LITERATURE

MODULE
 TRADITIONS AND FORMS FROM DIFFERENT NATIONAL
LITERATURE AND CULTURES
Before delving into the introduction, let’s venture first on the four major areas that cover
world literature.

I. ANGLO-SAXON

There are two important epochs in Anglo-Saxon Period:

1. In the year 600 (7th Century), BEOWULF, the longest epic in old English was put into
life.

A. BEOWULF
 A heroic poem which is the highest achievement of Old English Literature in the earliest
European vernacular age.
 It deals with events of the early 6th century and it has believed to be composed between
700-750.
 It was named after the heroic character, Beowulf

2. Duke of Normandy had conquered the British Isle; hence, French has intervened in the
evolution of English.

II. EUROPEAN

o In the early time of the European literature, traditional Latin was the language manifested
in literary works in most of their states especially in Germany.
o As the prestige of the Papacy began to decline, national consciousness began to increase
in different states. This nationalism was manifested in literature written in National
Languages or Vernacular instead of traditional Latin.
o The Vernacular Opera such that cultural peculiarities can be naturally expressed. This
allowed literature to be realistic and human to the readers.
o In the late 1600’s and the early 1700’s, when Enlightenment was well under the way in
Britain and France, Germany was highly fragmented both politically and culturally.
o This period is marked by new emphasis on logic and intellectualism. Writers put more
attention to useful rather than abstract thoughts and express their desires in improving the
conditions of humanity, through tolerance, freedom and equality.
III. AFRO-ASIAN

o Afro-Asian literature refers to the literary output of the various countries and cultures in
Africa and Asia. This includes their oral traditions and from the first to the contemporary
written and/or published prose and poetry.

o There are 10 focus countries of the Afro-Asian Literature:

1. South Africa 6. Israel

2. Sudan 7. Saudi
3. Philippines 8. Pakistan
4. Japan 9. China
5. Cambodia 10. India

IV. NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE

 o It’s not impossible that some people in North America knew how to write before 1500
AD. Some Cherokee people tell stories about an early way of writing, for instance. These
stories were usually about religion, or about how people should act.

o The earliest North American literature was mainly sermons by men like Cotton
Mather, written in 1600s and 1700s. African-American people who had come over from
Africa as slaves met local Cherokee people and translated traditional African and
Cherokee stories into English as Br’er Rabbit stories.

o By the 1800’s, people were beginning to write novels or fictional stories.

INTRODUCTION ABOUT WORLD LITERATURE

A. CLASSICS

 Classic Literatures are often called “work of a transcendent” because it progresses even
how old it might be to generations.

 A work is usually considered to be a representation of the period in which it was written

and merits lasting recognition. In other words, if a book is published over the recent past,
it is not a classic.

 FRANK KERMODE developed this idea: Established Body of Classics. He attempts to

determine the criteria for classical literature through an analysis of the social and
intellectual importance of great works of the past.

B. MASTERPIECES

 Masterpieces are recent pieces but need foundational and cultural force.
 GOETHE proposed this idea: EVOLVING CANON OF MASTERPIECES.
 Literary masterpieces such as the plays of William Shakespeare have structure and
meaning that can be applied to all humanities.
 Often make a strong emotional impact to the reader and are often influential in shaping
world literature
 All classics are masterpieces, but not all masterpieces are classics

C. WINDOWS

 This means that literature is open to all and opens its links to all. Regardless of the
nationality and the language, literature is open to everyone
 GOETHE termed this as WELTLITERATUR. It is the capacity of literature to transcend
national and linguistic boundaries.

D. 12 WORLD'S MASTERPIECES

1. Goethe - He proposed a widely known crossword puzzle.

 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman,
theater director, critique, and amateur artist considered as the greatest literary figure of
the modern era.

2. The Epic of Gilgamesh -This epic originated in Mesopotamia. Story revolves around a
king who abuses his people.
 It follows the story of Gilgamesh, the mythological hero-king of Uruk, and his half-
wild friend, Enkidu, as they undertake a series of dangerous quests and adventures, and
then Gilgamesh’s search for the secret of immortality after the death of his friend. It also
includes the story of a great flood very similar to the story of Noah in “The Bible” and
elsewhere.

3. The ODYSSEY - Homer wrote this after the story of the Greeks destroyed Troy in a very
long war. Focuses on Odysseus, King of Ithaca.

 The Odyssey is Homer's epic of Odysseus' 10-year struggle to return home after the
Trojan War. While Odysseus battles mystical creatures and faces the wrath of the gods,
his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus stave off suitors vying for Penelope's hand
and Ithaca's throne long enough for Odysseus to return. The Odyssey ends as Odysseus
wins a contest to prove his identity, slaughters the suitors, and retakes the throne of
Ithaca.

4. The 1001 Arabian Nights - The King and Scheherazade had fallen in love in thrilling
nights of storytelling.

 The Arabian Nights is a story straight out of a romance novel. It's an epic collection of
Arabic folk tales written during the Islamic Golden Age. Scorned by an unfaithful
wife, Shahryar is the king of a great empire, but is brokenhearted. Shahryar chose to
marry a new woman every day only to kill her the next morning. Needless to say, this
did not make him a very popular ruler. More and more innocent women die until one
day Scheherazade, The daughter of the king's top advisor, offers to marry the king. The
king and advisor both protest, but Scheherazade insists, all knowing that the night could
be her last. That night, she requests the presence of her sister and tells a story that
manages to be the beginning of dozens of stories meant to keep her alive.

5. Candide - Story revolves around a nephew who was tutored by a baron and later he fell
in love with the baron’s daughter

 Candide is the illegitimate nephew of a German baron. He grows up in the baron’s castle
under the tutelage of the scholar Pangloss, who teaches him that this world is “the best
of all possible worlds.” Candide falls in love with the baron’s young daughter,
Cunégonde. The baron catches the two kissing and expels Candide from his home. On
his own for the first time, Candide is soon conscripted into the army of the Bulgars. He
wanders away from camp for a brief walk, and is brutally flogged as a deserter. After
witnessing a horrific battle, he manages to escape and travels to Holland.

6. Death and the King’s Horseman - This is a play that focuses on Elesin, the king’s
horseman

 Death and the King’s Horseman play tells the story of Elesin, the king’s horseman, who
is expected to commit ritual suicide following the death of the king, but who is
distracted from his duty. The story is based on a historical event. In 1946, a royal
horseman named Elesin was prevented from committing ritual suicide by the British
colonial powers. Soyinka alters the historical facts, placing the responsibility for
Elesin’s failure squarely on Elesin’s shoulders, so that he might focus on the theme of
duty rather than of colonialism.

7. Diary of a Madman - Farcical story of Gogol that suggest horrific instances of insanity.
 The story contains thirteen fragments from the diary of a man who has lived in
confusion for thirty years and suddenly gains spiritual insight from the moon. This
lunatic sensitivity leads him to paranoia. Barking dogs, people’s glances, children’s
stares, a mother’s cursing words to her son, a brother’s caring, and a doctor’s treatment
—all converge, in his mind, into a sinister scheme about eating him. On a sleepless night
he reads through a Chinese history with “Virtue and Morality” written on each page but
finds the words “eat people” between the lines. Then he discovers his brother’s
accomplice in the plan for eating him and realizes that his mother is also collaborating.
He even discovers his unwitting involvement in eating his sister’s flesh. The story ends
with the madman’s desperate cry: “Save the children.” In addition to revealing the
cannibalistic nature of four thousand years of Chinese history and its governing ideology
and ethics, “The Diary of a Madman” exposes the ubiquity of such cannibalism and how
everyone is an accomplice in the game of eating and being eaten.

8. My Name is Red - This is a chronology of Arabic and Western art primed by

Orhan Kamukwho won a Nobel Prize because of this.

 My Name Is Red is essentially the story of Black, a failed illustrator who has spent 12
years in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire after falling in love with his
beautiful cousin, Shekure, and being rejected by her.

9. Eileen Chang - Considered as the most influential Chinese Writer. Often, the concept of
her pieces is about love, marriage, family.

 Eileen Chang (1920–1995) was born into an aristocratic family in Shanghai. Her father,
deeply traditional in his ways, was an opium addict; her mother, partly educated in
England, was a sophisticated woman of cosmopolitan tastes. Their unhappy marriage
ended in divorce, and Chang eventually ran away from her father—who had beaten her
for defying her stepmother, then locked her in her room for nearly half a year.

10. Tale of Genji – Japanese Hikaru Genjiis a son of Emperor’s mistress andGenjihad an
illicit affair with his father’s wife.

 The story takes place in ancient Japan. Genji is the son of the king. His mother is the
king's favorite concubine. Genji's future is foretold by a Korean sage in a prophecy
heralding Genji's bright future, but his mother's fate turns for the worst. She spends her
last days in frivolous court cases, until finally she becomes ill and dies.

11. Ficciones - These are collection of Fictions in South American Literature by Borges.

 The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the gargantuan powers of imagination,

intelligence, and style of one of the greatest writers of this or any other century. Borges
sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we
enter the fearful sphere of Pascal's abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books, and
the iconography of eternal return
 Borges sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm;
we enter the fearful sphere of Pascal’s abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books,
and the iconography of eternal return. To enter the worlds in Ficciones is to enter the
mind of Jorge Luis Borges, wherein lies Heaven, Hell, and everything in between.

