...Where the Gods Fly The relationship between a mother and a child is birthed simultaneously with the child’s entry into the world. The child takes its first breath of life and displays the initial dependent human longing for protection and love in the presence of a mother. As the mother is everything a child needs when it is born, the mother also only needs the child in that moment. That bond is more precious than anything in the world, which is why every mother tries to have her children as close to her as she can. Every mother loves her child. They can argue, discuss intensely, the can even fight, but at the end of the day, a mother will always love her child. Because of the love, a mother has for her child; it is hard for her to let go. Some will tell their children how they feel, and some will just what do they think is the right thing for the child and hope that the child will understand. Motherly love is a topic we find in the short story “Where the Gods Fly”, written in 2012 by Jean Kwok. The short story is from the anthology “The Shortlist” which was one of the short stories that won The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award in 2012. Briefly, the short story is about a mother: fearful that she may be losing touch with her, and that she may be losing all that is inherent in her culture. A Chinese mother takes the drastic step of removing her daughter from ballet school. This paper contains an analysis and interpretation where part of the paper focuses on the...
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...Where the Gods Fly Coming to a new country can be quite overwhelming. Having no family, not being able to speak the language, or not being able to adapt to the community. All these things can make your life way harder. All this can get even more difficult when your country of origin is so fundamentally different from your new one. Bringing a child will also make everything much harder. You probably want to try to give this child a good life, but you have to take away what they love the most to do so. This is exactly what happens in Jean Kwok’s short story ‘’Where the Gods Fly’’ where a family of three immigrates to the US. The narrator in the text is a ‘first person narrator’. We are already able to tell that after the first line in the story, which says: ‘’I kneel before the gods and the thought of what I am about to do stings my eyes like incense’’. The first thing I thought when I had read the first couple of lines, was that it sounded like the mother is going to tell the ballet teachers that Pearl couldn’t dance there anymore. She tells how hard it had been for her family at the start, so the author probably wants the reader to put her/himself in the mother’s place. Right after she tells that she probably spoiled her, but she only did it because she thinks that it would be the best for Pearl. On line 20 and 21 Pearl says that when her mother is running late, she starts beating her stuffed dog ‘Fat Boy’. This could symbolize Pearl’s frustration with her mother. On line...
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...Where the Gods fly Moving to foreign country can be extremely difficult. It can be hard to adapt to new surroundings, and in this case adapt to a society that does not value the believe in religion as much as you do yourself. Especially when you come from a country so fundamentally different from the one being in. this is the exact case in the short story “Where the Gods fly” written by Jean Kwok, in 2012, where a small Chinese family moves to USA where they face a lot of difficulties, adapting to the new society. The structure of the short story, “Where the Gods fly”, is quite significant. The story begins in medias res “I kneel here before the gods and the thought of what I am about to do stings in my eyes like incense”. This beginning is in fact the ending of the story, as the decision, that the mother makes, is going to be irreversible. The rest of the story until the end focusses on how the mother came to this crucial decision. Throughout the story, the narrator goes into details about the struggle Perl’s family faced when they immigrated to the United States of America. The narrator uses Pearl’s life as a timeline. Basically, the short story starts in the present tense in the first couple of lines. (ll. 1-8). After which, the text changes into the past tense, as we are introduced to the struggle the family stumbles upon every day. “Pearl was too young, or so I argued[…]” (l. 9). At the end of the story, we are back in present tense: “The monks are ringing the gong”(l...
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...Moving Away From Your Culture Imagine permanently moving to a country where the language, the culture basically where everything is foreign to you. This is the reality of most immigrant parents, who try to raise their children safely in a foreign country, where strong influences can ruin a person of their fundamental cultural identity. As human beings, we have a constant need to hold on to what we define as safe, but in order to chase happiness some people must let go of their fundamental basics. Travelling to another country can be very hard especially the lack of friends, family and the fact that you need to learn an entirely new culture. The short story “Where the Gods fly”, written by a Chinese American writer, Jean Kwok. Jean Kwok tells the story about a family that emigrates from China to America, and how the Chinese mother struggles to give her daughter, Pearl the life she affords. She is bound to her old culture and protects her daughter through her religion and hers decisions. A first person narrator tells the story, from a mother’s perspective. Her, her husband and her daughter migrated from China when her daughter Pearl was a child. While reading the story we notice, that the narrator shifts in the grammatical tense, which is what structures the plot of the story. In the present narrative tense, we find the mother in some sort of religious state of mind, where she prays to specific gods and spirits, for example “Ah, Amitabha, Buddha of great compassion, I whisper…”(p...
