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manifestly know they are free but do not acknowledge it.

Bad faith is
paradoxical in this regard: when acting in bad faith, a person is both aware
and, in a sense, unaware that they are free.

So the woman just wants to stay there with things as they are. Then, the man suddenly
says “I find you very interesting” which makes the woman think he wants to sleep with
her. Afterwards, they hold each other’s hands. At this point, there are two possibilities:

 Leaving the hand there. She wants to keep on flirting or she doesn’t kill the mood.
 Removing the hand. She doesn’t want to seem a sexual object or she’s just lying
to herself.

*underlined examples are bad faith examples.

Sartre says we are defined by everybody. We are what the rest thinks of us.

THE COLLECTOR, JOHN FOWLES


Clegg eliminates the whole world but Miranda. He only has her. That’s why he feels
heartbroken when he reads Miranda’s notebook.

At first, we have a weird perception of Clegg (not physical) because he seems to act
weirdly. When we reach Miranda’s part, our Clegg’s perception turns out to be an ugly
perception. Suddenly, he stops being the one we thought he was. Now we know many
things we hadn’t been told before.

 1st question: why is Clegg telling the story?


 2nd question: if he has found the diary where he’s defined as a creepy and
disgusting man, why does he show us the diary?

He’s the most honest person ever because he took what he really wanted. We wouldn’t
dare to kidnap the person we love.

We must consider two aspects within this novel: the philosophical law and the civil law.

He’s really lucky for winning the lottery because that money sets him free.

He doesn’t like what Miranda draws. Besides, Miranda doesn’t try do draw him like he
actually is, she goes further.

Miranda’s idea that Clegg had won’t match how she actually is at last.

When Miranda dies, Clegg knows right the blame is on him. So, what he does is just
trying to convince us that it’s only been an accident, like he didn’t have any fault in what
happened. This is a bad faith example. He even refers to Miranda as his guest instead of
his prisoner, which is exactly what she is. Also, Miranda is GP’s prisoner. This helps
Clegg trying to explain that he has saved Miranda from GP (another reason for showing
the diary). He also wants to prove that Miranda is not as good and sweet as we think.
She’s kind of annoying, she just thinks of GP, etc…
There’s no way Miranda’s going to win. She’s kind of masochist because GP hurts her
but she always gets back to him.

Rape idea when we start reading the novel we expect the rape to happen. And Clegg
always tries to convince us that he’s such a good fellow. He wants us to think that another
guy would have rapped her, but he’s good instead, everything he does is taking pictures
of her.

In the end of the novel Clegg spoils everything when he says he’s already put an eye on
another girl. This makes us completely understand that it’s not Miranda, it’s the fact of
owing a girl. Also, this fact helps understanding the tittle of the novel. If he actually loved
Miranda that much, he’d have killed himself after Miranda’s death.

*Does he deserve to go to jail or asylum?

He never acknowledges his responsibility. Even though he has always known that he was
going to end up killing her. He’d already dreamt of this idea before. And eventually, he
doesn’t do enough when Miranda is about to die. And doing nothing in this situation is a
way of murdering too. Moreover, he always knew he wouldn’t ever let her go (bad faith
example).

Why does Miranda finally want to have sex with him? This has to do with power. Miranda
has power on him. She’s waiting for him to rape her from the very beginning. When she
realizes he’s not going to, he loses all the power he had. After that happens, the
relationship totally changes. We can think he’s impotent but he would never say so, which
means we’ll never know. By the time he’s realized he has lost all his power, he realizes
he needs another girl. Also, he wants to prove he’s a nice guy who would never lay down
with her. We must remember that the first thing he does after winning the lottery is going
to a whorehouse. But he doesn’t have sex with the whores in the end.

He’s shamed of showing Miranda his desire. He feels like putty into Miranda’s hands
when she tries to have sex with him. He has no erection longer. He thinks something like
“I’m not going to have sex with you because you are being dirty. Therefore, from now on
I’ll treat you like that.” That’s why Miranda’s death doesn’t matter. Miranda becomes an
object, another butterfly to his collection. After all of this takes place, Miranda starts to
feel empathy about him.