12. The Lusiads - This was the discovery of India. An epic poem that is composed by 10
cantos with 1102 stanzas.
  The Lusiads is the national epic of Portugal. It specifically tells the story of Vasco da
Gama's voyage to India in the sixteenth century, but also details other voyages of the
Portuguese during the period of time in which they were a major imperial force and a
major force for world exploration.

THE BOY NAMED CROW by HARUKI MURAKAMI

About the Author:

Haruki Murakami (Murakami Haruki, born January 12, 1949) is a Japanese writer. His
books and stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work being
translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside his native country.

Characters:

KAFKA TAMURA
 A 15-year-old from Tokyo who chooses the handle "Kafka" to hide his identity as he
runs away from home. Kafka and his alter ego, The boy named Crow, flee to escape
Kafka's father, renowned sculptor Koichi Tamura. It is prophesized that Kafka will kill
his father and sleep with his mother and sister, who abandoned him when he was
younger.
NAKATA
 A kind, simple man around 70 years old, Nakata lost most of his mental faculties as a
4th grader in rural Japan during WWII. Although this strange incident during his
childhood left him without much mental prowess, he somehow gained the ability to
speak with cats.
MISS SAEKI
 Memorial Library. The Komura family heir was her childhood sweetheart, but he was
killed while they were in their 20's. Having lost her one true love, Miss Saeki lives a
hollow life. As the story progresses, Kafka begins to see her as his mother.
SAKURA
 A young girl who Kafka befriends on the bus as he runs away from home. She helps him
out in sticky situations and acts like an older sister to Kafka.
JOHNIE WALKER
 This killer of neighborhood cats takes the form of the famous scotch mascot. He
slaughters cats to make their souls into a magic flute. He occurs in several violent scenes
in the book, and curiously, the time of his death concurs with the murder of Kafka's
father.
OSHIMA
 A transgendered gay man, whom Kafka first mistakes for a woman, Oshima is the
library assistant at the Komura Memorial Library. Around 21 years old, he quickly takes
to Kafka and becomes somewhat of a mentor to him. He owns a cabin deep in the woods
of Shikoku and is also a hemophiliac.

Story:

Cash isn’t the only thing I take from my father’s study when I leave home. I take a small,
old gold lighter—I like the design and feel of it—and a folding knife with a really sharp blade.
Made to skin deer, it has a five-inch blade and a nice heft. Probably something he bought on one
of his trips abroad. I also take a sturdy, bright pocket flashlight out of a drawer. Plus sky blue
Revo sunglasses to disguise my age.

I think about taking my father’s favorite Sea-Dweller Oyster Rolex. It’s a beautiful
watch, but something flashy will only attract attention. My cheap plastic Casio watch with an
alarm and stopwatch will do just fine, and might actually be more useful. Reluctantly, I return
the Rolex to its drawer.

From the back of another drawer I take out a photo of me and my older sister when we
were little, the two of us on a beach somewhere with grins plastered across our faces. My sister’s
looking off to the side so half her face is in shadow and her smile is neatly cut in half. It’s like
one of those Greek tragedy masks in a textbook that’s half one idea and half the opposite. Light
and dark. Hope and despair. Laughter and sadness. Trust and loneliness. For my part I’m staring
straight ahead, undaunted, at the camera. Nobody else is there at the beach. My sister and I have
on swimsuits—hers a red floral-print one-piece, mine some baggy old blue trunks. I’m holding a
plastic stick in my hand. White foam is washing over our feet.

Who took this, and where and when, I have no clue. And how could I have looked so
happy? And why did my father keep just that one photo? The whole thing is a total mystery. I
must have been three, my sister nine. Did we ever really get along that well? I have no memory
of ever going to the beach with my family. No memory of going anywhere with the m. No
matter, though—there is no way I’m going to leave that photo with my father, so I put it in my
wallet. I don’t have any photos of my mother. My father had thrown them all away.

After giving it, some thought I decide to take the cell phone with me. Once he finds out
I’ve taken it, my father will probably get the phone company to cut off service. Still, I toss it into
my backpack, along with the adapter. Doesn’t add much weight, so why not. When it doesn’t
work anymore, I’ll just chuck it.

Just the bare necessities, that’s all I need. Choosing which clothes to take is the hardest
thing. I’ll need a couple sweaters and pairs of underwear. But what about shirts and trousers?
Gloves, mufflers, shorts, a coat? There’s no end to it. One thing I do know, though. I don’t want
to wander around some strange place with a huge backpack that screams out, Hey, everybody,
check out the runaway! Do that and someone is sure to sit up and take notice. Next thing you
know the police will haul me in and I’ll be sent straight home. If I don’t wind up in some gang
first.

Any place cold is definitely out, I decide. Easy enough, just choose the opposite—a warm
place. Then I can leave the coat and gloves behind, and get by with half the clothes. I pick out
wash-and-wear-type things, the lightest ones I have, fold them neatly, and stuff them in my
backpack. I also pack a three-season sleeping bag, the kind that rolls up nice and tight, toilet
stuff, a rain poncho, notebook and pen, a Walkman and ten discs—got to have my music—along
with a spare rechargeable battery. That’s about it. No need for any cooking gear, which is too
heavy and takes up too much room, since I can buy food at the local convenience store.

It takes a while but I’m able to subtract a lot of things from my list. I add things, cross
them off, then add a whole other bunch and cross them off, too.

My fifteenth birthday is the ideal time to run away from home. Any earlier and it’d be too
soon. Any later and I would have missed my chance.

During my first two years in junior high, I’d worked out, training myself for this day. I
started practicing judo in the first couple years of grade school, and still went sometimes in
junior high. But I didn’t join any school teams. Whenever I had the time I’d jog around the
school grounds, swim, or go to the local gym. The young trainers there gave me free lessons,
showing me the best kind of stretching exercises and how to use the fitness machines to bulk up.
They taught me which muscles you use every day and which ones can only be built up with
machines, even the correct way to do a bench press. I’m pretty tall to begin with, and with all this
exercise I’ve developed pretty broad shoulders and pecs. Most strangers would take me for
seventeen. If I ran away looking my actual age, you can imagine all the problems that would
cause.

Other than the trainers at the gym and the housekeeper who comes to our house every
other day—and of course the bare minimum required to get by at school—I barely talk to
anyone. For a long time my father and I have avoided seeing each other. We live under the same
roof, but our schedules are totally different. He spends most of his time in his studio, far away,
and I do my best to avoid him.

The school I’m going to is a private junior high for kids who are upper-class, or at least
rich. It’s the kind of school where, unless you really blow it, you’re automatically promoted to
the high school on the same campus. All the students dress neatly, have nice straight teeth, and
are boring as hell. Naturally I have zero friends. I’ve built a wall around me, never letting
anybody inside and trying not to venture outside myself. Who could like somebody like that?
They all keep an eye on me, from a distance. They might hate me, or even be afraid of me, but
I’m just glad they didn’t bother me. Because I had tons of things to take care of, including
spending a lot of my free time devouring books in the school library.

I always paid close attention to what was said in class, though. Just like the boy named
Crow suggested.

The facts and techniques or whatever they teach you in class isn’t going to be very useful
in the real world, that’s for sure. Let’s face it, teachers are basically a bunch of morons. But
you’ve got to remember this: you’re running away from home. You probably won’t have any
chance to go to school anymore, so like it or not you’d better absorb whatever you can while
you’ve got the chance. Become like a sheet of blotting paper and soak it all in. Later on you can
figure out what to keep and what to unload.

I did what he said, like I almost always do. My brain like a sponge, I focused on every
word said in class and let it all sink in, figured out what it meant, and committed everything to
memory. Thanks to this, I barely had to study outside of class, but always came out near the top
on exams.

My muscles were getting hard as steel, even as I grew more withdrawn and quieter. I
tried hard to keep my emotions from showing so that no one—classmates and teachers alike—
had a clue what I was thinking. Soon I’d be launched into the rough adult world, and I knew I’d
have to be tougher than anybody if I wanted to survive.

My eyes in the mirror are cold as a lizard’s, my expression fixed and unreadable. I can’t
remember the last time I laughed or even showed a hint of a smile to other people. Even to
myself.

I’m not trying to imply I can keep up this silent, isolated facade all the time. Sometimes
the wall I’ve erected around me comes crumbling down. It doesn’t happen very often, but
sometimes, before I even realize what’s going on, there I am—naked and defenseless and totally
confused. At times like that I always feel an omen calling out to me, like a dark, omnipresent
pool of water.

A dark, omnipresent pool of water.

It was probably always there, hidden away somewhere. But when the time comes it
silently rushes out, chilling every cell in your body. You drown in that cruel flood, gasping for
breath. You cling to a vent near the ceiling, struggling, but the air you manage to breathe is dry
and burns your throat. Water and thirst, cold and heat—these supposedly opposite elements
combine to assault you.

The world is a huge space, but the space that will take you in—and it doesn’t have to be
very big—is nowhere to be found. You seek a voice, but what do you get? Silence. You look for
silence, but guess what? All you hear over and over and over is the voice of this omen. And
sometimes this prophetic voice pushes a secret switch hidden deep inside your brain.

Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, full to the banks. All signposts
that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And
still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the
news you tell yourself: That’s it. That’s my heart.

