A Small, Good Thing

“I want to talk to the doctor. I don’t think he should keep sleeping like this. I don’t think that’s a good sign” (Carver 381).
-This statement shows that Dr. Francis provided Ann with bland answers that.

“Scotty was fine, but instead of sleeping at home in his own bed, he was in a hospital bed with bandages around his head and a tube in his arm. But this help was what he needed right now” (Carver 382).
-This was a thought just stay on the positive sides of things.

“We’ll know some more in a couple of hours, after the results of a few more test are in. But he’s all right, believe me, expect for the hairline fracture of the skull. He does have that” (Carver 382).

“I’ve been praying, I almost thought I’d forgotten how, but it came back to me. All I had to do was close my eyes and say, ‘Please God, help us—help Scotty,’ and then the rest was easy. The words were right there. Maybe if you prayed, too” (Carver 384).

   Something else that the couple was aware of throughout the story and that was also shown to us in the closing scene of the story was: it was still important for the couple to take care of themselves and each other. They sought to do the little things that they could to make themselves feel better; for example, the couple continually told each other to get some rest, get some food, and relax. Also, they gave small embraces and checked to see if each other were okay. It was valued by the couple to tend to each other and themselves in a time of need.  At the very end, the baker assured the couple that eating something when you’re in a poor state is “a small, good thing.”
   This is often seen in many other situations where someone is ill. For instance, I could directly relate to this story. My grandma one day became extremely ill. We instantly ran to the hospital, but the doctors were not giving us the answers we needed. They only provided bland answers that did not justify what I searched for.
   Doctors played the waiting game with us too and my family took a similar approach to cope with the pain of waiting. We constantly asked each other how we were doing and told each other to get rest. We looked at the small things to help the larger picture.  My family too believed that praying was the solution. We leaned to God for help because we had felt he was the only one who can ultimately help us.

"There were no pleasantries between them, just the minimum exchange of words, the necessary information" (Carver 376).

-This quote resembles alienation and isolation. Ann's overall minimal knowledge of the baker and/or her neighborhood. The baker resembles God itself. An image often seen with a bakery is bread. Being Catholic at a Catholic institution, I recognize bread as the body of Christ. The baker resembles God and how religion is always there even if you didn't recognize it. The baker also resembles how Ann and Howard were being contacted by God throughout the story but did not realize it. Both Ann and Howard were praying for Scotty, and the baker, the image of God, was responding through phone call. The bakery is unforeseen image of Christ. This shows that although there was a minimal exchange of words, there ultimately was a resolution. In the end of the story they realize the baker is the one consistently making the phone calls to them. Ann and Howard, disappointed about there son, attend the bakery to pay for the cake they never picked up. The baker befriends them and offers the smallest thing in order for pleasure. Ultimately that's all religion has to be for you. Religion can being the largest factor in an individuals life or the smallest thing, in the end, it plays a reflecting role on peoples lives as the baker did in "A Small, Good Thing".

The Masquee of the Red Death

by Edgar Allan Poe

 

While reading quotes by Edgar Allan Poe, keep in mind how dark everything is...

 

 

 

"The 'Red Death' had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous" (3).

 

"There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and the profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution" (3).

 

"But the prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand half and light-heated friends from among and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys" (3).

 

"The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue" (4).

 

"But in the western or black chamber the effect of the firelight that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all" (5).

 

"There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust" (6).

"But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the sable drapery appalls; and to him whose foot falls upon the sale carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments" (7).

"There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made" (8).

"Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of revelers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse-like mask, which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form" (10).

"And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all" (10).


 

 

 

Her Final Show

by Rafael Campo

She said it was a better way to die
Than most; she seemed relieved, almost at peace,
The stench of her infected Kaposi's
Made bearable by the Opium applied
So daintily behind her ear: "I know
It costs a lot, but dear, I'm nearly gone."
Her shade of eye shadow was emerald green;
She clutched her favorite stones. Her final show
She'd worn them all, sixteen necklaces of pearls,
Ten strings of beads. She said they gave her hope.
Together, heavy as a gallow's rope,
The gifts of drag queens dead of AIDS. "Those girls,
They gave me so much strength," she whispered as
I turned the morphine up. She hid her leg
Beneath smoothed sheets. I straightened her red wig
Before pronouncing her to no applause.

     The bolded statement "She said it was a better way to die" proves that she was accepting of her death. Death causes pain and she overcame the pain because of hope. Rafael Campo never states the victims name because he is doing it out of trust. He pursues truth by being compassionate to a friends illness. This poem relates to Dominican University's mission statement: As a Sinsinawa Dominican- sponsored institution, Dominican University prepares students to pursue truth, to give compassionate service and to participate in the creation of a more just and humane world.
     In this poem Campo's friend is suffering from AIDS and receives hope from other drag queens. The poem mentions things of value, such as "costs a lot," "emerald green," and "sixteen necklaces of pearls." This shows the monetary value of money and beauty for drag queens. Drag queens view beauty as a value and it gives them hope. The gifts by people who have passed away, such as pearls, surrounds her with death and love by others. She also is being compassionate to those who have passed away as well by wearing the pearls passed down to her. Campo would like to live in a more just and humane world. Ultimately Campo was doing a compassionate service by being there for a friend who is suffering.

After the biopsy

 

Jul 25, 2006 by Anya Silver              

“Each time that we have some pain to go through, we can say to ourselves quite truly that it is the universe, the order and beauty of the world, and the obedience of creation to God that are entering our body. After that, how can we fail to bless with tenderest gratitude the Love that sends us this gift?”
                                —Simone Weil

The pathology report an icon; the tissue
staining the slide, God’s kaleidoscope.
And those cells, obeying their DNA,
cosmic dust as they whirl and split.
Why not praise cancer, relentless, blind,
that seeks and finds the lymph and blood?
Because I am unthankful, rude.
Because if I linger over this gift,
I will change, I will vanish from the earth.
In Russia, an icon of Mary has wept
for twenty years. Mary, do you see
my nuclei mutating, like words
in “whisper down the lane”? This same God
took your son away. Help me disobey.

