Moby Dick

By Herman Melville (1851)

Excerpt

This classic story by Herman Melville revolves around Captain Ahab and his obsession

with a huge whale, Moby Dick. The whale caused the loss of Ahab's leg years before,

leaving Ahab to stomp the boards of his ship on a peg leg. Ahab is so crazed by his desire

to kill the whale that he is prepared to sacrifice everything, including his life, the lives of

his crew members, and even his ship to find and destroy his nemesis, Moby Dick.

—E.W. DesMarais <jlongst@aol.com>

In 1841, young Ishmael signs up for service abroad the Pequod, a whaler sailing out of

New Bedford. The ship is under the command of Captain Ahab, a strict disciplinarian

who exhorts his men to find Moby Dick, the great white whale. Ahab lost his leg to that

creature and is desperate for revenge. As the crew soon learns, he will stop at nothing to

gain satisfaction.

—garykmcd

Reflection
 Immaturity might lead to death as Captain Ahab who lost his leg because of

Moby Dick, a whale. Captain Ahab is immature because he wants vengeance to

the animals that have a low intellectuality than him, he searched for whale so

at last, the whale killed him. Therefore as the main point of reflection, human

must understand the animals and does not act immaturity rather help the

animals and be friends with them because they do such a horrible thing

because they have a strong distinct. Also, we humans must think that we don’t

have to chase animals for vengeance but to be thankful that they teach us

lessons even it is the cause of our loss.

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 The Great Gatsby
By F. Scott Fitzgerald
Excerpt
The narrator of The Great Gatsby is a young man from Minnesota named Nick
Carraway. He not only narrates the story but casts himself as the book’s author. He
begins by commenting on himself, stating that he learned from his father to reserve
judgment about other people, because if he holds them up to his own moral standards,
he will misunderstand them. He characterizes himself as both highly moral and highly
tolerant. He briefly mentions the hero of his story, Gatsby, saying that Gatsby
represented everything he scorns, but that he exempts Gatsby completely from his usual
judgments. Gatsby’s personality was nothing short of “gorgeous.”

Reflection
“In my younger . . . years my father gave me some advice . . . “Whenever you feel like
criticizing anyone . . . just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the
advantages that you’ve had”. It is said by nick the narrator of the story.
 As a reflection don’t waste your time in replying to those people who criticize
you because they will not have the advantages that you had. People who
criticize you and judge you are already below you, so ignore them because you
can't get any benefit by arguing nonsense things with them.

“I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly

suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out
unequally at birth” Nick shares these words from his father in the novel’s opening. This
quote suggests that wealth is not the only thing people are assigned unequally; that the
fundamental decencies such as kindness, empathy, and consideration of others are more
abundant in some people from the moment of birth.

 As a reflection, money is not the only thing that man is needed but kindness,
empathy, and consideration are the true wealthiness and needs of humans. If
you are born without any money but you have a pure heart that sets you happy
you are rich more than those people that love money so much even if they are
not happy with it.

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 The Sound and the Fury

By: William Faulkner

Excerpt
Quentin Compson wakes up in his dorm room at Harvard, hearing his watch ticking. He
realizes that it is between seven and eight o’clock in the morning. Quentin remembers
his father giving him the watch and saying that the watch might allow Quentin an
occasional moment when he could forget about time. He thinks about the inevitability of
his own awareness of time and remembers that St. Francis called death his “Little
Sister,” though, Quentin thinks, St. Francis never had a sister. Quentin gets up briefly,
then goes back to bed. He has a memory of his sister Caddy’s wedding
announcement: “Mr. and Mrs. Jason Richmond Compson announce the marriage of. . .
.” Caddy was married in April, just two months ago.
Reflection

“If I’d just had a mother so I could say Mother Mother”

This quotation occurs several times toward the end of Quentin’s section. Quentin is
reflecting on how little affection his mother gave him as a child. Consumed by self-
absorption and insecurities about her family name, Mrs. Compson showed affection for
only one of her children, Jason. Quentin and Caddy formed a close bond as neglected,
unloved outsiders, and Quentin developed an inordinately strong attachment to his
sister. This bond leads to Quentin’s despair over Caddy’s promiscuity, which ends with
his suicide. The object of Quentin’s focus during the last hours of his life—his mother’s
absence and neglect—shows how significant and damaging Mrs. Compson’s failure as a
mother has been.

 As my own reflection, the characters want to have a mother because she is

jealous of others who had one. Mother can guide her to be on the right path,
Quentin’s can be motivated if she had a mother that can enlighten her mind
especially if the circumstances came in her way, she can call her mother to lean
on so she wished to have a mother.