Before running away from home, I wash my hands and face, trim my nails, swab out my
ears, and brush my teeth. I take my time, making sure my whole body’s well-scrubbed. Being
really clean is sometimes the most important thing there is. I gaze carefully at my face in the
mirror. Genes I’d gotten from my father and mother—not that I have any recollection of what
she looked like—created this face. I can do my best to not let any emotions show, keep my eyes
from revealing anything, bulk up my muscles, but there’s not much I can do about my looks. I’m
stuck with my father’s long, thick eyebrows and the deep lines between them. I could probably
kill him if I wanted to—I’m sure strong enough—and I can erase my mother from my memory.
But there’s no way to erase the DNA they passed down to me. If I wanted to drive that away I’d
have to get rid of me.

There’s an omen contained in that. A mechanism buried inside of me.

A mechanism buried inside of you.

I switch off the light and leave the bathroom. A heavy, damp stillness lies over the house.
The whispers of people who don’t exist, the breath of the dead. I look around, standing stock-
still, and take a deep breath. The clock shows three p.m., the two hands cold and distant. They’re
pretending to be noncommittal, but I know they’re not on my side. It’s nearly time for me to say
good-bye. I pick up my backpack and slip it over my shoulders. I’ve carried it any number of
times, but now it feels so much heavier.

Shikoku, I decide. That’s where I’ll go. There’s no particular reason it has to be Shikoku,
only that studying the map I got the feeling that’s where I should head. The more I look at the
map—actually every time I study it—the more I feel Shikoku tugging at me. It’s far south of
Tokyo, separated from the mainland by water, with a warm climate. I’ve never been there, have
no friends or relatives there, so if somebody started looking for me—which I kind of doubt—
Shikoku would be the last place they’d think of.

I pick up the ticket I’d reserved at the counter and climb aboard the night bus. This is the
cheapest way to get to Takamatsu—just a shade over ninety bucks. Nobody pays me any
attention, asks how old I am, or gives me a second look. The bus driver mechanically checks my
ticket.

Only a third of the seats are taken. Most passengers are traveling alone, like me, and the
bus is strangely silent. It’s a long trip to Takamatsu, ten hours according to the schedule, and
we’ll be arriving early in the morning. But I don’t mind. I’ve got plenty of time. The bus pulls
out of the station at eight, and I push my seat back. No sooner do I settle down than my
consciousness, like a battery that’s lost its charge, starts to fade away, and I fall asleep.
 Sometime in the middle of the night a hard rain begins to fall. I wake up every once in a
while, part the chintzy curtain at the window, and gaze out at the highway rushing by. Raindrops
beat against the glass, blurring streetlights alongside the road that stretch off into the distance at
identical intervals like they were set down to measure the earth. A new light rushes up close and
in an instant fade off behind us. I check my watch and see its past midnight. Automatically
shoved to the front, my fifteenth birthday makes its appearance.

“Hey, happy birthday,” the boy named Crow says.

“Thanks,” I reply.

The omen is still with me, though, like a shadow. I check to make sure the wall around
me is still in place. Then I close the curtain and fall back asleep.

SYNTESIS:
Kafka on the Shore, by Japanese author Haruki Murakami, is a surrealist tale about two
characters, Kafka and Nakata. Kafka is a 15-year-old boy who has run away from home in order
to escape an Oedipal prophecy, whereas Nakata, a mentally disabled old man with the ability to
converse with cats, is on a journey to find a lost cat. Although the two do not ever come face-to-
face, Kafka and Nakata's actions affect each other metaphysically. In Murakami's magic realist
world, anything is bound to happen — mackerel rain from the sky, and young boys fall in love
with ghosts.
Fifteen-year-old Kafka Tamura has a bad relationship with Koichi, his sculptor father, and his
mother left with his sister when he was four. The insensitive Koichi has told the boy that one day
he will have sex with his mother and sister, a prophecy tainting his desire to find them. Kafka
runs away from home.

THOUGHT FOR REFLECTION

Sometimes fate is like a sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change directions
but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this
out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t
something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is
you. Something inside of you.

-Haruki Murakami

THE FOLDED EARTH by ANURADHA ROY

ANURADHA ROY
 Anuradha Roy is an award-winning Indian novelist, journalist and editor. She has written
three novels, which have been widely translated in Europe and Asia, including into Dutch,
Spanish, Arabic, French, and Italian. Anuradha Roy's first novel, An Atlas of Impossible
Longing, has been translated into fifteen languages across the world. It was named by World
Literature Today as one of the "60 Essential English Language Works of Modern Indian
Literature". Her second novel, The Folded Earth, won the Economist Crossword Prize and is
widely translated. Sleeping on Jupiter, her third novel, won the DSC Prize for South Asian
Literature and was nominated for the Man Booker Prize. Her essays and reviews have appeared
in newspapers in India, the US and Britain.

STORY:

My rival in love was not a woman but a mountain range. It was very soon after my
wedding that I discovered this. We had defied our families to be together, and those first few
months we were exultant castaways who had fitted the universe into two rented rooms and a
narrow bed. Daytime was only waiting for evening, when we would be together. Nights were not
for sleeping. It took many good-byes before we could bear to walk off in different directions in
the mornings. Not for long.

It began in little ways—silences, the poring over maps, the unearthing of boots and
jackets stuffed in a suitcase under our bed—and then the slow-burning restlessness in Michael
became overpowering. He was with me, but not with me. His feet walked on flat land but flexed
themselves for inclines. He lay at night with his eyes open, dreaming. He studied weather reports
for places I had never heard of.

Michael was not a climber; he was a press photographer. Through a school friend whose
father was an editor, he had found a job with a newspaper when we got married. We could not
afford more than an annual trek for him in the mountains and that one trek was what he lived for
all year.

Michael’s yearnings made me understand how it is that some people have the mountains
in them while some have the sea. The ocean exerts an inexorable pull over sea people wherever
they are—in a bright-lit, inland city or the dead center of a desert— and when they feel the tug
there is no choice but somehow to reach it and stand at its immense, earth-dissolving edge,
straightaway calmed. Hill people, even if they are born in flatlands, cannot be parted for long
from the mountains. Anywhere else is exile. Anywhere else, the ground is too flat, the air too
dense, the trees too broad-leaved for beauty. The color of the light is all wrong, the sounds
nothing but noise.

I knew from our student days together that Michael trekked and climbed. What I had not
known was that his need for the mountains was as powerful as his need for me. We were far
away from the high peaks: we lived in Hyderabad. The journey to the foothills of the Himalaya
took two nights on trains and cars and it took many more days to reach the peaks. No hills closer
at hand would do. Not the Nilgiris, nor the entire Western Ghats. It had to be the Himalaya—it
would be impossible for me to understand why until I experienced it, Michael told me, and one
day I would. Meanwhile, each year, the rucksack and sleeping bag came out and his body left in
a trail of his mind, which was already nine thousand feet above sea level and climbing.

One year, Michael decided to go on a trek to Roopkund, a lake in the Himalaya at about
sixteen thousand feet. It is reached by a long, hard climb toward the Trishul, a snow peak that is
more than twenty-two thousand feet high. For much of the year, its water remains frozen. A park
ranger stumbled upon the lake in 1942 and it has been an enigma ever since: it contains the bones
and skulls, preserved by the cold, of some six hundred people who died there in the ninth
century, some say the sixth. Many of the skeletons wore gold anklets, bracelets, necklaces, and
bangles. Six hundred travelers at that altitude, in that stark wilderness—where were they going?

Impossible to tell: there was no known route from Roopkund to Tibet, or to anywhere
else. How did they die? Archeologists think they may have been caught in an avalanche or hit by
large hailstones: there are tennis-ball-sized dents on many of the skulls.

The bones were stripped of their jewelry and most of them were left where they were.
And there they have remained, although momento-seekers have carried off bits and pieces as
trophies. Even now, each time the lake melts during the monsoon, bones and skulls float in the
water and wash up at its edges. Michael had tried to reach Roopkund once before and failed
because of bad weather and lack of experience. This time, he had better equipment, he said; he
was timing it differently, he knew what to expect. Even so, I felt a cloud of dread grow and
darken as the day for his departure neared. I found myself looking at him with an intensity I had
forgotten over six years of being married to him. The smell of him, which I breathed in deep as if
to store inside me; the bump on his nose where it had been broken when he was a boy; the early
lines of gray in his hair; the way he cleared his throat mid-sentence and pulled at his earlobes
when thinking hard.

He knew I was worrying, and the night before he left, as I lay on my stomach and his
fingers wandered my tense back and aching neck, he told me in a voice hardly more than a
murmur about the route: the trek was not really difficult, he said, it only sounded as if it was. His
fingers went down my spine and up my neck while an iron ball of fear grew heavier inside me.
Many had done it before, he said. The rains and snow would have retreated from that altitude by
the time they reached it; there would be wildflowers all over the high meadows on their route.
His hands worked their way from my legs to my shoulders, finding knotted muscles, teasing
them loose before he returned to my back. The boots, sleeping bag, tent, would be checked,
every zip tried, every rope tested. The bulbs and batteries in his headlamp were new; he would
get himself better sunglasses in Delhi. It was as if he was running through a list in his head.

Each item he mentioned reminded me of things that could go wrong. I did not want to
know any more. I touched his always fast-growing stubble and I think I said, “By the time you’re
home you’ll have a beard again, like every other time.” My fingers held the inch or two of fat he
had recently grown at his waist. “And you’ll have lost this. You’ll be thin and starved.”

