Outside+Elements

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Robert Burns was born in Scotland in early 1759. His father was not a wealthy man by any stretch of the imagination, but he did his best to give his children a good education. Though Burns’ education was poor, the more important part of it he owes to his father and his own reading. By the time he reached adulthood, he had a good knowledge of English, a reading knowledge of French, and a wide range of familiarity with masterpieces of English literature; pieces that came from the time of Shakespeare to his own day. He had an irregular relationship with Jean Armour, for which he was censured by the Kirk-session. After his farming misfortune and the attempts of his father-in-law to overthrow his marriage, Burns chose to emigrate. In order to raise money for passage, he published a volume of poems (Kilmarnock, 1786) which he had started some years previous. It was released and unexpectedly successful; so instead of sailing for the West Indies, he went to Edinburgh, and was a literary celebrity of sorts for a season. One of his poems was enlarged, and the money allowed him to take stock for himself on the farm of Ellisland in Dumfriesshire. He was now regularly married to Jean, and he brought her over to Ellisland to be with him, trying once again to farm for three years. In 1791, after continued years of ill-success, he abandoned the farm and moved to Dumfries. By this time he was “thoroughly discouraged; his work was mere drudgery; his tendency to take his relaxation in debauchery increased the weakness of a constitution early undermined” (Electric Scotland). He died in Dumfries at the age of thirty-eight. =====

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One of Burns’ poems is entitled //__Comin’ Thro The rye__//, and it is from this poem that Holden Caulfield’s dream of being “the catcher in the rye” originates. It was a misquote, of course, but without it Holden would not be the character whose life has enthralled many a reader. =====

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One day while walking, Holden spots a little boy with his parents on the sidewalk. The child is singing “If a body catch a body coming through the rye”. Later on, when Holden visits Phoebe in her room, he admits to her that his dream is to be the catcher in the rye. He imagines himself in a field of rye with children running all around him. He stands in front of a cliff, and as the children play they edge ever closer. He feels it is his job to catch them before they fall. Phoebe quickly corrects him in saying that it isn’t, in fact, “If a body //catch// a body,” it is “If a body //meet// a body”, and comes from a poem by the Scottish poet Robert Burns. =====

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This symbolizes Holden’s fear of growing up; he sees the cliff as the invisible line between Childhood and Adulthood. Holden feels very strongly towards children. They are the some of the only people in the world who he feels aren’t phony, and that all adults are phony. He doesn’t want them to lose their innocence by falling over the edge, or crossing the line he has drawn in his mind. This makes him think that it is his job to stop them, where he is so close to crossing over himself. He shows signs of maturity sometimes, reflecting how much of an adult he already is, though his mindset is generally that of a child. All in all, he is terrified of growing up. =====

The thing's a body's ain.
==**// Most people only know of this through the work of J D Salinger but several variants on the verses of this piece are in existence, including the following which were added later by Burns for theatrical purposes. //**==

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//__ Out of Africa __// is written by Isak Dinesen and published in 1937. The novel retells the years she spent on her coffee plantation in East Africa. It is made up of a series of observations about the way the African land was laid out, and she told about Europeans that she met while on the plantation. Not only is //__Out of Africa__// a summary of what Dineson saw and found in Africa, it also a story about how brave, independent women came to understand and define themselves. Dinesen tells the story with quiet and gentle beauty, and her wish for life was fulfilled by Africa. =====

__Isak Dinesen__
==== Dinesen was born in Rugsted, Denmark; her love for painting encouraged her to study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where she developed an eye for landscaping. She then continued her studies in Paris and Rome and began to write fiction novels. In 1907, a literary magazine published her story called “The Hermits”. She and her husband, Bohr, moved to Kenya, and with help from her family they bought six thousand acres of land. Dinesen's marriage to Bohr did not survive and they divorced in 1921. Though they divorced, her love for the land and people of Africa still was strong. When Dinesen was in Africa she would write letters and stories that she would share with her friends when they came to visit her. She left Africa in 1931, due to financial problems which forced her to sell the farm and return back to Denmark. Dinesen then completed her first book entitled “The Seven Gothic Tales”. ==== ==== The novel __//Out of Africa//__ relates to __//The Tatcher in the Rye//__ because Holden Caulfield and Isak Dinesen were about the same age and were both affected by many people throughout their life. Holden was trying to find out who he really was and he tried to isolate himself from the rest of the world because he wanted to be independent, much like the African women. Holden would try to shield himself away from the world by using his red hunting hat. He would also try to avoid anyone who made him feel as though he could tell them anything. Towards the end of the novel, Holden discovers who he is and finally breaks down and realizes that he can’t shelter himself from the world anymore, that people are going to grow up and he won’t be able to stop them. ====

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=__** Summary: //Of Human Bondage// by Somerset Maugham **__= //You take that book Of Human Bondage, by // //Somerset Maugham, though. I read it last summer. It's a pretty good book //// and all, // //but I wouldn't want to call Somerset Maughamup. I don't know, he just isn't the kind of guy I'd want to call up, that's all. ﻿ I'd rather call old Thomas Hardy up. I like that Eustacia Vye. (Salinger, ) //

The protagonist, Phillip, is comes to live with his aunt and uncle after the death of his mother, the result of a stillbirth. His uncle is a vicar, and a man that Phillip sees as a hypocrite for the selfish tendencies of his to show his family frugality that he holds not for himself. Phillip regularly points out these details, and the man’s attitude leads to Phillip’s rejection of Christianity at a young age.