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 Disgrace
By J. M. Coetzee

Excerpt
David Lurie is a Communications professor at Cape Town Technical University. He has
been twice divorced, has one child, and currently spends ninety minutes of his Thursday
afternoons with a prostitute named Soraya. After Lurie crosses the line by phoning
Soraya at her home, he turns to one of his students to fulfill his desires. Lurie first
notices Melanie in the university gardens and invites her to his home for wine and
dinner. Startled at his call, Melanie agrees to have lunch with him. They return to his
house and have sex on the living room floor. Young Melanie is passive throughout the
majority of the act but Lurie, on the other hand, attains sensory overload and falls asleep
on top of her. The very next afternoon Lurie arrives at Melanie's flat, pushes himself in
and carries her to the bed. She does not resist and asks him to leave after he is finished
because her cousin is coming. She misses the mid-term the next day and arrives at his
house sobbing that night needing a place to stay. Soon after, Melanie's boyfriend pays
the professor a visit and events begin to snowball. Melanie withdraws from all her
classes and a sexual harassment case is filed again, Professor Lurie.
Reflection
 As a reflection human must be contented to love just only one, because if he or
she seeks for another, worst for the pleasure it may turn them down, just like
David he wants to fulfill his desire by having a sex to Melanie, at the end
Melanie accused David in a rape case, it turns out that because of the scandal
David lost his job and even his property. Another thing is to be careful about
whom you trust because sometimes the people around and close to you is the
one who put you down just what like happen to David, Petrus is his man,
David trust Petrus but at the end Petrus Betrayed David.

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 Invisible Man

By Ralph Ellison

Excerpt

The narrator begins telling his story with the claim that he is an “invisible man.” His
invisibility, he says, is not a physical condition—he is not literally invisible—but is rather
the result of the refusal of others to see him. He says that because of his invisibility, he
has been hiding from the world, living underground and stealing electricity from the
Monopolated Light & Power Company. He burns 1,369 light bulbs simultaneously and
listens to Louis Armstrong’s “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue” on a
phonograph. He says that he has gone underground in order to write the story of his life
and invisibility.

As a young man, in the late 1920s or early 1930s, the narrator lived in the South.
Because he is a gifted public speaker, he is invited to give a speech to a group of
important white men in his town. The men reward him with a briefcase containing a
scholarship to a prestigious black college, but only after humiliating him by forcing him
to fight in a “battle royal” in which he is pitted against other young black men, all
blindfolded, in a boxing ring. After the battle royal, the white men force the youths to
scramble over an electrified rug in order to snatch at fake gold coins. The narrator has a
dream that night in which he imagines that his scholarship is actually a piece of paper
reading “To Whom It May Concern . . . Keep This Nigger-Boy Running.”

Reflection

“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless
heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by
mirrors of hard, distorting glass”

 As a reflection, if you hide and hide obviously other people refuse to see you,
therefore you must show who you are, what is your capable doing of. The
narrator is invisible because he hides from people he does not want to show his
real self so he becomes invisible not physically but it turns out that he does not
really exist. In real life enable you to grow you must show who are you so the
other people may give their attention as well as they value your existence.

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 The Portrait of a Lady

By Henry James

Excerpt

Isabel Archer is a woman in her early twenties who comes from a genteel family in
Albany, New York, in the late 1860s. Her mother died when she was a young girl, and
her father raised her in a haphazard manner, allowing her to educate herself and
encouraging her independence. As a result, the adult Isabel is widely read, imaginative,
confident in her own mind, and slightly narcissistic; she has a reputation in Albany for
being a formidable intellect, and as a result, she often seems intimidating to men. She
has had few suitors, but one of them is Caspar Goodwood, the powerful, charismatic son
of a wealthy Boston mill owner. Isabel is drawn to Caspar, but her commitment to her
independence makes her fear him as well, for she feels that to marry him would be to
sacrifice her freedom.

Reflection

“You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed; you were punished
for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional.”

 Isabel looks for freedom so she refuses the sincerity of the two men who want
to marry her because she believes that if she had a family she lost her freedom.
Isabel traveled with her aunt, and there she met one person that she thinks she
loves it but in the end, the man who was she married is a sadistic man and gold
digger. It is the consequences that Isabel must face because of her ambition
with her freedom that lead to her in a miserable life. Therefore, if you value
your freedom don’t abuse it and be ignorant about it, if someone truly loves
you, that someone will not control you rather support you in your desire or
dreams.