“Completely starved,” he said. “Lean and hungry.” His teeth tugged at my earlobes. He
stretched over me to switch on the shaded lamp by our bed and traced with his eyes every curve
of my face and the dimple on my chin. “Why did he marry this girl?” he said in a voice that
imitated the stereotypical older relative. “Why did he marry this stick-thin girl, as dark as boot
polish? All you can see in her face are her big eyes.” He ran his fingers through the tangled mass
of my hair. “Almost at your waist, Maya. Where will it have grown to by the time I’m back?” I
could smell onions frying although it was almost midnight. On our neighbor’s radio, a prosaic
voice reported floods, scams, train accidents, cricket scores. Michael’s hand wandered
downward until it reached my hips. He said, “Your hair will be here—or maybe longer? This
far?

I switched the light off.

The news came to me by way of my landlord, who had a telephone. They had found
Michael’s body after three days of searching. It was close to the lake, I was told; he had almost
made it there when the landslides, rain, and snowstorms came and separated Michael from the
others with him. His body had a broken ankle, which was no doubt why he had not been able to
move to a less exposed place. And the face was unrecognizable, burned black by the cold.

THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION

The story can be based on a real life setting and is applicable to anyone's life. In our
world, people are meant to love and exist for love, people also look for commitment towards
their fulfillment but certainly relationships are always imperfect. Even true love can never make
two people exactly alike. People have different passions, goals and aspirations others tend to stay
within their comfort zones while others crave for adventure and new discoveries. Though it is not
impossible for a stable and fulfilled person to love an unpredictable and undecided one but it can
be tough. Difficulties can always be surpassed through respect. Love and commitment do not last
because each and every one of us is intervened with death, our existence will be brought to an
end all of us will die without knowing when or how that's why we have to be ready because life
and love is are of uncertainties. When people love, they embrace and respect each other's
imperfections; Love is about accepting differences and accepting the truth that one day you can
lose another.

1. What does the author mean when she said, “My rival in love was not a woman but a
mountain range.”?
The dream of Michael is to climb the mountain and has a strong desire to fulfill his dream.
He spends more time to fulfill his passion than he spends time with Maya.
2. Describe the married life of Maya and Michael in the first few months.
Michael and Maya fell in love with each other. They are different in terms of belief and
religions but they fought for their love because their parents are rivals. It’s like the story of
Romeo and Juliet; they eloped and married each other. Even if it’s daytime, they are waiting for
the evening to come for them to come together, they find it hard to part ways in the next
morning.
3. “Michael’s yearnings made me understand how it is that some people have the mountains in
them while some have the sea.” What does this line mean?
Some people are like the mountains because they have high expectations, they’re
perfectionists and they have great dreams. Some are like the sea, they show humility, and they go
with the flow and they usually manifest calmness. It talks about the setting of life because we all
have choices; we choose whatever life we are tracking. “Dream higher than the sky and think
deeper than the ocean.
4. “I knew from our student days together that Michael trekked and climbed. What I had not
known was that his need for the mountains was as powerful as his need for me. “What is
meant by the persona in this line?
Since high school, Maya knew Michael trekked and climbed, but it was only after marriage
that Maya realized that his needs for mountains were comparable for his needs with Maya. Maya
thought there was a mistress in the relationship which is the mountain.
5. Based on the story, describe Roopkund.
Roopkund is a lake in Himalaya, it is frozen. Some claimed that strangers have stumbled in a
place and since then, it became an enigma. There are a lot of travelers who died
6. “This time, he had better equipment, he said; he was timing it differently, he knew what to
expect. Even so, I felt a cloud of dread grow and darken as the day for his departure neared.
“Based on the given line, what is the plan of Michael?
Because of the bad weather, Michael can’t climb the Mountain or the first time. But for the
second time, he had better equipment. Even if he knew something bad was going to happen, he
still pursued through his passions.
7. “The trek was not really difficult.” What is the hidden message in the given line?
This is a line of Michael in the story. It is an indirect promise that Michael will be able to
achieve his dream and come back to Maya.
8. What does the mountain symbolize?
The passion of Michael because he pursued into it and he wanted although he was a
journalist. It is the dream of Michael to climb the mountain. The choice of Michael because he
chose that passion even though he is aware of the consequences
9. Why do people long to be somewhere else?
People long to be somewhere else because they want to find themselves. Sometimes what the
mind wants is different from the heart so people who follow their hearts go and find some places
else to live with while those who follow their minds tend to follow the places that others want for
them.
10. How do you think Maya will move on after Michael’s Death?
Maya would have been stricken by his death and I think that it will be hard for her to move
on, she would have remembered their conversations and miss their differences.
11. Why couldn’t Maya stop Michael from climbing, even when she was afraid? What does this
say about the nature of Love?
Maya can't stop Michael from climbing because love is certainly unpredictable love is never
perfect because love starts with two different people with imperfect lives. Love is about
respecting your better half's decisions and wants in order to fill in your love for each other, love
is filling in but not completely changing the life of someone therefore love is unpredictable
because of the differences between each person which are touchable but not completely
changeable which makes love imperfect.

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES
 Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences proposes that people are not born with all
of the intelligence they will ever have.
 This theory challenged the traditional notion that there is one single type of intelligence,
sometimes known as “g” for general intelligence that only focuses on cognitive abilities.
 Gardner introduced eight different types of intelligences consisting of: Logical/Mathematical,
Linguistic, Musical, Spatial, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Naturalist, Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal.
 All human beings possess all intelligences in varying amounts.
 Each person has a different intellectual composition.
 We can improve education by addressing the multiple intelligences of our students.
 These intelligences are located in different areas of the brain and can either work
independently or together.
 These intelligences may define the human species.
 Multiple intelligences can be nurtured and strengthened, or ignored and weakened
 Each individual has nine intelligences (and maybe more to be discovered).

INDIA
 India is a tropical country varies from tropical monsoon in south to temperate in north.
 India has two National languages (Central administrative). They are English (associate
official) and Hindi (in the Devanagari script). The Indian Constitution also officially
recognizes 22 regional languages.
 The food, clothing and habits of an Indian differ in accordance to the place of origin.
 India (Land of Prayer) is a diverse country, a fact that is visibly prominent in its people,
culture and climate. Hinduism has 300 million Hindu gods. India is known as the second
most populated country in the world.
 The beauty of the Indian people lies in their spirit of tolerance, give-and-take and a
composition of cultures that can be compared to a garden of flowers of various colors and
shades of which, while maintaining their own entity, lend harmony and beauty to the garden.
 India used to worship a cow because cows are known as sacred, because they offer milk as
does one’s natural mother
 Topography:
 Beautiful places such as the Himalayan Range separating the plains of the subcontinent
India from the Tibetan Plateau
  Taj Mahal is the most beautiful gift in the world, it is majestic but has a dark side
 More than a million Indian are millionaires, yet most Indians live on less than 2 dollars a day
due to the caste hierarchical system
 Kalidasa wrote the Salutation to the Dawn
 Rabindranath Tagore – take circumstances to succeed
 Mahatma Gandhi – fought for the rights
Costumes
Diversity reflects not only the culture of people, it also display in the colorful costumes they
wear. The ubiquitous sari is perhaps the most recognizable Indian garment of all. The traditional
dress of North Indian men, especially Muslims, is the sherwani. South Indian men keep it
simple- sporting a shirt with their sarong.
Crafts of India
Artifacts are very popular and display creativity in its highest. Perpetual Indian artistic trail is
dribbling from region to sub-region developing its own genre and style. Majestically carved
furniture in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur and walnut woodwork of Kashmir, exquisite Karnataka's
fragrant sandalwood artifacts are few to name.
Buddhism
Buddhism is most widespread religion throughout Asia and along with Christianity and Islam,
one of the three most influential religions of the world. Buddhism originated in India. With so
many places to visit in India, Buddhist trail is one of favorite tour amongst travelers. From
Bodhgaya (Bihar) to extremes of Leh and Ladakh with verdant monasteries, the religion seems
enshrouds the whole map.
Ayurveda
Ayurveda is as old as Indian civilization, the earliest school of medicine known to humans is one
of the fastest growing alternative medicine all over world.

LIKE STARS ON EARTH

Every Child is Special, with an original Hindi title, Taare Zameen Par, and reissued as
Like Stars on Earth for Walt Disney, is a 2007 Indian drama movie. This movie was directed by
Aamir Khan as his debut film.

After its international release, Every Child is Special has received numerous critical
acclaims for its one of a kind story offering.

CHARACTERS
ISHAAN AWASTHI
An eight-year old boy who wondered why adults seemed not to appreciate the colors, fish, dogs
and kites and instead, likes to do homework, marks and neatness. He is dyslexic and labeled
trouble-maker, lazy, etc.
RAM SHANKAR NIKUMBH
Ishaan's Art Teacher; He is an ideal teacher with just the right amount of wit to make a class so
interesting and with the ever flowing compassion towards a struggling kid, whether his students
or not.
MAYA AWASTHI
Ishaan's mother; She is strict one that wants her son to be all prim and proper. But that soon
changed after they went to Ishaan’s school to talk with the principal and the teachers.
NANDKISHORE AWASTHI
Ishaan's strict father; He is a stubborn man who wanted the perfect son and drives both of his
sons to do so. In pushing his sons he becomes blinded to their true needs.
YOHAAN AWASTHI
Ishaan's elder brother; He is the complete of opposite of Ishaan at the start. He is the ideal son,
top of the class, never has problem with teachers and schoolmates, ever gets in trouble, very
good at badminton, and obedient to his parents.
SEN SIR AND TIWARI SIR, RESPECTIVELY
Teachers at New Era High School whose attitudes changed towards Ishaan when he is already
accumulating high grades.

