Family Furnishings IOC Outline:

Introduction:

‘Family Furnishings’ is a short story written by Alice Munro. This short story is from Munro’s collection published in 2014, titled ‘Family Furnishings.’ In this short story Munro highlights the intricacies of maturing, exploring the prevalent yet inexplicit theme of coming of age. Munro reveals the burden of becoming an adult and having to carry the ‘family furnishings.’

Sequential Passage Analysis:

This passage is situated after the protagonist attends her father’s funeral, she meets Alfrida’s daughter and finds out that Alfrida did not attend the funeral due to her health problems and old age. The purpose of this passage is to confine the entire story and tie everything together. 

1.     Alfrida’s daughter recalls the story about Alfrida and the protagonist’s father:

a.     “Boy and a girl, they would just get teased something terrible” this foreshadows the incestuous relationship later revealed to have blossomed between the narrator’s father and Alfirda in their youthful years.

b.     “Bells rung.” According to the Bible, Bells ringing may symbolize the sacred union between a man and a woman. Bells also symbolize the start of a new life. The bells allude to the incestuous relationship between Alfrida and the protagonist’s father, and the extra-marital child that was created as a result of the union.

c.      Alfrida’s daughter recalls the story vividly, yet in a manner that is non-identical to the protagonist’s version of it. Here Munro reveals the “power” of words (as stated in line 7). Story telling is always structured in a manner appropriate for its readers.

2.     The protagonist is confused as to the change in the story she was once told about her father and Alfrida.

a.     “Only I thought hey were just children.” The noun ‘children’ symbolizes purity and innocence. In emphasizing the word children, Munro reveals the impurity of the relationship between Afrida and the protagonist’s father.

b.     “She was pretty good at remembering anything involving your father.” This alludes to the emotional attachment and love that Alfrida had for the protagonist’s father.

c.      “People change things around.” Munro discusses the power of words and storytelling once again, people have the ability to mend the truth and change their words in order to protect their selves.

3.     The protagonists finds out that she lived her whole life not knowing who Alfrida truly was:

a.     “She said you were smart, but you weren’t ever quite as smart as you thought you were.” Here the protagonist figures out the true relationship between her father and Alfrida, indicating how she had overlooked the truth through out her life.

b.     “She said you were kind of a cold fish.” This metaphor characterizes the protagonist as an unresponsive individual, oblivious to their surroundings.

This moment in the plot reveal’s that Alfrida and the protagonists father had emotional and sexual relationships in their teenage years. Alfrida’s reputation, her affinity for her father, her removal to another city, and an implausible story of armistice day with which Murno open her tale all allude to this overlooked relationship. Munro connected the dots, yet kept the reader from doing so. In doing so, Munro has emphasized the power of storytelling. Munro tests how we read between the lines.

The Moons of Jupiter- Practice IOC

Hello,

This is the link to my practice IOC. My passage if from a short story by Alice Munro, titled 'The Moons of Jupiter.'

Ed Sheeran ‘Small Bump’

Ed Sheeran is known for his magical hands, which strum the chords of our hearts and fuels us with many emotions.  ‘Small Bump’ is no different; it is a touching tale of the tragic journey to parenthood.

‘Small bump’ starts by Ed Sheeran sharing emotions of love and compassion with the listeners, the excitement that comes with parenthood. We smiled as he smiled at the though of the exciting journey of parenthood. We laughed as we thought about how his baby might look, whether he would the singer’s hair or the mother’s eyes. 

The song ending takes a tragic turn as the listeners find out that the baby has been ‘torn from life.’ The songwriter grieves the loss of his child and through his portrayal of his baby’s departure as being ‘torn’ from life by God, it is evident that the songwriter holds feelings animosity and blames God for his pain. This vivid image evokes emotions of sadness: an innocent child aggressively torn from the hands of his loving parents.

I personally have never experienced the attachment a parent feels towards his/her child; I don’t understand the eternal selflessness and love that parent are capable of. However, Ed Sheeran has crafted a tale in which he took us through the events of loving and expecting an unborn child and then grieving the child’s loss.  

