FIRST DAY OF WORK OVER THE PRESENTATION ON BUENOS AIRES

I searched for different pictures about the 10 places that I consider essential visiting. Next comes: writing...

LETTER

Dear Sr. Editor of Yorkshire Magazine ,
I am a frequent reader of your column but as a student, I must admit that I was quite shocked by the one published in the Magazine's last issue.
I disagree completely with what you are expressing. First of all, students work hard and we do not deserve to be called lazy. Of course there are always exceptions to the rule but you should give priority to the generality.
Secondly, many students do engage in a responsible way in their studies and they even work at the same time, such as me! (if you are trying to find an example).
Therefore, those of us who do, we undoubtedly know and we are familiarized with the meaning and importance of hard work.
Thirdly, we do not complain all the time that we feel stressed or exhausted. We do this during exam's period, when most of us do not even sleep or, if we do, it is just for a couple of hours.
Besides, weren't you a student some time ago?
Just think about it. These are just some ideas to express my point of view.

Thank you very much,
Sincerely,
M. Camila Bones Dávila

PICNIC

SELF PORTRAITS AND SOCIAL MEDIA

1. Is there a difference between self-portraits we may take of ourselves on a day-to-day basis and those more contrived by artist’s and professional photographers?

To begin with, the pictures we take of ourselves are mere photographs. It is us just posing, generally doing crazy stuff, in parties, with wild make-up. Those self-portraits by artists are entirely different because they can be crazy and all but when it comes to expressing an artistic idea. They have a purpose concerning art; ours are expressing something as well but in most cases, it has nothing to do with art whatsoever. Our self-portraits have no photographic technique; it is just someone trying to make a crazy picture.

2.  If you haven’t seen the idea of taking photos of yourself as self-portraiture, for what reason do you record your life and times through the taking of self-portraits or, why do you think people in general feel so compelled to take photos of themselves?

I don’t take many pictures of myself at all. The pictures I have in Fb have been taken by somebody else in parties and that kind of stuff. I don’t like posing for the camera, it makes me uncomfortable.

People want to take photos of themselves because they want to show off something they have just bought, because they think too highly of themselves,  because they are egocentric, or simply because they have nothing to do with their time but to waste it taking silly photos.

3. One of the sections in the painting article dealt with the self-portrait as self-study.  Could this also be extended to the self-portraits we see in social media?  Are people really studying themselves or, is it still the narcissistic love of our own image?

I think it is just an expression of how much they like seeing themselves, exposed to everyone they know so that they can be “admired” as astonishing, beautiful creatures they are. I’m just kidding! But let’s face it, people want to be loved and admired and through these pictures they manage to make people watch them because humans are by nature curious and critics of everything and everyone.

THE INFLUENCE OF ERNEST HEMINGWAY ON AMERICAN LITERATURE: HIS SHORT STORIES

Getting to know the author.

Ernest Hemingway is a well-known writer who is admired for his prose but, at the same time, criticized because of it. He has numerous short stories, novels and poems published and he is very recognized even by those who dislike him. He even won a Noble Prize in Literature for The Old Man and The Sea “which the awards committee lauded for its ‘powerful style-forming mastery of the art of modern narration.” (Bloom, H., 1999).

Ernest Hemingway was the most famous representative of the so-called “lost generation”, that group of young writers who contributed to one of the greatest outpourings of modern literature in our history. They were young men who were either directly or indirectly involved in World War I. (Pidgeon, J. A., 2006).

He also participated in World War II. He had a very conflictive relationship with women, perhaps influenced by his lack of mother-son bond. He was an alcoholic and felt great passion for boxing, long fishing and hunting trips. He was a journalist and a reporter, used to observe reality and write about it in the most objective and brief way possible.

Hemingway was both a swaggering adventurer and a skillful craftsman. He revised his work endlessly, laboring to catch the most subtle of emotions with his sparse, telegraphic language. He lived life as largely as he could, endlessly generous to friends yet quick to anger, exuberantly joyful yet shadowed by the ever-present fear of failure and death. His work is largely pessimistic, recognizing the spirit of nada, nothingness that lurks behind the glories of fame and fate. Nonetheless, below this darkness lies a deep compassion, a sense of some ephemeral love and truth that can exist in the passing moment of human existence. He brought a new spirit of realism to American literature, a new ability to capture what really is and what makes us who we are. (Bloom, H., 1999).

Getting to know his style.

Hemingway is characterized by a very direct style, economy of language, repetition of certain words and rhythm. His dialogues are very simple and close to the everyday dialogues. Ezra Pound influenced Hemingway in a strong way; he actually follows Pound’s Principles in his writing.

