Cover Letter
To Whom Tt May Concern,
Welcome to Diamond tang’s Writing portfolio! This blog shows my track of study in the English selective course called “Advanced English Writing” this semester, as well as acts as a platform to display the achievements I have got after this course. Specifically, it consists of five articles: essay draft one to three, a reading log and a final timed-writing.
Looking back on the whole semester’s study, I would say the most valuable thing I have learned is how to think, write and act in a western style. Actually, I felt hampered in writing before just because of lacking this, which supplements my Chinese way of thinking perfectly.
First, My writing has become more exact than before. I used to regard mistakes about grammar and spelling as trivial ones, but now I got to know that actually they are fatal to my writing. When my instructor, Mr. Ron, returned the first timed-writing to me, it was surprising to find that I had made so many mistakes. Some of them were obvious and I can easily pick them out in review, such as the subject-verb agreement problems; while others were hidden. Only be resorting to Mr. Ron’ marginal hints could I figure them out. Before that, I often wrote run-on sentence or fragment ones without noticing them. Now I have given enough attention to these kinds of mistakes since Mr. Ron made it clear that all these would hinder a trader from fully understanding the author’s meaning. After this experience, I have developed the habit of proofread so as to make my writing more exact.
I have also developed the spirit of teamwork and honed my skill of exchanging ideas with others. If you look through draft one to three, you may find the dramatic change I have made, which should be attributed to my two teammates, Alice Zhang and Fendi Wu, who gave me some very valuable advice. I myself could not have come up with so many ideas about where to improve, since bystanders often can see more than the ones really involved. This exchange process, called “peer review”, enlightened both parties and acted like a think tank, from which I derived the spirit of teamwork. Exchanging ideas is even more prevalent on the ICA while we wrote reading logs. At there, all sorts of ideas flow freely and mingle with each other. By reading comments and articles of my classmates, I broadened and deepened my understanding of the stories we have read. Of course, Mr. Ron’s pertinent comments are most instructive to me. One thing I found out to be extraordinarily helpful to me is to exchange ideas with the instructor as much as possible. By doing this one can spot his error on time and practice spoken or written English. I myself revised the thesis statement three times and sent it to Mr. Ron by e-mail for suggestion each time. It turned out that with the prompt help of Mr. Ron, I successfully pinned down a short and meaningful thesis statement. Otherwise, I would have wasted much time as I lacked a specific direction to write.
Most importantly, this course turned me from a subjective writer into an objective one. I am used to writing according to my feeling, in neglect of the flow of logic until I attended this course. Mr. Ron has repeatedly emphasized that every assertive sentence should be well supported by concrete examples so as to make the whole writing comprehensible to readers. You can detect the huge transition from my three drafts. In the first draft, the opening paragraph has a weak link with the main body due to my former subjective writing habit. After the peer review, my teammates also raised this problem to me: they could not understand my writing fully, feeling that what I wrote is a prose, not an analytical essay. Therefore, in the next two drafts, I strengthened the flow of logic and endeavored to make every layer of meaning as detectable as possible. Chances are that most readers can find my main ideas and topic sentence for each paragraph without much effort, and all these have made my essay more convincing! During this editing process, Mr. Ron also reminded us not to plagiarize, no matter we are aware of it or not. The best way to prevent it is to use parentheses and page numbers to show that you have quoted something from a certain author’s work. Doing this can still do good to one’s objective writing, since from time to time one is reminded of the inner logic of his work so it is not that easy for him to deviate from his original plan.
Of course, having a dedicated and experienced instructor like Mr. Ron means I have learned many more techniques to accomplish a well-polished academic writing. Still, I think that through this course, preciseness, spirit of teamwork and objective writing skills are the three major things I have acquired. Now I feel strongly that writing is no longer an isolated activity. It tests your concentration and doggedness through its need of preciseness; it makes your personality more wholesome because it demands teamwork; and it trains your logic and cultivates honesty since it calls for strict objectiveness.
