Abstract
The paper relates a review of a novel in which the author takes a complex journey through various literary themes. The book "Saving Fish from Drowning" by Amy Tan, is a political satire directed at the cultural clash between the West and the East. The paper relates that the story is a monograph of the insincerity and tensions that often pervade human relationships, especially when there are also race or gender differences involved.

From the Paper
"Turning to her own family, the Bibi Chan reveals even more of these stereotypes related to gender and gender roles. In a Chinese family, these tend to be even more poignant. Thus, her father is portrayed as a self-centered person, very little preoccupied with his own family, who is worshipped by the household women simply because he is a man: "He read much, but seldom spoke, and truly, there was no need in a household whose women worshipped him and anticipated his needs before they ever occurred to him."(Tan, 29) The insincerity of the family relationships described by the ghost narrator is striking: the father is the typical male dominator who rules over his family and expects all his wishes to be fulfilled by the women even before he voices them, the stepmother is cold and tyrannical and the communication between members is virtually inexistent. With her usual sarcasm Bibi Chan notices that, as a child, she interpreted the lack of communication as a token of perfect harmony typical of the ideal marriage: "I was thus left to assume that a good marriage was one in which the husband respected the wife's privacy. He did not intrude in her life, visit her rooms, or bother her with questions. There was no need to speak to each other, since they were of the same mind."(Tan, 30) More stereotypes about women appear in Sweet Ma's description of Chan's natural mother, who, as she says, always used her feminine charms, paired with a submissive attitude, to gain something from her husband: "She was a schemer. She'd put on her rose-colored dress, twirl her favorite flower hairpin, and with eyes dishonestly lowered, she would raise that simpering smile of hers toward your father. Oh, I knew what she was up to."(Tan, 33) The woman in a traditional Chinese family is seen thus almost as an ornamental object, without a will of her own, who is necessarily a good breeder and is capable of becoming pregnant every year: "According to Sweet Ma, my mother proved true to her breeding and excelled at becoming pregnant every year. 'She gave birth to your eldest brother,' Sweet Ma said, counting on her fingers. 'Then there was your second brother. After that, three blue babies, drowned in the womb, which was a shame but not so tragic, since they were girls.'"(Tan, 34) As Sweet Ma evidences, no tragedy occurred if out of the many children bred by the woman, a few newborn girls died, since the girls had no importance. Thus, the ghost narrator of the story is a very witty and sarcastic feminist, who captures a sum of powerful stereotypes related to womanhood, motherhood and masculinity in her book. The female and the male worlds appear at some points as completely irreconcilable, both for the Chinese and for the Americans. "

Tags:race, gender, women, chinese

Abstract
This paper provides a comparison and contrast of two poems, Karl Shapiro's "Auto Wreck" and Stevie Smith's "Not Waving But Drowning." How the authors use different poetic devices to reinforce the tone and theme of their works is a focus.

From the Paper
"In Karl Shapiro's poem "Auto Wreck" and Stevie Smith's poem "Not Waving But Drowning", the poets both render poems that are gloomy or despairing in tone. In Shapiro's poem, fascination with the carnage of an automobile wreck shows the ubiquity of deadly technology's presence among humans. In Smith's poem, the pain of isolation from and rejection by others is brought home when a drowning man's cries for help are taken as waving and ignored. In comparing and contrasting "Auto Wreck" and..."

Tags:humanity, mortality, imagery, metaphor, simile, oxymoron, death, despair

From the Paper
"Stevie Smith's "Not Waving But Drowning," Karl Shapiro's "Auto Wreck," and Frank O'Hara's "Poem" each focus on violent death, although in very different ways.

Smith writes in part from the viewpoint of the man who "was much further out than you thought" (Smith 989). This is a drowning man's thought, a perspective which sets it apart from the other two poems.

The violence of drowning, and the fact that he is seen as waving rather than signaling desperately for rescue, are metaphors in this poem for his life. Those who hear of the drowning reflect that the water was too cold, that his heart failed. These others see the fact that they mistook the man's signals as waves as evidence that he "always loved larking" (Smith 989)."

From the Paper
"Drowning ranks second only to motor vehicle accidents as the most common cause of accidental deaths among children. Almost 5 children per 100,000 drown each year in the United States alone. Infants and toddlers are most at risk: as many as 45 percent of all cases involve children not yet one year old. This research focuses on reasons behind drownings, how they can be prevented and medical problems resulting from near drownings. For the purposes of this research, near drownings are classified as a life threatening incident in which children are found face down or under the surface of water. Cases in which children are found floating and breathing, or struggling, are not included.

During 1989, swimming pools accounted for between 55 and 80 percent of all childhood drowning deaths in the United States."

Abstract
Focuses on a woman's tenuous hold on reality. Discusses ways in which the character of Amanda fluctuates, including her mental instability, Amanda's two secrets, her sister's death, and her relationship with her sister's daughter.

From the Paper
"The character of Amanda Starkey in Christina Schwarz's Drowning Ruth is a woman driven by rejection, a desire to be loved, and a pair of terrible secrets that shape her entire adult life. This brief essay will examine..."

Abstract
This paper examines how in Primo Levi's last book, "The Drowned and the Saved", he seeks to find meaning and understanding in his experience in the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz. It looks at how he introduces the "Gray Zone" where internal collaboration between inmates and Nazis becomes the only way of survival. This paper critically analyzes the "Gray Zone" and the Nazis as "enemies of memory" who strategically aimed at destroying the souls of dissidents.