The story must be composed of a series of melodic gestures; it is tone poem based on repetition of archetypal images and sounds within the implicative structures of unstated but implicit meanings. (Junkins, D., 1985)

Hemingway is known for a very uncommon style and indeed he is a master of the economy of narrative. He describes with precision and vividness using American English because he actually thought that the British were not a culture that had to be imitated or looked up to. He is ironic and pessimistic due to his war experience. He can sometimes transmit suffering, sentimentalism or disillusionment in his stories.

Hemingway distrusts all the emotions, except the simplest and most primitive (physical satisfactions, eating, drinking, making love) which are the pursuit of action for the action’s sake. His characters are never moved, they are never touched by aspiration, except emotions that are the product of physical desire or satisfaction. (Adams, Donald J., 1939)

The use of simple and everyday words is very common in Hemingway’s short stories. For instance, In The Killers Hemingway says: “Two other people had been in the lunchroom. Once George had gone out to the kitchen and made a ham-and-egg sandwich “to go” that a man wanted to take with him.” In Hills like White Elephants, ““The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.”

It is also very evident the use of short and simple sentences. He does not abuse language, he just delivers the ideas in a very natural and, I would risk saying, juvenile way. His sentences are built in a way that you can follow and understand without any problem. Sometimes, you can encounter short sentences that give the reader the impression of emphasis and economy followed by a notoriously long sentence. As an example, In Another Country he writes:

I had been wounded, it was true; but we all knew that being wounded, after all, was really an accident. I was never ashamed of the ribbons, though, and sometimes, after the cocktail hour, I would imagine myself having done all the things they had done to get their medals; but walking home at night through the empty streets with the cold wind and all the shops closed, trying to keep near the street lights, I knew that Ì would never have done such things, and I was very much afraid to die, and often lay in bed at night by myself, afraid to die and wondering how I would be when back to the front again.

He always begins his stories with a short first paragraph in which the reader can foresee where everything is taking place but nothing else. He always includes descriptions in this first paragraph but it all gets very confusing unless the reader continues reading. In Another Country, it all begins with:

In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows. There was much game hanging outside the shops, and the snow powdered in the fur of the foxes and the wind blew their tails. The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty, and small birds blew in the wind and the wind turned their feathers. It was a cold fall and the wind came down from the mountains.

In Hills like White Elephants, he presents the story with the following:

The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building. It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went to Madrid.

In The Killers, he starts with: “The door of Henry’s lunchroom opened and two men came in. They sat down at the counter.”

Hemingway’s style is very concise and in his descriptions he always uses the repetition of words to emphasize the message he is trying to deliver. In Another Country, “The three with the medals were like hunting-hawks; and I was not a hawk, although I might seem a hawk to those who had never hunted; they, the three, knew better and so we drifted apart.” In Hills like White Elephants, “The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glass on the table and looked at the man and the girl.”

His descriptions are very detailed in order to show the reader the whole scenario, to present the situation as Pound encouraged. In Hills like White Elephants:

The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.

In Another Country:

Although, as we walked to the Cova through the though part of town, walking in the dark, with light and singing coming out of the wine-shops, and sometimes having to walk into the street when the men and women would crowd together on the sidewalk so that we would have had to jostle them to et by, we felt held together by there being something that had happened that they, the people who disliked us, did not understand.

Hemingway is a fantastic writer when it comes to the use of metaphors. In Another Country, he presents the paradox of machines repairing what guns (machines likewise) provoked. He made a mockery of the imaginary that machines and technology can make everything work out and that the Americans have that power.

In Hills like White Elephants, It is full of metaphors regarding the main subject of the story. It all revolves around the dialogues of this couple that is deciding whether they should have an abortion or not. Then, we have the metaphor of the white elephant that refers to the burden that having a baby implies economically speaking.

How his life influenced his style, his own rule: Write what you know.

Many literary critics indeed see in each of Hemingway’s characters a representation of himself, their creator. It could be part of his doctrine that consisted on writing about what the author knows, creating real characters but not writing about real people.

Out of his emotions and needs, as well as out of a conscious desire to create and win approval, the author projects, transforms, exaggerates, and a drama emerges which is based on his life but which has only a very tenuous relationship to the situation, in its facts, that might be observed from the outside. That is to say, he writes out of his life, not about his life. So that one can say, yes, Hemingway's life is relevant to his fiction, but only relevant in the way that a dream might be relevant to the emotional stress that might have produced it. (Benson, J. J., 1989)

Hemingway wrote about war, wounds, threat, alcoholism, love disappointment, boxing, fishing and hunting. His stories take place in Spain, Paris, Africa, places that he had visited and even lived in.