SUMMARY

Ishaan Awasthi is an 8-year-old boy who hates school and learning, as he finds all the
subjects difficult and is frequently belittled and disliked by both his teachers and his classmates.
His imagination, creativity and talent for art and painting are often disregarded or unnoticed. His
father, Nandkishore Awasthi, is a successful executive who expects his children to excel, and his
mother, Maya Awasthi, is a housewife frustrated by her inability to educate Ishaan. Ishaan's elder
brother, Yohaan Awasthi, is an exemplary student and athlete whose merits Ishaan is often
ashamed of.

After receiving a particularly poor academic report, Ishaan's parents sends him to a
boarding school. There he rapidly sinks into a state of fear, anxiety and depression, despite being
befriended by Rajan Damodharan, a physically disabled boy who is one of the top students in the
class. Ishaan is anguished due to missing his parents, the boarding school teachers being even
more abusive than the previous school's, and starting to feel that he genuinely was a failure.
Ishaan contemplates suicide, climbing up the fence in a terrace, but Rajan intervenes, saving him.

Ishaan's condition changes when a new art teacher, Ram Shankar Nikumbh, a cheerful
and optimistic instructor at the Tulips School for young children with developmental disabilities,
joins the school. Nikumbh's teaching style is markedly different from that of his strict and
abusive predecessor, and he quickly observes Ishaan's unhappiness and impassive participation
in class activities. He reviews Ishaan's work and concludes that his academic shortcomings are
indicative of dyslexia, a condition suppressing his artistic capabilities. One day he sets off to
Mumbai to visit Ishaan's parents where he is surprised to discover Ishaan's hidden interest in art
after finding some of his drawings. Upset, he asks Nandkishore why he sent the child to a
boarding school in the first place and shows Mrs Awasthi her son's notebooks giving an analysis
of his struggles. He explains how Ishaan has severe difficulty in understanding letters and words
due to dyslexia even though Nandkishore, labelling it as mental retardation, dismisses it as a
mere excuse for laziness. Frustrated by his crude and inaccurate explanation of Ishaan's
condition, Nikumbh leaves. Nandkishore finally feels guilty for his mistreatment towards Ishaan.

Nikumbh returns and subsequently brings up the topic of dyslexia in a class by offering a
list of famous people who were dyslexic. Afterwards, he comforts Ishaan by telling him how he
struggled as a child as well by facing similar problems. Nikumbh then visits the school's
principal and obtains his permission to become Ishaan's tutor. With gradual care, he attempts to
improve Ishaan's reading and writing by using remedial techniques developed by dyslexia
specialists. Ishaan soon develops an interest in his studies and eventually his grades improve.

Towards the end of the school year, Nikumbh organises an art fair for the staff and
students. The competition is judged by artist Lalita Lajmi. Ishaan, with his strikingly creative
style, is declared the winner and Nikumbh, who paints Ishaan's portrait, is declared the runner-
up. The principal announces that Nikumbh has been hired as the school's permanent art teacher.
When Ishaan's parents meet his teachers on the last day of school they are left speechless by the
transformation they see in him. Overcome with emotion, Mr. Awasthi thanks Nikumbh. As
Ishaan gets into the car to leave with his parents for summer vacations, he turns around and runs
toward Nikumbh, who gives him a hug and tells him to return next year.

SYNOPSIS

The movie “Like Stars on Earth” is about an eight-year old boy who constantly gets in
trouble. He is an introverted little boy who would much rather play with stray dogs than the kids
in his neighborhood. He doesn’t have the same urgency about life as the other around him does.
Not bound by routine he’d happily miss the bus for a few more minutes of sleep full of limitless
dreams.

Aamir Khan’s directorial debut, “Taare Zameen Par” (Every Child is Special), is a very
touching film that can make one cry and smile at the same time. Based on a script by Amole
Gupte, this film became a hit in India, and is ranked in IMDB’s Top 250. Although director
Aamir also stars in the movie, he does not appear until the second half. He leaves the stage to
Darsheel Safary, playing nine-year-old Ishaan.

The movie is divided into two parts – first we see things from Ishaan’s perspective, and
then through the teacher, Nikumbh. This is achieved by clever camera tactics and good use of
soundtrack songs, and creates a strong bond between viewer and Ishaan. His role has very little
dialogue, but the great performance of this young actor, plus his beautifully animated inner
world, creates a vivid character. When we see Ishaan bonding with Nikumbh and building his
confidence back in the second part of the film, it is such a strong emotional trigger.

ESSENCE OF THE MOVIE

The movie shines a light on the problem of dyslexia and portrays it relatively
accurately. Activists who want to bring awareness to this problem in India and worldwide
celebrated this theme. But the movie is not just about the particular issue of dyslexia, but more of
a general statement on education.

“Out here it’s a merciless, competitive world where everyone wants to breed toppers and
rankers. Each child has unique skills, capabilities and dreams. But no, everyone’s hell bent on
pulling and stretching to make each finger long. Go ahead, even if the finger breaks,” says
Aamir’s character Nikumbh.

The movie shows that a child is not just an empty jar that parents can put their hopes and
ambitions into, forming him or her into a “perfect citizen.” And ironically, the robotic, monotone
daily life of family members, beautifully shown in song sequence, is not joyous at all. Parents
and teachers are forcing children to follow in their steps for their “bright future,” leading them to
the same “rat race” that they are in themselves. “Taare Zameen Par” and “3 Idiots”, both movies
with Aamir Khan, go very well together, as one spotlights problems in the high school system,
and the other in higher education.

CHARACTERISTICS OF ISHAAN

Ishaan Avasti (played by Darsheel Safary) is much more different from his peers than his
lack of social skills, he scores way below the average in all subject areas. His teachers and
parents alike are frustrated with him and are at their wits end. They blame bad behavior, laziness
and lack of discipline. Soon he is shipped off to boarding school in hopes of better discipline
(however it’s more for his father’s relief than anything else). Enter substitute art teacher Ram
Shankar Nikhumb. “Nikhumb Sir,” played by Bollywood super star Aamir Khan, quickly
realizes the boy’s problem and begins to enlighten the others. He is an art teacher at a school that
caters to children with disabilities, and he also has first-hand experience with dyslexia. Realizing
that Ishaan has the same disorder, he works with him a few extra hours outside of school and
soon the little guy is able to read and write with much less difficulty and spelling mistakes. Even
math comes easier.

Ishaan is the second child in a middle class Awasthi family. His older brother is an
exemplary student and athlete who makes his parents very proud. Meanwhile, most of Ishaan’s
time is spent in his own world where fish and dogs are his friends, and there are birds, dragons
and intergalactic fights. However, harsh reality often knocks its way into his vast world of
imagination, and we get to know that the boy struggles a lot at school. He cannot read or write,
and is about to fail third grade for a second time. He responds to the stress with disobedience that
gets him into even more trouble. Eventually losing patience, the father sends his son to a
boarding school to be “beaten into shape”.

Ishaan is overwhelmed with frustration in his new environment. Not only he is a new kid
coming in mid-term, but he also loses the support of his mother and brother. He is ridiculed by
strict teachers and even loses his biggest passion, painting. We watch how everything goes
downhill for Ishaan as a soundtrack song sings, “Idiot, duffer, crazy, lazy. Why can’t you?”
When Aamir Khan’s character, arts teacher Ram Nikumbh, enters the scene, everything changes.
He comes in with music and play; he doesn’t act as any other teacher in the school. He notices
Ishaan and sets out to find what is troubling the boy. He discovers what Ishaan’s parents and
teachers have missed – all the boy’s mistakes and shortcomings have a pattern. Nikumbh
concludes that Ishaan is dyslexic, and admits he has the same problem. He starts helping the boy
to overcome his disability, meanwhile unleashing his amazing artistic potential.

MESSAGE OF THE MOVIE/STORY

The message behind the movie is clear; do not dismiss a person because they are not
performing at the same level as everyone else. Look for the underlying cause and work with it.
Dismissal of Ishaan could have caused him to become much worse and he might have ended up
being a drop-out. However, with a little dedication and some individual attention, he was able to
thrive and his above average intelligence showed. He also was able to express himself through
his paintings which were very mature for his age. Sometimes what a person can offer to the
world is not mainstream or one of the major interest areas such as science or mathematics.
Encouragement should be given where children excel, though it may be art or another area which
isn’t so lucrative.

GENERALIZATION

The story/movie tells a story of young Ishaan, an eight-year-old boy who struggles to
adapt to school and where he lives. After years of fighting his rebellious ways, his parents decide
to send him away to boarding school so that he can learn to be disciplined. Ishaan suffers from
the mental disease called dyslexia, this is only discovered by his art teacher who then explains to
Ishaan’s parents all of years of learning he has lost. This is a realistic movie, about a sickness and
the suffering of millions of misunderstood children. This is the type of movie that all parents and
teachers should watch. Sometimes we forget, and only believe in what we see, missing out
important details that are overlooked.

THOUGHT FOR REFLECTION

“Every child is special in their own ways.”