Actually, now writing is an integrated and colorful experience to me. When I built up this blog, I felt much excited. I knew this blog would provide me another opportunity to hone my writing skill, to exchange distinctive ideas with my readers and develop myself into an even more mature thinker.
Yours Sincerely
Diamond Tang
Essay Draft Three
Diamond Tang
June 6, 2007
Draft Three
Success Needs More Than Outstanding Abilities
Men are born for accomplishments. “A man can be destroyed, but he can never be defeated”, said Earnest Hemingway. So without doubt, everyone has his ambition, no matter big or small. With the goal in our mind, we set out our journey to be somebody. To increase our competitiveness, we have more or less developed some qualities, such as doggedness, or originality. Most people take it for granted that using these qualities can surely help them realize their dreams. However, they may be wrong, or at least, their notion of how to be successful is not adequate. Chinua Achebe somehow supplements their views in “Dead Men’s Path”.
In this story, Michael Obi, a new headmaster of a Nigeria School, who is energetic in putting his many wonderful ideas into practice, found his school was backward in many aspects. For example, there is a dead men’s path, which functions as the connection between the village shrine and its place of burial. In Obi’s eyes, this superstitious thing is intolerable since it completely goes against his modern teaching system. He has to eradicate all similar things. After a confrontation with a senior priest on whether the path be closed or not, Obi managed to realize his reform but his opponent destroyed much of the school in retaliation, which was seen as the result of his negligence by the white supervisor. Obi’ failure is not inexplicable. If he really wants to wield his brilliance and innovativeness to be a success, he should have curbed his individual ambition so that it did not go against social customs, which are some unwritten norms or common beliefs shared by the majority of the society.
Obi is utterly work-oriented and almost pays no attention to family life, which obviously does not obey our usual emphasis on building a happy, cozy and harmonious family. I cannot help feeling pity for his wife, since she has almost become an accessory of her egocentric husband over the years of their marriage. She had become completely infected by her husband’s passion for modern school. She has no individual emotion, since Obi’s happiness is also her happiness; Obi’s misfortune makes her downcast as well. What is most impressive and ironic is that she “wavered between hope and fear” (53) just because she remembered that all the school faculties are single so she cannot be the queen of the school! This detail tells us that the poor wife has nothing individual; everything of her husband can affect her fragile and dependent emotion. If Obi had not been treating his wife just as something necessary and decorative, should his wife waste her energy and time on such trifle things? Apart from sharing Obi’s enthusiasm, his wife can do nothing, which explicitly shows Obi’s lack of family value, which is one aspect of social customs.
What also illustrates Obi’s slack family idea is his awkward logic: the fact that all his colleagues are both young and unmarried is quite good because they will devote all their time and energy to the school. Are work and family two opposing things? According to common social customs, only by boasting a stable family as a strong support can one really exhibit talents in work. Based on this point, we can conclude that Obi is too enterprising and eager to be somebody that he ignores social customs such as family life. Such ignorance turned out to be the source of his waterloo as revealed in the later part of the story.
If Obi had only been a typical workaholic, he would not necessarily have his wretched ending. In fact, he made other mistakes in dealing with various kinds of people. “He was outspoken in his condemnation of the narrow views of these older and often less-educated ones.” (52). Since Obi just had some sound secondary school education, he definitely is not eligible enough to show his “denigration of these old and superannuated people” (52) and think they would be better employed as traders in some raucous markets than in the teaching field. It was just because Obi had such narrow views towards other people that he thought their views were narrow! Men are socially born, raised and developed. To know how to appreciate other people and learn from them is undoubtedly a usual social custom. Therefore, Obi’s such attitude towards people around him clearly accounts for his failure.
Obi’s words also vividly depict his lack of sophistication when dealing with people. When one of the teachers told him that the path appeared to be very important to the villagers and implied its deep religious meaning, Obi did not catch the hint at all. “A guest must do as his host does”. However, Obi knew nothing but his school. The arrogant headmaster asked, “What has that got to do with the school?" (53). What a dumbfounding question Obi has raised! Even if he did not know the path’s special implication, he should have changed his idea and showed respect to the local people’ own choice of religion. Unfortunately, Obi did not notice the teacher’s accommodating tone or body language “with a shrug of the shoulders” (53), he just arbitrarily ordered that it would not be used from then on.
