A Christmas Carol• I've known the basic story from watching different versions of it on TV. The Disney cartoon version and other movie versions.
• I do have to say that the book was much more detailed especially when the ghost of Christmas present was on the scene
• I also think this is a great story of redemption. You have a man who has become bitter in his old age. He is rich but stingy and unhappy. After he is taken on a trip through Christmas past, present, and the future he has a major change of heart and sees how not only his life, but the lives of others are effected by how he lives.
She Stoops to Conquer• An interesting play. The play is a comedy that all takes place in one evening.
• The characters are all, in some way, trying to get their own way while at the same time trying to trip up others.
• Different people are presented as other than who they really are. Some people are shocked by the way they are treated because they are misidentified. The father is thought to be an innkeeper and is treated as such. Demands are made of him as if he was simply a servant.
• One person wants to run away with another man's fiancé. The husband to be doesn't want to marry the woman and she doesn't want to marry him. This is an arranged marriage. They scheme and plot and plan in order to deceive those who are arranging this marriage.
• In the end after all the ups and downs and major errors and all the deception it all works out. How convenient.
• Certainly not a realistic story, but is comedic in the modern sense of causing laughter.
Bartleby, the scrivener• Here is a story about a man who has three employees and ends up needing another because business is so good. So he hires Bartleby to help. Bartleby is a copyist. He copies boring law documents all day long. But after he gets hired it isn't long before he begins to act strange. Bartleby won't do anything but copy. He won't help check his work, go to the post office, nothing. He simply say "I prefer not to" do whatever he has been asked to do.
• Finally Bartleby stops working all together. He won't even copy. The employer doesn't know what to do with him. He tries to get him to work, to do something, anything. After a long time Bartleby still hasn't done anything and now the towns people begin to talk about this odd fellow. The employer finally tries to fire Bartleby, but he won't leave.
• Finally the employer just moves his office to another building. Bartleby stays behind, but the new occupants can't get him to do anything either and they can't get him to leave. Bartleby is, in the end, put in prison where he eventually dies.
• Some have suggested that this is a work discussing the idea of people becoming "Cogs" in the machine of life/business. One "Cog" simply stops working, quits and eventually dies. He is then replaced.
• What is the moral or proper interpretation of the story? I don't really know. It was an interesting little story that's for sure.
Metamorphosis• This is a very strange story about a man who wakes up one day to find that he has been changed into a bug. He tries to figure out how he can continue to go about his daily life (work, ect.) and at the same time he has to adjust to being a bug (he can't move properly, ect.).
• Over time his family comes to cope with the change and they pretty much leave him along, keeping him locked in his room.
• More time passes and he becomes more bug like and accustomed to him new bug body. He is able to move around and eat, ect.
• The family has to all get jobs because the son, who is now a bug, was the sole bread winner.
• After a long period of time the bug man gets injured, stops eating, and then dies.
• The family takes the day off from work and goes for a nice ride in the sun. The bug is gone from the home, life goes on.
• When I first read this I thought it might be a way of discussing what happens when a member of the family gets sick with a terminal illness. At first everyone tries to do what they have always done and not make much fuss. Over time the family becomes burdened and the person who is sick has less and less interaction with the family.
• Finally the family has had enough of all the stress and desires the sick person to leave/get better/be less of a burden. Eventually the sick person dies. Everyone is now able to move on.
• But I have heard that this story is about being so much a part of the system that you wake up one day feeling like you're an animal (or bug), just going along with the flow.
• I have also heard one interpretation that it may have to do with going from puberty or adolescence to adulthood. Changes of your body and feeling misunderstood by parents, ect.
• Whatever the true interpretation, if there is one, it is a strange story.
