| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: But that was no life for a girl! After I began to herd and milk, I could
never get the smell of the cattle off me. The few underclothes I had I
kept in a cracker-box. On Saturday nights, after everybody was in bed,
then I could take a bath if I wasn't too tired. I could make two trips
to the windmill to carry water, and heat it in the wash-boiler on the stove.
While the water was heating, I could bring in a washtub out of the cave,
and take my bath in the kitchen. Then I could put on a clean night-gown
and get into bed with two others, who likely hadn't had a bath unless
I'd given it to them. You can't tell me anything about family life.
I've had plenty to last me.'
`But it's not all like that,' I objected.
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: but I had not the heart to go back and drive them off.
I began walking along the beach in the opposite direction,
designing to come round the eastward corner of the island and so
approach the ravine of the huts, without traversing the possible
ambuscades of the thickets.
Perhaps half a mile along the beach I became aware of one of my three
Beast Folk advancing out of the landward bushes towards me. I was now
so nervous with my own imaginings that I immediately drew my revolver.
Even the propitiatory gestures of the creature failed to disarm me.
He hesitated as he approached.
"Go away!" cried I.
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: the ship, and Jacques put his feet upon the couch. The curtain
of my bed-place swung to and fro as if it were a punkah, the
bulkhead lamp circled in its gimbals, and now and then the cabin
door rattled slightly in the gusts of wind. It was in latitude
40 south, and nearly in the longitude of Greenwich, as far as I
can remember, that these quiet rites of Almayer's and Nina's
resurrection were taking place. In the prolonged silence it
occurred to me that there was a good deal of retrospective
writing in the story as far as it went. Was it intelligible in
its action, I asked myself, as if already the story-teller were
being born into the body of a seaman. But I heard on deck the
A Personal Record |