We can already find that Obi is much lacked in social experience and social techniques from this single ridiculous sentence. It is too curt and impolite! How can Obi avert his doom if he did not notice there are tons of hidden yet strong social principles that we must abide by?
Of course, Obi’s biggest blunder that leads to his tragedy lies in the field of religion. Once again, it was still caused by his ignorance of the social customs. The whole story reached its climax with the direct confrontation between Obi and the village priest. After the senior priest reiterated the religious importance of the path: “Our dead relatives depart by it and our ancestors visit us by it. But most important, it is the path of children coming in to be born…” (54), Obi even did not have the basic politeness to let the old man to complete his talk! Instead, he smiled with much satisfaction. All these mean that throughout the talking, Obi always held a superior’s position, that is, he never stopped using a patronizing tone. Sarcastically, it gave me the feeling that Obi was the real chief of the village, while the senior priest was only an intruder who begs for some interests. Obi frequently applied this kind of utterly wrong attitude towards the sensitive topic of religion. He said his modern school aimed at “eradicating such beliefs as that.”(54). The thought is totally subverting since he dared to undermine the fundamental base of the local people! Moreover, he did not stop by that; in the presence of the old priest, he mocked that the whole idea about the dead men’s path was just fantastic. He should advocate that his duty is to teach local children to laugh at such ideas! Even after hearing these presumptuous, stabbing and arbitrary words, the senior priest still didn’t give up the last hope, and he used a rather simple yet most compromising sentence, much against to his will: “What you say may be true,” (54) and he gave a big offer that if Obi reopen the path the local people shall have nothing to quarrel about. Nevertheless, Obi didn’t know the gravity of the religious disaster. From his perspective, compared to his school, which is his whole life, the local people’s religion accounts for nothing. Obi did not make even a little concession; he insisted that the school compound could not be a thoroughfare because that was against the school’s regulations. Talking with such a stubborn, naïve and bold young man, the old priest used a last resort: “What I always say is: let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch.” (54) Chances are Obi thought this sentence did not show much education and disdained it. After all, Obi ended this round of confrontation with stances of a winner. However, what he said and did equals ruining the cultural root, the moral bottom line of the local people. He always thought religion is a kind of thing that is full of narrow ideas and is only practiced by those less-educated ones. But just as the senior priest said, “we follow the practice of our fathers” (54), religion is not something that can be simply labeled “true” or “false”, for it is the cream or crystal of a specific nation, originating from its history, culture and politics. Obi should have noticed that religion is a rather important factor of the social customs.
On the whole, the author never let the story to be puzzling. Instead, plots in “Dead Men’s Path” is simply enough for us to accept what the author strived to let us know: Obi has many qualities that a success needs, and he should have been able to make it, if only he had curbed his ambition, not letting it to defy so much social customs, with which Obi goes against in the fields of family value, dealing with other people and the issue of religion. Obi’s tragedy roots from his misunderstanding about how to be successful. Success is not one man’s business. In other words, it needs more than one’s outstanding abilities. It involves the whole society around him, which means that one has to contemplate enough about the people and the whole environment of the society from time to time while he is pursuing his dream. Only by meeting this criterion can one be qualified to be different from others. We have the right to be confident to make the world we live better with our ideas, but we don’t boast the privilege to let our personal dream to go utterly against the more powerful and influential force—the social customs. These things are special because one can’t simply say they are right or wrong. They are sets of unwritten norms that we have to accept and conform with. Or we can say that there are many things including the social customs that we are born to accept. Never try to change it by force, even if you think you are 200% right!
