Book of the Dead Summary

Book of the Dead begins by throwing the reader right into a torture scene. We enter through
Sandmans point of view torturing and killing Drew Martin in an apartment in Rome. Drew
Martin is a U.S. tennis star who was in Rome for a vacation after a big tournament. Book of
the Dead then fast forwards ten days and Scarpetta and Benton, since they are consultants
for International Investigative Response, are in Rome investigating Drews death. Drew
Martins nude, mutilated body was found near Piazza Navona in the heart of Rome with her
eyes gouged out and filled the sockets with sand. Benton and Scarpetta end their trip in
Rome with a romantic proposal. Scarpetta accepts and she flies back to Charleston, South
Carolina while Benton flies back to McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. After the near fatal
strangulation that Scarpetta suffered from at the end of P.R.E.D.A.T.O.R., Scarpetta starts
over with a private forensic pathology practice with Pete Marino, Lucy and Rose at her side.
Coming back from Rome, Scarpetta has to deal with another case. A body of an abused,
emaciated boy was dumped in a desolate marsh. The identity of the boy is not known until
the very end of the book. Scarpetta coming back from Rome engaged had a very bad effect
on Marino who has always loved Scarpetta. He buys a motorcycle, gets an extremely bad
and trashy girlfriend and begins talking to Dr. Self again. Dr. Self is a crazy, self-absorbed
psychiatrist who manipulates people into doing the opposite of what is best for them. Dr.
Self was also in touch with Drew Martin before her death. Dr. Self checked herself into
McLean Hospital because she received an email with a picture attached from The Sandman
which scares her into hiding. We later find out that The Sandman sent Dr. Self a picture of
Drew being tortured. Dr. Self, being her usual manipulative self, realizes Benton is working
at McLean and tries to get into his program so that she can write bad things about him. The
plot thickens when Dr. Maroni is introduced to the story. He is a investigator that always
knows way more than what he lets on. He hints around to information that he wants people
to know but keeps other information to himself that people shouldnt know quite yet or at
all. He is the mastermind kind of pushing people all towards the ending where we finally
figure out the truth. We find more out about Will The Sandmans life as the book
progresses. He hates his mom and strongly dislikes his father as well. He went to war over
in Iraq and came back a changed person. He was traumatized with what he saw over there
and uses torturing techniques that he learned over there on two of his victims. His next
victim is a woman who lives in a beach house in Hilton Head. He tortures and kills her
similar to what he did to Drew Martin and sends another picture to Dr. Self. Scarpetta and
Marino have not been on the best terms this book and their entire relationship comes
crashing down when Marino shows up at Scarpettas house extremely drunk and they argue.
Marino ends up grabbing Scarpetta, ripping her blouse off and almost rapes her. Marino
eventually stops attacking Scarpetta and Scarpetta is severely traumatized from the event.
She attempts to talk to Marino about it though and tells him that she forgives him for it.
Marino is on self-destruct mode after this and the book ends with Marino hating himself and
disappearing and possibly committing suicide. Rose, Scarpettas secretary, finds out that she
has untreatable lung cancer and will die before the book is over. Lucys brain tumor begins
to be contained in this book. It shrunk some but the drugs that she is on will not make it go
away. She will eventually have to get surgery to remove it. Scarpetta, Benton and Marino
find out in the end after following a string of clues left by Dr. Maroni that the identity of The
Sandman was Will Rambo. Will Rambo was not always his name though; his real name is
Willard Self. Dr. Maroni and Dr. Self had an affair years ago and Will was the result of the
affair. The reason The Sandman was sending all the pictures to Dr. Self was because he was
her son and he wanted to pay her back for never really caring about him. Dr. Maroni revels
to Benton that he knew that Will was a bit crazy. Each time he got deployed for war he got a
lot worse. He raped and killed tourists in various locations and finally came into the picture
as a serious murderer with the public death of Drew Martin and from there on the deaths
got more gruesome. Scarpetta and Lucy find Wills hiding place on a sandy beach, the same

sand that he put in all of his victims eyes. They also find dead bodies, but they do not find
Will. Will is found later when he attempts to capture and kill Scarpetta, but a police officer
intervenes and saves Scarpettas life. The book ends with Scarpetta and Benton sitting at
Scarpettas house relaxing and talking about all the traumatic events that have happened.
Marino is still missing and no one has heard a word from him.

