First I would like to thank you for taking the time to read the selected works for my portfolio. The three parts of the portfolio (five items excluding the cover letter) represent what we have done in the course during this semester, which revolved around a book entitled International Story. In the book we read stories about various people in different backgrounds, present our personal opinions concerning our feelings for each of the stories and finally, select one from them, and learn to write an essay about it. Although all the four stories are worth talking about, the last one, namely The Grass-Eater by Krishnan Varma, has given me the strongest feeling. As a result, the topics of most of the items in the portfolio would reside on that specific story.

Ever since I successfully went though the GRE writing test, I have always been confident about my writing ability, especially in the structural and grammatical part. But the term writing ability turns out to be more meaningful than I have previously thought, which by definition should also involve the ability to choose a proper thesis statement and a lot more technical skills such as the usage of quotations in an essay. Both of them are not what I was good at before. But after taking the course of this term, I have made evident progresses in these two aspects. By my teacher, Mr. Ron’s help, I have learned to make a clear thesis statement of my essay, as could be seen in the three editions of the same essay pasted below. With regard to the problem of quotations, I tend to quote too much, which, in Ron’s words, makes my essays Krishnan’s instead of mine. From comments on my paper and class lectures on introducing quotes, I gradually began to know the various ways of using quotations in an essay, which greatly improved the originality of my paper. Overall, despite the fact that my clear thesis statement does not necessarily mean that it is strong, and the fact that there still remains many other skills that I have to learn in my future way of English writing, I have already achieved much in this single course. And I believe that I could walk faster and smoother in my progress of improving my English writing ability.

The first part of the portfolio includes three essays, which I have set great emphasis writing. I put them first because they clearly show my trace of progressing during this course. Draft three is the final edition, in which the thesis statement has been clearly stated, the quotations been properly used and the grammar mistakes almost eliminated. It stands for the fruit of joining the course. Comparably, draft two is inferior in that the thesis statement is not so clearly stated and there are still too many quotations in some paragraphs. Draft one is the first edition, in which the thesis is vague, quotations have not been properly introduced and some grammatical mistakes are evident.

The second part involves the timed-writing paper. This paper shows my ability to write on a specific topic within the time limits. I paste it here because it constitutes a certain part of the curriculum.

The final part is the reading log, in which I have given my personal views of the story The Grass-Eaters. In this part, my ability of free writing could be seen. Besides, it also gives hints about what I think of the story, which after the later careful thought, finally evolves into the topic of my essay of the course.

Thank you for taking the time to read this paper. I hope it will help you understand the items in my portfolio and notice the progresses that I have made in this course.

Sincerely,
Stephen

Stephen

June 17, 2007

Draft 3

No Hope for a Better Life

Stephen
May 18, 2007
Draft 2

Title

In The Grass-Eaters, Krishman Varma writes about Ajit Badu who does not have a decent place to live, who has to feed on grass instead of the normal food, and who undergoes many other miseries in his life. Although Badu told the story in quite a humorous way, we find in his calm statement of the miseries of his daily life the poverty in India’s education system, the housing issue, the general social order and its people’s access to food and cloth. And it is just the extreme poor life conditions that resulted in his complete desperation of the possibility of improving his life.

The shortage of the education system first appealed to me when Ajit Badu, as a retired school master, told us in the story “I could spare little from my pension for new clothes” and “I had to make do with a loin clothes to save my few threadbare clothes from further wear and tear.” It is difficult to think of a society that weights education, yet spends so little on the education fee as a retired school master could not buy the necessary cloth when he wants. Of course, there still lies possibility that Badu’s school may be a specific case—extremely poor. Yet, in that case, the fact that the rich would like to send their child to Badu still helps us to see the lack of the educational resources in India.

We read in the beginning of the story that Badu was once tutor to a spherical boy. And I assert that the boy’s family was rich, mainly for two reasons. The first reason has to do with the figures of the boy as spherical, of the father as ovoid, and the mother as cuboid—in a word, they are fat. Common sense tells us that in a poor society that people may or may not have enough to eat, fatness usually stands for richness. And the second reason is that the ovoid father once said to Badu “why don’t you move into one of my buildings”. It is clear that the father possessed several buildings, which no doubt implies his richness.

But if the family was rich, how could they send their boy to an extremely poor school if my former supposition that Badu’s school was extremely poor is true? Two possible reasons could explain this. Perhaps the couple knew Badu or someone else in that school, who they believed could tutor their boy well. But that piece of explanation is quite impossible since poor schools, without all the privileges that good schools have, could hardly hire good teachers. Then the second reason comes into my mind, as the city lacks schools. It is not that the rich were unwilling to get their boy the best education, but the fact was that there was not so much to choose from. Thus I deduce that in Calcutta, where the story took place, there were scanty educational resources. Noting that Calcutta was one of the largest cities in India, which in nature should have more educational resources, I think the author is telling us the lack of the educational resources in the whole India.

