| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum: they scattered like straws in the wind. But the noise and clatter
seemed as dreadful to them as Jim's heels, for all who were able
swiftly turned and flew away to a great distance. The others picked
themselves up from the ground one by one and quickly rejoined their
fellows, so for a moment the horse thought he had won the fight with ease.
But the Wizard was not so confident.
"Those wooden things are impossible to hurt," he said, "and all the
damage Jim has done to them is to knock a few splinters from their
noses and ears. That cannot make them look any uglier, I'm sure, and
it is my opinion they will soon renew the attack."
"What made them fly away?" asked Dorothy.
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: too; so that it was full night before we reached the wood. Upon
the shrubby hill of its edge Weena would have stopped, fearing
the darkness before us; but a singular sense of impending
calamity, that should indeed have served me as a warning, drove
me onward. I had been without sleep for a night and two days,
and I was feverish and irritable. I felt sleep coming upon me,
and the Morlocks with it.
`While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim
against their blackness, I saw three crouching figures. There
was scrub and long grass all about us, and I did not feel safe
from their insidious approach. The forest, I calculated, was
The Time Machine |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: BOOK X. Many things pleased me in the order of our State, but there was
nothing which I liked better than the regulation about poetry. The
division of the soul throws a new light on our exclusion of imitation. I
do not mind telling you in confidence that all poetry is an outrage on the
understanding, unless the hearers have that balm of knowledge which heals
error. I have loved Homer ever since I was a boy, and even now he appears
to me to be the great master of tragic poetry. But much as I love the man,
I love truth more, and therefore I must speak out: and first of all, will
you explain what is imitation, for really I do not understand? 'How likely
then that I should understand!' That might very well be, for the duller
often sees better than the keener eye. 'True, but in your presence I can
The Republic |
