920/3 Novels STPM 2013

2014/10/23

SECTION A : Critical Appreciation
(25 marks)

Answer only one question from this section.

     
JANE AUSTEN: Pride and Pejudice


    'My dear Mr. Bennet,' said his lady to him one day, 'have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?'
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
     'But it is,' returned she; 'for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.'
Mr. Bennet made no answer.
     'Do not you want to know who has taken it?' cried his wife impatiently.
     'You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.'
This was invitation enough.
     'Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.'
     'What is his name?'
     'Bingley.'

. . . . .

     'Mr Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion on my poor nerves.'
     'You mistkae me, my dear. I have high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.'
     'Ah! you do not know what I suffer.'

Discuss the use of dialogue in this excerpt.

Or
2   
AMY TAN: The Joy Luck Club


     As I remember it, the dark side of my mother sprang from the basement in our old house in Oakland. I was five and my mother tried to hide it from me She barricaded the door with a wooden chair, secured it with a chain and two types of key locks. And it became so mysterious that I spent all my energies unraveling this door, until the day I was finally able to pry it open with my small fingers, only to immediately fall headlong into the dark chasm. And it was only after I stopped screaming - I had seen the blood of my nose on my mother's shoulder - only then did my mother tell me about the bad man who lived there for thousands of years, she said, and was so evil and hungry that had my mother not rescued me so quickly, this bad man would have planted five babies in me and then eaten us all in a six-course meal, tossing our bones on the dirty floor.

. . . . . 

     I have a photo of my mother with this same scared look. My father said the picture was taken when Ma was first released from Angel Island Immigration Station. She stayed there for three weeks, until they could process her papers and determine whether she was a War Bride, a Displaced Person, a Student, or the wife of a Chinese-American citizen. My father said they didn't have rules for dealing with the Chinese wife of a Caucasian citizen. Somehow, in the end, they declared her a Displaced Person, lost in a sea of immigration categories.

Examine how the narrator perceives her identity in this extract.



Section B: JANE AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice
(25 marks)

Answer the question below.

3 Examine Jane Austen's use of irony in Pride and Prejudice.



Section C: AMY TAN: The Joy Luck Club
(25 marks)

Answer the question below.

4 Examine the narrative structure used by Amy Tan in The Joy Luck Club. Why is it significant?



© Majlis Peperiksaan Malaysia 2013

920/2 Plays STPM 2013

2014/04/27

SECTION A : Critical Appreciation
(25 marks)

Answer only one question from this section.

     
SHAKESPEARE: Twelfth Night

Maria
.. here comes my lady: make your excuse wisely, you were best.
[Exit]

Enter Lady OLIVIA [attended,] with MALVOLIO

Feste
Wit, and’t be thy will, put me into good fooling! Those wits that think they have thee do very oft prove fools, and I that am sure I lack thee may pass for a wise man. For what says Quinapalus? “Better a witty fool than a foolish wit’ – God bless thee, lady.
Olivia
Take the fool away.
Feste
Do you not hear, fellows? Take away the lady.
Olivia
Go to, y’are a dry fool: I’ll no more of you; besides, you grow dishonest.
Feste
Two faults, Madonna, that drink and good counsel will amend: for give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry; bid the dishonest, if he cannot, let the botcher mend him. Anything that’s mended is but patched: virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin, and sin that amends is but patched with virtue. If that this simple syllogism will serve, so; if it will not, what remedy? As there is no true cuckold but calamity, so beauty’s a flower. The lady bade take away the fool; therefore I say again, take her away.
Olivia
Sir, I bade them take away you.
Feste
Misprison is the highest degree! Lady, cucullus non facit monachum: that’s as much to say as I wear not motley in my brain. Good madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool.
Olivia
Can you do it?
Feste
Dexteriously, good madonna.
Olivia
Make your proof.
Feste
I must catechise you for it, madonna. Good my mouse of virtue, answer me.
Olivia
Well, sir, for want of other idleness, I’ll bide your proof.
Feste
Good madonna, why mourn’st thou?
Olivia
Good fool, for my brother’s death.
Feste
I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
Olivia
I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
Feste
The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.
Olivia
What think of you this fool, Malvolio? Doth he not mend?
Malvolio
Yes, and shall do, till the pangs of death shake him; infirmity, that decays the wise, doth ever make the better fool.
Feste
God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity, for the better increasing your folly!...


Twelfth Night Act 1 Scene V

Analyse how Feste, Lady Olivia's jester (or 'fool'), provides entertainment as well as criticism in this passage, and how Olivia and Malvolio respond to him. 

Or
2   
LORRAINE HANSBERRY: A Raisin in the Sun

RUTH (studying her mother-in-law furtively and concentrating on her ironing, anxious to encourage without seeming to): Well, Lord knows, we’ve put enough rent into this here rat trap to pay for four houses by now …
MAMA (looking up at the words “rat trap” and then looking around and leaning back and sighing – in a suddenly reflective mood - ): “Rat trap” – yes, that’s all it is. (Smiling) I remember just as well the day me and Big Walter moved in here. Hadn’t been married but two weeks and wasn’t planning on living here no more than a year. (She shakes her head at the dissolved dream) We was going to set away, little by little, don’t you know, and buya little place out in Morgan Park. We had even picked out the house (Chuckling a little Looks right dumpy today. But Lord, child, you should know all the dreams I had ‘bout buying that house and fixing it up and making me a little garden in the back – (She waits and stops smiling) And didn’t none of it happen.

