Summary:

A devoted scientist, in a brief step from his laboratory pursuits, marries a beautiful woman with a single physical flaw: a birthmark on her face. Aylmer becomes obsessed with the imperfection and his need to remove it. The tale evolves around his progressive frenzy to use his scientific skills to render his bride perfect and the faith of his submissive wife that the union can survive only if he accomplishes his goal. The author tells us that Aylmer "had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies . . . " and, in the secrecy of his laboratory he prepares the potion for Georgiana which results in the disappearance of the birthmark and the death of Aylmer's experimental subject.

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A man called "The Counselor" is wandering the deserts, plains, and villages. He teaches scripture and rebuilds churches, like a monk, eating and sleeping very little. He attracts an odd group of followers--cripples, murderers, fanatical boys--and leads them to Canudos where they build a town and a glorious cathedral. The town is designed in imitation of Jerusalem. Many people flock to the site to see The Counselor; he heals them with a touch and washes them clean of sin.

The newly-installed conservative government is suspicious of Canudos, seeing it as a bastion of progressive sentiment. They resolve to attack the town and wipe it out. The Counselor, however, has long warned his followers that the Dog and his forces of evil will try to ruin their sanctuary.

When the small branch of the army sent to destroy what they think is a band of cripples and madmen arrives, they are slaughtered with all the vengeance of a holy war. The angered government sends a larger force and the town is eventually destroyed, but the few survivors insist that they saw The Counselor ascend to heaven, and so his reign lives on.

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Mr. Utterson is a London lawyer who is a friend of Dr. Jekyll. Jekyll gave up his regular practice to experiment with non-traditional medicine. Utterson is concerned because Jekyll has written a will that leaves all his money to his new partner Mr. Hyde. Utterson has heard bad things of Hyde and disliked him at first sight. The lawyer thinks his friend is being blackmailed.

One day, the lawyer is asked to identify the body of a murdered man, Sir Danvers Carew, one of Utterson’s clients. Hyde is suspected of the murder, but he has disappeared. Jekyll swears that he has not seen Hyde and has broken with him forever. The case remains unsolved and Jekyll becomes more sociable than he had been.

Suddenly, though, he locks himself into his laboratory, yelling to the servants through the door, directing them to gather chemicals for him. The servants recognize a change in his voice and think that their master has been murdered; another man has taken his place in the lab. They call Utterson who breaks down the door. On the floor lies Hyde, who has killed himself with poison. Sadly, Utterson assumes Hyde returned and killed Jekyll, but the doctor’s body is nowhere to be found.

He does find, however, a letter in which Jekyll explains his relationship to Hyde. Jekyll had sometimes indulged in debauches which, if discovered, could have ruined his reputation and of which he is ashamed. Pondering this split in his personality, he decides to find a way to separate his two beings. Jekyll creates a potion that releases his evil side, Mr. Hyde. Hyde is shorter and smaller than Jekyll, having not had as much exercise.

For a while Jekyll enjoys his two bodies; he can do whatever he likes without fear of discovery. His pleasure is stunted when Hyde kills Carew in a nonsensical fit, and he resolves never to take the potion again. Hyde is now strong, however, and emerges whether Jekyll will have him or not. Indeed, Jekyll must use the potion to be rid of him if only for a moment. Jekyll knows that it is only by killing his body that Hyde’s body, too, will die.

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Summary:

The narrator remembers a science fair she participated in as a child. The projects presented were diverse. One boy weighed mice before and after killing them in order to measure the weight of the soul. Another made an atom smasher. A girl made cookies from Euglena. The narrator rubs the tar of cigarettes into the shaved backs of mice in order to discover the tremulousness of life.

The narrator says she recalled the fair because the dusky seaside sparrow just became extinct, though its cells are frozen at Walt Disney in case it is ever learned how they may be cloned. She concludes by noting that the cookies won the prize.

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Summary:

Frankenstein's monster is speaking. "Bigger than the best, but not the best," he will do anything, he will not rest until "the earth is rid of that Creator / who dared to make a thing without a soul." He tells us that he is "the dark body . . . / made . . . to symbolize your dread." He warns us that he is not really something exterior or alien--we can find him in our sons and daughters, even in ourselves: "While you disperse in every dark theater / in streams of light, inside you I am whole."

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Summary:

Shelley angrily asks why some people chase after death or knowledge of it. To analyze the source of life or the conditions of its end is "vain" curiosity. Such knowledge has no benefit; it merely is a case of man trying to usurp the role of God.

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Summary:

Bleier uses the image of a lab coat as a basis to discuss the objective status of science. Is the white lab coat a symbol of purity, of aseptic neutrality, in which the scientist is wrapped? Or does it give the scientist a faceless authority that cannot be challenged? Bleier believes that our conception of science must be changed. It is not enough to simply clear androcentric bias. Scientists must recognize the values and beliefs that inform their work, rather than assuming they work in an apolitical, asocial vacuum. Scientists should commit themselves to human values.

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Summary:

At the bomb testing site, a lizard waits. It is expecting something, awaiting "something farther off / than people could see . . . . " The lizard grips the earth, "its elbows tense . . . ready for a change."

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This is a powerful poem about the "ugly, grunting . . . disgusting creatures" the poet sees through his microscope. We know the creatures are dead, we know the creatures are sliced, we know they’re splayed on the pathologist’s slides. Are they microbes? Are they "bits of animals"? Are they cancer cells? No one asks "whether these creatures wouldn’t have preferred" to live "their disgusting life / in bogs / and canals" or to eat one another. No one asks any questions, "because it’s all quite useless . . . like everything else in this world," a world in which the poet meets "a lonely girl," a general, a rat, even "my own self at every step."

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Summary:

In this essay on the spirit and the sacred, Rushdie examines the importance of language and literature in a secular, rationalist, materialist culture. He makes a case for literature as a privileged arena so that we can, "within the secrecy of our own heads . . . hear voices talking about everything in every possible way."

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