Quote:
“…the dinning had naturally ended by making him perfectly indifferent. He had never considered it his affair that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, nor had it appeared to him as a matter for sorrow. It was less to him than the breaking of a pencil’s point” (Crane, 1012)
Summary:
This is the correspondent’s thoughts about a poem he read when he was in school. He starts thinking how he didn’t understand or didn’t care about the meaning of this soldier dying. However, he starts to understand how important and real that poem was.
Response:
“…the dinning had naturally ended by making him perfectly indifferent. He had never considered it his affair that a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, nor had it appeared to him as a matter for sorrow. It was less to him than the breaking of a pencil’s point” (Crane, 1012)
Summary:
This is the correspondent’s thoughts about a poem he read when he was in school. He starts thinking how he didn’t understand or didn’t care about the meaning of this soldier dying. However, he starts to understand how important and real that poem was.
Response:
Crane’s irony is reflected in this quote. In this case, the correspondent remembers a poem where a dying soldier is regretting not being able to see his homeland once more. By the time the correspondent read this poem, it had no meaning to him; he was indifferent to the soldier’s pain, because it didn’t matter to him. He couldn’t find the meaning of a poem that didn’t relate to him and that wasn’t his own situation. This is also part of our self-centered world. Crane is trying to tell us that reality is only about “us” and not about what happens to others. However, reality strikes once you are about to die and you realize that the world doesn’t revolve around you.
This quote leads the correspondent to a realization about himself, after saying that he didn’t understand this story, now he can truly understand the soldier’s feelings, because he is experiencing the same situation, and he cannot escape from it. Furthermore, this shows how this correspondent finally steps out of his own space to understand other’s situation, but this only happens when he know he might die, and he has the time to think about his life.
What I found more ironic is that even a dying soldier wouldn’t cause the minimum sorrow to him, however, now that he is the same situation he is falling in despair and he is feeling sorrow for himself, because he doesn’t want to die. I guess Crane wants to show us that we are self-centered after all, and the only way to connect with other people’s pain is to feel it ourselves.
This quote leads the correspondent to a realization about himself, after saying that he didn’t understand this story, now he can truly understand the soldier’s feelings, because he is experiencing the same situation, and he cannot escape from it. Furthermore, this shows how this correspondent finally steps out of his own space to understand other’s situation, but this only happens when he know he might die, and he has the time to think about his life.
What I found more ironic is that even a dying soldier wouldn’t cause the minimum sorrow to him, however, now that he is the same situation he is falling in despair and he is feeling sorrow for himself, because he doesn’t want to die. I guess Crane wants to show us that we are self-centered after all, and the only way to connect with other people’s pain is to feel it ourselves.
1 comment:
20/20 It takes experience to realize what The Words mean.
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