 Each student has his/her own way, pace and motivation in their studies. Others cope with
problems and pressure differently. Every student has their own strengths and has their own way
of dealing their weaknesses. Others may start early, and others may progress slowly, but all have
the same aim. The path to success is not just one, but everyone has their own unique path.

“People like Ishaan are special, who need love, support, understanding and attention.”

Worse outcomes might have had happened to Ishaan if Ram wasn't there to notice his
condition and helped him. He's only a child and God knows what he might do to himself, since
he doesn't fully understand what is right and what is wrong yet.

“Every Child Is Special”

We may be different from each other in different aspects but there is surely something
within all of us that falls under the term 'special'. That something special is what makes us
unique and defines us who we are. Ishaan may be special in a different way, but people have to
perceive that his disorder is just a disorder, and people have to overlook it. Instead, people
should start noticing what's special about everyone -it may be the talents, skills, personality, and
whatnot. People like Ishaan did not ask for a disability, they were given that because they were
believed to be strong enough to handle it, and that's what people should look at rather than
looking down on him because he isn't 'normal' and not acting 'normal'.

DID YOU KNOW?

1. France is known as L'Hexagone, ("the hexagon") due to its geometrical shape. You may
check the picture number one from your previous activity.
2. With its 300 meters high, it was the tallest building in the world since its construction until
1930, year in which the Chrysler Building in New York snatched the position. However, it
remains the tallest structure in Paris, the tallest fifth in France and adding the antenna at the
top, it surpasses the height of the Chrysler Building reaching 324 meters.
3. It is the world’s most-visited art museum, with a collection that spans work from ancient
civilizations to the mid-19th century. It Would Take 100 Days to See All of the Art in the
Louvre Museum. It is impossible, as a human being, to see the entire Louvre museum in just
one day. In fact, even a month of exploring this space wouldn’t be enough. If you were to
spend 30 seconds on each piece of art in the Louvre, it would take 100 consecutive days to
get through them all. That is without sleep, breaks or mealtimes.
4. Japan’s poetic name is “Land of the Rising Sun.”
5. Fuji welcomes nearly 300,000 climbers on its slopes each year, making as the most climbed
mountain in the world. Its unique character in Japan, its proximity to a city of Tokyo and its
13 million inhabitants and the possibility of climbing it in half a day explain this success.

Silk is a natural fiber made from the strands found in the cocoon of a silkworm. Silk
fabric is so expensive because it needs efficient work to achieve its smooth and soft but not
slippery texture.

The above diagram portrays the process on how to make a silk fabric. After the silk worm
eggs hatch, manufacturers feed the larvae with leaves. After a few days, the tiny larvae grow.
Before the larvae become moth, they produce tiny thread, forming cocoons or known as their
pupas. The cocoons will then be collected by the manufacturers’ then soak them in a boiling
water to loosen the seracin that holds each of the strands together.

One thread from a cocoon is around 1 kilometer long. Each strand from the cocoons is
then untangled and spun into thread. Once it is done, manufacturers will weave the thread into
fabric.

ALESSANDRO BARICCO
 Alessandro Baricco is Italy's most famous contemporary writer. Born in Turin in 1958, he
studied philosophy and earned a diploma in piano at university. After a short time working as a
copywriter for an ad agency, he started his writing career as a music and cultural critic for the
Italian press. His first novel, Castles of Anger (1991), won Italy's Prix Medicis and the
Campiello Prize. His other novels include Ocean Sea (1993), Silk (1996), City (1999)
and Without Blood (2002). Silk, which became an immediate best seller in Italy, has been
translated into 16 languages, including Japanese. Critics have commented that it is no surprise
Baricco was trained as a musicologist, given the lyrical nature of much of his writing. Baricco
has also written plays and essays and hosted television programs on opera and literature. In 1991
he founded a training program for writers, The Holden School. Baricco has a great interest in
publicly reading his work; he worked with the French musical group Air in 2002 on a reading of
City, which was successful enough to warrant making a DVD of the collaboration, City Reading.
Last fall he gave sold-out public readings in Rome and Turin of his adaptation of Homer's Iliad.

1. HERVE JONCOUR
 The main character of the story.
 A French silkworm eggs merchant who crossed the entire latitude of Europe and Asia.
 The hero heeds a call to adventure, makes a journey to a fabled land at the ends of the
earth, makes great sacrifices, saves his people, and acquires wisdom.
2. HELENE
 The beloved wife of Herve Joncour.
 At first, she was reluctant to see Herve go for a long journey, but she knew that without
the silkworm eggs, the entire community will perish.
3. BALDABIOU
 tells of the extraordinary silk of Japan and encourages Joncour to travel
4. RA KEI
 A Japanese nobleman who can speak French
5. HARA KEI’S MISTRESS
 Described as a woman with no oriental eyes
6. MADAM BLANCHE
 A French woman who has a mother figure to Herve and Helene

SILK BY ALESSANDRO BARICCO

Silk (1996) is a novella by Italian author Alessandro Baricco, translated into English by
Guido Waldman in 1997, and by Ann Goldstein in 2006. Set in the 19th century, the novella
follows French merchant Hervé Joncour as he falls in love with the wife or concubine of a
Japanese nobleman. The novella was adapted as a 2007 film of the same title starring Keira
Knightley.

The novel opens as a silkworm disease eradicates the species all over Europe and North
Africa. Hervé’s town depends on the silk trade, and local magnate Balbadiou, who owns the
town’s silk mills, dispatches Hervé to Japan to buy silkworm eggs there. The task is dangerous.
Japan is still all but closed to foreigners, and Japanese law forbids the export of silkworms.
Furthermore, the journey to Japan takes months. Hervé must cross the entire latitude of Europe
and Asia to get there.
Hervé’s beloved wife, Hélène, is reluctant to see him go for so long, but husband and
wife both know that without the silkworm eggs, their community will perish. Bringing some
eggs back, however, will make Hervé rich. Hervé finally reaches Japan by sailing from the coast
of Siberia on a smugglers’ ship. He travels on foot, avoiding major roads, until he reaches a
rendezvous point where he is blindfolded and taken to a small village.

There Hervé is granted an audience with a local aristocrat, Hara Kei, who agrees to sell him
some silkworm eggs. During the audience, however, Hervé is distracted by a woman in Hara
Kei’s retinue—a wife or a mistress—who does not have oriental eyes. The woman notices
Hervé’s attention, and the two exchange wordless glances and gestures that ignite a fierce
passion in the French merchant. However, Hervé has no way to see her and to be caught trying
would entail a death sentence.

Hervé returns to France, lovelorn for the mysterious woman. Balbadiou pays him
handsomely for the silkworm eggs, and he purchases the house of his and Hélène’s dreams. He
still loves Hélène, but theirs feels increasingly like a domestic affection, with none of the exotic
and forbidden romance of his Japanese affair.
When Balbadiou needs more eggs the following year, Hervé is only too glad to return to
Japan. Hara Kei befriends him and shows him his aviary of exotic birds. Meanwhile, Hervé
seizes an opportunity to conceal one of his gloves in a pile of clothes, for his beloved to find. She
responds with a note, handwritten in Japanese.

Hervé returns home, desperate to find out what the note says. He locates a brothel in
Lyon whose owner is a Japanese woman, known as Madame Blanche. She tells him that the note
reads: “Come back or I shall die.” She warns Hervé against pursuing the author of the note.
Hervé and Hélène want to have a child, and they take a holiday in the Riviera, hoping to
ignite passion in their relationship. However, they do not conceive. When the time comes for
Hervé to return once more to Japan, Hélène is heartbroken. She knows that each time Hervé
travels, he comes back more distant from her than before.
While Hervé is staying with Hara Kei, his beloved releases the birds in the aviary,
making Hara Kei angry. She sends a servant girl to Hervé, whom Hervé sleeps with in her place.
When it is time for the silkworm transaction, Hara Kei does not appear in person, instead,
sending an intermediary. When Hervé leaves, Hara Kei does not appear to wish him goodbye.
This time, upon his return to France, Hervé is utterly forlorn, longing to return to his
beloved in Japan. However, civil war has broken out there, and when it is time to collect more
silkworm eggs, Balbadiou wants Hervé to go to China instead. Hervé refuses and insists on
going to Japan.
When he arrives, he finds Hara Kei’s house and village abandoned. As he wanders
around, a young boy approaches him and gives him the glove he left for his beloved. The boy
leads him to a campsite, inhabited by Hara Kei and the people of his village.
Hara Kei denies Hervé entry to the camp. Hervé refuses to leave. The next morning Hara
Kei has the boy executed for bringing Hervé to the camp.
Hervé manages to procure silkworm eggs in another Japanese town, but he has taken too
long. The eggs hatch on the way to France, and all the worms die. The mills of his town have
nothing to mill. The people endure great hardship, but Hervé hardly notices. All he can think of
is his beloved in Japan.
One day, he receives a letter written in Japanese. He hurries to Madame Blanche. The
letter is a powerfully erotic confession of love, which concludes by saying goodbye and wishing
Hervé a happy life. Madame Blanche gives Hervé some of the blue flowers which she wears in
her clothes.
Hervé continues to pine. He retires from trade and spends all his time constructing a park
with an aviary modeled on Hara Kei’s. He thinks of it as a monument to his lost love, to the
"yearning for something you'll never experience."
Hélène, still only in her 30s, contracts a fever and dies. Despite his continuing obsession
with his Japanese beloved, Hervé mourns his wife deeply. One day, Hervé notes that someone
has left blue flowers on her grave. He goes to Madame Blanche to ask what connection she had
to his wife.

