Romantics and Revolutionaries Reading Summaries PDF

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Reading Summaries Quarter 1 1. Flashback Hotel – Vladislavić, I The Prime Minister is Dead  The day they killed the Prime Minister, the protagonist was working with his father in the garden and his grandmother heard the news on the radio o When his grandfather died he left the family a suitcase, when the Prime Minister died he left the family a compost heap o They named the new suburb they lived in after him  The day they buried the Prime Minister, the protagonist and his father were planting an orchard (spring) o “The earth should never be too kind. It spoiled people” (pg12), about the fig tree that never developed o The protagonist’s mother suggests the boy should see the procession, his father will take him in the clothes they’ve been working in o Repeated imagery of the flag: handed to the people, visible in the crowds, laid on the Prime Minister’s coffin o The boy and his father use the wheelbarrow to transport the coffin during the procession when the gun carriage breaks down o His father ran forward when they reached the formality of the funeral, and at the lip of the grave, heaved the coffin forward Tsafendas’s Diary  Structure: numbered 1-22  Granny as a central character and guiding force  Tsafendas’s diary as a treasure that is being seeked by the protagonist and their grandmother  The pink and blue thinking-cap, knitted by Granny is a token of growth and development for the protagonist, they feel strengthened by it  Although the two travel to Pretoria to retrieve the diary, they do not find it\  The protagonist thinks that the diary is within them all along, so they try to write it out  Granny pulls out the long black ribbon from her wooden basket, saying she’s had it all along  Imagery: thinking-cap, meat blanket, wooden basket, knitting, diary, rocking-chair, ribbon, hole in the garden  The protagonist digs granny into the insatiable earth, the hole in the backyard. She cooks, bubbles and squeaks with the bones, leaf-mulch, vegetable peelings, blankets and papers

Movements  Focus on the relationship between a couple  Imagery: house/home (steps, door, room)§  I o They fight, and attempt to take space from one another o Involvement of the Italian neighbor playing dominos o They long to be in touch with one another o He does not want them to separate o They end up together in bed  II o “He cries for the first time, in black and white” (63) during a confession o “She says she hasn’t been able to cry for years” o She thinks of his crying as sensitive and brave o He cries more often, not only during confessions o She begins to cry again, “she thanks him for making it possible” o “She cries more often. He can’t keep up… he is always more convinced by his own emotion than by hers” o “He cries as counter-espionage” (64) o “He starts to enjoy it when she cries” o “He stops crying. She doesn’t notice” o The two lovers lose touch with each other more and more o For a while, their roles are reversed. He is incapable of crying and she is sensitive, beautiful, brave  III o She hesitates to leave him because she wants to be comforted o She considers him as guarding the room, whereas the door is a ‘frontier’ (65) o He goes to her, it feels like his one hand pulls her in by her shoulder while the other pushes the small of her back out into the night o “She opens him like a door, it is easy, and she walks through” (66) o It seems that she ends up leaving him o “It is morning outside, where she is”  could indicate a sense of hope/optimism about her future

A Science of Fragments  An Unposted Letter o Protagonist: a writer o Sitting down to write, using grief as the theme o Writing makes ‘her’ death feel more real to him o He is confronting his loss o He intends “to post his letter in her grave” but doesn’t o He becomes too attached to his words and can’t part with them  Fruit o She picks fruit from the branches of an Apricot Tree o He sits on a verandah and watches o She wears a lilac dress (a flattering and vivid colour) o Her cheeks bulge with fruit as she climbs down the tree, he stifles laughter o It hurts her that he washes the fruit under the garden tap  Versions of Himself o “Once, at an exhibition, he bought a photograph she had taken: ‘The Waiting Room’” o Characters: The watcher, the lovers, the listener, the other man  Conversation o She likens his hands to that of a clerk, saying she used to like them but no longer does o He likens her hands to those of a plumber and she laughs at him  Broken Mirror o “Forgive me my story, as I forgive you yours” (81) o “You crossed the border. You came to rest in a homeland of deaf earth and dumb stone. Now and always, you are travelling on a foreign passport” he writes on the back of a serviette in the Cavalier Bar at Flashback Hotel  Conversation o “She said, ‘I have the mind of a forty-year-old divorcee in the body of a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl’. He replied, ‘Or vice versa’” o Her expression signified worldliness, cynicism and regret  Versions of Herself o “Once, for his birthday, she gave him the fragments of an animated film she had made” (82) o He kept two versions of the heroine (variations of herself) o The dancer: wears a tattered lilac frock, hair exploding over her shoulders, startled eyes o The sleeper: wears the same frock, hair pouring over her shoulder, which she presses into a pillow