Because of Hemingway's fame, because of his identification with his characters, because be advertised himself as writing from experience, and because he gradually failed to provide his fictions with sufficient distance, the attraction of the biographical fallacy has seemed nearly irresistible. (Benson, J. J., 1989)

Conclusions

Hemingway followed an unconventional path in his writing. He was an innovator and he was great at this. There is no doubt that he was a troubled man who felt terribly lost, and perhaps this is why he committed suicide.

Hemingway’s essential message is that man is a helpless victim of a malevolent environment, an environment which inflicts violence and pain. He believed that life wounds all of us unreasonably: If we love something we will lose it because life will rob us of it. (Pidgeon, J. A., 2006).

Hemingway was a genius and his short stories are a great accomplishment not only in its style, but also regarding their theme. He went beyond all boundaries and ended up with impressive “short” pieces of art.

References

Adams, Donald J. (1939). Ernest Hemingway. The English Journal. Vol. 28. N° 2, Part 1, 87-94.

Benson, J. J. (1989). Ernest Hemingway: The life as fiction and the fiction as life. American Literature, 61(3), 345.

Bloom, H. (1999). Biography of Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). Bloom's Major Short Story Writers: Ernest Hemingway, 11.

Fuschs, D. (1965). Ernest Hemingway, literary critic. American Literature, 36(4), 431.

Gajdusek, R. E. (1981). On the definition of a definitive text: Hemingway. Hemingway Review, 1(1), 18.

Guang, W., & Xuan, L. (2007). Striking style of writing in Hemingway's powerful novel: A review of the sun also rises. US-China Foreign Language, 5(8), 67-70.

Junkins, D. (1985). Hemingway's contribution to American poetry. Hemingway Review, 4(2), 18.

Lambadaridou, E. A. (1990). Ernest Hemingway's message to contemporary man. Hemingway Review, 9(2), 146.

Nakjavani, E. (1984). The aesthetics of silence: Hemingway's ‘The art of the short story’. Hemingway Review, 4(1), 38.

Pidgeon, J. A. (2006). Ernest Hemingway. Modern Age, 48(1), 90-92.

Smith, P. (1987). Impressions of Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway Review, 6(2), 2.

THE BIG NIGHT - REVIEW

Year: 1996 (Release date: 01/24/1996

Director: Campbell Scott & Stanley Tucci

Actors: Stanley Tucci – Tony Shalhoub – Ian Holm – Isabella Rossellini – Minnie Driver – Marc Anthony

This movie takes place in United States. Primo and Secondo are brothers that moved from Italy to United States seeking for new opportunities and a better life. They own an Italian restaurant located in an Italian neighborhood. They are about to close down their business because they cannot keep it running any longer. They are almost bankrupt.

Right in the corner, there is another Italian restaurant that is a complete success. Secondo knows the owner, Pascal, and he goes to visit him in order to ask for a loan but he gets nothing but the contact of Louis Prima that might give him the money he so desperately needs.

Primo and Secondo decide to throw a party and to invite Louis Prima. They arrange everything for the Big Night. In the meantime, both brothers encounter some problems but in the end, they get along just fine. The moment arrives. The place is full. However, hours go by, but the guest of honor does not arrive.

They decide to begin without him. They first serve “la zuppa” which is an absolute success. Then, “il primo piatto” which consists of 3 different kinds of risotto. After that, “il timpano” (a secret recipe from their hometown). Later, “il secondo piatto” (chicken, fish, pork). The guests area absolutely delighted and simply astonished. They were enjoying their best meal ever. Finally, “I dolci”.

At the end of the party, they find out that Louis Prima was never supposed to come because he was never invited in the first place. Secondo’s girlfriend finds out that he was cheating on her with Gabriella and she leaves him. Primo confesses to Secondo that an uncle of theirs was offering them a job in a restaurant back in Rome. Secondo will not leave. He would rather stay in the States because he still believes he can succeed.

The movie ends with both brothers in their restaurant’s kitchen having a what-could-be, their last breakfast together.

It is a good movie. A little bit slow at the beginning but it gets better. The scenes in which they prepare the meal are completely amazing, they just give you the desire to be there so as to taste those dishes.  

THE FIRST AUSTRALIANS

1. The British arrived in Australia in what year?  How does this year correspond to their colonies and activities elsewhere in the Empire?

They arrived the 25^th January 1788. Back then, they had already lost the 13 colonies in United States (1776) but they had just began their colonization of Asia.

2. What was the original landing site of their arrival called by the Aborigines and what was it renamed by the British?

In the East Coast. In a place called Warang by the aborigines and called Sidney by the British.

