the guise of Greta’s “mood,” is
what Gabriel cannot master (nor can Gretta).
In the hotel, Gabriel’s “place” has been taken by another, and he is out
of place. A similar displacement has
already occurred several times in the narrative: in the scene with Lily, in the
dance with Molly Ivors, and in other sites throughout “The Dead.” Please discuss the relationship of the Gabriel
Conroy/Molly Ivors dancing episode with the ending of the tale. The ending begins when Gabriel sees his wife,
whom he does not recognize at first, transfixed, listening to the song sung by
the tenor D’Arcy; it runs to the conclusion of the story. The theme you must address is that of the
Self and its impossible claim on mastery and self-mastery.