The housing problem of the India society runs through the whole story. As we begin reading the story, we find that the couple was living in a pipe and that the Chittatanjan Avenue in Calcutta was “so crowded with residents that if you got up at night to relieve yourself you could not be sure of finding your place again”. Yet, the problem is most evident when it comes to Badu’s decision to find a suitable place for his wife’s confinement. Although he “lost no time in looking for a suitable place”, the places he suggested, as if joking, were someplace like the railway station platform, the overbridge and the water tank—all those places that are unfit for an ordinary human being to reside, not to mention to give birth to a child. That means even though he seems to be serious of the problem of finding a suitable place, he may not actually take it seriously, or at least do not think that he could manage to find one in the end. But why didn’t he think of the possibility of solving the problem even at the beginning? The reason that is highly possible is due to his frequent past frustration, which may give him a hint that no matter how hard he would try, he may not be able to solve the problem—in this case, finding a suitable place to stay. And thus it all becomes nature that he would be reluctant to try to find some place to live. The issue ended as they came across a pipe and decided to live there. Sarcastically, even the pipe was said to be “unbelievably not occupied” and was “far more comfortable than any of our previous homes”, which confirms that in Calcutta, and thus in India, the poor could have great difficulty in finding a suitable place to live.

Besides the education and housing problems of the India society, the general social order regarding its transportation system, the criterion in people’s daily life and the working status of the people seems to be the most serious problem in India. The chaotic situation of the transportation system is almost obvious since in few other countries could people do what the Indians are doing as when they find the trams are crowded, they get up on its roof. What’s worse, as Badu said: “the conduct will not stop you”. The same chaotic situation fills Indians’ daily lives. “When we go out—to the communal lavatory ,…” this sentence implies that the roads and streets in the society serve as the lavatory and people piddle whenever and wherever they want. “We live very quietly, content to look at the passing scene: a tram burning, a man stabbing another man, a woman dropping her baby in a garbage bin”, which tells us that it is common scene to spot those crimes in India. All these facts pictures a tumult India society in which there is almost no criterion that curbs people’s behavior, not to mention the existence of the force that is needed to keep a society under control.

Another problem of the social order is the people’s working status. As Badu was telling his experience in living in a wagon, he said “that was not the only time we went to bed in Calcutta and woke up in another place”. This sentence implicitly states that the couple was able to live in the wagon without being found for several times. But how could it be possible if the people who move the wagon work carefully? It could be accepted that the hammals may not find the couple for the first time or two when they transported the wagon, but if after several times, they would still fail to notice that, the only explanation could be that they were in a low working status which impeded them from finding someone who were not supposed to be in.

All the shortages in the three aspects mentioned above together with the obvious difficulty in the access to the daily needs such as the food and cloth leads to Badu’s complete desperation of the possibility of improving his life. The lack of the educational resources in India means that there is a large possibility that Badu, because of the fierce competition, may not be able to offer his child a decent education, and the lack of education invariably dims ones future. Thus Badu may not put hope on his offspring to bring improvement to the life. Just as he said: “and now, we have no fears or anxieties”, despite the fact that his son is still in Naxalite’s underground, and that the Naxalite movement aimed to change India’s social structure by liquidating estates among the rural poor. Although he may try to improve his life through his own hands, yet the frequent frustrations would finally drive the idea way, as we could see in the housing issue discussed above. But perhaps all these problems are not sufficient to put a man in the valley of despair. Yet by taking into consideration that the whole society is not in good order, we could safely deduce that Badu has complete lost hope of changing his life, because, common sense tells us that a man may be able to deal with one or two or some more difficulties in his life, but he may feel weak, incapable and frustrated when every thing around him seems chaotic. And thus, he would give in, stop trying when difficulties emerge, and abandon himself in the stream of fate. As he said in the end:

We live very quietly, content to look at the passing scene: a tram burning, a man stabbing another man, a woman dropping her baby in a garbage bin

The incredibly calm voice is uttered through the sear throat of a man who could do nothing but accept what is happening around. It is not that he is truly content or pleasant about the criminal scene, or that in nature he is unwilling to do anything that could be of use to stop the crimes, but the sad truth is that he could not—that is he could not get the whole society into the right trace within his own efforts. And thus he quits, forces himself to feel content or accustomed to the sin around, and becomes despair about any improvement in his life.

In conclusion, it is just the extreme poor conditions of the India life in its education system, the housing issue, the general social order and its people’s access to food and cloth that drives Ajit Badu despair about the possibility of improving his life.