3.  Who was on the British ship and what was their interest in Australia at the time?

About 1,300 people. Half were convicts and the rest were soldiers. Arthur Phillip, Captain of the First Ship, decided to take humans, animals and supplies. There were 44 sheep, 4 cows, 1 bull, his own greyhounds, wine, seeds. He transported all this in order to begin the building of a new colony. He was named Governor under the instructions of endeavoring by all possible means an intercourse with the natives and conciliating their affections.

People were ordered to remain on the boat until dawn. At first light they were ordered to disembark. Within 2/3 days of landing, they were dancing hand in hand with the natives.

However, it was almost impossible that they would carry on their plans with the peace they intended.

They would in the end take the native’s land on the ground of believing they were simply animals. They wanted to take convicts that were crowding the jails in England.

4.  What was the Dreaming or Dreamtime in Aboriginal spirituality?

Before the Dreaming, the Australian Continent was a flat place. Then, came the spirits from the sky, came within the sea and emerged within the earth. With their arrival, the Dreaming started and life was born. In the North of Australia, humanity was given birth. In Central Australia, the marriage laws were brought to life. On the East Coast, the landscape was shaped. When it was all completed, the spirits went to a mountain and looked at the sky. As they moved across the land, rivers were created and the earth was shaped. In everything the spirits touched they left their essence making the land sacred to those who honored them. These were the First Australians.

5. Who was the Aborigine who took on a significant role among the settlers and, later, in England itself?

His name was Bennelong.

6.  How would you characterize his situation, or, what do you think he was thinking he was going to accomplish?

Bennelong survived the epidemic that took place in Sidney and he was kidnapped along with another man. They were taken to the Governor’s House to function as interpreters and to explain the british intentions to the aborigines. He managed to scape after a while and to return to his former way of living. However, in 1790 Phillip was determined to establish friendly relationships with the natives. He went to a spot were Bennelong had been seen. Phillip is wounded as a revenge.

Bennelong and his wife decide to go back to the Governor’s House and this is evaluated by the natives as a sign of the good will of the british. It brings a bit of understanding to the situation.

Bennelong and a little boy go voluntarily to England in 1793. To some, he just worked as a trophy of what the british had accomplished back in the colony. He was the proof of that.

To others, this was used by Bennelong as an opportunity to infiltrate perfectly in the british society. In 1794, the little boy dies from pneumonia and Bennelong is left all alone and on the verge of dying himself.

He eventually lost his position of authority back in his tribe and he asked whether he could return to his home land. He eventually did and became an alcoholic. In the end, he managed to leave the Governor’s House and return to his old habits. In 1813 he died.

He was evaluated as a peace-maker and a leader to the natives. He had strong political skills.

7.  How does the British Australian experience of colonization differ and how does it overlap with their previous attempts in North America, which includes Canada, and India?

In Australia, the aborigines and the british were trying to comprehend each other despite the incidents of cruel violence that did take place. There was a friendship built in some cases, a true relationship and the natives were actually very fond of the white people, which did not happen in the other colonies.

Actually, in Australia the descendents of the first Australians are still fighting for their land rights.

8. Bonus Question: What do you do with a drunken sailor?

Just like the song says,

“1. Put him in the long boat till he's sober,

2. Keep him there and make 'im bale 'er.
3. Shave his belly with a rusty razor.
4. Put him in bed with the captain's daughter.”

A HISTORY OF BRITAIN

1. What was the British idea of liberty before the Empire began its exploration, colonization and settlement of North America?

Liberty represented the reward for centuries of civil wars that had helped to transform Britain into the freest country in the world. Liberty had become their religion and they actually built temples in their gardens to bring virtue to it. With Liberty came along trade which brought power to Britain.

2. The sugar plantation became a significant British interest in various parts of the New World.  Why was sugar so important at the time and what were the consequences of this interest?

Sugar was once seen as a luxury, but now it was seen as a necessity. Barbados provided the perfect habitat to make it grow (tropical heat and saturating rains) Britain began to settle in the West Indias, transforming the forests into sugar plantations. It took 40 months for the plantations to be ready. It was a very messy and dangerous job. The plantations required strong, quick men, “beasts”, that would not dare to complain. They were slaves.

3. Slavery and Empire, what was the relationship between the two and, what was the inherent contradiction between the ideals of Empire and its actuality in practice?

In order to transform the plantations into “liquid gold”, the British did not care whether they had to go to Africa to look for slaves and then ship them back to the Indias. The logistics were difficult but the outcome was good. The amount of slaves was enormous, 3.5 million. The slave commodity was the most important of all because it contributed to the building of british cities, and generated british profits. Back in Britain people were silent about turning people into slave animals because the scale of profits was huge. Slaves to them were simply commodities, objects.