 

When it pertains to religious ideologies, it is said that everything is made in the image of God, as discussed in the book of Genesis and numerous times throughout the Bible.  The beginning line of the poem “After the Biopsy” describes the pathology, or the science of the causes of diseases, as an icon. Icons are defined as a representation of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, or a holy figure by the Collins English Dictionary; as a picture, a sculpture, or a painting. This immediately sets straight the belief by the narrator that what is happening to her body is an act of God, sculpted in his image. God views these images through his kaleidoscope in which the cancer tissue is the stain of the slide. This image makes the reader think of God overlooking every detail and watching the cells as they obey their creation and their purpose; splitting and producing. This relates directly to our school motto: Caritas Veritas. Caritas Veritas or Love and Truth answers the questions of being and becoming, of meaning and calling, of mindfulness and wonder. It allows us to examine life as a whole. God is overlooking us all and his creation allowed cancer. Cancer is reality and through love and truth one may overcome the calling of cancer and the meaning of our calling. Although one may want to disobey, the truth is God has created cancer and cancer was upon you. The reality is one may overcome the fight and one may be able to do so through love and a fight. The purpose of the poem is to show her reflection on life and religion after something so tragic has happened to her; the goal is to overcome it.

 

Lament By Thom Gunn

 

"Your dying was a difficult enterprise."
     The poem starts off with a nameless victim stating how the death of something was a difficult challenge that they encountered. This line proves that there is a challenge ahead of them.

"In hope still, courteous still, but tired and thin,   

You tried to stay the man that you had been"

This quote proves that although this "man" encountered a challenge, he still would still like to be the same man that he has always been. Although he may have encountered a challenge, he would like to be treated the same and act the same as if "nothing" has happened.

 

"No respite followed: though the nightmare ceased,   

Your cough grew thick and rich, its strength increased."

This was seen as a nightmare because of the sickness. The sickness is developing and his cough is growing thicker, more in strength.

 

"We talked between our sleeping bags, below

A molten field of stars five years ago:

I was so tickled by your mind’s light touch

I couldn’t sleep, you made me laugh too much"

 

"You never thought your body was attractive,   

Though others did, and yet you trusted it   

And must have loved its fickleness a bit"

He always viewed himself as unattractive; even though other did, he became untrustworthy. The attention was nice, but if they were accepting of the complement, then they would not longer receive it.

 

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Rafael Campo

Aids and the Poetry of Healing

"Now you were tired, and yet not tired enough

—Still hungry for the great world you were losing   

Steadily in no season of your choosing—

And when at last the whole death was assured,   

Drugs having failed, and when you had endured   

Two weeks of an abominable constraint,   

You faced it equably, without complaint,   

Unwhimpering, but not at peace with it.   

You’d lived as if your time was infinite" (Thom Gunn, Lament).

 

 

"No matter how much I fortify, however AIDS seems to demand that I suffer too" (95).
Even though one is building strength and prove to not only everyone else but themselves too they are strong, AIDS pulls them back demanding one to suffer. It is an incurable virus many suffer from.

"Religion still implies AIDS is a punishment, meted out by an unloving, unforgiving and unimaginable God, intent with wrath" (95).
This is a dehumanizing statement. This statement says one is deserving of an illness and should expect the worst to happen. Religion plays a large role on people's lives and it is hurtful to say God is unforgiving and his intent with wrath.

 

    "So I am grateful for the poetry that is written about AIDS, in that it has helped me so generously to  locate myself in a world irrevocably altered by the presence of the virus" (95).
    This is proof that poetry written about AIDS has helped locate them as a person and helps the recovery process of staying positive.

    "Now, when I see SILENCE = DEATH painted on the sidewalk, or pinned to the lapel of my white coat, immediately I know what that means. It means our words are keeping us alive" (99).
    Words play a larger role on ones life. Words can mean keeping us alive proving poetry in general plays a large role on healing someone.

    "I have lost myself the same way in the faces, the bodies, and the poems of people with AIDS. I see them teaching us, each one of us, the meaning of our own losses. Teaching us that every word is true" (100).
    Poetry can teach us the meaning of our losses. It teaches us that every word has meaning and they play a larger role on our lives.

Stitches A Memoir By David Small

Quotes through Page 156:

"The mere moving of her fork a half-inch to the right spelled dread at the dinner table" (16).

"And it was dad the radiologist who gave me the many x-rays that were supposed to cure my sinus problems" (21).

"I thought it must be her hair that gave Alice the magic ability to travel to a land of talking animals, singing flowers, and dancing teapots, I wanted to go there immediately" (56). 

"Your mother has asked me to speak to you about something we both feel is important" (150).

Quotes 157-325

"That night, back in my hospital room, I was surprised by a visit from my mother" (170).

"Even among my old friends I felt invisible, a shadow flickering around the edges of every event" (213).

"At home, late at night, I began to have the sensation that I was shrinking down... and living inside my own mouth" (216). 

"After that awkward moment, while my own emotions ricocheted between extremes of betrayal and foolishness, anger and confusion, what stayed with me for the longest time was the look mother gave me, itself full of complex feelings, few of which, I'd guess, had much to do with me" (273).

"I gave you cancer" (287).

"Although my parents talked seriously about get a divorce, they never did" (301).

"She couldn't talk and neither could I. I had been screaming for so many hours that I, too, was voiceless" (306).

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