You were just a small bump unborn, in four months you're brought to life

You might be left with my hair, but you'll have your mother's eyes

I'll hold your body in my hands be as gentle as I can

And now your scan on my unmade plans

Small bump, in four months you're brought to life

I'll hold you tightly, I'll give you nothing but truth

If you're not inside me, I'll put my future in you

You are my one, and only

You can wrap your fingers round my thumb and hold me tight

Oh you are my one, and only

You can wrap your fingers round my thumb and hold me tight

And you'll be alright

You're just a small bump unknown and you'll grow into your skin

With a smile like hers and a dimple beneath your chin

(Oh) Finger nails the size of a half grain of rice

And eyelids closed to be soon opened wide a small bump

In four months you'll open your eyes

I'll hold you tightly, I'll give you nothing but truth

If you're not inside me, I'll put my future in you

You are my one, and only

You can wrap your fingers round my thumb and hold me tight

Oh you are my one, and only

You can wrap your fingers round my thumb and hold me tight

And you'll be alright

You can lie with me, with your tiny feet when your half asleep

I'll leave you be

Right in front of me for a couple weeks

So I can keep you safe

'Cause you are my one, and only

You can wrap your fingers round my thumb and hold me tight

Oh you are my one, and only

You can wrap your fingers round my thumb and hold me tight

And you'll be alright

You were just a small bump unborn, for four months then torn from life

Maybe you were needed up there but we're still unaware as why

In what ways could Wallace’s theory about education be applicable to the writing of Alice Munro? Justify your conclusion.

The ability to see beauty in what is often overlooked is something both Munro and Wallace have in common.

In his essay, ‘This is Water’, Wallace discusses humans’ inability to understand their “most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities.” People over indulge in abstract realities, they often find themselves living their whole life in those abstract realities rather than in the real world. By abstract realities, I am referring to the pessimistic voice inside all of our minds, the ones we fail to ignore. Humans live their whole life seeing through the ‘water’, yet failing to acknowledge its vitality. We do not think of what lies in the heart of living: it is coming to terms with the fact that there are individuals other than ourselves in this world struggling and trying to survive in their own way. To live in serenity, we must learn to feel for one another and we must learn how to coexist. Wallace’s educational theory is that the liberal-arts cliché about ‘learning how to think’ is one that is far too often trivialized. Do not become “a slave to your head” and learn how to truly think for yourself. Wallace reminded me that despite having spent the majority of my life in a classroom, I have yet to learn how to think, how to truly think for myself.

Wallace’s prominent theory in his essay is that true freedom is acquired not from knowledge, but rather from being able to exercise control over how and what you think. We must acknowledge that the world does not revolve around us (as individuals). If this is not achieved, we will become slaves to our own thoughts and to the thoughts instilled into our brain by others. One’s inability to connect to other people enables feelings of isolation and depression to burgeon. Wallace states that to live a happy life, we must be able to connect with people through interpersonal intelligence: the ability to connect with other people through verbal and non-verbal means.

Munro and Wallace alike see the value in interpersonal intelligence. Munro’s writing, although anti-climatic, enables the readers to build emotional connections to her characters: empathy, sympathy and compassion. At the core of Munro’s short stories is the study human psychology. Like Wallace, Munro sees beauty in human relationships. In his essay, Wallace provides his reader’s with the grocery store anecdote, saying that spending an afternoon in a crowded grocery store is tedious to many of us. We begin to blame others for our misfortune. However, he states “It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars — compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things.” Similarly, Munro crafts stories such as ‘Passion’ in which the plot is far too enigmatic to be fathomed without a basic understanding of emotional intelligence. Munro creates  the character Grace: a young woman who builds her relationships solely on the need to satisfy her emotional needs, making them susceptible to a tragic ending. Munro enables the readers to live in the character’s mind. The readers become sympathetic towards Grace’s character and despite her sinful acts of emotional infidelity and her selfish actions, the readers see how her family history has impinged upon her personality. Munro enables the readers to see the world in colour: life is not in black and white, people are not distinctly good or bad. Every aspect of living has a different fusion of good and bad, yet it is easy for us the see the bad and overlook the good.

One must be aware of their internal state of mind, there is no doubt that humans must be emotionally stable in order to lead a successful life. However, emotional intelligence is just as important. After all, we are social beings and in order to secure the void we develop in isolation, we must learn how to connect with others and truly think for ourselves.

The importance of emotional intelligence in our lives has been emphasized by many philosophers. Aristotle famously stated “Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.” Furthermore, Abul 'Ala Al-Ma'arri, an Arab poet and philosopher once said “الناس للناس من بدو ومن حضر  …  بعض لبعض وإن لم يشعروا خدم”  meaning that humans are naturally social beings, and thus they must set their social and political differences aside in order to coexist. Humans must be able to empathize with one another, they must be able to understand that the world in which they live is not their own.

Emotional intelligence is an ostracized ability. It is a universal language, enabling us to feel in tune with all of humanity.

The Thief and the Dogs

The Thief and the Dogs. A novella depicting life in post-revolutionary Egypt, written by Naguib Mahfouz. A vivid psychological study into the mind of Said Mehran, a thief who spent his whole life seeking justice, oh the irony.

Existentialism is a prominent theme in the novel, built by Mahfouz's narrative techniques: stream of consciousness, soliloquy, and interior monologues. The end result is a surreal novella, hauntingly vidid.