He knows he must destroy the photos if he’s going to kill himself. But this is only
hypothetical because he won’t ever do that.

SUMMARIES
The monkey’s paw
"The Monkey's Paw" is set in the White family home in England. It begins on a dark and
stormy night, so we know we're in for a scary story. The Whites – Mr. and Mrs. White
and their adult son Herbert – are inside enjoying a cozy evening around the fire.

Soon Sergeant-Major Morris arrives. He's been in the army in India for the past 21 years.
He tells the Whites stories of his adventures in that faraway land and shows them a
monkey's paw that has the power to grant three wishes. Mr. White wants the paw, but
Morris tells him it's cursed – people get hurt when their wishes are granted. He tries to
burn the paw in the fire, but Mr. White snatches it up and buys it. After Morris leaves,
Mr. White, following Herbert's suggestion, wishes for two hundred pounds, the amount
of money he would need to pay off the bank and own the house outright.

The next morning, Herbert goes off to work as usual and Mrs. White watches for the two
hundred pounds to show up. In the afternoon, a fancily dressed man pays the Whites a
visit. He is from Maw and Meggins, the company Herbert works for. The man tells the
Whites that Herbert has been killed in a machinery accident. (We aren't given details of
Herbert's work, but the clues suggest that he works in some kind of factory.) The man
says that the company takes no blame for Herbert's death but wants to give the Whites
some money to help with their loss. You can probably guess how much money the man
gives the Whites. That's right, two hundred pounds. Mrs. White screams and Mr. White
faints.

Full of sadness over Herbert's death, Mr. and Mrs. White bury him in the cemetery two
miles from their home. One night Mrs. White gets a bright idea: use those other two
wishes to bring Herbert back! She shares her plan with Mr. White. He thinks it's a bad
idea – he could barely look at Herbert's mangled body when he went to identify it. His
wife really turns up the heat, though, and he caves in. Mr. White pulls out the cursed
monkey's paw and wishes Herbert back to life.

Nothing happens, so the Whites go back to bed. Soon after, someone – or something –
starts pounding on the door. (Have you seen Pet Sematary? This cannot be good.) Mrs.
White is sure it's Herbert – it just took him a minute to get there from the cemetery. Mr.
White is sure it's Herbert too, and he doesn't want his son to get in the house, so he makes
his third wish on the monkey's paw. (We aren't told what it is.) The knocking stops. Mr.
White hears Mrs. White open the door. He hears her scream out in agony because Herbert
is not there. He goes outside with her and sees that the road is completely empty.

The fall of the house of Usher

An unnamed narrator arrives at the House of Usher, a very creepy mansion owned by his
boyhood friend Roderick Usher. Roderick has been sick lately, afflicted by a disease of
the mind, and wrote to his friend, our narrator, asking for help. The narrator spends some
time admiring the awesomely spooky Usher edifice. While doing so, he explains that
Roderick and his sister are the last of the Usher bloodline, and that the family is famous
for its dedication to the arts (music, painting, literature, etc.). Eventually, the narrator
heads inside to see his friend.
Roderick indeed appears to be a sick man. He suffers from an "acuteness of the senses,"
or hyper-sensitivity to light, sound, taste, and tactile sensations; he feels that he will die
of the fear he feels. He attributes part of his illness to the fact that his sister, Madeline,
suffers from catalepsy (a sickness involving seizures) and will soon die, and part of it to
the belief that his creepy house is sentient (able to perceive things) and has a great power
over him. He hasn’t left the mansion in years. The narrator tries to help him get his mind
off all this death and gloom by poring over the literature, music, and art that Roderick so
loves. It doesn’t seem to help.

As Roderick predicted, Madeline soon dies. At least we think so. All we know is that
Roderick tells the narrator she’s dead, and that she appears to be dead when he looks at
her. Of course, because of her catalepsy, she might just look like she’s dead, post-seizure.
Keep that in mind. At Roderick’s request, the narrator helps him to entomb her body in
one of the vaults underneath the mansion. While they do so, the narrator discovers that
the two of them were twins and that they shared some sort of supernatural, probably
extrasensory, bond.