The Arabian Nights (The Thousand and One Nights, or The Thousand
Nights and One Night) is a collection of Arabic short stories. The story starts
with a king, Shahzaman, whose wife has committed adultery with a kitchen boy. He
kills both of them and declares that he shall leave immediately for his brothers
kingdom in India. Shahzaman gets to the palace of his brother, Shahrayar. While
he is in his brothers home, he grows sickly and pale because of his internal
demons. He is king but he cannot protect or keep what is his. His brother invites
him on a hunt, but he declines, staying in the palace with his grief. Then he
witnesses his brothers wife, paramours, and concubines fraternizing with the black
slave boys. He realizes that his misfortune is not uncommon, and he finds
consolations in his own affliction and forgets his grief. After Shahrayar gets back
from the hunt, Shahzaman eventually tells him about his wife, and he would like to
see this with his own eyes. They sneak out, under the guise of another hunt, but go
back into the city to catch his wife with the black slave. Realizing the truth of the
matter, the brothers decide to go on a journey. On this journey, they cross the path
of a demons wife, who commands them to sleep with her, bringing her total to one
hundred men she has slept with while entrapped in the horrible marriage of the
demon. She showed the brothers that a womans cunning will get her what she
wants. They travel back to their cities, and Shahrayar has a plan in mind to outwit a
womans cunning wiles. When Shahrayar returns he puts his wife to death, then he
orders his vizier to find a daughter of a prince. He marries her, and then kills her
the next morning, before any harm can befall him. Shahrayar continues this for
many days, until the people call for a plague upon the head of their king. However,
the vizier has two daughters. Shahrazad has been well educated and is
knowledgeable. With a plan in mind, she requests that her father marry her to the
king. Her father, the vizier, tells her the story of the donkey and the ox, stating that
her miscalculation will be the end of her. Then when she insists to be wed to the
king, he threatens with the story of the Merchant and His Wife to beat her. She still
requests. The vizier goes before the king, telling him that his daughter would like to
marry him. They are wed, and that night Shahrazad requests that she say good bye
to her sister before her death in the morning. The king agrees and sends for
Dinarzad, who requests a story from her sister before she sleeps. With the kings
permission she starts the story of the Merchant and the Demon, but does not finish
due to sunrise and sleep. As morning overtakes her, her audience is intrigued by
her story. She states What is this compared with what I shall tell you tomorrow
night if the king spares me and lets me live? Due to his curiosity, she is not put to
death, but the next night continues the story. She does this for one thousand and
one nights. At the end, the king accepts her as his queen, having learned many
lessons about life from her stories.

Stevan Javellanas Without Seeing the Dawn was all about the village and the man who lived
on the farm but became a rebel when one of the land owners betrayed the farmers. He tried
the life on the city, but it was never easy for them.

