The Book Of Sand

In The House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus III, there are an infinite amount of possible outcomes when dreams collide, but overall not everybody can have his/her dreams fulfilled, unless there is a compromise to which all parties can agree upon, but only one can get what they came for, and the characters in the story do not come to this conclusion. This idea is expanded upon throughout the story of House and Sand and Fog when we get two people, Kathy Nicolo, and Colonel Behrani who have their dreams intertwine. They both do not ever come to a compromise that can satisfy the both of them, but instead it leads to nobody achieving their dream.

Undoubtedly, Stephen Crane’s Open Boat’ is regarded as one of the finest and most intriguing short story written by an author with a naturalistic point of view or perspective. Stephen sets up the story based on his real life experience thereby bringing out the intrinsic reality to his audience using symbolism, poetry, and imagery. Perhaps the most intriguing naturalistic approach of ‘the Open Boat’ is the way Stephen expresses the themes in the short story with an ironic twist regarding the vastness of the universe and the insignificance of man. As such, Stephen Crane’s short story, The Open Boat, is a true depiction of the tag of war between the unpredictable cosmic universe and man exposing the themes of determination for survival, mortality, friendship, with an exquisite touch of other devices such as poetry, symbolism or imagery, and tone. This paper aims at dissecting this subject matter through a detailed analysis of the plot created throughout the novel.

African Americans have been discriminated and were not treated fairly from the beginning of the American colonies up to the 1960s. Their history included about 250 years of slavery followed by another 100 years of discrimination. However, many people state that throughout the 1800s, the whaling industry helped African Americans thrive as a race. In addition, they were treated as equals and could gain glory and wealth from it. In most cases, this is not true because negroes for three main reasons. Almost all African people did not receive high positions on their crew ships. Also, they experienced segregation on ships and were treated not equally. Finally, they were taken for their cheap and hard labor in a dangerous, unrewarding industry. Using internet sources and the novel, In The Heart of The Sea, by Nathaniel Philbrick, African Americans in the whaling industry had low status within crews and faced harsh working conditions as well as discrimination and racism.

struggles with self identity after moving from Iran to America for asylum. In addition to fleeing Iran due to the political climate and his family’s involvement with the Shah, Behrani is presented to the reader as the quintessential immigrant and refugee. He and his family move to San Francisco, California in order to start a new life. With very little money compared to what they were accustomed to, Behrani and his family reside in a relatively wealthy area.

By juxtaposing Hladik’s reality and the play he has constructed in his mind, Borges introduces the overarching idea of how the mind constitutes for a different realm in which the dreamers and thinkers can shape, share, and confide in.

Decay, given enough time, is inevitable. Over the course of history, many nations and empires have undergone the same cycle of growth, stagnation, and eventual factional conflict which reduces their seemingly unending dynasties into piles of rubble. And most of the time, these societies attribute their struggles and times of instability to the actions of one or a few figureheads who misappropriate their power, holding on to their preconceived notions of the inability of their strong and stable central governments, booming and vibrant economies, and complex, developed social structures to propagate such periods of unrest. However, in the novel Dune by Frank Herbert, Herbert emphasizes the collective culpability of various different parties

However at this point he had already lost his friends and the things he valued. The book had taken up a great extent of his time that could not be taken back, because unlike The Book of Sand, his life was not infinite.

This passage is where the rising action happens. The man was curious about the book of sand. He wanted to own it and receive the knowledge the books gives him. The man traded with the stranger. He traded his most valuable bible and some money. It is ironic, how the man trades his most valuable bible for an unknown and mysterious book. I would've expected the man to understand the book more thoroughly and then trade. He gave up something valuable without knowing what the book is. Later in the story the book turns out to be a disaster. He explains, “A prisoner of the book, I almost never went out anymore… summer came and went, and I realized that the book was monstrous”(Borges 3-4).The man has lost most of his friends and is to consume to the

Plot summary: Amir flashbacks to when he was twelve years old in Afghanistan. He lives with his father, Baba, and has two servants, Ali and Hassan, who are also a father and son duo. The latter two are Hazaras, Afghan’s minority, and as such, are subjected to racial slurs and cruelty. Amir and Hassan are playing when Assef, Kamal, and

In The Sand Child, Tahar Ben Jelloun composes a multi-layered tale about Ahmed, a woman socialized as a man, who struggles to reclaim her sexuality. Ben Jelloun contrasts gender and sexual orientation to suggest that a person’s characteristics can be shaped and changed by will, but his sexuality is predisposed and will be the deciding factor of how he will act and identify himself within his community.

