| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: supersensitive, an answer thereto arose in Clare's own
mind, and he almost feared it. It was based on her
exceptional physical nature; and she might have used it
promisingly. She might have added besides: "On an
Australian upland or Texan plain, who is to know or
care about my misfortunes, or to reproach me or you?"
Yet, like the majority of women, she accepted the
momentary presentment as if it were the inevitable.
And she may have been right. The intuitive heart of
woman knoweth not only its own bitterness, but its
husband's, and even if these assumed reproaches were
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: grotesque belief.
She looked at him quizzically for a moment. Then she replied:
"It is the duty of a high priestess to instruct, to interpret--
according to the creed that others, wiser than herself, have
laid down; but there is nothing in the creed which says that
she must believe. The more one knows of one's religion the
less one believes--no one living knows more of mine than I."
"Then your only fear in aiding me to escape is that your
fellow mortals may discover your duplicity?"
"That is all--the dead are dead; they cannot harm--or help.
We must therefore depend entirely upon ourselves, and the
The Return of Tarzan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: the smashing impact of bombs; witnessed for the first time in his
life the grotesque, swift onset, of insatiable conflagrations.
From it all he felt detached, disembodied. The Vaterland did not
even fling a bomb; she watched and ruled. Then down they had
come at last to hover over City Hall Park, and it had crept in
upon his mind,, chillingly, terrifyingly, that these illuminated
black masses were great offices afire, and that the going to and
fro of minute, dim spectres of lantern-lit grey and white was a
harvesting of the wounded and the dead. As the light grew
clearer he began to understand more and more what these crumpled
black things signified....
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