“Let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch.” (54) This pithy and meaningful sentence told us an eternal maxim: the world provides a stage for us to be individuals we want to be, but the stage is not unlimited. Don’t make a scene of yourself by trying to alter every aspects of the bigger world that seem stupid to you, otherwise you would be practicing Obi’s tragedy again, since he thought it is absolutely right for him to defy and change so much social customs. Achebe wrote the fiction to remind us this: We, each as an individual born into this world, have our responsibilities to observe all the rules of the big game of life, no matter they are written or not, manifest or opaque. Never try to change them. The world is always cleverer than you on the whole, not you.
Work Cited
Achebe, Chinua. “Dead Men’s Path.” 1953. Rpt.in The International Story: An Anthology with Guidelines for Reading and Writing about Fiction. Ruth Spack. New Yorks: St.Martin’s, 1994. 6-8.
Essay Draft Two
Diamond Tang
May 15, 2007
Draft Two
Success Needs More Than Outstanding Abilities
Men are born for accomplishments. “A man can be destroyed, but he can never be defeated”, said Hemingway. So without doubt everyone has his ambition, no matter big or small. With the goal in our mind, we set out our journey to be somebody. To increase our competitiveness, we have more or less developed some qualities, such as doggedness, originality etc. Most people take it for granted that using these qualities can surely help them realize their dreams. But they may be wrong, or at least, their notion of how to be successful is not adequate. Chinua Achebe somehow supplements their views in “Dead Men’s Path”.
In this story, Michael Obi, a new headmaster of a Nigeria School, who is energetic in putting his many wonderful ideas into practice, found his school was backward in many aspects. For example, there is a dead men’s path. In Obi’s eyes, this superstitious thing is intolerable since it completely goes against his modern teaching system. He has to eradicate all similar things. After a confrontation with a senior priest on whether the path be closed or not, Obi managed to realize his reform but his opponent destroyed much of the school in retaliation, which was seen as the result of his neglect by the white supervisor. Obi’ failure is inexplicable. From my perspective, if he really wants to use his brilliance and innovativeness to be a success, he should have curbed his individual ambition so that it didn't go against social customs.
Obi is utterly work-oriented and pays almost no attention to family life, which obviously doesn’t obey our usual emphasis on building a happy, cozy and harmonious family. I can’t help feeling pity for his wife, since she has almost become an accessory of her egocentric husband over the years of their marriage. She had become “completely infected by” her husband’s passion for “modern school. She has no individual emotion, since Obi’s happiness is also her happiness; Obi’s misfortune makes her downcast as well. What is most impressive and ironic is that she “wavered between hope and fear” just because she remembered that all the school faculties are single so she can’t be “the queen of the school”! If Obi had not been treating his wife just as something necessary and decorative, should his wife wastes her energy and time on such trifle things? His wife can just share Obi’s enthusiasm, which explicitly shows Obi’s lack of family values.
What also illustrates Obi’s slack family idea is his awkward logic: the fact that all his colleagues are “young and unmarried” is “a good thing” because “they will give all their time and energy to the school”. Are work and family two opposing things? According to common social customs, only by boasting a stable family as a strong support can one really exhibit talents in work. From this point, we can conclude that Obi is too enterprising and eager to be somebody that he ignores social customs such as family life. Such ignorance turned out to be the source of his waterloo as revealed in the later part of the story.
If Obi had only been a typical workaholic, he wouldn’t necessarily have his wretched ending. In fact, he made other mistakes in dealing with various kinds of people. “He was outspoken in his condemnation of the narrow views of these older and often less-educated ones.” Obi just had some “sound secondary school education.” Is he eligible enough to show his “denigration of these old and superannuated people” and think they would be better employed as “traders in the Onitsha market” than “in the teaching field”? It was just because Obi had such narrow views towards other people that he thought their views were narrow! Men are socially born, raised and developed.
Knowing how to appreciate other people and learn from them is undoubtedly a usual social customs. So Obi’ such attitude towards people around him clearly accounts for his failure.