About a week later, on a dark and stormy night, the narrator and Usher find themselves
unable to sleep. They decide to pass away the scary night by reading a book. As the
narrator reads the text aloud, all the sounds from the fictional story can be heard
resounding from below the mansion. It doesn’t take long for Usher to freak out; he jumps
up and declares that they buried Madeline alive and that now she is coming back. Sure
enough, the doors blow open and there stands a trembling, bloody Madeline. She throws
herself at Usher, who falls to the floor and, after "violent" agony, dies along with his
sister. The narrator flees; outside he watches the House of Usher crack in two and sink
into the dark, dank pool that lies before it.

Breakfast of Champions
Breakfast of Champions tells the story of the events that leads up to the meeting of Kilgore
Trout and Dwayne Hoover, the meeting itself, and the immediate aftermath. Trout is a
struggling science fiction writer who, after their fateful meeting, becomes successful and
wins a Nobel Prize; Hoover is a wealthy businessman who is going insane, sent over the
brink by his encounter with Trout.

Trout, who believes himself to be completely unknown as a writer, receives an invitation


to the Midland City arts festival, and Trout travels to Midland City. First he goes to New
York City, where he is abducted and beaten up by the only anonymous, faceless
characters in the book, who through the media gain the moniker "The Pluto Gang." He
hitches a ride first with a truck driver whose truck says PYRAMID on its side, with whom
he discusses everything from politics to sex to the destruction of the planet. Then he hops
a ride with the only clearly happy character in the book, the driver of a Galaxie who works
for himself as a traveling salesman.

Dwayne Hoover gets more and more insane as the book progresses. He terrifies his
employee at the Pontiac agency, Harry LeSabre, by criticizing his clothes. LeSabre is
afraid Hoover has discovered that he is a closet transexual. Then he gets in a fight with
his mistress and secretary, Francine Pefko because he accuses her of asking him to buy
her a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.

Trout and Hoover meet in the cocktail lounge of the new Holiday Inn, where Hoover's
homosexual and estranged son, Bunny, plays the piano. When the bartender turns on the
black lights and Trout's white shirt glows brilliantly, Hoover is entranced by it. He accosts
Trout and reads his novel, Now It Can Be Told. The premise of the novel is that there is
only one creature with free will in the universe (the reader of the novel) and everyone else
is a robot. Hoover interprets its message as addressed to him from the Creator of the
Universe, and goes on a violent rampage, injuring many people around him and ending
up in a mental hospital.

In the Epilogue, Trout is released from the hospital with a partially severed finger (Hoover
has bitten it off in his rampage), and is wandering back to the arts festival, which has
unbeknownst to him been canceled. The narrator, who has become an interactive
character in the universe of his own creation, watches Trout and then chases him down.
He proves that he is the Creator of the Universe by sending Trout all around the world,
through time and back. Then he returns to his own universe, presumably, through the
"void," while Trout yells after him, "Make me young!"

Throughout Breakfast of Champions, the reader is introduced to many minor characters


as if they are major characters; the narrator points out that he means to write about life,
and in life, everyone is as important a character as everyone else. He believes that the
problems of the world can be traced back to humans wanting to live as if they are in a
story book; this allows rulers to waste the lives of thousands of "minor" characters, and
encourages people to kill one another and themselves for the effect of a dramatic ending.
The narrator himself is an important character, interacting with the characters he has
created and resembling Vonnegut himself in many ways.

The reader is also provided with short summaries of the works of Kilgore Trout. Their
plots often demonstrate themes of Breakfast of Champions itself, a technique that aligns
Vonnegut as an author with Trout as an author. For instance, Plague on Wheels deals with
the extinction of a race of automobile-people. When the idea of the automobile is brought
to Earth, Earthlings use it to destroy their own planet; the destruction of Earth is a theme
that features frequently in Breakfast of Champions. Another example is "This Means
You," in which a small percentage of the inhabitants of Hawaii own all the land, and
decide to enforce a No Trespassing rule. The rest of the citizens, who do not own the land,
are forced to dangle from the strings of helium balloons rather than paddle offshore. This
story thus explores the theme of overpopulation (also touched upon in Trout's story
Gilgongo!) as well as that of ownership, both of which are prominent in Breakfast of
Champions.

