| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: inhabited by many indigenous tribes, it may justly be said at the
time of its discovery by Europeans to have formed one great
desert. The Indians occupied without possessing it. It is by
agricultural labor that man appropriates the soil, and the early
inhabitants of North America lived by the produce of the chase.
Their implacable prejudices, their uncontrolled passions, their
vices, and still more perhaps their savage virtues, consigned
them to inevitable destruction. The ruin of these nations began
from the day when Europeans landed on their shores; it has
proceeded ever since, and we are now witnessing the completion of
it. They seem to have been placed by Providence amidst the
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: I had expected to see a knob of wood there, you know.
I returned deliberately to the first I had seen--and there
it was, black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids--a head
that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and, with the
shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth,
was smiling, too, smiling continuously at some endless and jocose
dream of that eternal slumber.
"I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact, the manager said
afterwards that Mr. Kurtz's methods had ruined the district.
I have no opinion on that point, but I want you clearly to understand
that there was nothing exactly profitable in these heads being there.
Heart of Darkness |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: gave way to his avarice, and he could not think of losing so large a
sum as he knew he might expect for our ransom: he therefore sent us
word that it was in our choice either to die, or to pay him thirty
thousand crowns, and demanded to know our determination.
We knew that his ardent thirst of our blood was now cold, that time
and calm reflection and the advice of his friends had all conspired
to bring him to a milder temper, and therefore willingly began to
treat with him. I told the messenger, being deputed by the rest to
manage the affair, that he could not but observe the wretched
condition we were in, that we had neither money nor revenues, that
what little we had was already taken from us, and that therefore all
|