(Dropping her hands in a futile gesture)


MAMA: I guess that’s how come that man finally worked himself to death likehe done. Like he was fighting his own war with this here world that took his baby from him. […] Crazy ‘bout his children! God knows there was plenty wrong with Walter Younger – hard-headed, mean, kind of wild with women – plenty wrong with him. But he sure loved his children. Always wanted them to have something – be something. That’s where Brother gets all these notions, I reckon. Big Walter used to say, he’d get right wet in the eyes sometimes, lean his head back with the water standing in his eyes and say, “Seem like God didn’t see fit to give the back man nothing but dreams- but He did give us children to make them dreams seems worth while.” (She smiles) He could talk like that, don’t you know.

How does this passage reflect the idea of a dream deferred?



Section B: SHAKESPEARE: Twelfth Night
(25 marks)

Answer the question below.

3 What effects does Viola have on Duke Orsino and Countess Olivia? Discuss with close reference to the play.



Section C: LORRAINE HANSBERRY: A Raisin in the Sun
(25 marks)

Answer the question below.

4 Discuss the different responses to money of the major characters in this play.



© Majlis Peperiksaan Malaysia 2012

Darcy's Confession of Love

These are the lines from Chapter 34Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. The quotes are specifically highlighted to be used as reference in essay writing or further understanding.

1. "In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you"
The feeling he suppressed and long felt was told. It is mentioned "he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride". Darcy optimistically hope that she will reciprocate his feelings by accepting his hand. Lizzy could easily see that Darcy is confident that she will have him.

2. "In spite of her deeply rooted dislike,.. at first sorry for the pain he was to receive; till, roused to resentment by his subsequent language, she lost all compassion to anger"
Lizzy was taken aback by his confession and she could not accept his compliments. Slowly listening to him, makes her even more angry and she lost all her compassion for him.

3. "But I cannot- I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I am sorry to have occasioned pain to any one"
THE REJECTION. The pride in Lizzy is blocking out all his good intentions. Darcy is surprised by her answer, "his complexion become pale with anger and the disturbance in his mind was visible in every feature". Darcy is disturbed with her negative reaction, maintaining his composure, asked Lizzy why she rejected him and calls it "a small importance"  on his part to understand.

4. "..a design of offending and insulting me, you chuse to tell me that you liked me  against your will, against your reason, and even against your character?.."
Lizzy is holding her grudge against him, trying to justify Jane's broken heart and relationship with Bingley. Darcy honestly proclaim that he did separate Bingley from her sister but he is not rejoiceful about it. Lizzy finds it disdainful looking at his civility and thus, finds another reason to prove his fault. She then mentioned Wickham's story.

5. "You take an eager interest in that gentleman's concerns", said Darcyin a less tranquil tone, and with a heightened colour.
There is a hint of jealousy in Darcy. He thinks that Lizzy's rejection of him is sabotaged by Wickham, unknowingly. Darcy exclaims his disappointment n her judgment of him through the words of others. Darcy reveals his pride more the less.

6. "Had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design" cried Darcy.
Lizzy felt herself getting more angry and she said to him that he could not make his proposal in any way possible for her to accept it.Her prejudice is made clear here:-

7. "From the very beginning, your arrogance, your conceit, your selfish disdain of the feelings of other.. before I felt you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry"
Notice her strong usage of words, to show Lizzy's thoughts on him that is so affected by the events that happened and swore that he could not impress her any how, intentionally or not, she had crushed Darcy's pride.



A question to ponder by the readers:
After Darcy left, Lizzy sat down and cried for half an hour.
Why did Lizzy break down?

Appreciation of Chapters by Analyzing Characters: Ying-ying St. Clair

2014/03/28

Part 1: The Moon Lady

# Memories of childhood

A. Lesson
Ying-ying remembered how she fell off the boat and got rescued where later she found the moon lady. She wants to make a wish as it only appears once in a great while. However,she discovers something else when she sees the moon lady.

"the secret wish fell from my lips, the moon lady looked at me and became a man" [pg 82]

Ying-ying discovers that things aren't always what they appear to be. She learns the truth and in some ways, she became a different person. 

B. Present time
She found out that if she keep her true nature hidden, nobody will know what she had done She realises how appearance versus reality, thus she hides herself in the past [pg 67]. Ying-ying blamed herself that her daughter had turn out this way, always hiding behind the shadow

".. as I see my daughter and the foolishness of her life" [pg 68]

She is determined to tell Lena that her marriage is not what it appears to be and wants her to repair it before it is too late.