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...Where the Gods fly by Jean Kwok When you are coming from a different culture, adaption can be very difficult. The things you have been taught, the things you know, your beliefs, qualities, preferences and religion will make the journey to adapting to this new culture very arduous, as your country of origin is so fundamentally different from your new one. Settling down in a country, not knowing the language or having any familiar faces around can be both overwhelming and frightening. If you decide to bring up a child in this new culture, but you still cling on to the values and beliefs from your former life, and wanting your child to share the same beliefs, rules and norms as you and your country of origin, you might find yourself in great trouble, as the culture will have a greater influence on your child than you will, and what will you do about it?. These issues are displayed in the short story “Where the Gods fly” by author Jean Kwok. The short story deals with a family who has emigrated from China to America. The mother struggles as she tries to give her daughter a greater life than she had. The mother and father work at a factory in Chinatown to provide for the family, while their daughter Pearl goes to school. Pearl is given a scholarship to a ballet school, but as time progresses, Pearl becomes disconnected from her parents, as ballet becomes a bigger part of her life, and soon becomes the only thing that she wants to do. This leaves the mother feeling distraught,...
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...Where the Gods fly Coming to a new country can be overwhelming and extremely frightening. It can be extremely hard to adapt to a civilization with different tongue, a different set of values and different social doctrines. Having no family, friends or familiar faces around is all very difficult. Misunderstandings will almost always happen and the two cultures will inevitably collide somehow. This is the case in Jean Kwok’s short story “Where the Gods Fly” from 2012 where a small family emigrates from China to the US in order to settle and work. Here a mother finds great trouble when her daughter becomes imbedded in a Western culture, which is almost completely incomprehensible to the mother. The short story is told by a nameless first person, auto diegetic narrator, with limited and internal omniscience. The name of the protagonist is never told, but all of her thoughts and contemplations are depicted very thoroughly. This type of narration never describes the thoughts of any of the other characters. The story is written sort of as a memoir and therefore it is difficult to track the exact timeline of the story. The protagonist is a Chinese woman who has immigrated to America with her husband and little daughter. It is described that the main character is uneducated and that she was not allowed to study as young in China, and she only picked up a little bit from looking at her brothers’ books. (p. 4 l. 77-79) This means that se is very uneducated and therefore works...
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...onstantly work at the factory to make a living. “Her father and I spent our waking hours at the factory in Chinatown” While they work, Pearl attends school and afterwards stays at home alone, waiting for her parents to return. Later, the mother comes to realize that this abandonment is perhaps why she becomes who she does. “I suppose I left Pearl too much alone in those early years. She had nothing to hold on to…so she never learned the value of such things.” The mother does not allow Pearl to visit anyone from her school. There are several reasons for this, one being that she does not understand the Americans “I understand nothing of these people who did not bow to our gods and ate with sharp knives at the table” herein lies one of the biggest problems in the story and for the mother. Apparently she does not feel it her duty to become integrated in the American society, her only duty is to raise a successful daughter and to put food on the table. Considering this is written by an American-Chinese author whose story probably resembles this one, I think it is deliberate that, this along with the other themes are the focal point of the story. By chance Pearl ends up with a scholarship to a ballet school; her mother has mixed feelings about this. On one hand she is happy that her daughter does not have to be alone, but on the other hand the popularity and effect it has on Pearl’s will to educate herself is less enticing. At one point the mother is thinking back on her own childhood...
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...Stella Vallik Christianshavns Gymnasium November 2012 Analytical Essay Jean Kwok: Where The Gods Fly Imagine permanently moving to a country where the language, the culture... everything is foreign to you. This is the reality of most immigrant parents, who try to raise their children safely in a foreign country, where strong influences can strip a person of their cultural identity. This is the exact situation we are dragged into, in the short story 'Where The Gods Fly' written by Jean Kwok. Here we meet a Chinese mother's unwelcoming approach, towards her daughter's passion for the arts of ballet. The story is told by a first person narrator, from a mothers perspective. Her, her husband and her daughter migrated from China when her daughter, Pearl, was still a child. We notice - while reading the story - that the narrator shifts in the grammatical tense, which is what structures the plot of the story. In the present narrative tense, we find the mother in some sort of religious state of mind where she prays to certain gods and spirits, for example: “Ah, Amitabha, Buddha of great compassion, I whisper...” (P. 1, L. 24). While she finds herself in this state, she is reminded of their, her family's, life since they moved from China to America, these parts of the story are, obviously, told in the past tense. The story begins in the present tense, as a sort of exposition. We are introduced to the narrator's situation, the main conflict of the story: she wants to take her daughter...
