Summary:

This troubling narrative opens with, "They say you see your whole life pass in review the instant before you die. How would they know? If you die after the instant replay, you aren’t around to tell anyone anything" (120). The narrator, a newborn girl on her way down the garbage chute from the 10th floor of an apartment building, reflects on what might have been had she lived long enough to have experienced life.

The structure of the piece moves the reader from floors ten, nine, into the game of chance played with dice, to "The Floor of Facts." At this juncture, the newspaper account of the newborn dead in the trash is iterated in its cold truths. The narrator laments, "As grateful as I am to have my story made public you should be able to understand why I feel cheated, why the newspaper account is not enough, why I want my voice to be part of the record" (123). The narrator shifts gears and begins to explore what her life might have been had she lived beyond these few hours.

She enters a "Floor of Opinions," where her own beliefs must be voiced and for which there must be room on the "Floor of Facts." She speculates, based on the experiences of her socioeconomic--and possibly racial--situation, whether her death will serve any purpose. On the "Floor Of Wishes" she imagines things she would have likely loved, such as Christmas. From this point, the narrative, in quick and painful anecdotes, draws the reality of the powerlessness, the limitations of love, and the brutality suffered by those in the clutches of urban poverty. Then the narrator enters the garbage compactor at the bottom of the chute, inviting us all to join her "where the heart stops."

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Summary:

Hans Castorp makes a visit to the International Sanitarium Berghof in the Swiss Alps to rest and visit his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen. There he meets other patients from around Europe, all with different opinions about life and its meaning. Before his three week visit is up, Hans develops tuberculosis and ends up staying seven years. He leaves only when the Sanitarium gets news of the assassination of the Archduke that will begin World War One.

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Sitting around the dinner table one evening, the Toumeville family receives news that the Marquis de Fumerol, Mrs. Toumeville’s brother, is dying. The Marquis squandered his money and reputation on a series of loose women; as a consequence, he has not seen his sister in years. Nevertheless, the Toumevilles leave immediately for his bedside in fear that the Marquis will die without having reunited with God. The Toumevilles are not so much concerned with the Marquis’ eternal life as with the possibility that the "freethinkers" and socialists will make the Marquis a hero for turning his back on the morality of the aristocracy.

The Marquis receives his nephew kindly, but when the priest enters he flies into a rage. The priest is forced to retreat. While the family is considering another plan of attack, they hear screams from the sick man’s room. A Protestant clergyman had entered and the Marquis grew so angry that he collapsed. His nephew thinks he is dead. His mother and the priest, however, act as though he is still alive. The priest administers extreme unction and Mrs. Toumeville cries out that her brother has squeezed her hand, recognizing her and accepting religion.

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Jordan, an 18-year-old athlete, finds his joints weak and begins to stumble unaccountably. The local doctor who has known him all his life sends him to the Mayo clinic where a diagnosis of Lou Gherig’s disease is confirmed. His mother, three brothers, sister, and brother-in-law (an Episcopalian priest) accommodate to his illness, with its promise of early death, in various ways.

The family is supportive, though the youngest brother goes through weeks of denial that look like rejection before he allows himself to feel the emotional impact. Jordan’s adored girlfriend can’t rise to the challenge of loving a boy with no future, and distances herself, but leaves it up to him to acknowledge and effect a separation that leaves her free to pursue other relationships, and him to burrow deeper into the loving family that sustains him in his final months. He takes one last trip to the Colorado mountains with his younger brother where they meet an old mountaineer who senses immediately what might be happening and becomes for Jordan the type and figure of the wise old man.

Here as in other stories of this kind, time seems to conflate for the young person facing death; maturity comes in sudden leaps, and a certain calm descends before the end. One of Jordan’s final acts is to serve as godfather at the baptism of his sister’s baby, his namesake. The act and the letter he writes the child gives him a sense of leaving behind a legacy that matters.