Lord of the flies


Lord of the Flies explores the dark side of humanity, the savagery that underlies even the
most civilized human beings. William Golding intended this novel as a tragic parody of
children's adventure tales, illustrating humankind's intrinsic evil nature. He presents the
reader with a chronology of events leading a group of young boys from hope to disaster
as they attempt to survive their uncivilized, unsupervised, isolated environment until
rescued.

In the midst of a nuclear war, a group of British boys find themselves stranded without
adult supervision on a tropical island. The group is roughly divided into the "littluns,"
boys around the age of six, and the "biguns," who are between the ages of ten and twelve.
Initially, the boys attempt to form a culture similar to the one they left behind. They elect
a leader, Ralph, who, with the advice and support of Piggy (the intellectual of the group),
strives to establish rules for housing and sanitation. Ralph also makes a signal fire the
group's first priority, hoping that a passing ship will see the smoke signal and rescue them.
A major challenge to Ralph's leadership is Jack, who also wants to lead. Jack commands
a group of choirboys-turned-hunters who sacrifice the duty of tending the fire so that they
can participate in the hunts. Jack draws the other boys slowly away from Ralph's influence
because of their natural attraction to and inclination toward the adventurous hunting
activities symbolizing violence and evil.

The conflict between Jack and Ralph — and the forces of savagery and civilization that
they represent — is exacerbated by the boys' literal fear of a mythical beast roaming the
island. One night, an aerial battle occurs above the island, and a casualty of the battle
floats down with his opened parachute, ultimately coming to rest on the mountaintop.
Breezes occasionally inflate the parachute, making the body appear to sit up and then sink
forward again. This sight panics the boys as they mistake the dead body for the beast they
fear. In a reaction to this panic, Jack forms a splinter group that is eventually joined by
all but a few of the boys. The boys who join Jack are enticed by the protection Jack's
ferocity seems to provide, as well as by the prospect of playing the role of savages: putting
on camouflaging face paint, hunting, and performing ritualistic tribal dances. Eventually,
Jack's group actually slaughters a sow and, as an offering to the beast, puts the sow's head
on a stick.

Of all the boys, only the mystic Simon has the courage to discover the true identity of the
beast sighted on the mountain. After witnessing the death of the sow and the gift made of
her head to the beast, Simon begins to hallucinate, and the staked sow's head becomes the
Lord of the Flies, imparting to Simon what he has already suspected: The beast is not an
animal on the loose but is hidden in each boy's psyche. Weakened by his horrific vision,
Simon loses consciousness.

Recovering later that evening, he struggles to the mountaintop and finds that the beast is
only a dead pilot/soldier. Attempting to bring the news to the other boys, he stumbles into
the tribal frenzy of their dance. Perceiving him as the beast, the boys beat him to death.

Soon only three of the older boys, including Piggy, are still in Ralph's camp. Jack's group
steals Piggy's glasses to start its cooking fires, leaving Ralph unable to maintain his signal
fire. When Ralph and his small group approach Jack's tribe to request the return of the
glasses, one of Jack's hunters releases a huge boulder on Piggy, killing him. The tribe
captures the other two biguns prisoners, leaving Ralph on his own.

The tribe undertakes a manhunt to track down and kill Ralph, and they start a fire to
smoke him out of one of his hiding places, creating an island-wide forest fire. A passing
ship sees the smoke from the fire, and a British naval officer arrives on the beach just in
time to save Ralph from certain death at the hands of the schoolboys turned savages.

Young Goodman Brown

Goodman Brown says goodbye to his wife, Faith, outside of his house in Salem Village.
Faith, wearing pink ribbons in her cap, asks him to stay with her, saying that she feels
scared when she is by herself and free to think troubling thoughts. Goodman Brown tells
her that he must travel for one night only and reminds her to say her prayers and go to
bed early. He reassures her that if she does this, she will come to no harm. Goodman
Brown takes final leave of Faith, thinking to himself that she might have guessed the evil
purpose of his trip and promising to be a better person after this one night.