From the Paper
"The second and longest essay focuses on the "Gray Zone," where the relationship between victim and oppressor is blurred and deemed incomparable to any other traumatic experience. Levi is captivated by the feelings of guilt and shame experienced by survivors and disapproves popular romantic notions of liberation that were not experienced by survivors. Furthermore, logical explanations for feelings of guilt and shame are unfounded and as Levi points out, this burden illustrates the morbid oppression implemented by the Nazis, which led to many suicides, a thought that was completely absent and incomprehensible while in the Lager. Levi's own internal conflict is revealed in the third chapter: "I felt innocent, yes, but enrolled among the saved and therefore in permanent search of a justification in my own eyes and those of others. The worst survived, that is, the fittest; the best all died" (82). Although survival depended mostly on sheer luck and coincidence, some prisoners created their own good fortune in collaborating with the Nazis. "

Tags:holocaust, auschwitz, prisoners

Abstract
This paper examines Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short story, 'The Most Handsomest Drowned Man in the World", which is about a corpse washing ashore and how it changes those who find it. In particular, it looks how the story is ironic in that it revolves around the fact that a dead man brings the village to life and how things that were once viewed with a dullness and complacency are suddenly seen with an attitude of appreciation and value. It examines how Marquez forces us to consider how we view unexpected events in our lives.

From the Paper
""The Most Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" is ironic in that is takes a dead man to bring the village to life. His presence told them a story of loneliness, which they respond to by giving him a home and a place to feel welcome. Esteban also becomes a symbol of change for the villagers because his presence inspires them to alter certain aspects of their lives. For instance, they are inspired to dig for springs and plant flowers on the cliffs "so that in future years at dawn the passengers on great liners would awaken" (560). It takes a dead man to bring them back to life."

Tags:corpse, village, esteban

Abstract
This paper discuses how Gabriel Garcia Marquez's story, "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World", illustrates neatly, how the process of acquiring knowledge through the logical structures of critical thinking is limited by a variety of perceptual blocks that effectively pre-filter new information into already functional categories of knowing. In particular, the paper looks at how, by placing a primary emphasis on visual perception, this story articulates the logical processes that take the children in the story from initial perception (seeing the bulge) through to full knowledge.

From the Paper
"It is important to understand, as Michel Foucault points out, that the mediating process of logic - the linking through induction or deduction of newly perceived with the already known - is not a gesture that can stand alone as an elementary unit, but must be seen as a function that is linked horizontally to that which has come before (the already perceived) and that which has yet to come into perception as the not-yet seen and, by extension, the not-yet known. (Foucault, 1972, p.107-8). Put another way, even with the finely-tuned process of deductive logic in place, an individual's range of knowledge (what he or she can know) is in many ways limited by what has already been perceived. In this sense, logic works, like metaphor to a literary theorist or linguist, to locate a new perception in terms of the structures of the already known and the already perceived. "

Tags:bulge, knowledge

Abstract
This compares the works of two Afro-Caribbean writers: Jamaica Kincaid's "Angie John" and Junot Diaz's "Drown". The paper focuses on the theme of alienation present in both novels, specifically focusing on the marginalized role of the father figure. The paper summarizes and compares each work as well as how each work treats the father figure and concludes that, despite the differences in both the works, there exists a common patriarchal order in both, which makes the reader question the woman's place in it.

From the Paper
"Most families represented in Drown can be sharply contrasted with Annie John's family. Five out of ten stories fluctuate between abandonment and return of fathers. The rest are practically fatherless families. The number of single mothers through the collection is proof enough of the sexual irresponsibility of the men. The first sentence of Aguantando strikes the note of longing for an absent father - "I lived without a father for the first nine years of my life". The plight and the helplessness of the narrator is heightened when he says, "He had left for NuevaYork when I was four but since I couldn't remember a single moment with him I excused him from all nine years of my life" adding that "the only way I knew him was through the photographs my mom kept in a plastic sandwich bag under her bed". "

Tags:Aguantando, Alexander, John, Fiesta, 1980

Abstract
This essay was designed to explore recurring motifs in Herman Melville's most famous novel: "Moby-Dic"k. The essay covers a very large portion of the book, and focuses mainly on instances of Diving, Falling, Returning, and Drowning. In addition to the motifs, it also explores the characters of Ishmael, Queequeg, and Captain Ahab and delves into the reflective nature of the novel as it pertains to self-exploration.

From the Paper
"There dwells in the lineage of individual creation a defining genesis in which rudimentary elements congeal and emerge from the tempestuous pandemonium of a primordial sea. The oldest of earthly wombs, the ocean reigns sovereign to all portals of existence. In the most tranquil of lulls, and whispering softly through the grand tumultuous gales, the sea remains a boundless lung of all existence. Inhaling death, she recycles the discarded refuse that even scavengers deny. And, exhaling life, she matches souls with empty vessels in one all-encompassing breath. Herman Melville believed that God shaped the universe around an endless web of purpose and meaning. According to Melville, man's innate sense of futility is rooted in his impulsive desire to grasp for purpose and meaning in randomness. At the beginning of the novel, Ishmael's breath is growing faint. His soul is steeped in "a damp, drizzly November"(12), and his spirit longs for an escape from monotony. Rather than fight this lethargy head on with "pistol and ball"(12), Ishmael boards a ship and quietly sails away. As Ishmael drifts into the fathomless expanses of two unpredictable seas, he falls from the comforts of his former life into the harsh complexities of an unknown world. Diving deep into the core of his substantive elements, and sometimes drowning in the darkest shadows of humanity, Ishmael successfully completes his protracted voyage of self discovery."

Tags:ahab, captain, ishmael, jonah, pequod, queequeg, whale