Keats' Letters

Keats letter to Fanny Brawne is a passionate one and it seems he was head to toe in love with Fanny Brawne. The way he wrote the letter was as if he couldn’t live without her, that she was his air and lived under his skin.

Both Shelley and Keats were great writers. Keats letter to Shelley reveals that their relationship was quite close for Shelley would invite Keats to stay with him when he learned that Keats was going to Italy. Another evidence of the closeness of their relationship is that Shelley advised Keats not to publish his work, Endymion.

In his letter to Shelley, Keats wrote that ‘My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.’ He implies that imagination is more powerful than most powerful thing. I’ve read some of his poems last semester like Bright Star, Ode To A Nightingale, Ode To Autumn and Ode On A Grecian Urn which he wrote about his imagination, the relation between thought and sensation and his own identity.

I think to be a writer like Keats, one has to ‘too frequently think too much’ and ‘think about a lot deeply’. It sounds a bit insane to me because thinking too much about what have happened and what is yet to happen is both very unhealthy. If we keep on dwelling with negative thoughts, we will feel depressed and it will become a habit which most people do not realize. Too much thinking and analyzing will just make any problem worse. I believe that today is wonderful and I want to live it in the present.

The Blue Rose

The Blue Rose – A Folktale From China

‘Honesty is the best policy’ means that it is always to be honest even if you have done something wrong. In the folktale of ‘The Blue Rose’, the gardener’s son chooses to be honest not only to the others but also to himself that there is no blue rose anywhere. Instead of making up one, he uses his wisdom to make the white rose becomes blue by showing the Princess the rose in a blue room at sunset. I think the gardener’s son is courageous and admirable for being honest.

To be honest, one has to have courage and it reveals our characters. It is easier to be honest than telling a thousand lies to hide one act of dishonesty and create more and more troubles for oneself. Honesty is at the heart of who we are and what we believe in. It is a choice and we make it each day. The choice is ours, either to stand with dignity or to lower ourselves to standards of dishonesty and fall.

Shooting An Elephant

Shooting An Elephant by George Orwell

The Occupier & The Occupied

This is not a story simply about shooting an elephant but again it involves prejudice, neither against African nor black American, but the natives in Burma, the conflicts between the east and the west during the colonial ages.

The natives of Burma have no freedom and are in inferior status in their own country because of British colonization. They are humiliated for being occupied, humiliated by British immoral and unethical attitude. Therefore they resent the presence of British and there is a constant tension between the natives and the British.

So the main themes for the essay are like prejudice, resentment and freedom.

 I think the narrator faces an internal conflict. He could choose not to shoot the elephant and walked away. But he has no courage to go against the will of the crowd. Instead of choosing honour, he chose to go against his conscience. Too often the same kind of situation of choosing between right and wrong happens in our society.

Here is a link to the text of “Shooting An Elephant” of George Orwell with a very thorough analysis which can be used in the classroom. And check out this link which consists of worksheets of a graphic organizer and activities related to “Shooting An Elephant”.

I would like to share this "The Elephant Song" with you. It's by Kamahl. The lyric of the song is as below.

Tell me said the elephant
Tell me brothers if you can
Why all the world is full of creatures
Yet we grow in fear of man
Tell me said the elephant
tell me why this has to be
we have to run from man and hunter
never safe and never free

 people kill without regret
although they fly by jumbo-jet
let the word all may remember
let the children not forget.

Gentle is the elephant
Pulling loads and everything
we love to hear the children laughing
when we,re in the circus-ring
Happy was the elephant
Happy was his jungle life
and then they came, the cruel hunters
with their rifle and their knives

Listen, please listen, said the elephant
if we want the world we know, to stay alive
Then man and beast, we must work together
And together we will survive

Listen said the elephant
It is conservation time
So take the warning when we trumpet
For the future of mankind