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Crossing o Underlying idea: sharks (after he makes a joke) o ‘The wreck disappointed him’ but ‘she was more than satisfied’ (83) o She wanted to swim out to it but he dissuaded her o She settled down on the dunes and slept, dreaming of crossing the wild sea to reach the wreckage Debris o Observations of Johannesburg, referencing local places and happenings Echo o On the anniversary of her death, he takes two versions of her (dancer and sleeper) from their shroud. He pins them up again, unsure why he chose them originally, and pushes the pins “carefully into the familiar wounds” (84)

Propaganda by Monuments  I – Grekov o Pavel Grekov, a junior translator in the Administration for Everyday Services, an English specialist, is bored with his job o Anxious about the discovery he has made (this letter) o Context: largest head of Lenin in the city of Moscow, he feels that the eyes are looking right at him o ‘How soon people became bored with the making and unmaking of history’ (127) o Monuments are being taken down (Lenin’s head) and removed, ending up in ‘scrap heap… of history’ (128) o Bronze: melted down o Stone: used for public pathways o Marble: tombstones/new monuments o ‘Ugly ones’ by famous artists are preserved o The statue’s ‘eyes gazed back unflinchingly’ (129) o He takes out his carbon copy of the letter, he is not still in possession of the original  II – Khumalo to the Ministir o Letter format, concerning surplus statues o ‘I am greeting you in the name of struggling masses of South Africa’ (131) o Searching out whether statues of V.I Lenin are made available to donate or purchase o Decoration for Khumalo’s V.I Lenin Bar & Grill  III – Lunacharski and Lenin (an offcut) o ‘Lunacharski knew only too well that experimental work would be incomprehensible to the illiterate masses’ (133) o The two clash over the position of Proletkult

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o Lenin’s scheme for ‘Propaganda by Monuments’ o ‘Lenin proposed that artists be commissioned to sculpt “concise, trenchant inscriptions showing the more lasting, fundamental principles and slogans of Marxism” on the city walls and on specially erected pediments, in place of advertisements and posters’ (134) o Inspired by the frescos in Campanella’s La Città del Sole o ‘the manufacture of monuments left much to be desired, “the unveiling of monuments went on much better”’ (135) IV – Christov to Khumalo o Letter format o Khumalo’s ‘letter is receiving considerate attention at many and various levels, local and national/international’ o ‘Head of V.I. Lenin’, in mind for dispatch, is a national treasure V – Khumalo o ‘There was nothing compromising about the letter. The Total Onslaught was over’ (139) o Khumalo ‘was a taverner long before the Taverners’ (140) o ‘The way of all flesh was fleeting, whereas décor has to last’ (141) o Khumalo realizes that the statue they have promised him will be too large for his location o ‘Khumalo went and stood at a distance, upwind of the stinking Freedom Symbol, with his eyes half-closed, squinting. And after a while he began to see how, but not necessarily why, the impossible [dome-like structure and generally] came to pass.’

The Omniscope (Pat. Pending)  First-person narrator, an inventor, Hauptfleisch  Miner-monk at a wooden bureau in his dream, looking through some kind of brass-plated telescope into a casket  ‘Dreams are more easily domesticated than people think’ (175)  ‘The inlooker had been seized by an unwholesome urge to make a whole greater than the part that was given’ (177)  Process: looked around for a casket (shoebox), recalled the items on the list (fires, swords, library, behemoth, mountain, river), places the razor blade (substitute for the sword) in the casket, Lion matches (fire), bone-shaped biscuit (behemoth), postage stamp (library), thimble (mountain), rubber washer (river), a teaspoon and nutmeg seed, pot-scourer and magnet, punched a hole in the corner and pushed through a cardboard tube  Preponderance of kitchenware

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Tube is too large, uses a drinking straw but must now add a bicycle torch objects = offerings Like the kaleidoscope (device for looking at beautiful forms), the Omniscope is not taken seriously as an invention but is considered a toy Three copies of Omniscope II were made and their fates o Mrs Bernstein, a public relations officer sold it to a collector of modern art o A Soweto businessman, who gifted it to his aunt (a soothsayer, who uses it to predict the outcome of sports events) o A member of his own family, who donated it to the Medical Museum of the University of the Witwatersrand By the story’s end, he seems to want to disassociate himself from the invention