C, Irony / Paradox
"But now that I am old, moving every year closer to the end of my life, I also feel closer to the beginning" [pg 83]. When she was little, she felt fear, loneliness and wonder as she fell off the boat and met the moon lady. Ying-ying recalled how everything that happened that day, has happened many times in her life as she felt the same innocence, trust, restlessness, fear, loneliness and wonder.

read chapter summary here: http://www.shmoop.com/joy-luck-club/part-1-chapter-4-summary.html


Part 4: Waiting Between the Trees

The gap between mother and daughter
Ying-ying felt that she and her daughter never really know each other, "when she was born, she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since" [pg 242]. Her silent and weak spirit had made Lena drifted away from her. She knows when Lena looks at her, Lena will only see a small old lady for she see things with her outside eyes. 

Ying-ying allowed herself to wait between the trees and let things happen 'as they should'. She lost her sense of autonomous will.

She finally realises that this isn't the way to be when her daughter's marriage is falling apart. She is determined to open up her past and tell Lena of her deeds and shame

"My daughter does not know that I was married to this man so long ago, 
twenty years before she was even born" [pg 246]

She is trying to give her daughter the strength to stand up for what she believes in; tells Lena not to lose hope.

Cultural Barrier
Lena "said in her proud American way", introducing the guest bedroom to her mother. It is the tiniest room in the house and in Chinese ways of thinking, the guest bedroom is the best bedroom. Ying-ying realised that Lena is ignorant of her own oriental heritage, for "her wisdom is like a bottomless pond" [pg 242]

The Gap between Clifford and Ying-ying (husband and wife)
Their gap is more of upbringing and cultural differences. Ying-ying having been brought up in a wealthy family in Wushi, is proud but passive. Clifford always brought her gifts, "as if he were a rich man treating a poor country girl to things we had never seen in China". Ying-ying treated these as mere worthless trinkets.

There is also language barrier between them even after they are married. (Refer to Lena's 'The Voice From The Wall')

Their distance is so great thta Ying-ying thinks Clifford have to die to know the things she have been hiding all these years. "Now he is a ghost. He and I can now live equally" [pg 252]. Her marriage to Clifford is based on her belief of her own destiny, of how she allows thigns to happen - like her daughter. She has never really loved Clifford as much as she had loved her previous husband. 

Snake - D. H. Lawrence

2014/03/02

SNAKE by D. H. Lawrence is the longest poem ever [next to My Last Duchess I guess].
I am not posting the poem as the latter will take up most space in this blog. Poem reference can be made here: 
http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Lawrence/snake.htm



MEANING OF DIFFICULT WORDS


1. Water-trough - a device to enable a steam railway locomotive to replenish its water supply while in motion. It consists of a long trough filled with water, lying along a flat stretch of railroad/railway track between the rails.

2. Pitcher - a container, usually with a handle and spout or lip, for holding and pouring liquids.

3. Fissure - a narrow opening produced by cleavage or separation of parts.

4. Muse – ponder, contemplate

5. Bowels – the inward or interior parts

6. Perverse - wilfully determined or disposed to go counter to what is expected or desired

7. Convulse – to cause to suffer violent

8. Paltry – ridiculously or insultingly small / mean / utterly worthless.

9. Accursed - damnable; detestable / under a curse; doomed; ill-fated.

10. Albatross – something burdensome that impedes action or progress / a seemingly inescapable moral or emotional burden, as of guilt or responsibility.

11. Expiate – to atone for; make amends or reparation for: to expiate one's crimes.

12. Pettiness – mean / showing or caused by meanness of spirit

POETIC/LITERARY DEVICES

1. Diction
The poet adopted a simple, mild, clear, colourful, descriptive and imaginative choice of words to portray his points. These make the poem to be picturesque.

2. Style and structure
The poem is a free verse, having no specific rhyming pattern. The poem’s first part talks about the arrival of the poet and the snake with brief description of the snake. The second division talks about the mode of the drinking of the snake and the patient attitude of the poet. Furthermore, the third segment features the poet’s mind conflict on whether to kill or spare the snake. The next segment portrays the returning of the snake and lastly, the remorse shown by the poet was expressed.

3. Figurative Expression

1. Anaphora:
  •  “And slowly” {line 46 & 47} 
  •  “And as he” {line 51 & 52}
  •  “And I”{line 67 & 68}
2. Repetition:
  •  “hot” {line 2}
  •  “must” {line 6} 
  •  “earth” {line 20 
  •  “afraid” {line37} 
  •  “slowly” {line 46}
  •  “a sort” {line 53}
  •  “like a king” {line 68 – 69}
3. Alliteration:
  •  “burning bowels” {Line 20 -21}
  •  “peaceful pacify” {line 29}
  • “dark door ” {line 90}
4. Assonance:
  • “door of” {line 40}
  • “and thankless” {line 29}
5. Simile:
  • “had come like a guest” {line 28}
  •  “…his tongue like a forked night..” {line 43}
  •  “…around like a god” {line 45}
6. Metaphor:
  • “the dark door ” {line 40}
7. Allusion:
  •  Sicilian July” {line 22}
  •  “albatross” {line 62}
8. Imagery
  • “pitcher ” {line 6}
  • “…brown slackness soft bellied” {line 10}


STANZA BY STANZA ANALYSIS


Stanza 1 and 2: The beginning of the poem depicts a hot day, when he had a visitor, a snake that came to his water- trough for a drink in his presence. As he came down the steps in his pyjamas with a pitcher, under the Carob tree spreading its shade and strange scent, he caught a glimpse of the snake and had to stand and wait.