4. Describe the conditions of the slave ships.

It was an absolute nightmare. Families were separated and slaves were chained with very little air to breath and with a broad variety of smells. It was deplorable, a real scene of horror. Children in fact were almost suffocated and the majority of people did not actually survive.

5. The conception of death the slaves held differs dramatically from the norm, how so and, do you think there conception of death was justified/justifiable?

When some of the slaves died, no one noticed until the crew did the daily check-up. Until then, slaves who were alive and those who were dead were chained one to another. Finally, the dead slaves were unchained and thrown overboard and eaten by sharks. For me, it is simply inconceivable. For the slaves, death represented liberty, the return of their spirits back home, to Africa.

6. General Wolfe´s conquest of Quebec had far reaching results, what was the immediate effect of this conquest and what did it mean for the British?

Wolfe planned a quite improbable attack: soldiers would climb the cliffs that protected the city and surprise the French people. Wolfe died in the arms of his brother, therefore becoming the first Empire Martyr. Victory in Quebec, and then Montreal, helped to establish the British Empire in North America and it meant the triumph of liberty over the French despotic regime.

7. What was the role of taxation in America and what part did it play in the British losing the 13 Colonies?

Taxation has always triggered the British Civil Wars. The result of taxes can be described as a complete disaster. Britain was a huge military state, supporting a big army and navy and a tax collecting machine.

8. What does `no taxation without consent’ refer to or, how were the British using taxation against the American Colonies?

Freedom to the Americans was simply an illusion, a dream because they were intended to continue paying taxes to the British. John Adams would not pay taxes anymore and he, with other people, gathered in the streets of wealthy Boston to refuse to give away their money. They were against of British taxes.

9.  The Stamp Act became known as the Tax of Knowledge, explain why and how.

Britain decided to put a tax on paper used to print newspapers, official documents. To over-informed Boston this seemed a tax on knowledge and it lit a fire. The best-educated people who were affected directly by this stamp were angry. The mob lit on fire the house of the Governor of Massachusetts. This ended up dividing the British Parliament.

10.  Where and when did the British finally surrender to the American Patriots?

The 4^th July 1776 the Declaration of Liberty was signed in Philadelphia. George III was declared a tyrant and all men were declared equal with the same rights. In 1781 in Yorktown, Virginia Britain finally surrendered and Liberty became a reality, it was no longer a dream. The Americans had had the support of France.

11.  Who was Richard Clive?  What was his role in the British colonization of India?

Clive gathered some people and took them to the Capital. During 6 long weeks they fought. He won and managed to make France retire its troops. Many years later, Clive became a sort of Indian Caesar and he turned India into a source of profit. He started collecting land taxes.

12.  What happened in Calcutta that brought such infamy to the British occupation of the city?

Calcutta became a black hole. In 1756 most of the residents managed to leave town in time but the rest were imprisoned in a cell in the ground without food, water and with no air. They were suffocated.

13.  How did the consistent nature of the French-English conflict assume a conflicting role in various parts of the world always, it seems, to the detriment of the native populations?

The French were seen as despotic and the British thought of themselves as providers of freedom. They fought constantly for power and to obtain territories from where they could profit somehow. They committed atrocities, without caring about people. They were machines of war, wanting to become more and more powerful than the other. They saw the native populations as a necessary cost to acquire full domain of territories.

14. What role does Rome and the Roman Empire play in the British consciousness in terms of conquering and Empire?

The Roman Empire thought of themselves as guardians of an Empire. They would hold wars just to provide peace. This was contradictory. Britain saw Rome as a model that had to be followed and imitated.

15.  Are there visible comparisons to be made between the current United States `Superpower’ that has recently lost its defining characteristics of liberty and justice in the pursuit of economy and power, and that of the British Empire, the Roman?  Are we seeing the end of the pseudo Empire of the United States?

We cannot tell whether this is the end of US as an economic Empire. However, it is true that US values have been lost in the way and they have commited the same atrocities that Britain and France did to them. They signed independence holding Liberty and Justice and Equality as values that any human being hold in his most inner self. They have ignored all this and destroyed the image they once had of rectitude and humanism.

IMAGISM

Here I make a description of a situation:

“It was quiet. There were flashes of light coming from different places. Where am I? Suddenly, I started to feel his breath. He was whispering something that I just couldn’t understand. In a split second, I decided to grab his hand and start running. This was the last place I wanted to be!”

Here I demonstrate how a description can be transformed into a presentation of an image:

“Silence and flashes of light,

I don’t know where I am

Hold my hand tight

And we’ll run away.”