Obi’s words also vividly depict his unsophisticacy in dealing with people. When one of the teachers told him that the path appeared to be very important to the villagers and implied its deep religious meaning, Obi didn’t catch the hint at all. “When you are in Rome, do things as Romes do”. However, Obi knew nothing but his school. “And what has that got to do with the school?" When I first read this, I felt dumbfounded. Even if he didn’t know the path’s special implication, he should have changed his idea and showed respect to the local people’ own choice of religion. Unfortunately, Obi didn’t notice the teacher’s accommodating tone “apologetically” or body language “with a shrug of the shoulders”, he just arbitrarily order that “it will not be used now”.
We can already find that Obi is very lacked in social experience and social techniques from this single sentence. It is too curt and impolite! How can Obi avert his doom if he didn’t notice there are tons of hidden yet strong social principles that we must abide by?
Of course, Obi’s biggest blunder that leads to his tragedy lies in the field of religion. Once again, it was still caused by his ignorance of the social customs. The whole story reached its climax with the direct confrontation between Obi and the village priest . After the senior priest reiterated the religious importance of the path “Our dead relatives depart by it and our ancestors visit us by it. But most important, it is the path of children coming in to be born…” Obi didn’t bother to let the old man to complete his talk! Instead, he showed “a satisfied smile” on his face. All these means that throughout the talking, Obi always held a superior’s position, he never stopped using a patronizing tone. Sarcastically, it gave me the feeling that Obi was the real chief of the village, while the senior priest was only a begging intruder. Obi frequently applied this kind of utterly wrong attitude towards the sensitive topic of religion. He said his “modern school” aimed at “eradicating such beliefs as that.” The thought is totally subverting since he dared to undermine the fundamental base of the local people! And he didn’t stop by that: “The whole idea is just fantastic. Our duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas.” Even after hearing these presumptuous and arbitrary words, the senior priest still didn’t give up the last hope, and he used a rather simple yet most compromising sentence, much against to his will: “What you say may be true,” and he gave a big offer: “If you reopen the path we shall have nothing to quarrel about.” Nevertheless, Obi didn’t know the gravity of the religious disaster. In his eye, compared to his school, which is his whole life, the local people’s religion accounts for nothing. “But the school compound cannot be a thoroughfare. It is against our regulations.” Talking with such a stubborn, naïve and bold young man, the old priest used a last resort: “What I always say is: let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch.” I guess Obi thought this sentence didn’t show much education and disdained it. After all, Obi ended this round of confrontation with a stance of winner. However, what he said and did equals ruining the root, the moral bottom line of the local people. He always thought religion is a kind of thing, which is full of “narrow ideas” and only practiced by those “less-educated ones”. But just as the senior priest said, “we follow the practice of our fathers”, religion is not something can be simply labeled “true” or “false”, for it is the cream or crystal of a specific nation, originating from its history, culture and politics. Obi should have noticed religion is a rather important factor of the social customs.
On the whole, the author never let the story to be puzzling. Instead, plots in “Dead Men’s Path” is simply enough for us to accept what the author strived to let us know: Obi has many qualities that a successor need, and he should have been able to make it, if only he had curbed his ambition, not letting it to defy some much social customs. Success is not one man’s business. It involves the whole society around him. We have the right to be confident to make the world we live better with our ideas, but we don’t boast the privilege to let our personal dream to go utterly against the more powerful and influential force—the social customs. These things are special because one can’t simply say they are right or wrong. They are the unwritten norm that we have to accept and conform with. In other words, there are many things including the social customs that we are born to accept. Never try to change it by force, even if you think you are 200% right!
“Let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch.” This pithy and meaningful sentence told us an eternal maxim: the world provides a stage for us to be persons we want to be, but the stage is not unlimited. Don’t make a scene of yourself by trying to alter every aspects of the bigger world. You have your responsibility to observe all the rules of the game, no matter it is written or not. The world is always cleverer than you on the whole, not you.
Essay Draft One
Diamond Tang
May 9, 2007
Draft One
Success Needs More Than Outstanding Abilities
Men are born for accomplishments. “A man can be destroyed, but he can never be defeated.”, said Hemingway. So without doubt everyone has his ambition, no matter big or small. With the goal in our mind, we set out our journey to be somebody. To increase our competitiveness, we have more or less developed some qualities. Most people take it for granted that using these qualities can sure help them realize their dream. But they may be wrong, or at least, their notion of success is not adequate. Chinua Achebe somehow supplements their views in “Dead Men’s Path”.