As we go through the summary of the novel, one is able to see how Stevan Javellana portrays the
society of the Philippines many decades ago. Those periods were both before and during the war.
We all know that the Japanese occupation of the Philippines remains as one of the darkest times
in our history.
If we analyze the characters in this novel, one can see that most of them belong to the lower
class, particularly the working class and the peasantry, and their experiences definitely
corresponds to the everyday realities of Filipino lower class life. For example, Javellana
skillfully portrays the oppression suffered by the Filipino peasants through the characters of
Tatay Juan and his son, Carding. As poor peasants, Tatay Juan and his family own a piece of land
but this is utterly negligible as they depend for their livelihood mainly on their tenant status They
generally have insufficient funds for both their daily living and agricultural expenses and often
use their crop to guarantee debts from the landlords and money lenders. Another financial
hardship is seen in Tatay Juans initial reluctance to agree to Cardings early wedding to Lucing,
not only because of Cardings education but also because the wedding expenses were usually
shouldered by the grooms family. Cardings despair after the flood that destroyed his crops in
Badlan also reflects the peasants dependence upon the land for survival. The characters belief in
luck and superstition reveals the backward nature of our educational system, where the majority
of the population did not have proper education that they led them into thinking that the
oppression that they are suffering are due to the bad luck.
The patriarchal system in the Filipino families is also present in Javellanas novel, especially in
Cardings relationship with his wife, Lucing. For example, Lucing was condemned as a whore
when Luis, the tenants son attempted to seduce her and almost succeeded, whereas Carding was
hailed as macho and as a ladies man when he had an extramarital affair with Rosing. Carding is
portrayed as a strong, outgoing, capable male who fights for what he believes is right, while
Lucings silence, meekness and inability to protect herself is seen by many readers as a virtue
rather than as a liability. A few reviews of the novel even praised Lucings decision to stay
behind in Manghayang to wait for her husbands corpse and fulfill her wifely duties to Carding,
despite the countless times that he took her for granted and abandoned her and the sure death and
torture that awaits Lucing when the Japanese find her in the village. Meanwhile, Rosing, the only
outgoing woman in the novel is portrayed as an immoral whore who used her charms to seduce a
married man like Carding. Such a relationship affirms the observation that in a third-world
country like the Philippines, women are doubly oppressed: first by poverty, secondly by
patriarchy. Another facet of Filipino life that is ably reproduced in Javellanas Without Seeing the
Dawn is the Filipino peoples struggle against Japanese imperialism. Like Carding, a lot of
other Filipinos stayed in the mountains. Their decision to remain in the hills was due to various
reasons. People were not sure what the Japanese would do next. Some members of a family were
unsurrendered soldiers; some families had beautiful daughters; there were those who loved
freedom more than life under the Japanese; and they were convinced that the Americans were
coming back. These people endured the hardships, trials like spreading of diseases such as
malaria, unfavorable weather such as cold and most of all, the risk of being captured by
patrolling Japanese. Despite the defeatist conclusion of the novel, Javellanas account of the
Filipino resistance against the Japanese remains as one of the most touching ever written. The
similarity of the experiences of Carding and all the other characters of the novel with the
experiences of the typical Filipino citizen confirms Stevan Javellanas statement that his
characters in the novel are representatives of the Filipino people, an assertion that solidifies his

novels importance in the Philippine literary field. Furthermore, Stevan Javellanas novel,
Without Seeing the Dawn retains its importance in the study of Philippine literature and society
not only because of its unforgettable characters and realistic portrayal of Philippine society
before and during the Japanese occupation but also because most of the trials in the society
described in Javellanas novel is still evident up to the present and a study of such challenges is
necessary to a deeper understanding of Philippine literature and culture.
Carlos Bulosan's writing, especially his semiautobiographical novel America Is in
the Heart, had a special significance in Asian American and ethnic studies for a wide
variety of reasons. First, and perhaps most important, Bulosan developed a race and
class perspective on behalf of his compatriots, the generation of Filipino migrant
workers known as the Manongs (or "respected elders") who worked in the fields,
fisheries, and canneries up and down the West Coast during the 1920s and
1930s.America Is in the Heart, especially, was widely used in Asian American
studies courses across the country because many of the field's founders thought
that this book, in particular, most explicitly exposed the racial prejudice and
discrimination that the Manongs faced before World War II. What differentiates
Bulosan from most other prewar Asian immigrant authors is that, along with race,
Bulosan was highly focused on the local and global class dynamics that also shaped
the Filipino immigrants' labor experiences and tribulations. In this same sense
Bulosan was also able to position the Filipino laborers' plight within an international
context, rare in terms of nonfiction Asian immigrant authors of the time. In America
Is in the Heart, specifically, Bulosan spends chapters developing the portrait of how
American colonial intervention in the Philippines created the macrodynamic that
forced peasants from the collapsing agrarian sector in the northern Philippines to
consider international migration as a possible solution to their constant cycle of
poverty and debt.

(13 plays) While many Filipino families of the time embrace change, Don Ramon
(played by Joel Lamangan) maintains a severe hold on his family, specially his
children. He forbids them from going out with friends yet does not welcome the idea
of entertaining visitors at home either. He distrusts their peers and dictates what
they can and cannot do in life. Though having only his childrens best interests at
heart, his unyielding will to wield control over their lives spur a series of events that
led him and his entire family spiraling uncontrollably towards an ominous fate. And
such fate unfolds in unexpected and heartbreaking proportions. I would like to
compliment what the play established; that although the Filipino family is
patriarchal, dominated mainly by an authoritarian father, the children still maintain
a high regard and respect for their father, no matter how loathing the circumstances
are. Regardless of my misgivings on trying out in a stage play, by simply watching
an excellent play with an outstanding storyline and characters, I already feel
content.