Goodman Brown sets off on a road through a gloomy forest. He looks around, afraid of
what might be behind each tree, thinking that there might be Indians or the devil himself
lurking there. He soon comes upon a man in the road who greets Goodman Brown as
though he had been expecting him. The man is dressed in regular clothing and looks
normal except for a walking stick he carries. This walking stick features a carved serpent,
which is so lifelike it seems to move.

The man offers Goodman Brown the staff, saying that it might help him walk faster, but
Goodman Brown refuses. He says that he showed up for their meeting because he
promised to do so but does not wish to touch the staff and wants to return to the village.
Goodman Brown tells the man that his family members have been Christians and good
people for generations and that he feels ashamed to associate with him. The man replies
that he knew Goodman Brown’s father and grandfather, as well as other members of
churches in New England, and even the governor of the state.

The man’s words confuse Goodman Brown, who says that even if this is so, he wants to
return to the village for Faith’s sake. At that moment, the two come upon an old woman
hobbling through the woods, and Goodman Brown recognizes Goody Cloyse, who he
knows to be a pious, respected woman from the village. He hides, embarrassed to be seen
with the man, and the man taps Goody Cloyse on the shoulder. She identifies him as the
devil and reveals herself to be a witch, on her way to the devil’s evil forest ceremony.

Despite this revelation, Goodman Brown tells the man that he still intends to turn back,
for Faith’s sake. The man says that Goodman Brown should rest. Before disappearing, he
gives Goodman Brown his staff, telling him that he can use it for transport to the
ceremony if he changes his mind. As he sits and gathers himself, Goodman Brown hears
horses traveling along the road and hides once again.
Soon he hears the voices of the minister of the church and Deacon Gookin, who are also
apparently on their way to the ceremony. Shocked, Goodman Brown swears that even
though everyone else in the world has gone to the devil, for Faith’s sake he will stay true
to God. However, he soon hears voices coming from the ceremony and thinks he
recognizes Faith’s voice. He screams her name, and a pink ribbon from her cap flutters
down from the sky.

Certain that there is no good in the world because Faith has turned to evil, Goodman
Brown grabs the staff, which pulls him quickly through the forest toward the ceremony.
When he reaches the clearing where the ceremony is taking place, the trees around it are
on fire, and he can see in the firelight the faces of various respected members of the
community, along with more disreputable men and women and Indian priests. But he
doesn’t see Faith, and he starts to hope once again that she might not be there.

A figure appears on a rock and tells the congregation to present the converts. Goodman
Brown thinks he sees his father beckoning him forward and his mother trying to hold him
back. Before he can rethink his decision, the minister and Deacon Gookin drag him
forward. Goody Cloyse and Martha Carrier bring forth another person, robed and covered
so that her identity is unknown. After telling the two that they have made a decision that
will reveal all the wickedness of the world to them, the figure tells them to show
themselves to each other. Goodman Brown sees that the other convert is Faith. Goodman
Brown tells Faith to look up to heaven and resist the devil, then suddenly finds himself
alone in the forest.

The next morning Goodman Brown returns to Salem Village, and every person he passes
seems evil to him. He sees the minister, who blesses him, and hears Deacon Gookin
praying, but he refuses to accept the blessing and calls Deacon Gookin a wizard. He sees
Goody Cloyse quizzing a young girl on Bible verses and snatches the girl away. Finally,
he sees Faith at his own house and refuses to greet her. It’s unclear whether the encounter
in the forest was a dream, but for the rest of his life, Goodman Brown is changed. He
doesn’t trust anyone in his village, can’t believe the words of the minister, and doesn’t
fully love his wife. He lives the remainder of his life in gloom and fear.