Stanza 3: The poet stood and watched the snake slithering down from a crack in the earthen wall and it slipped down its yellow-brown soft belly over the edge of the stone trough. He stood watching the snake, sipping the water dripping from the top with its straight mouth through its straight gums silently.

Stanza 4 and 5: This stanza pictures the poet D.H. Lawrence standing and watching the yellow-brown soft bellied snake at his water-trough drinking softly through its straight gums silently. While he was waiting there like a second comer, waiting for the snake to finish his drink. The snake lifted his head, looked at the poet vaguely, flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, paused a moment and then drank a little more. He describes the heat of the earth on the day of July in the city of Sicily and Etna, the volcanic mountain peak with its eruption and the large billows of smoke spewing out. The poet also describes the voices of knowledge that compels him to kill the snake, as the black snakes in Sicily are non-poisonous while the yellow snakes are venomous.

Stanza 6 and 7:
He talks about the voice in his head again, challenging him if he is a man he would finish him off. The voices re-echoed 'finish of the snake with a stick'. Later, D.H.Lawrence confesses that he liked the snake, and he was glad that it had visited his water-trough and that it was a silent guest for a drink. It departed peacefully but thankless back into the earth.

Stanza 8:
The poet debates within him if it was his cowardice that kept him from killing it, or probably his perversity that urged him to talk to it. He ponders if it was his humility that made him feel honoured. Above all the different voices, a voice challenged him that if he was not afraid he would kill it.

Stanza 9:
In this stanza the poet expresses emotions of fear and feelings of honour. Fear that the venomous snake was dangerous to let it go, and feelings of honour, since the snake had sought his hospitality.

Stanza 10:
Here the poet describes the contented snake, after his drink from his water-trough looked around, like a god not seeing, and then the slow retreat of the reptile to its hole.

Stanza 11 and 12:
As he stood there being honoured about the visit of a snake, and the lengthy reptile slowly disappearing a horror struck him. While the snake is climbing the broken bank of his wall-face, he had enough time to react and to make a quick decision to kill it. Placing down his pitcher, he braced himself, picked up a clumsy log, and hurled it at the water- trough with a clatter.

Stanza 13 and 14: The slow retreating body of the snake was then seen writhing and like lightning, in a flash it disappeared into the fissure, the dark hole from where it had appeared. Thus leaving the poet stares into space at his foolish act. For a moment regret engulfed him, his instant reaction and emotions reversed. He despised himself and the voices which bade him to kill the venomous reptile.

Stanza 15:
As the poet says he thought of the ‘albatross’, the ‘albatross’ he could be talking about his emotional burden or guilt after attacking the innocent snake. Then the poet desires the venomous reptile to be his visitor once again.

Stanza 16 and 17:
For this time the snake seemed to him like a king, a king in exile and one who has lost his crown in the underworld, waiting to be crowned again. He utters his regret of missing his chance with one of the lords of life. Though the reptile was venomous, yet for a moment the idea of a king graced it, one which was due for its crown. Then thoughts of highness and majesty about the snake command his inner soul to make amends for his rash behaviour. So he utters regret and pardon in his last statement. He had something to expiate for his irritable action when he picked up the clumsy log to kill the snake.




CRITICAL APPRECIATION


The novels as well as the poems of Lawrence are marked with his hatred for mechanical way of living. His hatred is directed against man’s lust for money and his lust for affected love. He wanted love to be strong and animal but not lustful. He hated reason and the use of mind in everything. He is for old simple and plain life of ancient days. He holds that the old civin is better that the industrial civilization.

One hot summer day, the poet happened to see snake, drinking water from his water container. The poet was coming downstairs to fill his pitcher with water. The water container was lying under the scented shade of a carob tree. The snake came here from a hole in the wall. The poet did not come downstairs. He was afraid of the snake. The snake was beautiful to look at. It den skin. It rested his throat on the edge of the stone water container. Her sipped water with his straight mount and passed it into his long body, silently.

The snake lifted his head form drinking as cattle do. Then he pushed his two forked tongue form his lips and mused form a moment. He stooped and drunk a little a more. The poet was terrified to see the snake. His education told him to kill him because the snakes of Sicily were known to be poisonous and dangerous. It guided him to take a stick and finish him off to prove hery and manhood. But the poet liked the snake because he was beautiful and also a great. It was cowardice on his part to kill the snake. It was not perversity that he wanted to talk to him. He considered it an honour not to harm his guest.

The snake drank the water again and felt satisfied. He began to draw into the hole or the wall. As the snake was entering his body into the hole, the poet felt great horror at it. It did not hit the snake but the last part of his body seemed to be disturbed by it. The snake rushed at into the hole and disappeared. The poet felt ashamed of his mean act and considered it to be the product of his education.

The poem can be interpreted on many levels. The snake in the poem represents the forces of darkness, brutality and ignorance. These forces harm man no doubt, but they should be crushed with power and authority. They must be conquered by the use of creative and intuitive powers. The poet has drawn the conflict power the uses of rational power intuitive powers. The poet listens to his rational voice and attacks the snake only to regret his mean and vulgar act.