May 6, 2007
Draft 1

Title

In The Grass-Eaters, Krishman Varma writes about Ajit Badu who does not have a decent place to live, who has to feed on grass instead of the normal food, and who undergoes many other miseries in his life. But does Varma choose the events by chance or does he deliberately pick up those events to reveal something about the life in India? In my opinion, the latter is true. By connecting the specific events in Badu’s life, we find the poverty in India’s education system, the housing issue, the general social order and its people’s access to food and cloth. Besides, Varma also implies that the poor are content with the current situation and thus have little chance to improve their own life.

The shortage of the education system first appealed to me when Ajit Badu, as a retired school master, told us in the story “I could spare little from my pension for new clothes” and “I had to make do with a loin clothes to save my few threadbare clothes from further wear and tear.” It is difficult to think of a society that weights education, yet spends so little on the education fee as a retired school master could not buy the necessary cloth when he wants. Of course, there still lies possibility that Badu’s school may be a specific case—extremely poor. Yet, in that case, the fact that the rich would like to send their child to Badu still helps us to see the lack of the educational resources in India.

We read in the beginning of the story that Badu was once tutor to a spherical boy. And I assert that the boy’s family was rich, mainly for two reasons. The first reason has to do with the figures of the boy as spherical, of the father as ovoid, and the mother as cuboid—in a word, they are fat. Common sense tells us that in a poor society that people may or may not have enough to eat, fatness usually stands for richness. And the second reason is that the ovoid father once said to Badu “why don’t you move into one of my buildings”. It is clear that the father possessed several buildings, which no doubt implies his richness.

But if the family was rich, how could they send their boy to an extremely poor school? Two possible reasons could explain this. Perhaps the couple knew Badu or someone else in that school, who they believed could tutor their boy well. But that piece of explanation is quite impossible since poor school, without all the privileges that good schools have, could hardly hire good teachers. Then the second reason comes into my mind, as the city lacks schools. It is not that the rich were unwilling to get their boy the best education, but the fact was that there was not so much to choose from. Thus I deduce that in Calcutta, where the story took place, there were scanty educational resources. Noting that Calcutta was one of the largest cities in India, which in nature should have more educational resources, I think the author is telling us the lack of the educational resources in the whole India.

The housing problem of the India society runs through the whole story. As we begin reading the story, we find that the couple was living in a pipe and that the Chittatanjan Avenue in Calcutta was “so crowded with residents that if you got up at night to relieve yourself you could not be sure of finding your place again”. Yet, the problem is most evident when it comes to Badu’s decision to find a suitable place for his wife’s confinement. Although he “lost no time in looking for a suitable place”, the places he suggested, as if joking, were someplace like the railway station platform, the overbridge and the water tank—all those places that are unfit for an ordinary human being to reside. But how could anyone think of these places for such a serious issue as to give birth to a new life? If he had not been desperate, and if he had had any idea where he could possibly live within his ability, he would have just gone there. The issue ended as they came across a pipe and decided to live there. Sarcastically, even the pipe was said to be “unbelievably not occupied” and was “far more comfortable than any of our previous homes”. These facts confirm that in Calcutta, and thus in India, the poor could have great difficulty in finding a suitable place to live.

Besides the education and housing problems of the India society, the general social order regarding its transportation system, the criterion in people’s daily life and the working status of the people seems to be the most serious problem in India. The chaotic situation of the transportation system is almost obvious since in few other countries could people do what the Indians are doing as when they find the trams are crowded, they get up on its roof. What’s worse, as Badu said: “the conduct will not stop you”. The same chaotic situation fills Indians’ daily lives. “When we go out—to the communal lavatory ,…” this sentence implies that the roads and streets in the society serve as the lavatory and people piddle whenever and wherever they want. “We live very quietly, content to look at the passing scene: a tram burning, a man stabbing another man, a woman dropping her baby in a garbage bin”, which tells us that it is common scene to spot those crimes in India. All these facts pictures a tumult India society in which there is almost no criterion that curbs people’s behavior, not to mention the existence of the force that is needed to keep a society under control.

Another problem of the social order is the people’s working status. As Badu was telling his experience in living in a wagon, he said “that was not the only time we went to bed in Calcutta and woke up in another place”. This sentence implicitly states that the couple was able to live in the wagon without being found for several times. But how could it be possible if the people who move the wagon work carefully? It could be accepted that the hammals may not find the couple for the first time or two when they transported the wagon, but if after several times, they would still fail to notice that, the only explanation could be that they were in a low working status that impeded them from finding someone who were not supposed to be in.

Finally, the people’s access to the daily needs such as the food and cloth is also a serious problem for the local people, which is easy to notice. But taking into consideration that Badu is someone who is with a job, I guess that if he is not able to buy the food or cloth because of the price, then there could be thousands of people who may not have a job suffering the same problem. And again, noting that the story takes place in one of the largest cities in India, it could be safely deduced that the food and cloth problem is already very serious in the whole India.