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..."Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." Eccl 12:13-14 (KJV) FEW WAYS TO LOVE YOUR HUSBAND 1. Discover his favorite pet name and call him by that. 2. Allow him exercise his authority as the head of the family. 3. DO not challenge him when he is hurt. 4. Be silent when he is angry. You can go back to him in his sober moment with apology n explain why you behave that way that annoyed him. 5. Be quick to say " I am sorry dear". When ever you offend him pettingly, insist on his forgiveness, appreciate and kiss him when he does. 6. Speak good of him before his Friends and siblings. 7. Honor his mother 8. Insist that he buys gift for his parents and so be sure that he will do same for your parents 9. Surprise him with his favorite dish especially when he has no enough money at hand and never delay his food. 10. Do not allow the maid to serve him food when you are at home. Because u may lose him to them. 11. Give him a warm reception with an embrace when he returns, collect his luggage and help undress him. 12. Smile when you look at him and give him occasional pecks when you are out socially. 13. Praise him before your children sometimes. 14. Wash his back while he is in the tub or shower. 15. Put love note in his lunch box or briefcase. 16. Phone and tell him that you...
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...This poem demonstrates a wide array of interpretations of death as well as Dickinson’s uncertainty as to what may come after Death and her questioning of the existence of God. Dickinson sees death in a very physical way; she chooses not to concentrate on the spiritual aspect or the anticipated arrival of “the King”. This is best shown in the opening line of “I heard a Fly buzz”, where we are immediately provoked by thoughts of decay and rot. She chooses to focus on physical aspects of the mourners such as their “eyes” and “breaths”. This is perhaps to focus on the painless death of the woman, as Calvinists believed that if someone suffered a peaceful death they would enter the Kingdom of God. Her use of an oxymoron in “that last onset” shows how she acknowledges the religious importance of death to others, as in 19th century America Christians believed that the “last” of someone’s life on earth was the “onset” of their eternal life in heaven. Death is thought to bring revelations as with it comes an exalted male figure of “the King” to be “witnessed”, yet this expectation and sense of ritual is undercut by the juxtaposition of “in the Room” and furthermore so by “the fly” which interposes and is all that appears in place of God. Dickinson focuses on the harsh realities of death in the fact that the dying can only “will their Keepsakes” yet their souls and character will be lost forever. This is emphasized by the manner in which the mourners conduct themselves. They seem...
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...Defying Order Proves Costly Who is God? The answer has been sought for millennia. If one thing is certain, it is that He is the most intelligent and powerful being in the universe. God is a designation used to represent the highest authority over everything. Although many people may not be religious or even believe in God, artists may use a supernatural being allegorically, perhaps God or the Devil, in their works to represent order. In Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding, a group of boys become stranded on a deserted paradise island after their plane is shot down out of the sky. On this island it would appear a higher power is controlling the order. They boys start out civil by creating a political democracy, and are as children without sin. Sin, like adulthood or corruption, then enters into the group and the group is destroyed. The political structure the boys establish when they first meet on the island is also destroyed in the process. The group descends into chaos, with Simon and Piggy as casualties. In the end, Jack, the primary exponent of sin, burns down the island while hunting Ralph, which allows for the boys’ rescue. Despite being rescued, it was clear the boys were changed forever. Likewise, in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606), the country of Scotland is portrayed to be organized under the order of a higher being; a king. When Macbeth, a highly regarded thane, is tempted by a prophecy of being king, he acts on his temptation. Macbeth then becomes king...