Alphabets for Surplus People  I – A Day in the Life of the Parper of the People o Parper and the Architect o Parper: ‘Affairs of state demand a sober mind and judgement’ (208) o The official limousine was broken, and so an antique Vespa was sent o Tourists were outraged to see a man administering electric al shocks to the other, the tour guide tells them it’s the organ-grinder and his monkey rehearsing for the gala performance (211) o Parper takes the armoured car to see what is happening on the ground o Parper wasn’t present at the time of the speeches, but was speaking to staff in the kitchen  II – The Comings and Goings around the Marmer of the Nation o The Marmer’s Acrobats, Bodyguards, Counsellors, Dilators, Electricians, Footballers, Glaziers, Hootchikootchi-men, Illuminists, Jugheads, Kitchenboys, Lawyers, Market Gardeners, Nutritionists, Organ-donors, Partypoopers, Quartermasters, Restaurateurs, Silversmiths, Tasters, Undertakers, Ventriloquists, Waterbabies, Xerographers, Yebomen, Zuluboy o Roles of these people in the Marmer’s life is abstract o She is clearly a busy woman, who often has a lot on her plate  III – The Signature Tunes of the Barber of the Piece o Arranger: o Babysitter: attempting to sing ‘Thula Mntwana’ with a white accent o Cheerleader: encouraging Barber to blow his own horn  Story indicates a family dynamic

‘Kidnapped’  Kidnapped Short Story Competition, to celebrate the centenary of the death of Robert Louis Stevenson  In the narrator’s dream with RLS (Magaliesburg) ‘every point [he] made on the side of companionship seemed only to support [RLS’s] claims for the joys of silence and surrender to the world around’ (259)  Ideas for the short story: Stevenson’s writing of Kidnapped, someone reading Kidnapped, or something to do with nothing of the sort  He begins to reread Kidnapped, the introduction of which inspires his story about the period between RLS’s writing of ‘The Great North Road’ and Kidnapped  ‘It came in on me that it would be effrontery to write a story about the other side of the world, the other side of time… it was presumptuous enough to write about the other side of the street. To write anything at all, to make anything up, to set anything down was to act in bad faith’ (262)  ‘Art and reality, said Stevenson, bobbing, are not in competition, you simpleton’ (262)  Looking at the atlas had ‘paralysed [his] creative faculties’ (263)  Realising he cannot write of an irrecoverable, unimaginable world, he considers a new idea: A Jim Comes to Jo’burg story, a South African version of Kidnapped  Wanting to adapt his story more closely to Stevenson’s style he considers another idea: set in the mining-camp of Johannesburg  He receives and peruses the competition’s rules, thinking he should forget the whole thing he chooses to arrange his own memorial dinner  He then has an idea: his own experience of attempting to write the short story  Deciding once again to write for the competition he considers the setting in Johannesburg, then another idea - Kidnapped: Chapter XXXI (an extra chapter)  He finds, on a call to the embassy and speaking to Mr Campbell, that Stevenson’s novel Catriona is Kidnapped’s sequel  Ultimately, he never submits a story. He does however, subscribe to Writing Magazine to read the entries and realizes there was not a ‘real story among them’ (273)  Today’s writers are ‘not even anatomists – they’re resurrection men’ (273) 2. Gulliver’s Travels – Swift, J From Shmoop Lemuel Gulliver is a married surgeon from Nottinghamshire, England, who has a taste for traveling. He heads out on a fateful