The snake becomes a king, a lord of the underworld and a god. The poet is reduced to shabby human beings who feel remorse at his mean act. The poet feels that he must expiate for his pettiness. The use of the word expiation suggests that he looks upon his act as a violation of a religious bond.



READING MATERIAL


D.H. Lawrence's Snake is an interesting poem. Lawrence paints a vivid picture of the snake at the trough, yet it seems as if it is a metaphor. Lawrence seems to be mocking society through his use of the snake. The snake represents the upper class while he, D.H. Lawrence, is just a middle class worker. In Stanza's 1 and 2, Lawrence begins by describing that the snake arrived at the trough first and that he therefore must await his turn. There is no hint that the man fears the snake, but instead there seems to be a respect that provides the man with the patience to wait his turn. As the poem continues, Lawrence paints a picture of the snake. In stanza 5 he states that the snake came from "the burning bowls of the earth." This could be an allusion to hell or even a reflection by man that he does not actually respect the social rankings and only does so for lack of choice. In stanza's 6 and 7 he struggles with his conscience and the idea of killing the snake. This could parallel to social rankings because the under classes may always be thinking of a way to "kill" the upper class; revolts, wars, uprisings etc. Since the man does not kill the snake, we see that he has succumbs to the social conventions and is in fact going to wait his turn as any peasant would in society.


When Lawrence says "Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? /Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? /Was it humility, to feel so honoured? /I felt so honoured" it parallels to society. The rich people, being the snake, would drink from the trough first feeling no remorse for the middle class man waiting in their presence. The middle class person, feeling as if he should show the rich person from their trough, instead feels honoured to have such nobility around, and as Lawrence later states, is actually afraid to fight back. D.H. Lawrence is combating social structure through the symbolic use of a snake. Eventually the man acknowledges that is indeed fear of the snake, not respect that has him waiting. He hurls a log at the snake. The snake, shocked and angry, leaves the trough; but we end up feeling remorse for the snake. Having done nothing wrong, the snake seems like a kind animal, when in reality we know it is not. This could reflect society because people were aware that the upper classes were sneaky like snakes but instead chose to believe that they did not fear them but instead respected them. The man regrets throwing the log as he feels like he has missed out on a memory with a majestic creature.

Most people would not think of a snake as a majestic creature, but D.H. Lawrence makes it clear in this poem that he does. Many people would take a snake to symbolize sin and evil as seen in the Bible and the Garden of Eden, but actually Lawrence is using it in a majestic and noble light. Perhaps this is the case because he is paralleling society and the nobility can be sneaky and sinful yet still seem majestic, just like the snake.

"And I have some to expiate, a pettiness" is the last and most powerful line of the poem. Expiate is such a strong word meaning repent or atone. The man wants to atone for his sin. He regrets throwing the log at the snake as he realized that the snake was not going to harm him. He wants to repent his pettiness and atone for the sin he has committed.

The use of the word expiate and the talk of atoning for sins leads one to understand that religion is indeed a theme in this poem. The use of the snake as a symbol and the battle between good and evil in this poem are all reasons that religion can be seen as an undertone. The battle of good vs. evil is on going in the Bible and can be seen here in this poem, if not only just in the symbol of the snake itself but also in the interaction between the snake and the man being that the man believes he is good vs. the snake whom he believes to be evil.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

Appreciation of Chapters by Analyzing Characters: Lena St. Clair

2014/02/10

Part 2: The Voice from the Wall


A. Language Barrier
There is an obvious language barrier between a Chinese mother and American-Chinese daughter. Lena mentioned, “I could understand the words perfectly, but not the meanings. One thought led to another without connection” [pg 106]

Lena also often lies when she has to translate for her mother. She was so embarrassed once that she told her mother that Chinese people weren’t allowed to shop there.

Not only linguistic barrier exist between mother-daughter but also among English husband and Chinese wife. Clifford St. Clair normally put words in his wife’s mouth. They communicate with moods and gestures, looks and silences.

B. Assimilation of Chinese genes
Lena always describe this part of her by saying ‘Chinese eyes’ as if to emphasize on her no eyelids, Chinese people’s eyes. She tried to be more American by opening them wide and walked around the house.

C. Neighbours
Lena constantly hears the mother and daughter in the adjacent apartment yelling, fighting and even throwing things. It comforted her to think that the girl next door have a more unhappy life. The difference between these noisy confrontations and her own relationship with her mother (which is marked by silence and avoidance of conflict), begins to make Lena realise something important. As Lena bumped into Teresa Sorci, she found out that the latter seemed quite happy. Through the shouting and fighting, it somehow expresses a kind of deep love between the mother-daughter pair.

Author's note:
Lena learned that expressing one’s feelings is vital to make things work and alive. She somehow will realise how she can apply this lesson then to her unhappy married life with Harold.



Part 3: Rice Husband

    # Conflict between the modernised world
# Communication gap between mother and daughter

A. Mother – Ying-ying
In the beginning of this story, Lena tells us that her mother has the ability to know things before it happens. Ying-ying know what causes the bad things to happen, “now she laments that she never did anything to stop them” [pg 149]. Ying-ying’s ignorance seems to pass down to her daughter – how it affects Lena’s personality and attitude towards her marriage.

