| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: himself in the Brotherhood. He heard himself promising to lie, to steal,
to forge, to murder, to encourage drug-taking and prostitution, to
disseminate venereal diseases, to throw vitriol in a child's face. O'Brien
made a small impatient gesture, as though to say that the demonstration
was hardly worth making. Then he turned a switch and the voices stopped.
'Get up from that bed,' he said.
The bonds had loosened themselves. Winston lowered himself to the floor
and stood up unsteadily.
'You are the last man,' said O'Brien. 'You are the guardian of the human
spirit. You shall see yourself as you are. Take off your clothes.'
Winston undid the bit of string that held his overalls together. The zip
1984 |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Apology by Xenophon: the god has said. I ask you, is there any one[28] else, you know of,
less enslaved than myself to the appetites[29] of the body? Can you
name another man of more independent spirit than myself, seeing that I
accept from no one either gifts or pay? Whom have you any right to
believe to be more just[30] than one so suited with what he has, that
the things of others excite no craving in him?[31] Whom would one
reasonably deem wise, rather than such a one as myself, who, from the
moment I began to understand things spoken,[32] have never omitted to
inquire into and learn every good thing in my power? And that I
laboured not in vain, what more conclusive evidence than the fact that
so many of my fellow-citizens who make virtue their pursuit, and many
The Apology |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: to keep house for her brother, Fred, who had an en-
gineering shop for small repairs by the water side.
Suddenly Falk takes to going up to their bunga-
low after dinner, and sitting for hours in the veran-
dah saying nothing. The poor girl couldn't tell
for the life of her what to do with such a man, so she
would keep on playing the piano and singing to
him evening after evening till she was ready to
drop. And it wasn't as if she had been a strong
young woman either. She was thirty, and the cli-
mate had been playing the deuce with her. Then--
Falk |