Moreover, the dominant theme within Frank Herbert’s Dune is the theme of ecology. Not only did Herbert focus on environmental ecology but, he also included social, political, economic, and language ecologies. The term “ecology” deputes one of the basic divisions of biology (Logan 51). Ecology is the study of the structure and dynamics of the biological processes that compose and sustain the earth’s ecosystem (Logan 52). Within the ecology article, Logan orates the basic premises of an ecological interpretation which include that all forms of life exist in co-dependent relationships, nature is lively rather than still, stability of nature depends on assortment, and nature is fragile and limited. Pardot Kynes was an Imperial planetologist within

With his death waiting for him, Pablo is not only thinking about the universe lasting forever, but is also thinking about the nature of the man. According to “The Wall,” the nature of a man, which is really limited in time, is the exact opposite of what the nature of the universe is. The universe keeps going on with the passing away of a person, but the man does not. Pablo mulls over his life and how he has spent his “time counterfeiting eternity” and he “has understand nothing.” According to Sartre, the man has no knowledge of his own limited time on the universe until their end is coming. Before that, the man behaves as if there is no end to their time and does not spend a

James Joyce’s short story Araby delves into the life of a young adolescent who lives on North Richmond Street in Dublin, Ireland. Narrated in the boys’ perspective, he recounts memories of playing with friends and of the priest who died in the house before his family moved in. With unrestrained enthusiasm, the boy expresses a confused infatuation with the sister of his friend Mangan. She constantly roams his thoughts and fantasies although he only ever catches glimpses of her. One evening she speaks to him, confiding that she is unable to visit Araby, a bazaar. Stunned by the sudden conversation, the boy promises he will go and bring her back a small memento. In anticipation, the boy launches into a period of restless waiting and distraction

She points out that “Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it. /It doesn’t feel itself seen and touched”. When referring to the sand as “it” she emphasises that human metaphors and concepts are inadequate or misleading in describing the universe. Instead, she personifies the sand, implying that it is has its own ‘meaning’ and ‘feeling’, but one that we cannot access. Instead, we only understand human perspectives, with humans gaining the pronoun “his” in the final stanza. Through this, Szymborska reinforces the idea that humans are blinded by ignorance and ego and hence find it difficult to create a connection with nature. By giving the sand feelings of being “touched” or “seen”, it is an anthropomorphic object, having its own feelings and meanings. However we are led to accept that we, as humans, are insignificant within those feelings. We instead lack the capability to imagine the possibility that the sand may have its own perspective, more than just an object. This concept is explored further in her poem Conversation with the Stone, where she adopts the perspective of a stone. Szymborska writes “I hear you have great empty halls, inside you, unseen”, questioning the accuracy of our perception of nature and encouraging us to change perspective to look at nature through different lenses. Through these ideas,

The infinite is a concept that is difficult for man to comprehend, yet in Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “The Garden of Forking Paths” he does such a fantastic job of describing this idea of infinity and its effect on mankind through his explanation of a labyrinth. This short story also can be used as somewhat of a lens while reading Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Borges’ story begins with frame narrative but both stories are, for the most part, told from a first person point of view. This aspect of point of view is very helpful in supporting the idea of infinite possibilities and infinite universes. By writing their stories from a first person point of view Bechdel and Borges give their readers a glimpse into the idea that each action, however little that action or decision may be, always has a reaction that can alter the outcome of a persons’ life drastically. Each action, can have different outcomes that essentially leads to infinite outcomes in other universes.