voyage to the South Seas when he gets caught in a storm and washed up on an island. This island, Lilliput, has a population of tiny people about 6 inches tall. They capture Gulliver as he sleeps and carry him to their capital city, where they keep him chained inside a large abandoned temple outside the city walls. Gulliver becomes a great friend of the Emperor of Lilliput, who introduces Gulliver to many of their customs. For example, instead of staffing his cabinet with capable administrators, the Emperor chooses guys who perform best at a dangerous kind of rope dancing. The Emperor asks Gulliver to help him in his war against Blefuscu, a similarly tiny kingdom across a channel of water. Gulliver agrees and uses his huge size to capture all of Blefuscu's navy. In spite of the great service that Gulliver has done for the Lilliputians, he has two terrible enemies, who seem to be jealous of his strength and favor with the Emperor: the admiral Skyresh Bolgolam and the treasurer Flimnap. These two men conspire to influence the Emperor to have Gulliver executed. They serve Gulliver with a series of Articles of Impeachment, with the final sentence that Gulliver is going to be blinded. (The ministers also decide, in secret, that they are going to starve Gulliver to save money on the enormous amount of food he eats.) Gulliver is informed of this plot against him by a friend at the Lilliputian court. He manages to escape to the island of Blefuscu. Fortunately for him, a human-sized boat washes ashore on Blefuscu. Gulliver rows to nearby Australia and finds a boat to take him back to England. Gulliver heads out to sea again after a brief stay in England with his family (who, we have to say, he doesn't seem to like all that much). Once again, a storm blows up, and Gulliver winds up on the island of Brobdingnag. The Brobdingnag are giants 60 feet tall, who treat Gulliver like an attraction at a fair. Gulliver comes to the attention of the Brobdingnagian Queen, who keeps him like a kind of pet. She is amused, because he is so tiny and yet still manages to speak and act like a real person. This Queen employs a young girl, Glumdalclitch, to look after Gulliver and teach him their language. Glumdalclitch does this with great affection. While Gulliver lives at the palace, he is constantly in danger: bees the size of pigeons almost stab him, a puppy almost tramples him to death, a monkey mistakes him for a baby monkey and tries to stuff him full of food. Because Gulliver feels ridiculous all the time, he starts to lose some of the pride and self-importance he couldn't help having in Lilliput. The Brobdingnagian King reinforces this new sense of humility. After Gulliver describes to him all that he can think of about English culture and history, the King of Brobdingnag decides that the English sound like tiny little pests. He absolutely refuses to accept

Gulliver's gift of gunpowder because such weapons seem like an invitation to horrible violence and abuse. Finally, Gulliver leaves Brobdingnag by a bizarre accident and returns home to England. He only stays there for about two months, however, when he goes to sea again. This time, he gets marooned by pirates on a small island near Vietnam. As he's sitting on this island, he sees a shadow passing overhead: a floating island called Laputa. He signals the Laputians for help and is brought up by rope. The Laputians are dedicated to only two things, mathematics and music. But their love of equations makes them really poor at practical things, so no one in the kingdom can make a good suit of clothes or build a house. And in imitation of the Laputians' abstract science, the residents of the continent below, Balnibarbi, have been steadily ruining their farms and buildings with newfangled "reforms." Gulliver also visits Glubbdubdrib, an island of sorcerers where he gets to meet the ghosts of famous historical figures, and Luggnagg, an island with an absolute king and also some very unfortunate immortals. He makes his way to Japan and then back to England once more – this time, for five months, before he sets out again, leaving his family behind once again. This time, Gulliver sails out as a captain in his own right, but his sailors quickly mutiny against him and maroon him on a distant island. This island is home to two kinds of creatures: (a) the beastly Yahoos, violent, lying, disgusting animals; and (b) the Houyhnhnms, who look like horses. The Houyhnhnms govern themselves with absolute reason. They do not even have words for human problems like disease, deception, or war. As for the Yahoos – they are human beings. They are just like Gulliver, except that Gulliver has learned to clip his nails, shave his face, and wear clothes. In Houyhnhnm Land, Gulliver finally realizes the true depths of human awfulness. He grows so used to the Houyhnhnm way of life that, when the Houyhnhnms finally tell him he must leave, he immediately faints. Gulliver obediently leaves the land of the Houyhnhnms, where he has been very happy, but he is so disgusted with human company that he nearly jumps off the Portuguese ship carrying home. Once Gulliver returns to his family, he feels physical revulsion at the thought that he had sex with a Yahoo female (his wife) and had three Yahoo children. He can barely be in the same room with them. We leave Gulliver slowly reconciling himself to being among humans again, but he is still really, really sad not to be with the Houyhnhnms. In fact, he spends at least four hours a day talking to his two stallions in their stable. Lesson learned from Gulliver's Travels: the more we see of humans, the less we want to be one.

3. Miguel Street – Naipaul, V.S. Bogart  “Before they called him Bogart they called him Patience, because he played that game from morn till night” (1)  Seemingly bored and superior, he was difficult to communicate with  “He did everything with a captivating languor”  “He made a pretence of making a living by tailoring” (2)  Bogart disappears suddenly and his friends began to use his place as a club-house (3)  “He turned up one morning just about seven and found Eddoes had a woman on his bed” (4)  “His accent was getting slightly American” (5)  Bogart spins a story about getting a job on a ship, deserting and going into the interior o He says he became a smuggler and then ran a brothel before he was arrested  “Bogart now became the most feared man in the street” (6) o He drank, swore and gambled (he had been very quiet previously)  He disappears again, but returns fatter ...