Sima's Blog

  The poem begins with a simple question for God: will He forgive the sin that all humans are born into? The speaker acknowledges that this sin isn't his (the speaker's) fault, and that it happened before he was even born. Then, without waiting for an answer, he asks God another question, this time if He will forgive the sins that the speaker continues to practice. The speaker ends the first stanza by telling God that when God has finished forgiving him for these sins, He isn't  quite  done yet… there are plenty more sins a-comin'. In the second stanza, the speaker echoes his earlier questions, but this time he's concerned with the sins he's caused  others  to participate in, not to mention the sins which he was able to briefly avoid for a while before giving in and enjoying. He again reminds God that this isn't the end of sins that need forgiving. They are starting to pile up, in fact. The final stanza focuses on the speaker's fear of dying before being...

  The speaker asks the object of his affection to come live with him—presumably to marry him and be his wife. He then discusses fish in pools and brooks as an indirect way of describing the allure of his beloved. The river will be warmed by her eyes, and the passing fish will be drawn to her, easily caught. If she enters the water, the fish will follow her. While others may catch fish in slimy and hurtful ways, deceiving the fish, the beloved is her “own bait,” honestly attracting others to her. The poet concludes that any fish that can resist her charms is wiser than himself. This poem shows Donne’s ability to take the standard pastoral form and apply it to a traditional spiritual metaphor. Whereas the traditional pastoral would focus on a shepherd or another land-based outdoorsman, “The Bait” takes as its motif a fisherman. Instead of sheep and green fields, Donne describes sparkling water and fish. The poem is made up of seven four-line stanzas, each of which follows an aabb rhy...

  Isabella was a lady from Messina who falls in love with Lorenzo, the administrator of her brothers’ fortune. They learn about the meetings of the lovers. At first they are silent to avoid scandal, but one day they invited Lorenzo to a festival outside the city and murdered him. Isabella was told that Lorenzo had had to make a long journey abroad. But months pass and he does not return. Isabella mourns and pines the departure of her lover. One day as she lay exhausted and sleeping, Lorenzo’s ghost suddenly appeared before her. He was pale, blood-drabbled, with garments rent and mouldy. He told her of her brothers’ deed and asked her to find his body where it lay. Isabella finds the grounds where Lorenzo had been murdered. She brings back his head and buries it in a pot of basil. She tends to this obsessively, arousing the suspicions of her brothers’. One day they steal away the pot and Isabella is left alone to die in pain, mourning the death of her one true love.

  An an unnamed village in India, an   astrologer   lays out his   tools of the trade , a mix of   cowrie shells , obscure charts, a notebook, and other such curios. They serve no purpose but to create the illusion of mysticism. The astrologer has also painted his forehead with sacred ash, wrapped his head in a turban, and seated himself and his gear beneath a large tree. All of these things serve to give him an air of wisdom, transcendence, and prophetic power, though the narrator is quick to point out that none of these qualities actually belong to the man. The astrologer has set up his little shop amidst a busy marketplace among people fencing stolen goods, presenting the same cheap food as a variety of gourmet delicacies, and auctioning off low-quality fabrics. The astrologer, quickly established as a fraud, is in the company of other fraudsters and spin doctors selling their wares and making their livings. The marketplace is  lit by various shop lights...

“ Kabuliwallah ”   opens with  the narrator  describing his five-year-old daughter,  Mini . She  “ can ’ t stop talking for a minute ”   and is frequently scolded by her  mother  for it. The narrator, on the other hand, thinks that it ’ s  “ unnatural ”   when Mini is quiet, and so he spends a lot of time talking to her and answering her many questions. One morning, Mini chats with her father while he ’ s working on an adventure novel. She looks out the window and spots a  Kabuliwallah  named  Rahamat  and starts calling to him. However, when he comes over, Mini runs into another room, convinced that his large bags are full of children, not goods. A few days later, the narrator finds Mini sitting next to Rahamat and talking to him with a pile of raisins and nuts in her lap. The narrator tells Rahamat not to give her any more treats and gives him a half-rupee, which Rahamat takes. Later, Mini ’ s mother scolds Mini for...

  On a dark autumn night, the   banker   paces in his study and recalls a party he hosted fifteen years before. In a flashback, he and several of his guests, many of whom are journalists and scholars, discuss whether capital punishment is more moral and humane than life imprisonment. While many, including the banker, assert that imprisonment is crueler because it kills by degrees rather than instantaneously, a young   lawyer   argues that life imprisonment is preferable because it is better to live somehow than not at all. The banker challenges him to be imprisoned in a cell for five years, and, not to be outdone, the lawyer insists he could do it for fifteen. The wealthy banker stakes two million rubles in exchange for the lawyer’s freedom. The banker goads then the lawyer over dinner, telling him to back out while he still can, because three or four years of the lawyer’s life (surely, the banker assumes, he will not stick it out any longer than that) is more v...

The story begins with  Della  despairing over the meager amount of money she’s managed to save over the past few months by pinching pennies. She had been hoping to save enough to buy her husband Jim a worthy Christmas present. Della suddenly goes to gaze at her reflection in a window, letting her hair fall to its full length below her knee. Della’s brown hair and Jim’s gold watch that had been passed down from his grandfather are the couple’s most prized possessions. Della runs to a hair shop and sells her hair for twenty dollars. Then she uses the money to buy Jim a simple platinum watch chain. The chain is described as possessing “quietness and value,” like Jim Della returns home to fix her hair into curls and make dinner. When Jim walks into the door, he freezes, staring at Della’s hair. Della tells him that she did it in order to buy a proper Christmas present for him. Jim snaps out of his shock, hugs Della, and throws a package on the table. ...