Reader-Respose - If You Forget Me ( Pablo Neruda)

I want you to know

one thing. 

You know how this is: 

if I look 

at the crystal moon, at the red branch 

of the slow autumn at my window, 

if I touch 

near the fire 

the impalpable ash 

or the wrinkled body of the log, 

everything carries me to you, 

as if everything that exists, 

aromas, light, metals, 

were little boats 

that sail 

toward those isles of yours that wait for me. 

Well, now, 

if little by little you stop loving me 

I shall stop loving you little by little. 

If suddenly 

you forget me 

do not look for me, 

for I shall already have forgotten you. 

If you think it long and mad, 

the wind of banners 

that passes through my life, 

and you decide 

to leave me at the shore 

of the heart where I have roots, 

remember 

that on that day, 

at that hour, 

I shall lift my arms 

and my roots will set off 

to seek another land. 

But 

if each day, 

each hour, 

you feel that you are destined for me 

with implacable sweetness, 

if each day a flower 

climbs up to your lips to seek me, 

ah my love, ah my own, 

in me all that fire is repeated, 

in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, 

my love feeds on your love, beloved, 

and as long as you live it will be in your arms 

without leaving mine.

Analysis:

Reader-response criticism focuses primarily to the reader's reaction to the text. It depends upon the reader how he or she interpret a certain literary work. For me, this poems can be dedicated to everything you value or love. This poem talks about love and friendship. If someone does not love you, then its time to move on but if they do love you then we should hold on to them forever. That is the same with friends, if one of them is the only one putting effort for the friendship but the other inst doing anything then we should lift our arms and our roots will set off to seek another land. A land in which we are appreciated and loved, and we should hold on to those people forever. 

Romanticism - Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ( Lord Byron )

Summary:

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem in four parts written by Lord Byron. It was published between 1812 and 1818 and is dedicated to "Ianthe". The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands. In a wider sense, it is an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. The title comes from the term childe, a medieval title for a young man who was a candidate for knighthood.

n Canto 1, Bryon introduces Childe Harold, a young English nobleman who has been wasting his life with drinking, idleness, and making love to unsuitable women. The woman he does love he cannot have. Despondent, he leaves his family, his family home, his heritage. and his lands to travel, albeit with no clear destination. Perhaps, he thinks, he will find happiness and some meaning to his life once he leaves England.

Leaving, he sings a mournful song—the poem “Good Night”—bidding farewell to his homeland, to his parents, and to his wife and sons. 

Analysis:

There is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings in this narrative poem. As we see, the poem is flooded with emotions that the main character felt throughout his journey like, love, longing, grief, sadness, and even pleasure. It is also said in romanticism that te artist's feeling is his own law. In the poem, Childe Harold became a vehicle for Byron's own beliefs and ideas. By masking himself behind a literary artifice, Byron was able to express his view that "man's greatest tragedy is that he can conceive of a perfection which he cannot attain".

Marxism - A Rose for Emily ( William Faulkner )

Summary:

We return to the past, two years after Miss Emily's father's death. There have been complaints about an awful stench emanating from Miss Emily's house. The older generation, which feels that it is improper to tell a lady that she stinks, arranges for a group of men to spread lime on her lawn and inside the cellar door of her house. All the while, she sits at a window, motionless.

Of primary importance in this section is Miss Emily's relationship to her father and her reaction to his death. The town views the father and daughter as a "tableau," in which a sitting Mr. Grierson grasps a horsewhip and affects an oblivious attitude toward his daughter, who, dressed completely in white, stands behind him. This image reinforces the physical relationship and the emotional distance we feel between the two, and it recalls the crayon picture standing before the fireplace. Also, the horsewhip that Mr. Grierson clutches suggests a bridled violence in this most gothic of tales, a violence that will reveal itself by the end of the story.

When her father dies, Miss Emily cannot face the reality of his death and her loneliness. Because she has no one to turn to — "We remembered all the young men her father had driven away . . ." — for three days she insists that her father is not dead. Her clinging to him after his death prepares us for her clinging to Homer Barron after she poisons him, and we feel that her father ultimately has some responsibility for his daughter's killing her lover.

Analysis:

It falls under Marxism theory because this theory is formulated specifically to analyze how society functions in a state of upheaval and constant change. In this story Miss Emily is unable to grip the idea of death and suffers great deals of denial. After the death of her father, the townspeople expected her to be in a state of grief but alas she is not. Instead she proceeds to say that her father is very well with her, alive. In whatever decisions she makes, the town people always has something to say to her. We can also observe in literary works that fall under Marxism the quest for wealth and power. In the story, Th family of Emily has lost their fortunes so her parents once thought of engaging Emily with a rich someone. 

