| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: understood her as these ordinary fellows at the Boosters' Club never could.
II
Five hours after he had arrived in Zenith and told his wife how hot it was in
New York, he went to call on Zilla. He was buzzing with ideas and
forgiveness. He'd get Paul released; he'd do things, vague but highly
benevolent things, for Zilla; he'd be as generous as his friend Seneca Doane.
He had not seen Zilla since Paul had shot her, and he still pictured her as
buxom, high-colored, lively, and a little blowsy. As he drove up to her
boarding-house, in a depressing back street below the wholesale district, he
stopped in discomfort. At an upper window, leaning on her elbow, was a woman
with the features of Zilla, but she was bloodless and aged, like a yellowed
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Adam Bede by George Eliot: quarries; while Lisbeth would ask him how he supposed the coffin
had been got ready, that he had slinked off and left undone--for
Lisbeth was always the first to utter the word of reproach,
although she cried at Adam's severity towards his father.
"So it will go on, worsening and worsening," thought Adam;
"there's no slipping uphill again, and no standing still when once
youve begun to slip down." And then the day came back to him when
he was a little fellow and used to run by his father's side, proud
to be taken out to work, and prouder still to hear his father
boasting to his fellow-workmen how "the little chap had an
uncommon notion o' carpentering." What a fine active fellow his
Adam Bede |