In this story, Michael Obi, a new headmaster of a Nigeria School, who is energetic in putting his many wonderful ideas into practice, found his school was backward in many aspects. For example, there is a dead men’s path. In Obi’s eyes, this superstitious thing is intolerable since it completely goes against his modern teaching system. He has to eradicate all similar things. After a confrontation with a senior priest on whether the path be closed or not, Obi managed to realize his reform but his opponent destroyed much of the school in retaliation, which was seen as the result of his neglect by the white supervisor. Obi’ failure is not unaccounted for. If he really wants to use his brilliance and innovativeness to be a success, he should have curbed his individual ambition so that it didn't go against the social customs.
The author introduced Michael Obi in a straightforward way. (P52)"It had always been an unprogressive school, so the Mission authorities decided to send a young and energetic man to run it. Obi accepted this responsibility with enthusiasm. He had many wonderful ideas and this was an opportunity to put them into practice." These sentences give us a first impression about the protagonist. He is the typical kind of person who is enterprising and eager to be somebody. (P53)"Why? They will give all their time and energy to the school." This indicates that Michael Obi is totally work-oriented and pays no attention to people's necessary social activities, especially those activities involving religion. Actually, Obi met his waterloo just in the field of religion, as we can see in the story later. (P53)"But he sometimes surprised people with sudden bursts of physical energy. In his present posture, however, all his bodily strength seemed to have retired behind his deep-set eyes, giving them an extraordinary power of penetration. "These sentences further and deepen our impression of the hero: he boasts an abundance of energy and it doesn't commensurate with his poor physical condition. His spiritual world is so strong that he is very likely to meet with some confrontation. Until now, the author has already depicted a typical model from a by-stander’s eyes.
But Obi himself said more words that reflect his inner thoughts and values. (P53)"And what has that got to do with the school?" asked the headmaster. "Well, I don't know," replied the other with a shrug of the shoulders. "But I remember there was a big row some time ago when we attempted to close it." "That was some time ago. But it will not be used now," said Obi as he walked away.
It vividly depicts an unsophisticated yet overly confident young man to us. "What has that got to do with the school?" It is a simple question but he who raised it must be lack in social experience since there are tons of hidden yet strong social principles that we must abide by. Even after he was informed of the religious use of the path, he still ignores its importance and arbitrarily ordered it to be abolished. (P54)"The whole purpose of our school," he said finally, "is to eradicate just such beliefs as that. Dead men do not require footpaths. The whole idea is just fantastic. Our duty is to teach your children to laugh at such ideas."
We readers must be appalled to read what the naive headmasters said. Too bold and presumptuous! The old priest is already using a compromising (accommodating) tone to make up for the religious disaster. But apparently Michael Obi can only see his "modern school" and career. He obviously doesn't know what does the sentence "let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch." He is not educated in how to cope with questions outside the academic field, such as religious issues. So it doesn't surprise me when the author said he met with a wretched ending.
The author never let the story to be puzzling. Instead, plots in “Dead Men’s Path” is simply enough for us to accept what the author strived to let us know: Obi has many qualities that a successor need, and he should have been able to make it, if only he had curbed his ambition, not letting it to defy some much social customs. Success is not one man’s business. It involves the whole society around him. We have the right to be confident to make the world we live better with our ideas, but we don’t boast the privilege to let our personal dream to go utterly against the more powerful and influential force—the social customs. These things are special because one can’t simply say they are right or wrong. They are the unwritten norm that we have to accept and conform with. In other words, there are many things including the social customs that we are born to accept. Never try to change it by force, even if you think you are 200% right!
“Let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch.” This pithy and meaningful sentence told us an eternal maxim: the world provides a stage for us to be persons we want to be, but the stage is not unlimited. Don’t make a scene of yourself by trying to alter every aspects of the bigger world. You have your responsibility to observe all the rules of the game, no matter it is written or not. The world is always cleverer than you on the whole, not you.