Despite so many problems of the society, Varma seems to be telling the sad truth that the poor people who are living at the bottom of the society are either quite content or desperate with the current situation and therefore could hardly improve their own standard of life. “We live very quietly, content to look at the passing scene”, as Badu said in the end of the story, which reveals that he is content with the current life. But the question is why he could be content with the life that seems miserable to us. The sentence “and now, we have no fears or anxieties” gives the answer. Who could have neither fears nor anxieties? Only those who have suffered everything and are thus totally desperate do. Noting the important fact that Badu’s son is still in Naxalite underground, and that the Naxalite movement aimed to change India’s social structure by liquidating estates among the rural poor, we find that Badu even do not put hope on his son to bring changes to the society, or he would never say that “we have no fears or anxieties.” And I think Varma creates Badu to stand for a large portion of the poor India people, thus Badu’s view is representative many of the India poor.

Throughout the story, we see the eventful life of Ajit Badu. But Varma does not choose the events by chance. Instead, he deliberately chooses these events to reveal the poverty in India’s education system, the housing issue, the general social order and its people’s access to food and cloth. What’s more, Varma also implies that the poor are content with the current situation and thus have little chance to improve their own life.

0455006

Stephen lin tao

June 21, 2007

Timed-writing 3

Directions: In Dead Men’s Path the priest says “let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch.” Discuss what you think he means and what this saying reveals about him.

In “Dead Men’s Path”, the priest says “let the hawk perch and let the eagle perch”. Obviously, he means that the hero should esteem the customs of other country’s and allow the existence of the habits of different people. By reflecting on the contents of the story, we find the priest said the sentence when the hero insisted on abolish the path in his school, which the villagers still use to honor their predecessors. This custom appears to be absurd to the hero, especially considering the fact that in his opinion, the school’s job is just to help people to get rid of such kind of superstitious thoughts, such as people may get revenged if they stop honoring the ancestors. And thus, he persisted in his intention of the closure of the path in the school. But on the other hand, the path do appears to be quite important to the local villagers, who take after the custom from their foregoers and are in no intention of getting rid of it. And thus, the priest told the sentence to the hero, hoping that he would not close the path and that he should do his job and do not interfere too much in other’s affairs. And the “hawk” and “eagle” in the sentence just mean the different ways of living and thinking in general.

I think this sentence reveals two points about the priest. The first is his tolerance. Before the attempt to close the path, the hero in the story has already done much to change the local people’s way of living. It is impossible that the priest failed to notice all that. Local born and local bred, those changes and the new ways of thinking imposed on the villagers may also appear to be abrupt to the priest and hard to accept. But he did not reject them in the first place. Adversely, from the sentence we could see that he had allowed the hero’s way of doing things, which is fully implied from the term “let the hawk perch”. These facts undoubtedly reveals his tolerance over the problem we call “social conflicts”.

Besides the tolerance, the sentence also tells about the foresight of the priest. As the old saying goes: A cornered dog bites. The priest has foreseen the failure of the hero since the later has already done too much, resulting in the more and more serious problem of social conflicts. The sentence serves as a warning to the hero that if he does not “let the eagle perch” at the same time, he would receive a bad end. This level of meaning is confirmed in the later part of the story, in which the school campus was destroyed and the hero lost his job. But considering that the priest could foresee the end from a middle point, that is when the end has not come, I think that reveals the foresight about him.

I am both amused by the black humors of the author and shocked by the chaos in India in the story “the grass eaters”.

Although living in an especially poor life in the society, the narrator seems to bear an element of optimism to most of the misfortunes happening around. Being able to live in a wagon seems to be the god's favor in his eyes; taking a pipe that is “unbelievably” not taken by others for residency appears to be more comfortable than any of his previous homes; and staying on bedraggled roof bears all the privileges that the residents living in the room below don't share. Besides, to the cloth, the lost leg, the food, and all the chaotic stuff happening, the narrator all seems to take an optimistic view. Obviously, the author is trying to make the story more interesting, even in quite a sarcastic way.

Yet, the seemingly happy elements could never hide the dim topic of the poor life of the India people. Behind the plain depiction of the narrator, we picture the crowed street that is filled up with residents, where everyone has no room of privacy; imagine the screen of tumult occurring at the railway station, which no one of us could even think of in china; and sense the blood and tension that is bound up with various types of crime in the every-day life of the India people.

We may smile when we read the context of the story, yet we can't help feeling uneasy after we close the book and thinking of all the things that once happened or is happening in the world that weights highly the value of humanism and claims to be far superior to the world our ancestors once lived for the high level of so called civilization we all enjoy nowadays.