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 The Grapes of Wrath
By John Steinbeck

Excerpt

Released from an Oklahoma state prison after serving four years for a manslaughter
conviction, Tom Joad makes his way back to his family’s farm in Oklahoma. He meets
Jim Casy, a former preacher who has given up his calling out of a belief that all life is
holy—even the parts that are typically thought to be sinful—and that sacredness consists
simply in endeavoring to be an equal among the people. Jim accompanies Tom to his
home, only to find it—and all the surrounding farms—deserted. Muley Graves, an old
neighbor, wanders by and tells the men that everyone has been “tractored” off the land.
Most families, he says, including his own, have headed to California to look for work.
The next morning, Tom and Jim set out for Tom’s Uncle John’s, where Muley assures
them they will find the Joad clan. Upon arrival, Tom finds Ma and Pa Joad packing up
the family’s few possessions. Having seen handbills advertising fruit-picking jobs in
California, they envision the trip to California as their only hope of getting their lives
back on track.

Reflection

“I'm glad there's love here. That's all.”

 As a reflection, if we faced challenges we cannot face it alone so enable us to

overcome the challenges we have to unite with others. Tom Joad and other
people who were forced to work they share their ideas it means that they unite
with each other, enable them to overcome the difficulties and suffering they
experienced. At last, even in the darkness of their lives, the loves are still in
their hearts.

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 Jazz and Palm Wine
By Emmanuel Dongala

Synopsis

Jazz, aliens, and witchcraft collide in the collections of short stories by renowned author
Emmanuel Dongala. The influence of Congo culture is tangible throughout, as
customary beliefs clash with party conceptions of scientific and rational thought. In the
first half of Jazz and Palm Wine, the characters emerge victorious from decades of
colonial exploitation in the Congo only to confront the burdensome bureaucracy,
oppressive legal system, and corrupt governments and the post-colonial era. The ruling
political party attempts to impose order and scientific thinking while the people struggle
to deal with drought, infertility, and impossible regulations and policies; both sides mix
witchcraft, diplomacy, and violence in their efforts to survive. The second half of the
book is set in the United States during the turbulent civil rights struggles of the 1960s.
In the title story, African and American leaders come together to save the world from
extraterrestrials by serving vast quantities of palm wine and playing American jazz. The
stories in Jazz and Palm Wine prompt conversations about identity, race, and co-
existence, providing contextualization and a historical dimension that is on often
pathway to racial harmony, peaceful co-existence, and individual liberty through artistic
creations.

Reflection

 As a reflection, we must know our rights so the other people especially the
government cannot abuse it. If the government acts that can harm the people,
the people must know how to fight back so they will not struggles and
experienced injustice such as drought, infertility, and obey rules that can harm
them. Also the story tells us that if we unite even we are in a different race we
can change our world for a better, like African and American who unite so they
can save the majority of people who suffer from the wrongdoing of the
government of Congo’s ruled by the European people.

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 Harvest of Skull

By Abdourahman Waberi

Synopsis

In 1994, the Akazu, Rwandan's political elite, planned the genocidal mass slaughter of
500,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi and Hutu who lived in the country. Given the failure of the
international community to acknowledge the genocide, in 1998, ten African authors
visited Rwanda in a writing initiative that was an attempt to make partial amends. In
this multidimensional novel, Abdourahman A. Waberi claims, "Language remains
inadequate in accounting for the world and all its turpitudes, words can never be more
than unstable crutches, staggering along... And yet, if we want to hold on to a glimmer of
hope in the world, the only miraculous weapons we have at our disposal are these same
clumsy supports." Shaped by the author's own experiences in Rwanda and by the stories
shared by survivors, Harvest of Skulls stands twenty years after the genocide as an
indisputable resource for discussions on testimony and witnessing, the complex
relationship between victims and perpetrators, the power of the moral imagination, and
how survivors can rebuild a society haunted by the ghost of its history.

Reflection

 Some human enable them to satisfy their desire and intention they must kill
the others, it is dangerous because it may cause the extinction of humanity in
the earth just like Hutu and Tutsi, Hutu wants to kill Tutsi so they can fulfill
their desire to be the most powerful human being in their own land, therefore
millions of Tutsi were killed it is worst because they are like a lion and deer
enable to satisfy the hunger of lion he must kill the deer. At the end every
human in this world do not have a right to take the lives of others because only
God has a right to do that.

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The stories of Flannery O'Connor

By MARY FLANNERY O'CONNOR

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