Final Timed-writing
0518053
Diamond Tang
June 21, 2007
Timed-Writing Three
for a movie based on The Grass-Eaters, which scene would you select? Why? Discuss ways in which you might film the scene. Were I to create a filmed advertisement for a movie based on The Grass-Eaters, I would select a scene in which Ajit Babu and his wife happened to find a pipe that was not occupied.
My reason is as follows: If a movie is based on The Grass-Eaters, it must show explicitly what the couple has suffered and how they have overcame it. Since the author raised the issue of dwelling to us readers at the very beginning of the story, telling that if one get up at night to release himself then it would be hard for him to locate where his place is afterwards, where to live is certainly one of the biggest problem the couple is facing. I select the scene about finding the pipe because Babu and his wife has changed several dwelling place before they found the pipe to be their most suitable to live. Before that, they have tried the station platform, where there are too many people; they have considered the tanks, and Babu’ wife thought she was like a frog to live in places like that; they have also lived in a wagon for a relatively long periods of time, but the wife didn’t want their fourth baby to perish so wretchedly and moved out of it. So we can conclude that it was rather difficult and fortunate for them to finally find the pipe to live in, and they have endured a long toil before that.I chose this scene also because it shows their poor life typically. They have endured extreme poor material conditions but they face all the obstacles optimistically. Why? Because they each have a pure heart. Nowadays, many people are never satisfied. The more they have acquired, the more they want to get. But Babu and his wife can just face the reality calmly since they could not change the present situation by their own strength. They just accept it and tried to a decent man in their spiritual world, as they are already living like a rat in a deserted pipe. Actually, the author narrated many facts with great sarcastic just to show that the couple had great optimism. To this extent, the scene I have chose can best show their optimism, because they can even accept to live in a pipe.
To show my intentions for a most influential effect, I would film the scene like this: Babu and his wife were both half bare and carrying the few possessions they have, walking to us from distance. Since India is an equatorial country, they suffered from nasty hygiene condition and bad siege from the mosquitoes and hundreds of small insects like flies are harassing them. But they show no traces of anger in their eyes. What they really care is to find a place to live as soon as possible, for the sake of their fourth poor children and themselves. They have suffered enough dragging themselves here and there like deserted dogs. There is not a little hint of life in their eyes.Then suddenly, they found a pipe before them, and the pipe is not small, it can hold two people! The wife ran to it madly, while the husband was still downcast in spirit. He said to his wife: “Don’t waste time to find the pipe. It must be occupied.” Really, they have confronted a lot of situation in which they want to find a living place by force, ejecting the original residents, but they always met with a failure. So they almost lost hope. But there cried his wife with ecstasy: “It is not occupied! It is not occupied!” The husband could not believe his own ears and ran to the pipe frantically. It is really not occupied! And such an ideal place to live! They quickly put their belongings into the pipe, and hang two pieces of cloth on either ends of the pipe. It was hard to believe now they are the owner of this perfect pipe! Husband and wife slept quickly and they both had a nice dream that night.
However, when they get up the next day, all are the same: people thronging everywhere, one man stabbing another and a woman dropping her baby in the litter bin. But, Babu and his wife are satisfied, they already have a perfect pipe to live in.
Reading Log
Reading Log for The Americanization of Shadrach Cohen
The old man has flexibility; but more importantly, he has tenacity. He insisted upon a strict observation of every tenet of their religion. He had carried many tenets from Russia, and he changed or even discarded a lot of them to "catch up with" his sons. But he never gave away the tenets of his Jewish religion. This is where I think he is most intelligent. He knew that he would spoil the father-son relation if he wouldn't become Americanized. Nevertheless, he taught his sons an important lesson: one can't loose his faith or cultural root. It wasn't only by some small knacks that he managed to make his sons to become "Jewishnized" religiously. Cohen used flexibility to let his two sons accept him, and then, wielded tenacity to influence them step-by-step, reminding them of their religious and cultural roots.