| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily
gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at
bottom--so he told me--he was actuated by a profound desire to learn
among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his people still
happier than they were; and more than that, still better than they
were. But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that
even Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more
so, than all his father's heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag
Harbor; and seeing what the sailors did there; and then going on to
Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also,
poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it's a wicked world
Moby Dick |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, 20
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
The Waste Land |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: "I did not sell Amalgamated Electric on Wednesday, and on Thursday a
doubt about the increased dividend began to be circulated. The stock,
nevertheless, after a forenoon of weakness, rallied. Moreover a check for
my first dividend came from the Pollyopolis Heat, Light, Power, Paving,
Pressing, and Packing Company."
"'What a number of things it does!' exclaimed Ethel, when I showed her
the company's check."
"'Yes,' I replied, and quoted Browning to her: ''Twenty-nine Distinct
damnations. One sure if the other fails.' Beverly's mother has a lot of
it.'"
"But Ethel did not smile. 'Richard,' she said, 'I do wish you had more
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