Author: Sajeevan

My favorite story is “A Good Fall” by Ha Jin because I was able to understand the story easily and clearly. The main characters in the story are Ganchin, Master Zong, and Cindy. Ganchin is the main character which story revolves around him. Ganchin is a monk who works in the temple under Master Zong who fires him one day because Ganchin was asking for his salary money. Master Zong is a monk himself who owns a luxury car and lives a luxury life even though the monk cannot do that. Cindy is a flight attendant who is a friend of Ganchin and wants to help Ganchin when he was struggling, but Ganchin did not want her help. The first important scene in the story is when Master Zong decides to fire Ganchin because he was asking for his salary. This scene is important because this is the main turning point of the story, if Ganchin was not fired in the first place then this story would have never happened. The second important scene in the story is when Ganchin decides to commit suicide and jumped from the top of the building. But nothing serious happened to him and he was admitted to the hospital. After that everyone talked about him and a lot of people came to help him because of that. Ganchin strictly follows deontology ethics because he follows monk rules seriously. He did not like Cindy at the beginning of the story because he is not supposed to get married. Even though Cindy liked Ganchin, Ganchin could not do anything. But in the end, Ganchin forgets about being a monk and decides to love Cindy. Master Zong, on the other hand, follows Utilitarian ethics, since he cares only about maximum good for himself. Cindy follows feminist ethics since she wants everyone to listen to her perspective. Also, she is living a life however she wants.

Sajeevan Rangeswaran

Midterm Essay, English 2001

October 19, 2020

                                                            Black Cat Narrator vs Emily

            Gothic is writing that creates excessive emotions and actions related to nightmares, mysteries, terror, death, and madness. We have read so many Gothic fictions this semester and most of them have a different gothic element in the story. There were two stories in which I felt the character has some similarities. The two stories were “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner. The narrator from “The Black Cat” and Emily from “A Rose for Emily” had similarities in their gothic fiction.

           In the story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe; the narrator is the main character, and he is an alcoholic who gets angry at everyone and beats his wife. One day he hanged his cat Pluto and after that, his house was destroyed by the fire. After that, he found a cat that looks like his cat Pluto. That cat followed the narrator even though the narrator did not like it. One day he could not tolerate the cat, so he decided to kill the cat with the knife, but his wife came in the middle, and instead of the cat he kills his own wife. Then he hides her body inside the wall where the cat will also get stuck. When the police came to his house, he got caught because the cat made noise from the wall. In the end, he was arrested for killing his wife and he is going to die now because of that.              

In the story “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, Emily is the main character who lives with her father in the southern united states. One day her father dies, and she lives alone in the house. One time she meets Homer Barron, who she falls in love with. Homer Barron told everyone in the area that he slept with Emily, which made Emily so angry. Emily decided to kill Homer Barron because of that. Even though she killed him; she kept Homer Barron dead body with her in the house. After a few years, she dies also because of aging.

For this coffeehouse post, I read “A very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A tale for children” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and “The House of Asterion” by Jorge Luis Borges. Both the stories had a lot of gothic elements and I will talk about the characters, plot points, and setting in this coffeehouse post.

First, let’s talk about “The House of Asterion”, Asterion is the main character in the story who is a half man half bull. He is not a regular man since he has bullhead and he doesn’t go outside his house because people are afraid of him. He is being feared by all the people and he is an arrogant person. Eventhogh he is a minotaur but most of the time he acts childish. He doesn’t have any friends, so he makes up games to play by himself. In the end, nine men die in front of him and he wants his redeemer to come for him and he doesn’t know how his redeemer will look like. Theseus believes the minotaur defended himself. Asterion lives in a Maze and he doesn’t do anything other than make a distractions for himself.

“A very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, in the beginning, Pelayo was killing crabs where he found an Old man with wings near his courtyard. The old man looked like a poor and homeless guy. Pelayo put the old man in the cage and made him stay there. When people started to come to watch the old man, Pelayo started charging them money and he got rich from it. But in the end, Old man regained his strength and flew away from the house. Eventhough the pelayo wife was watching she didn’t do anything. The main characters are Old man, Pelayo, Elisenda, and their child. I think this story happens in a village.