Madame Blanche reveals that Hélène was the author of the erotic love-letter. She asked
Madame Blanche to translate it and send it to Hervé. She had known Hervé was in love with a
Japanese woman and wanted to ease his pain. Madame Blanche tells him that Hélène had wanted
to be the woman he loved.
Hervé realizes that Hélène was his true love. He has the word “hélas” (“Alas”) carved on
her gravestone.

SYMBOLISM

The story is filled with variety of emotions left for the viewers and readers. Hence, there
can be a more comprehensive way to analyze the story if the symbols were interpreted. Here are
some of the symbols found in the story:

1. THE CUP- The love and lust felt between the woman without oriental eyes and Herve
Joncour
2. BLUE FLOWERS- The love of Helene to Herve, wishing to be loved back by Herve
3. THE LETTER- Love and trust
4. HERVE- France
5. HARA- Japan
6. BALDABIOU-The person, who, served as the key to the destiny of Herve
7. SILK-Adventure, love, infidelity, and treasure

GENERALIZATION
Distance between two lovers should not be the reason why they give up for one
another. It should be a reminder why they should remain strong and faithful with each other.

THE FAULT IN OUR STARS

FAST FACTS:
 Researchers believe that over half of all cancer cases – and up to half of all cancer deaths –
are preventable. This means there are between 2.4 million and 3.7 million avoidable deaths
per year, 80% of which occur in low- and middle-income countries.
 Cancer is not one disease. In the last 10 years we have realized that there are more than 200
different types and subtypes of cancer. This has triggered a shift away from a one-size-fits-all
approach and toward "tailored therapy".
 Only 5-10% of all cancers are entirely hereditary. Most cancers develop through a
combination of hereditary and environmental factors, including smoking, alcohol, obesity
and diet.
 Breast cancer is more common in the left breast than the right. The left breast is 5 - 10%
more likely to develop cancer than the right breast. The left side of the body is also 10%
more prone to melanoma (a type of skin cancer). Nobody is exactly sure why this is.
 The word ‘cancer’ comes from the Latin for ‘crab’ – just like the zodiac sign. Early doctors,
when describing certain tumors which had veins or extensions from the main body, called
them crab-like, or ‘cancerous’.

THE FAULT IN OUR STARS

BY JOHN GREEN

(PLOT OVERVIEW)
Seventeen-year-old Hazel Grace
Lancaster reluctantly attends a cancer patients'
support group at her mother’s behest. Because
of her cancer, she uses a portable oxygen tank
to breathe properly. In one of the meetings she catches the eye of a teenage boy, and through the
course of the meeting she learns the boy’s name is Augustus Waters. He's there to support their
mutual friend, Isaac. Isaac had a tumor in one eye that he had removed, and now he has to have
his other eye taken out as well. After the meeting ends, Augustus approaches Hazel and tells her
she looks like Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta. He invites Hazel to his house to watch the
movie, and while hanging out, the two discuss their experiences with cancer. Hazel reveals she
has thyroid cancer that has spread to her lungs. Augustus had osteosarcoma, but he is now cancer
free after having his leg amputated. Before Augustus takes Hazel home, they agree to read one
another’s favorite novels. Augustus gives Hazel “The Price of Dawn”, and Hazel
recommends “An Imperial Affliction.”

Hazel explains the magnificence of An Imperial Affliction: It is a novel about a girl

named Anna who has cancer, and it's the only account she's read of living with cancer that
matches her experience. She describes how the novel maddeningly ends midsentence, denying
the reader closure about the fate of the novel’s characters. She speculates about the novel’s
mysterious author, Peter Van Houten, who fled to Amsterdam after the novel was published and
hasn’t been heard from since.

A week after Hazel and Augustus discuss the literary meaning of An Imperial Affliction,
Augustus miraculously reveals he tracked down Van Houten's assistant, Lidewij, and through her
he's managed to start an email correspondence with the reclusive author. He shares Van Houten's
letter with Hazel, and she devises a list of questions to send Van Houten, hoping to clear up the
novel’s ambiguous conclusion. Hazel is most concerned with the fate of Anna’s mother. She
figures that if Anna’s mother survives her daughter’s death, then her own parents will be alright
after Hazel dies. Van Houten eventually replies, saying he could only answer Hazel’s questions
in person. He invites her to stop by if she is ever in Amsterdam.

Shortly after Augustus invites Hazel on a picnic. It turns out he's planned an elaborate
Dutch-themed picnic where he reveals that a charitable foundation that grants the wishes of kids
with cancer has agreed to grant his: He's taking the two of them to Amsterdam to meet Van
Houten. She is thrilled, but when he touches her face, she feels hesitant for some reason. Over
time she realizes that she likes him a lot, but she knows she'll hurt him when she dies. She
compares herself to a grenade.

In the midst of her struggle over what to do about Augustus, Hazel suffers a serious
episode in which her lungs fill with fluid and she goes to the ICU. When she is released after a
period of days, she learns that Augustus never left the hospital’s waiting room. He delivers Hazel
another letter from Van Houten, this one more personal and more cryptic than the last. After
reading the letter, Hazel is more determined than ever to go to Amsterdam. There is a problem
though: Her parents and her team of doctors don’t think Hazel is strong enough to travel. The
situation seems hopeless until one of the physicians most familiar with her case, Dr. Maria,
convinces Hazel’s parents that Hazel must travel because she needs to live her life.

The plans are made for Augustus, Hazel, and Hazel's mother to go to Amsterdam, but
when Hazel and Augustus meet Van Houten, they find that, instead of a prolific genius, he is a
mean-spirited drunk who claims he cannot answer any of Hazel’s questions. The two leave Van
Houten’s in utter disappointment, and accompanied by Lidewij, who feels horrified by Van
Houten's behavior, they tour Anne Frank’s house. At the end of the tour, Augustus and Hazel
share a romantic kiss, to the applause of spectators. They head back to the hotel where they make
love for the first and only time. The following day, Augustus confesses that while Hazel was in
the ICU he had a body scan which revealed his cancer has returned and spread everywhere. They
return to Indianapolis, and Hazel realizes Augustus is now the grenade. As his condition
worsens, he is less prone to his typical charm and confidence. He becomes vulnerable and
scared, but is still a beautiful boy in Hazel’s mind. As this change occurs, she ceases calling him
Augustus and starts referring to him as just Gus, as his parents do. Hazel recognizes that she
loves him now as much as ever. Augustus’s condition deteriorates quickly. In his final days
Augustus arranges a prefuneral for himself, and Isaac and Hazel give eulogies. Hazel steals a line
from Van Houten about larger and smaller infinities. She says how much she loves Augustus,
and that she would not trade their short time together for anything in the world.

Augustus dies eight days later. Hazel is astonished to find Van Houten at the funeral. Van
Houten explains that he and Gus maintained correspondence and that Augustus demanded Van
Houten make up for ruining the trip to Amsterdam by coming to his funeral to see Hazel. Van
Houten abstractly reveals the fate of Anna’s mother, but Hazel is not interested. A few days later
Isaac informs Hazel that Augustus was writing something for her. He had hinted about writing a
sequel to An Imperial Affliction for her, and as Hazel scrambles to locate the pages she
encounters Van Houten once more. He drunkenly reveals that Anna was the name of his
daughter. She died of cancer when she was eight, and An Imperial Affliction was his literary
attempt at reconciling himself with her death. Hazel tells Van Houten to sober up and write
another book

Eventually Hazel learns that Augustus sent the pages to Van Houten because he wanted
Van Houten to use the pages to compose a well-written eulogy about Hazel. Lidewij forces Van
Houten to read the pages and sends them straight off to Hazel. The novel concludes with Hazel
reading Augustus’s words. He says getting hurt in this world is inevitable, but we do get to
choose who we allow to hurt us, and that he is happy with his choice. He hopes she likes her
choice too. The final words of the novel come from Hazel, who says she does.

THOUGHT FOR REFLECTON!

“You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts
you.”

Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters are two characters that offer us noteworthy lessons about
life. Their love story serves us different teas that say: We must enjoy life and learn from it; We must
accept the unfair nature of the universe yet, not let it strip us of our hope for more; We must make the best
of our days so that the number we get becomes insignificant compared to what is within our given set;
and we must not aspire to circumvent pain and heartbreak, but rather try to make choices that are worth
the inexorable breaking. Most importantly, we learn that it is a good life if we allow it to be, if we take the
time to see it that way.