A rose for Emily

The story is divided into five sections. In section I, the narrator recalls the time of Emily
Grierson’s death and how the entire town attended her funeral in her home, which no
stranger had entered for more than ten years. In a once-elegant, upscale neighborhood,
Emily’s house is the last vestige of the grandeur of a lost era. Colonel Sartoris, the town’s
previous mayor, had suspended Emily’s tax responsibilities to the town after her father’s
death, justifying the action by claiming that Mr. Grierson had once lent the community a
significant sum. As new town leaders take over, they make unsuccessful attempts to get
Emily to resume payments. When members of the Board of Aldermen pay her a visit, in
the dusty and antiquated parlor, Emily reasserts the fact that she is not required to pay
taxes in Jefferson and that the officials should talk to Colonel Sartoris about the matter.
However, at that point he has been dead for almost a decade. She asks her servant, Tobe,
to show the men out.

In section II, the narrator describes a time thirty years earlier when Emily resists another
official inquiry on behalf of the town leaders, when the townspeople detect a powerful
odor emanating from her property. Her father has just died, and Emily has been
abandoned by the man whom the townsfolk believed Emily was to marry. As complaints
mount, Judge Stevens, the mayor at the time, decides to have lime sprinkled along the
foundation of the Grierson home in the middle of the night. Within a couple of weeks, the
odor subsides, but the townspeople begin to pity the increasingly reclusive Emily,
remembering how her great aunt had succumbed to insanity. The townspeople have
always believed that the Griersons thought too highly of themselves, with Emily’s father
driving off the many suitors deemed not good enough to marry his daughter. With no
offer of marriage in sight, Emily is still single by the time she turns thirty.

The day after Mr. Grierson’s death, the women of the town call on Emily to offer their
condolences. Meeting them at the door, Emily states that her father is not dead, a charade
that she keeps up for three days. She finally turns her father’s body over for burial.

In section III, the narrator describes a long illness that Emily suffers after this incident.
The summer after her father’s death, the town contracts workers to pave the sidewalks,
and a construction company, under the direction of northerner Homer Barron, is awarded
the job. Homer soon becomes a popular figure in town and is seen taking Emily on buggy
rides on Sunday afternoons, which scandalizes the town and increases the condescension
and pity they have for Emily. They feel that she is forgetting her family pride and
becoming involved with a man beneath her station.

As the affair continues and Emily’s reputation is further compromised, she goes to the
drug store to purchase arsenic, a powerful poison. She is required by law to reveal how
she will use the arsenic. She offers no explanation, and the package arrives at her house
labeled “For rats.”

In section IV, the narrator describes the fear that some of the townspeople have that Emily
will use the poison to kill herself. Her potential marriage to Homer seems increasingly
unlikely, despite their continued Sunday ritual. The more outraged women of the town
insist that the Baptist minister talk with Emily. After his visit, he never speaks of what
happened and swears that he’ll never go back. So the minister’s wife writes to Emily’s
two cousins in Alabama, who arrive for an extended stay. Because Emily orders a silver
toilet set monogrammed with Homer’s initials, talk of the couple’s marriage resumes.
Homer, absent from town, is believed to be preparing for Emily’s move to the North or
avoiding Emily’s intrusive relatives.
After the cousins’ departure, Homer enters the Grierson home one evening and then is
never seen again. Holed up in the house, Emily grows plump and gray. Despite the
occasional lesson she gives in china painting, her door remains closed to outsiders. In
what becomes an annual ritual, Emily refuses to acknowledge the tax bill. She eventually
closes up the top floor of the house. Except for the occasional glimpse of her in the
window, nothing is heard from her until her death at age seventy-four. Only the servant
is seen going in and out of the house.

In section V, the narrator describes what happens after Emily dies. Emily’s body is laid
out in the parlor, and the women, town elders, and two cousins attend the service. After
some time has passed, the door to a sealed upstairs room that had not been opened in forty
years is broken down by the townspeople. The room is frozen in time, with the items for
an upcoming wedding and a man’s suit laid out. Homer Barron’s body is stretched on the
bed as well, in an advanced state of decay. The onlookers then notice the indentation of a
head in the pillow beside Homer’s body and a long strand of Emily’s gray hair on the
pillow.

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