Exploring Different Versions of Love in Literary Passages

Love and Hate:

What version of love appears in this passage?

1. Examine the last three-and-a-half pages of The Road. Make three observations about style. What is the significance of those observations? Consider here, perhaps, how those stylistic features emphasize or challenge McCarthy’s formulation of the environment that the boy and his father live in.

“How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! – Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion, and straight black lips.

The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.”

1. What version of love appears in this passage?

2. From George Elliott Clarke’s “Love Letter to an African Woman”:

Are you not Sheba, “black but comely,” who enlightened Solomon; Nefertiti, who brought glory to Egypt; Harriet Tubman, who brandished a pistol and pledged to shoot any slave who tried to abandon her freedom train; Lydia Jackson, who fled Nova Scotian chains to found Sierra Leone; Portia White, who enthralled the world with song; Carrie Best, who gave us a Clarion voice; Pearleen Oliver, who brought our history on home; Marie Hamilton, whose steadfast compassion uplifted many? Are you not these heroines and a hundred more?

African daughter, forgive me my several trespasses. I have been so week, so scared!

3. Black Queen, teach me to cherish children; teach me the pride of our Blackness, our Negritude; teach me that manhood is not the dumb idolatry of muscles but the impassioned sharing of love in battling injustice.

4. Explain three allusions in this section. How do those allusions help us understand the version of love in the poem?

5. What does Rosemary Moore get wrong about “The Bloody Chamber”?

6. Choose one text in which a character is reaching out – literally – for someone o somethinelse. What version of love appears in that text?

A. Write a three-sentence summary of this poem.

B. Identify at least two tones in the poem. Please provide evidence.

C. Identify one metaphor. Be sure to indicate what kind of metaphor it is.

D. How many lines in the poem have caesuras? Please provide evidence.

E. What are three words that describe the persona’s relationship with that man? Please provide evidence to justify your analysis.

Here is a hypothesis about the poem: “The persona is right; she does know that man.” To what degree is that claim correct? How does your evaluation of that claim help you understand the version of love presented in this poem? Write an essay that explains your answers. Be sure to provide a thesis statement; develop an argument; and use ample textual evidence.