I truly enjoyed attempting to capture what was lost in translation in this translated text. I often found myself thinking "I know what you are saying here Mahfouz, although it makes no sense in English, I know what you are saying." The truth is: idioms, wit, humor, amongst many other things, are lost in translation. The reason behind why I understood something a non-arabic-speaking reader would have looked over is due to my understanding of the form and structure of the Arabic language. A lot of what was said in English was rooted in an Arabic way of thinking and an Arabic mentality. "Ha-Ha!" I cried aloud as I felt privileged and wealthy through my knowledge of the Arabic language, as if it empowered me in some way. Then, I began to ponder at the amount of rich content which must have flown over my head from the translated text's I have read in the past. The feeling I felt at that moment could never be comprehended through words, I can only compare it to the fusion of nausea and high blood pressure.

Although a lot can be lost though translation, I think it is important for us to read translated texts. Not only do translated texts provide us with an authentic unveiling of a new culture and a new part of the world, but they reveal to us eras of history which he haven't lived long enough to see. Translated texts reveal a new style of writing, a new form of narration, and a new experience in which story-telling is presented as you had never seen it before.

A translated text is a ticket taking you through time and across the whole world.

Munro's Influence on the Ocean's Current

Over the summer, we have been asked to read several short stories by Alice Munro. Upon discussing these stories with my peers, I have found that many of them failed to connect to Munro's writing. However, I failed to understand them.

How could they not have devoured Munro's writing techniques? A treasure hunt, a guerrilla war against words in attempts to find a second dimension. The world that Munro has hidden behind the ivy blue ink, which she has slapped across the white A4 pages. A whirlpool, enjoy a front row seat in the theatre as the past and the future pirouette around you. A magic trick, in which Munro knows the cards in all the decks: one side of the card may read 'Alfrida', yet as you turn it upside down you will discover it is not 'Alfrida', it is the joker.

How could they have not grappled with Munro's exploration of the human psyche? Munro's short stories confront humans with their flaws: the flaws which they have veiled and hidden from society's scrutiny. Many writers utilize literature as a form of escape into a world with no sense of reality, detached from the tasteless life on earth and attached to the world in which dreams become a reality. Not Munro. Munro is fascinated by what we all think we understand, yet in reality, we don't. Munro is fascinated my humans. Munro delves into the human mind; she searches through an uninhabited ocean of human psychology.

Finally, how could they not marvel at Munro's influence on the ocean's current? How could they not pick up on the hints of the second wave of feminism weaved throughout all of the short stories our eyes demolished? The second wave of feminism strives for a"truly equal partnership with men" as aptly stated by the National organization for Women.

Munro's stories were often painful to read, they reminded me of the flaws in my society, the burden of womanhood. Munro's writing was heavy on my chest as it was incredibly personal: her words truly struck a chord and made me think whether I am truly "just a girl" and whether I would be able to walk against the wind for long.

Thank you Munro for adding flavor to my dry return to the desert.

IOC Practice

Text:

Coriolanus by William Shakespeare

Act IV, Scene 7

AUFIDIUS

I understand thee well; and be thou sure,

when he shall come to his account, he knows not

What I can urge against him. Although it seems,

And so he thinks, and is no less apparent

To the vulgar eye, that he bears all things fairly.

And shows good husbandry for the Volscian state,

Fights dragon-like, and does achieve as soon

As draw his sword; yet he hath left undone

That which shall break his neck or hazard mine,

Whene'er we come to our account.

Lieutenant

Sir, I beseech you, think you he'll carry Rome?

AUFIDIUS

All places yield to him ere he sits down;

And the nobility of Rome are his:

The senators and patricians love him too:

The tribunes are no soldiers; and their people

Will be as rash in the repeal, as hasty

To expel him thence. I think he'll be to Rome

As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it

By sovereignty of nature. First he was

A noble servant to them; but he could not

Carry his honours even: whether 'twas pride,

Which out of daily fortune ever taints

The happy man; whether defect of judgment,

To fail in the disposing of those chances

Which he was lord of; or whether nature,

Not to be other than one thing, not moving

From the casque to the cushion, but commanding peace

Even with the same austerity and garb

As he controll'd the war; but one of these--

As he hath spices of them all, not all,

For I dare so far free him--made him fear'd,

So hated, and so banish'd: but he has a merit,

To choke it in the utterance. So our virtues

Lie in the interpretation of the time:

And power, unto itself most commendable,

Hath not a tomb so evident as a chair

To extol what it hath done.

One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail;

Rights by rights falter, strengths by strengths do fail.

Come, let's away. When, Caius, Rome is thine,

Thou art poor'st of all; then shortly art thou mine.

Exeunt

Guiding Question for Passage Analysis:

1.  What is the main theme or idea in this text, and how has it been developed?
2. What atmosphere is the writer trying to create in the text?