| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: to himself. She sat on a chair and looked at him
fixedly across the table with her brown, blurred
eyes. 'Why don't you have him upstairs?' I
asked. With a start and a confused stammer she
said, 'Oh! ah! I couldn't sit with him upstairs,
Sir.'
"I gave her certain directions; and going out-
side, I said again that he ought to be in bed up-
stairs. She wrung her hands. 'I couldn't. I
couldn't. He keeps on saying something--I don't
know what.' With the memory of all the talk
Amy Foster |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: About this money. You'll never know how grateful I am. Flora
doesn't understand these things, but I can talk to you. It's
like this----"
"I might as well be honest about it," Sophy interrupted. "I'm
doing it, not for you, but for Flora, and Della--and Eugene.
Flora has lived such a sheltered life. I sometimes wonder if she
ever really knew any of you. Her husband, or her children. I
sometimes have the feeling that Della and Eugene are my
children--were my children."
When he came home that night Baldwin told his wife that old Soph
was getting queer. "She talks about the children being hers,"
One Basket |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: "Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.
One's own life--that is the important thing. As for the lives
of one's neighbours, if one wishes to be a prig or a Puritan,
one can flaunt one's moral views about them, but they are not
one's concern. Besides, individualism has really the higher aim.
Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age.
I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is
a form of the grossest immorality."
"But, surely, if one lives merely for one's self, Harry, one pays
a terrible price for doing so?" suggested the painter.
"Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