Lena wonders what her mother ‘will see’ in her new house before she arrives. Ying-ying somehow had pointed out all the flaws of construction/architecture in the house and it convinces her that her mother can tell what is happening in her marriage. Previously, Lena’s narration mentioned that Harold and herself had fought over her cat’s fleas fee but she already knew that “our problems are much, much deeper than that”. Lena knew that her marriage is rocking but she never do anything about it.

B. Husband – Harold Livotny
Her relationship with Harold is the same as the balance sheet stuck on the refrigerator. His philosophy of love is to separate money with feelings, as in keeping what is his, as his. Harold calls it ‘equality’ and ‘love without obligation’ . Money is an obvious issue here. Despite the fact that he make seven times more than what she made, they divide all expenditures equally.

When Lena had finally confronted Harold about their predicament, it made her feel inferior and indecisive of her option.

“Or maybe we shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place. Maybe Harold is a bad man. Maybe I’ve made him this way” [pg 164]

Her own train of thoughts describes what Rose had told her previously. The feeling of fear “are commonplace in woman like us”. Women like us refers to their ethnicity because they are “raised in all this Chinese humility” and as a Chinese, you’re supposed to accept everything, flow with Tao and not make waves.

Lena succumbed in those beliefs and the trait she got from her mother that made her relationship with Harold to be what it is now.

Author's note:
Here, ‘Rice Husband’ refers to both Harold and Arnold. Amy Tan’s use of homophone in both men that affects Lena’s life is to showcase the similarity and yet differences between them. Ying-ying’s words are planted deep in Lena’s own thoughts and she believed everything her mother had said.  Her narration, “when I want something to happen – or not happen – I begin to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid”
Arnold became her opportunity to take as she started to leave more rice and food on her bowl so that he would get leprosy and die in Africa. Whereas, Harold is what she chose to avoid despite all the signs are flashing in front of her very eyes.

Literary Terms

2014/02/09

accentual meter: Lines of verse organized by number of stresses rather than by feet or number of syllables. This was the form of poetry written in Old English (which combined stress with alliteration). For a modern example, see Richard Wilbur, "Junk" (1961). Accentual meter is the basis of sprung rhythm.

accentual-stress meter: Lines of verse based on the metrical foot. This is the most common form of English poetry.

alcaics: a four-line stanza of considerable metrical complexity, named after the ancient Greek poet Alcaeus.

alliteration: The repetition of sounds in nearby words, most often involving the initial consonants of words (and sometimes the internal consonants in stressed syllables).

allusion: An indirect reference to a text, myth, event, or person outside the poem itself (compare echo). Although it is woven into the context of the poem, it carries its own history of meaning: for example, see the reference to Hamlet in T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1917).

ambiguity: The ability to mean more than one thing.

analogy: Resemblance in certain respects between things that are otherwise unlike; also, the use of such likeness to predict other similarities.

anapest: Two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one, as in "unabridged" (see foot).

anaphora: Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines. For example, see Anne Bradstreet, "To My Dear and Loving Husband" (1678).

assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds in a line or series of lines. Assonance often affects pace (by working against short and long vowel patterns) and seems to underscore the words included in the pattern. For example, see the beginning of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Khan" (1816).

aubade: A lyric about the dawn (e.g., see John Donne, "The Sun Rising" [1633]).

ballad: A narrative poem, impersonally related, that is (or originally was) meant to be sung. Characterized by repetition and often by a repeated refrain (a recurrent phrase or series of phrases), the earliest ballads were anonymous works transmitted orally from person to person through generations. For example, see"Sir Patrick Spens." Modern literary ballads imitate these folk creations (e.g., Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The 
Rime of the Ancient Mariner" [1798]).

ballad stanza: A four-line stanza, the second and fourth lines of which are iambic trimeter and rhyme with each other; the first and third lines, in iambic tetrameter, do not rhyme. This form, frequently used in hymns, is also known as "common meter"; a loose form of it is often used by Emily Dickinson.

blank verse: Unrhymed iambic pentameter; for example, see Alfred, Lord Tennyson,"Ulysses" (1842).

caesura: A sign, used in scansion, that marks a natural pause in speaking a line of poetry.

concrete poetry: An attempt to supplement (or replace) verbal meaning with visual devices from painting and sculpture. A true concrete poem cannot be spoken; it is viewed, not read (compare pattern poetry).

confessional poem: A relatively new (or recently defined) kind of poetry in which the speaker focuses on the poet´s own psychic biography. This label is often applied to writings of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton.

connotation: What is suggested by a word, apart from what it explicitly and directly describes (compare denotation). For example, the "cypresses" of Eavan Boland´s"That the Science of Cartography Is Limited" (1994) connote death, because of their traditional associations with mourning.

controlling metaphors: Metaphors that dominate or organize an entire poem. For example, metaphors of movement structure John Donne´s "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" (1633).

conventions: Standard ways of saying things in verse, employed to achieve certain expected effects. Conventions may pertain to style (e.g., the rhyme scheme of the sonnet) or content (e.g., the figure of the shepherd in the pastoral).