BACKGROUND OF THE AUTHOR OF DEVIL WEARS PRADA

CHARACTERS
 Andrea "Andy" Sachs, a recent Brown graduate hired as junior personal assistant to a
powerful and tyrannical fashion magazine editor.
 Miranda Priestly, the British-born (as Miriam Princhek) editor-in-chief of Runway, an
influential fashion magazine published by the Elias-Clark company. She is known for
wearing a white Hermès scarf somewhere on her person every day, and treats her
subordinates in a manner that borders on emotional and psychological abuse.
 Emily Charlton, Miranda's former junior assistant, now her senior assistant. She and Andrea
have a conflicted relationship.
 Alex Fineman, Andrea's boyfriend, who teaches at an elementary school in the
South Bronx through Teach for America.
 Lily Goodwin, a free-spirited graduate student in Russian literature at Columbia with curly
black hair. She is Andrea's roommate.
 Nigel, a very tall gay British man who serves as Runway's creative director. He often appears
on television as a fashion consultant and is one of the few stars of the magazine Andrea
knows before she works there. He is a loud speaker with an outrageous sense of style, and the
only person who can get away with critiquing Miranda's personal wardrobe choices.
 James, another gay man at Runway who works at the beauty department. He befriends
Andrea, and jokes about "calling in fat" on days when he feels unattractive.
 Jeffy, who oversees Runway's famous "Closet." The Closet is stocked with clothing on loan
from fashion designers for use in shoots, but is rarely returned and often "borrowed" by
magazine staff. He is responsible for transforming Andrea's wardrobe so she can fit in among
the fashionable hallways of Runway offices.
 Hunter Tomlinson, a prominent New York tax attorney who is Miranda's current husband
(she is divorced from the father of her two daughters, a well-known British rock star). As
nice to Andrea and Emily as his wife is cruel, he is referred to by other close associates of
Miranda's as "B-DAD" behind his back, for Blind Deaf and Dumb—the only way they could
imagine anyone being able to live with her.
 Eduardo, a security guard at the Elias-Clark building, who playfully makes Andrea or
anyone else unfortunate enough to work as one of Miranda's personal assistants sing or put
on some sort of act before he lets them enter the building.
 Christian Collinsworth, a handsome young writer whom Andrea meets at a party. They
develop a mutual attraction.
 Caroline and Cassidy, the twin daughters Miranda dotes on.
 Cara, the girls' nanny, who saves Andrea's skin more than once but is eventually fired by
Miranda after she gives the twins a timeout in their bedroom for a bad attitude.
 Jill, Andrea's older sister, who is married and lives in Houston, where she has begun to affect
a Southern accent, much to Andrea's displeasure.
 The Clackers, the magazine's many female editorial staffers, mainly Allison (former senior
assistant, now beauty editor), Lucia (fashion department), Jocelyn (editorial),
and Stef (accessories). Andrea gives them their nickname for the sound their stiletto
heel shoes make on the marble floors of the Elias-Clark building.
 Benjamin, referred to as Benji. He is Lily's ex-boyfriend, but they have stayed in touch
despite their breakup. He was involved in the car accident with Lily.

The Devil Wears Prada

By Lauren Weisberger
 Andrea "Andy" Sachs (Anne Hathaway), an aspiring journalist fresh out of Northwestern
University, lands the magazine job "a million girls would kill for": junior personal assistant to
icy editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), who dominates the fashion world from her
perch atop Runway magazine. Andy puts up with the eccentric and humiliating requests of her
boss because, she is told, if she lasts a year in the position, she will get her pick of other jobs,
perhaps even the journalistic position she truly craves.

At first, she fits in poorly among the gossipy fashionistas who make up the magazine staff.
Her lack of style or fashion knowledge and fumbling with her job make her an object of scorn
around the office. Senior assistant Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt), Miranda's senior personal
assistant, is condescending to her. Gradually, though, with the help of art director Nigel (Stanley
Tucci), Andrea adapts to the position and its many perks, including free designer clothing and
other choice accessories. She begins to dress more stylishly and do her job competently,
fulfilling a seemingly impossible request of Miranda's to get two copies of an unpublished Harry
Potter manuscript to her daughters.

She also comes to prize chance encounters with attractive young writer Christian
Thompson (Simon Baker), who helped her obtain the Potter manuscript and suggests he could
help her with her career. At the same time, however, her relationship with her boyfriend Nate
(Adrian Grenier), a chef working his way up the career ladder, and other college friends suffers
due to the increasing time she spends at Miranda's beck and call.

Shortly afterwards, Andrea saves Miranda from social embarrassment at a charity benefit
when the cold-stricken Emily falters in reminding Miranda who an approaching guest is. As a
result, Miranda tells Andrea that she will accompany her to the fall fashion shows in Paris, rather
than Emily who had been looking forward to the trip for months, but is currently suffering from
the flu. Miranda warns Andrea that if she declines, it could adversely affect her future job
prospects. Emily is hit by a car before Andrea can tell Emily that she is not going to Paris with
Miranda, making Andrea's choice moot.

During a gallery exhibit of her friend Lilly's (Tracie Thoms) photography, Andy again
encounters Christian, who openly flirts with her, much to the shock and disgust of Lilly, who
witnesses it all. After Lilly calls her out and walks away, Andy bumps into Nate, who, when she
tells him she will be going to Paris, is angered that she refuses to admit that she's become the
girls she's made fun of and that their relationship has taken a back seat. As a result, they break up
in the middle of the street the night before she leaves for Paris.

In Paris, Nigel tells Andrea that he has gotten a job as creative director with rising fashion
star James Holt (Daniel Sunjata), at Miranda's recommendation, and will finally be in charge of
his own life. Andrea also finally succumbs to Christian's charms, and sees her boss let down her
guard for the first time as she worries about the effect an impending divorce will have on her
twin daughters.

But in the morning, Andrea finds out about a plan to replace Miranda as Runway editor
with Jacqueline Follet, editor of the magazine's French edition, later that day. Despite the
suffering she has endured at her boss's behest, she attempts to warn Miranda but is seemingly
rebuffed each time by the very same woman she tries to save professionally.

At a luncheon later that day, however, Miranda announces that it is Jacqueline instead of
Nigel who will leave Runway for Holt. Later, when the two are being driven to a show, she
explains to a still-stunned Andrea that she was grateful for the warning but already knew of the
plot to replace her and sacrificed Nigel to keep her own job. Pleased by this display of loyalty,
she tells Andrea she sees some of herself in her. Andrea, repulsed, said she could never do to
anyone what Miranda did to Nigel, primarily as Nigel mentored Andrea. Miranda replies that she
already did, stepping over Emily when she agreed to go to Paris. If she wants to get ahead in her
career, that's what she'll have to be willing to do.

Andrea gets out of the limo at the next stop, going not into the show with Miranda but out
into the street, where instead of answering yet another call from her boss she throws her cell
phone into a nearby fountain, leaving Miranda, Runway and fashion behind.

Later, back in New York, she meets Nate for breakfast. He has accepted an offer to work as
a sous-chef in a popular Boston restaurant, and will be moving there shortly. Andrea is
disappointed but her hope is rejuvenated when he says they could work something out, implying
they will have a long-distance relationship in the future. At the film's conclusion, she has finally
been offered a job as a newspaper reporter, greatly helped by a fax from Miranda herself who
told Andrea's prospective boss-in-line that Andrea was her "biggest disappointment ever", and
that if they didn't hire her they would be idiots. Andrea calls Emily and offers her all of the
clothes that she got in Paris, which Andrea insists that she doesn't need anymore. Emily accepts
and tells Andrea's replacement she has some big shoes to fill. In the last shot, Andrea, dressed as
she was at the beginning of the film but with a bit more style, sees Miranda get into her car
across the street. They exchange looks and Miranda gives no indication of a greeting, but gives a
soft smile once inside the car, before sternly telling her chauffeur to "go!".

SYNTHESIS:
The story tells the professional adventure of Andrea, whose greatest dream is to become a
journalist. Andrea gets a job in the fashion industry through Runway magazine, the most famous
of its type, to make ends meet. But Andrea won't develop her writing skills in the magazine, but
her talents as the editor in chief's assistant, Miranda. The problem is that Miranda is a merciless,
posh and cruel woman, making the experience a living hell for the girl. The environment in the
place will be cold and extremely critical with the physical appearance. The girl will have to
change her simple and plain style, for a trendier and more elegant one, in order to gain the
acceptance of her ruthless boss and colleagues, specially Emily, her unpleasant workmate.
Despite everything against Andrea in the office, she will consider the experience as a challenge,
drastically changing her clothes and self-image, with the help of Nigel, the magazine's art
director. Nevertheless, the job becomes extremely demanding, because of Miranda's tough work
rhythm and nearly impossible tasks, leaving Andrea without a private life with her boyfriend,
family and friends. Maybe the old Andrea has gone, now more preoccupied about her image and
her future in the magazine.

THOUGHT FOR REFLECTION:

 Never lose sight of who you are.
 People tend to be caught up in what others around them are doing, and sometimes it
almost feels right to do the same thing as everyone else. But you will never be happy if
you just try to achieve what society deems to be successful and ignore your personal
wants and interests.

“I’m frustrated.” “Life is chaotic right now.” “It’s just not how I thought this semester
would go.” Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, these are just some of your primary responses as you
continually partake your classes online. From this, we know it’s not fair. We feel like we should
be doing something. Along those lines, perhaps we should also be asking ourselves as your
teachers a second question: “What do you think you’ll learn from this?” Right now, your
classmates are among those allies in your corner, and I know what it feels like when seemingly
everything you’ve come to know this semester is just suddenly going away, and you are
powerless to stop it. I was there not too long ago—learning Literature for how many weeks, as a
matter of fact. Yet this week, as we end our sessions in Literature, all coronavirus concerns aside,
we are happy. And Class, we know that you will be happy again too if you just follow this
simple advice—when you are at your most vulnerable, consult your corner. Assemble your
allies. Because if they are truly your allies—friends worth holding on to over the next adventure
—I promise you that they will never really be gone. We hope you learned something in our
Literature subject which you can use in your own endeavor. Have a prosperous 2021!!!