Humanism - The Moor's Last Sigh" ( Salman Rushdie )

Summary:

The Moor of the title is Moraes "Moor" Zogoiby, cursed with a "double-quick" life: his mother, after wishing in a moment of frustration for a child who would grow up quickly, gives birth to him four and a half months after his conception, and he continues to age at twice the normal rate. Moraes's mother, Aurora da Gama, is a famous artist and his father, twenty years older than his mother, is a former clerk in her family's spice business who finds more lucrative employment in smuggling and drug trafficking. Moraes becomes entangled in rivalries between his parents and their competitors, becoming a prisoner of an artist jealous of his mother who allows him to live as long as he writes his life story. Throughout the story Rushdie relates the history of the family as far back as explorer Vasco da Gama, discoverer of India, and draws parallels with the family's circumstances in modern time. The "Moor's last sigh" of the title has a number of explanations, one being that it is the title of a portrait of Moraes, the last his mother painted before her death.

Analysis:

This can be viewed under humanist theory because "Moor", throughout the book, is an exceptional character, whose physical body ages twice as fast as a normal person's does and also has a deformed hand. The book also focuses heavily on the Moor's relationships with the women in his life, including his mother Aurora, who is a famous national artist; his first female tutor; and his first love, a charismatic, demented sculptress named Uma. Moor's aspirations, and all his emotions and attributes as a human was clearly described throughout the story.

Psychoanalytic - The Death of Ivan Illych ( Leo Tolstoy )

Summary:

The novel tells the story of the death, at age 45, of a high-court judge in 19th-century Russia. Living what seems to be a good life, his dreadful relationship with his wife notwithstanding, Ivan Ilyich Golovin injures his side while hanging up curtains in a new apartment intended to reflect his family's superior status in society. Within weeks, he has developed a strange taste in his mouth and a pain that will not go away. Several expensive doctors are consulted, but beyond muttering about blind gut and floating kidneys, they can neither explain nor treat his condition, and it soon becomes clear that Ivan Ilyich is dying.

The second half of the novel records his terror as he battles with the idea of his own death. "I have been here. Now I am going there. Where? ... No, I won't have it!" Oppressed by the length of the process, his wife, daughter, colleagues, and even the physicians, decide in the end not to speak of it, but advise him to stay calm and follow doctors' orders, leaving him to wrestle with how this terrible thing could befall a man who had lived so well.

He spends his last three days screaming. He realizes he is "done for, there was no way back, the end was here, the absolute end ..." One hour before his death, in a moment of clarity, he sees that he has not, after all, lived well, but has lived only for himself. After months of dwelling on his own anguish, he suddenly feels pity for the people he's leaving behind, and hopes his death will set them free. With that thought, his pain disappears. He hears someone say, "He's gone." He whispers to himself, "Death has gone," and draws his last breath.

Analysis:

This novel really fall under psychoanalytic theory. Evidently, this novel is an evident for the analysis of the author's life. for Tolstoy, a sinful life (such as Ivan's) is moral death. Therefore death, the return of the soul to God, is, for Tolstoy, moral life. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, therefore, is more than a story about death. Death permeates the narrative in a realistic and absorbing fashion but, interestingly enough, the actual physicality of death is only passively mentioned in the early chapters during Ivan’s wake. Instead, the story leads the reader through a pensive, metaphysical exploration of the reason for death and what it means true to life. Tolstoy was a man who struggled greatly with self-doubt and spiritual reflection, especially as he grew close to his own death in 1910.

Feminism - Like One of the Families ( Alice Childress )

Summary:

Originally published as a serial in African-American papers in the 1950s this series of monologue-style short stories are all in the voice of Mildred–a daytime maid for white families in New York City.  The monologues are all addressed to her best friend and downstairs neighbor, Marge, who is also a maid.  The stories range from encounters with southern relatives of moderately minded employers to picnics threatened by the Ku Klux Klan to more everyday occurrences such as a dance that went bad and missing your boyfriend.  Mildred’s spitfire personality comes through clearly throughout each entry.

Analysis:

This can be classified under the theory feminism. Mildred and her friend Marge create a vibrant picture of the life of black working woman in New York in 1950's. In here, we gain a glimpse not only of one woman’s day to day struggle, but of her previous ache of racial oppression. A domestic who refuses to exchange dignity for pay, Mildred is an inspiring conversationalist, a dragon slayer in a segregated world. We can see her strengths and weaknesses as a woman.

New Historicism - The Believers ( Zoe Heller )

Summary:

When radical New York lawyer Joel Litvinoff is felled by a stroke, his wife, Audrey, uncovers a secret that forces her to reexamine everything she thought she knew about their forty-year marriage. Joel's children will soon have to come to terms with this discovery themselves, but for the meantime, they are struggling with their own dilemmas and doubts. 

Rosa, a disillusioned revolutionary, has found herself drawn into the world of Orthodox Judaism and is now being pressed to make a commitment to that religion. Karla, a devoted social worker hoping to adopt a child with her husband, is falling in love with the owner of a newspaper stand outside her office. Ne'er-do-well Lenny is living at home, approaching another relapse into heroin addiction. 

In the course of battling their own demons—and one another—the Litvinoff clan is called upon to examine long-held articles of faith that have formed the basis of their lives together and their identities as individuals. In the end, all the family members will have to answer their own questions and decide what—if anything—they still believe in.

Analysis:

Upon reading this book, you will realized the role of history in it. It tells us something about the ideology of Orthodox Judaism that Rosa has been drawn into. As the head of their family got into coma, they are suppose to reveal secrets from the past about their beliefs. They searched for the history of their family.