Following his attempt to become an artist in Paris, Phillip returns to London to attend art school. He meets a girl that he irrationally falls in love with, Mildred Pierce, while attending medical school. Their relationship is never good, and only goes downhill – even so far that the relationship becomes masochistic. Phillip continually tries to help the woman his loves, but she rejects such aid and eventually resorts to prostitution and, finally, suicide. Phillip, now deciding that life is vacant and simply nugatory, marries into a life where he will have respect and responsibility, but no love.

“A typical critical reaction, however, is echoed in the sentiments of a //Dial// reviewer, who admitted that the detail contained within six-hundred pages ‘can hardly fail to leave us with the feeling of intimate acquaintance,’ but that the novel ultimately imparts a "depressing impression of the futility of life.’”(Enotes) In this way, the novel is not dissimilar to //The Catcher in the Rye.// Both leave a dark messages with little hope, but bring us to keenly know the character and the sorts of problems that they struggled with.

Information of Maugham: __Of Human Bondage__ is known as his breakthrough novel, a novel known to be ‘semi-autobiographic’ “Maugham believed that there is a true harmony in the contradictions of mankind and that the normal is in reality the abnormal.” He lost both parents at a young age, his mother to tuberculosis and his father to cancer.

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__**The Great Gatsby**__

__The Great Gatsby__ was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. After the birth of their first child, the Fitzgeralds moved to Great Neck, Long Island. Great Neck inspired Fitzgerald to write a novel in which the setting would be based. F. Scott Fitzgerald links small details of his own life to The Great Gatsby. Gatsby takes place just after World War I. //__The__ __Great Gatsby__// creates an image of American Society during the 1920's. __Main Characters in The Great Gatsby:__ One of the main focuses of //The Great Gatsby// is to look into the social state of the country America had become in the 1920s, and what had become of what he refers to, and what we know as the American dream. It details the failed romances of three couples intricately connected. The narrator, Nick Carraway, is one of the ‘new rich’ of the 1920s. His next-door neighbor, Jay Gatsby, is also a newly-made millionaire who dresses in a pink suit and throws huge, lavish parties in his Goth mansion every Saturday night. Being invited to one of these parties, Nick meets Jordan Baker, who he then turns to fall in love with. Eventually Gatsby tells Nick of a lost love of his, Daisy Buchanan, who is also Nick’s cousin. Gatsby requests that Nick make a reunion for the two of them, even though he fears that Daisy will refuse to come if she knows that he still loves her. Thus the intricacies begin to become more prevalent. Daisy and Gatsby’s love is rekindled, and Daisy’s husband, Tom, becomes enraged, despite being involved in an extramarital affair himself. A heated confrontation ensues at an apartment party between the groups. On his way back to his home, the car Gatsby and Daisy are driving strikes and kills Tom’s mistress. Daisy and Gatsby both want to take the blame for the event, though Daisy was actually the one driving. Tom tells his mistress’s husband that it was Gatsby that killed her, and so the man comes and kills Gatsby, assuming that her killer must have also been her lover. Afterwards Nick breaks off his relationship with Jordan and moves out to the west, having decided “era of dreaming—both Gatsby’s dream and the American dream—is over” (Sparknotes).
 * Nick Carraway who is the narrator in the movel. Nick is a very sucessful young man. Twenty nine years old, he graduates from Yale and is a veteran in World War I. Nick plays a important role because he is Gatsby's neighbor and a cousin to Daisy.
 * Jay Gatsby is the protagonist. Jay is a rich man who spends most of his time throwing huge parties in his goth mansion, in West Egg.
 * ====Daisy Buchanan is a very attractive and snotty young girl. She is Jay Gatsby's second cousin and the wife of Tom Buchanan. Daisy plays a role in which she signifies Fitzgerald's wife.====

Like //__The Catcher in the Rye__//, many details of the story of //__The Great Gatsby__// are based on the author’s life. It is a spin of an autobiography, an attempt for Fitzgerald to share with the world the conclusions he has come to in life and the battles he has fought within his mind. He tries to find the flaw points in our culture that lead to the intense difficulties that young people experience in their coming-of-age struggles, and of building a life as a whole. They as the philosophical questions: What are the supporting pillars of culture? What //ought// the supporting pillars of culture to be? These questions are also explored in __The Catcher in the Rye__, though the time period is different. __The Great Gatsby__ explores the period of the Roaring Twenties, whereas __The Catcher in the Rye__ explores post-war America. Each takes the autobiographal realities of their represetative time period and places them into a fictional story as to better spread their message and stand the test of time.

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