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...Holy Lives If you put a buzzard in a pen six or eight feet square and entirely open at the top, the bird, in spite of his ability to fly, will be an absolute prisoner. The reason is that a buzzard always begins a flight from the ground with a run of ten or twelve feet. Without space to run, as is his habit, he will not even attempt to fly, but will remain a prisoner for life in a small jail with no top. The ordinary bat that flies around at night, a remarkable nimble creature in the air, cannot take off from a level place. If it is placed on the floor or flat ground, all it can do is shuffle around helplessly and, no doubt, painfully, until it reaches some slight elevation from which it can throw itself into the air. Then, at once, it takes off like a flash. A Bumblebee if dropped into an open tumbler will be there until it dies, unless it is taken out. It never sees the means of escape at the top, but persists in trying to find some way out through the sides near the bottom. It will seek a way where none exist, until it completely destroys itself. In many ways, there are a lot of people like the buzzard, the bat, and the bee. They are struggling about with all their problems and frustrations, trials and tribulations, heart-breaks and head-aches...stressed out, strung out and on the verge of giving out, not realizing that the power of God to withstand every situation is inherent within you and the answer to life's most difficult problems is just above you.. Brothers...
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...****Take note of points 2 and 6**** Title: Good grief: Lord of the Flies as a post-war rewriting of salvation history Author: Marijke van Vuuren 1. Introduction "It is a great pleasure to meet you, Mr Golding," said King Carl XVI Gustaf, presenting William Golding with the Nobel Prize in 1983. "I had to do Lord of the Flies at school" (Monteith, 1986:63). The Swedish king's words may well be echoed by countless people worldwide who have "had to do" Golding's first novel in various English courses. Indeed, this "unpleasant novel about small boys behaving unspeakably on a desert island" (1) may well have been done to death by exhaustive but reductive reading and teaching. Where Lord of the Flies has been read reductively, Original Sin writ large over it, readers have tended to respond to the novel in terms of its doleful view of humanity or its perceived theology. Its initial success reflected post-war pessimism, the loss of what Golding (1988a:163) has called his generation's "liberal and naive belief in the perfectability of man". Although the novel does not groan under a dogmatic burden to the extent that some critics have alleged, it has seemed the prime example of Golding's earlier writing, a tightly structured allegory or fable. … It is not surprising that the Bible's first and last books, on humankind's "origins and end" beyond the horizons of knowledge, turn to symbolic narrative. In Lord of the Flies Golding draws heavily on imagery from Genesis and the Apocalypse,...
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...A Vision In “I heard a Fly buzz”; Emily Dickinson expresses to her readers about the emotional instability she feels while on her deathbed. She has written several poems about death, but this one differs from her other poems because it is told from her perspective, in accordance with her final moments. The poem creates several powerful images that arouse various possible explanations. It is easiest to understand how the poem (and her death) unfolds by reviewing the poem stanza by stanza. However, before examining the actual context, it is also important to look at the form of the poem, which also plays a puissant role. First of all, and most noticeable, is the continual use of dashes, which adds a lingering essence, as if foreshadowing the death. The dashes also signify power and unanswered questions about death and, perhaps, whether or not an afterlife exists. Another aspect of the form is how it is broken up into stanzas expressing differing ideas in each one. By braking up such ideas, it is easier to analyze the varying aspects of death that Ms. Dickinson believes are imperative when expressing what she is feeling prior to her death. The first stanza starts off repeating the title, “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—“ (line 1). These words, though odd, are explained through the rest of the stanza, as the insignificance of the sound of a fly’s buzz is magnified, thus becoming extreme, compared to “The Stillness in the room” (2). This “Stillness” is then...
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...contact with. In the letters that she would write there would be poems somewhere within them. Emily wrote a total of 1,775 poems in her lifetime. Even though she wrote these poems she never let it be known that she had the capability to write poems with such elegance. All of the poems that she would write she kept hidden somewhere in her room. She would hide the poems in places like her window, under her bed, in corners of the room, and lots of other places. After Emily’s death the truth would be told about her secret talent. Emily’s sister, Lavinia Dickinson found around 900 of the poems Emily had hidden in her room. Her sister decided that the poems were good enough to be published. She went to a friend of the family where she would get help in editing and publishing the poems. Lavinia’s friend, Mabel Loomis Todd and a friend of hers, Thomas Wentworth Higginson began to put a lot of Said 2 effort of getting the poems published. In the year 1890 they accomplished in getting 115 of Emily’s poems published. After their first success of publishing the poems they began to get more involved with Emily’s poems. Along with publishing the poems Mabel and Thomas began practicing the revision of the poems. When Emily wrote the poems some of the English...
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