couplet: A pair of lines, almost always rhyming, that form a unit.

dactyl: A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones, as in "screwdriver" (see foot).

denotation: The direct and literal meaning of a word or phrase (as distinct from its implication). Compare connotation.

dramatic poetry: Poetry written in the voice of one or more characters assumed by the poet. For example, Geoffrey Chaucer´s Canterbury Tales are dramatic narratives.

dramatic monologue: A poem written in the voice of a character, set in a specific situation, and spoken to someone. This form is most strongly identified with poems of Robert Browning (e.g., "My Last Duchess" [1842]); see also Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses" (1842).

echo: A reference that recalls a word, phrase, or sound in another text. For example, "And indeed there will be time" in Eliot´s "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1917) recalls both Ecclesiastes 3.1 ("To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven") and Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress" (1681; "Had we but world enough and time"). It is less specific than an allusion.

elegy: In classical times, any poem on any subject written in "elegiac" meter (dactylic couplets comprising a hexameter followed by a pentameter line), but since the Renaissance usually a formal lament for the death of a particular person. For example, see W. H. Auden, "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" (1940).

end stop: A line break that coincides with the end of the sentence (vs. a run-on line; compare enjambment).

English sonnet: Three four-line stanzas and a couplet, rhymed abab cdcd efef gg. For example, see William Shakespeare, Sonnet 146 (1609; "Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth").

enjambment: The use of a line that "runs on" to the next line, without pause, to complete its grammatical sense (compare end stop). For example, see Gwendolyn Brooks, "We Real Cool" (1960).

envoy: A short concluding stanza found in certain poetic forms (e.g., the sestina) that often provides a concise summing-up of the poem.

epic: A long poem, in a continuous narrative often divided into "books," on a great or serious subject. Traditionally, it celebrates the achievements of mighty heroes and heroines, using elevated language and a grand, high style (e.g., Homer´s Iliad), but later epics have been more personal (e.g., William Wordsworth´s Prelude [1805 / 1850]) and less formal in structure (e.g., H. D. ´s Helen in Egypt [1961]).

epigram: Originally any poem carved in stone (on tombstones, buildings, gates, etc.), but in modern usage a very short, usually witty verse with a quick turn at the end (e.g., much of the light verse of Ogden Nash).

extended metaphors: Detailed and complex metaphors that extend over a long section of a poem (e.g., the metaphor of grass in Whitman´s "Song of Myself"[1881], section 6 or of the compass in Donne´s "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning").

feminine rhyme: Rhymes comprised of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (e.g., see George Gordon, Lord Byron, Don Juan 1.38 [1819]: "He learn´d the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery, / And how to scale a fortress- or a nunnery"). Compare masculine rhyme.

figures of speech: Uses of a word or words that go beyond the literal meaning to show or imply a relationship, evoking a further meaning. Such figures, sometimes called "tropes" (i.e., rhetorical "turns"), include anaphora, metaphor, metonymy, andirony.

foot: The basic unit, consisting of two or three syllables, into which a line is divided in scansion. Verse is labeled according to its dominant foot (e.g., iambic) and the number of feet per line (e.g., pentameter). Lines of one, two, three, four, five, and six feet are respectively called monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, and hexameter. See anapest, iamb, dactyl, spondee, and trochee.

free verse: Poetry that does not follow the rules of regularized meter and strict form. However, these open forms continue to rely on patterns of rhythm and repetition to impose order; for example, see Whitman, "Song of Myself" (1881).

heroic couplet: A pair of rhymed lines of iambic pentameter. For example, see Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Pardoner´s Tale." Perhaps the most polished instances of this form are provided by Alexander Pope.

iamb: An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one, as in "above" (see foot). Iambic is the most common meter in English poetry.

image: A mental representation of a particular thing able to be visualized (and often able to be apprehended by senses other than sight).

irony: A figure in which what is stated is the opposite of what is meant or expected. For example, see Wilfred Owen´s ironic use of Horace, Odes 3.2.13, in"Dulce Et Decorum Est" (1920).

Italian sonnet: An octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines); typically rhymed abbaabba cdecde, it has many variations that still reflect the basic division into two parts separated by a rhetorical turn of argument (e.g., see Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese [1850]).

limerick: A five-line light poem, usually in anapestic rhythm. The first, second, and fifth lines are rhymed trimeter; lines three and four are rhymed dimeter. The rhymes are frequently eccentric, and the subject matter is often nonsensical or obscene.

lyric: Originally a poem meant to be sung to the accompaniment of a lyre. Now, a lyric is the most
common verse form: any fairly short poem in the voice of a single speaker, usually expressing personal concerns rather than describing a narrative or dramatic situation.

masculine rhyme: Rhymes that consist of a single stressed syllable. This is the most common form of end rhyme in English (compare feminine rhyme).

meditation: A contemplation of some physical object as a way of reflecting upon some larger truth, often (but not necessarily) a spiritual one. For example, see Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning" (1923).

