| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien DeTroyes: his service. Three whole days the Joy lasted, before Erec could
get away. On the fourth he would no longer tarry for any reason
they could urge. There was a great crowd to accompany him and a
very great press when it came to taking leave. If he had wished
to reply to each one, he would not have been able in half a day
to return the salutations individually. The nobles he salutes
and embraces; the others he commends to God in a word, and
salutes them. Enide, for her part, is not silent when she takes
leave of the nobles. She salutes them all by name, and they in
turn do the like. Before she goes, she kisses her cousin very
tenderly and embraces her. Then they go and the Joy is over.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: "I wouldn't ask too much of her," I ventured. "You can't repeat the past."
"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!"
He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the
shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.
"I'm going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said,
nodding determinedly. "She'll see."
He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover
something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.
His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could
once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he
could find out what that thing was. . . .
The Great Gatsby |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: child. Therefore if you hear names such as are used in this country, you
must not be surprised, for I have told how they came to be introduced. The
tale, which was of great length, began as follows:--
I have before remarked in speaking of the allotments of the gods, that they
distributed the whole earth into portions differing in extent, and made for
themselves temples and instituted sacrifices. And Poseidon, receiving for
his lot the island of Atlantis, begat children by a mortal woman, and
settled them in a part of the island, which I will describe. Looking
towards the sea, but in the centre of the whole island, there was a plain
which is said to have been the fairest of all plains and very fertile.
Near the plain again, and also in the centre of the island at a distance of
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