metaphor: A figure of speech that relies on a likeness or analogy between two things to equate them and thus suggest a relationship between them. For example, in "A Far Cry from Africa" (1962) Derek Walcott portrays the continent as an animal, with a "tawny pelt" and "bloodstreams." Compare metonymy, simile.

meter: The formal organization of the rhythm of a line into regular patterns; seefoot, scansion.

metonymy: A figure that relies on a close relationship other than similarity (compare metaphor) in substituting a word or phrase for the thing meant. For example, the "scepter" in Tennyson´s "Ulysses" (1842) represents the rule of Ithaca.

mnemonic devices: Forms, such as rhyme, built into poems to help reciters remember the poems.

motif: A recurrent device, formula, or situation that deliberately connects a poem with preexisting patterns
and conventions. For example, Edmund Spenser´s Sonnet 75 (1595; "One day I wrote her name upon the strand") relies on the motif of immortality through poetry (cf. William Shakespeare, Sonnet 55 [1609]).

mythologies: Large systems of belief and tradition on which cultures draw to explain and understand themselves. These are often political or religious, and often become conventional over time (for example, see the use of "Venus´ son" in Elizabeth´s "When I Was Fair and Young").

narrative: Poetry that tells a story and is primarily characterized by linear, chronological description.

occasional poem: A poem written about or for a specific occasion, public or private (e.g., Maya Angelou´s
poem for the 1993 presidential inauguration, "On the Pulse of Morning"). Such poems can transcend the particular incident that inspired them; for example, see William Butler Yeats, "Easter 1916" (1916).
ode: An extended lyric, usually elevated in style and with an elaborate stanzaic structure (e.g., see Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Dejection: An Ode" [1817]). 
off-rhyme: Rhyme that does not perfectly match in vowel or consonant sound; for example, see William Butler Yeats, "Easter 1916" (1916): faces / houses, gibe / club, etc.

onomatopoeia: Use of a word or words the sound of which approximates the sound of the thing denoted (e.g., "splash").

oxymoron: A figure of speech that combines two apparently contradictory words (e.g, John Milton´s description of the flames of hell as giving "No light, but rather darkness visible" in Paradise Lost 1.63 [1667]).

parody: A poem that imitates another poem closely, but changes details for comic or critical effect. For example, "The Dover Bitch" by Anthony Hecht (1968) parodies Matthew Arnold´s "Dover Beach" (1867).

pastoral: A poem (also called an eclogue, a bucolic, or an idyll) that portrays the simple life of country folk, usually shepherds, as a timeless world of beauty, peace, and contentment. From its beginnings (the Greek Idyls of Theocritus, third century B.C.), pastoral has idealized rural life; poets have used the conventions of this highly artificial form to explore subjects having little to do with any actual countryside (for example, see Christopher Marlowe, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" [1599, 1600]). There is also a large subgenre of pastoral elegy (e.g., see John Milton, "Lycidas" [1637]).

pattern poetry: A poem with lines in the shape of the subject of the poem. This form was popular in English poetry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (e.g., George Herbert, "Easter Wings" [1633]) and again in the twentieth century (notably by John Hollander and May Swenson). Compare with concrete poetry.

persona: A voice assumed by the author of a poem. See speaker.

personification: Treating an abstraction as if it were a person, endowing it with humanlike qualities. For an extended example, see Emily Dickinson, #712 (1890; "Because I could not stop for Death").

Petrarchan sonnet: See Italian sonnet.

prosopopoeia: See personification.

protest poem: An attack, sometimes indirect, on institutions or social injustices. For example, see Anna Letitia Barbauld, "The Rights of Woman" (1825).

pyrrhic: two successive unstressed or lightly stressed syllables.

quantitative meter: Lines of verse divided into feet, which are scanned by syllable length (actual duration of the sound) rather than stress (compare accentual meter). This is the form of classical Greek and Latin verse, and it is very difficult to reproduce in English, which privileges stress.

quatrain: A four-line stanza, whether rhymed or unrhymed. This is the most common stanza form in English poetry. 


rhyme: The repetition of the same ("perfect rhyme") or similar sounds, most often at the ends of lines. See off-rhyme, vowel rhyme.

rhyme royal: A seven-line iambic pentameter stanza, rhymed ababbcc. For example, see Thomas Wyatt, "They Flee from Me" (1557).

scansion: The analysis of a line of poetry (by "scanning") to determine its pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, which usually are divided into metrical feet. See foot.

sestina: Six six-line stanzas and a final three-line stanza in a complex form that repeats words, not lines (as in the villanelle) or rhymes. The final word in each line of the first stanza becomes the final word in other stanzas (in a set pattern: ABCDEF, FAEBDC, CFDABE, ECBFAD, DEACFB, BDFECA); the lines in the concluding stanza, or envoy, usually end ECA and each line contains one of the remaining three end words. Invented in the twelfth century by the troubadours, the form has again come into use in the twentieth century (e.g., by Marilyn Hacker); the repetitions often convey a sense of circling around a subject.

setting: The time and place of the action in a poem..

Shakespearean sonnet: See English sonnet.

simile: A direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another that usually draws the connection with the words "like" or "as." Compare metaphor.


situation: The context of the action in a poem; that is, what is happening when the poem begins.


Bibliography