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Summary:

A doctor is riding through the desolate steppe at twilight and loses his way. He comes to a hut along the new railroad where two men, an engineer and his young assistant, are spending the night. After they all have a few drinks, the engineer marvels over the beauty of lights in the distance, while the young man says the lights remind him "of something long dead, that lived thousands of years ago." (p. 607) He sees no point in human love or accomplishment because, after all, we all have the same fate--death. This encourages the old engineer to tell a tale of his youth.

Once, when visiting his hometown on business, he had come across a childhood friend, a woman who was unhappily married. He looked forward to having a brief affair with her, but she considered him her savior. She desperately wanted him to take her away. The engineer agreed, but then callously abandoned her.

Later, he realized that "I had committed a crime as bad as murder." (p. 635) He went back and "besought Kisotchka’s forgiveness like a naughty boy and wept with her . . . " (p. 639) At the end of "Lights," the doctor rides off at sunrise toward home. All around him nature seems to be saying, "Yes, there’s no understanding anything in the world!"

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Dr. Panteleon has practiced medicine for more than forty years in a town where his patients rarely became ill. One day, a girl arrives at his office requesting a gynecological examination. The doctor performs a silent and mechanical pelvic exam. The girl’s stepfather wants the physician to certify that the young woman is a virgin and able to have children. The stepfather has given her an ultimatum. She must marry either the town butcher or Dr. Panteleon. She hates the butcher and the doctor will not marry her.

The girl asks for help. The stepfather suffers from chronic constipation and hemorrhoids. Although critical of Dr. Panteleon’s treatment of his problem, the stepfather nevertheless requests additional medicated suppositories. Before embarking on a house call to meet with the lazy man and discuss the young woman’s plight, Dr. Panteleon prepares six special suppositories laced with a poison that will make constipation the least of the stepfather’s problems.

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Summary:

This is a harrowing story, told in the first person, of an obsession with food and body image. "One day I will be thin enough", says Josie, the 25 year old anorectic woman who has been hospitalized for life-threatening self-starvation. "Just the bones, . . . the pure, clear shape of me." "One day I will be pure consciousness." The narration spins out in painful detail the pattern of compulsive behavior which pervades Josie’s existence. Her pitifully barren emotional life is revealed as well.

How did it all begin? Flashbacks of significant events invade Josie’s attempts to stop thinking. A shy, awkward adolescent, overly sensitive to casual comments about excess flesh, decides to diet. Josie stumbles non-communicatively through a teen-age sexual initiation to a later affair with her married professor, retreating ever further from her bewildered family.

But why do events take such an extreme turn? The mystery of anorexia nervosa remains. In the hospital, a nurse who has seen everything seems to strike some responsive cord, and Josie begins eating to gain weight. At the end of the novel she’ll soon be released , under supervision, but the outcome is in doubt. "Can I learn to be so present? Can I learn to be so full?" ". . . if I were a body, what would I be?"

 

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Summary:

Villagers gather together in the central square for the annual lottery. There is much excitement and interest as the rituals of the event proceed. The familiar discussion of current and everyday happenings in village life is intermingled with commentary on the traditional and modern ways of holding the lottery, as well as observation of the particularities of this year’s proceedings. Finally a winning family is chosen by ballot, and from that family a winning member--Mrs. Hutchinson. Mrs. Hutchinson is then stoned by the villagers, including her family members.

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Summary:

In "Life Support," a mother must make a difficult decision: whether or not to consent to heart surgery without anesthesia for her critically ill newborn who is on a ventilator. Her instincts and reason contradict each other, and she isn’t sure which to believe. She wants to let the child die naturally in her arms, but this will not be allowed in this particular institution. She feels distant from her husband and from the doctors, and believes that her sudden transformation into the guardian of this child presumes far more knowledge and ability than she possesses.

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Summary:

Losing Julia is narrated by Patrick Delaney, age 81, a World War I veteran, who lives, somewhat independently, in Great Oaks, an assisted living facility. Still able to go into town to get new clothes, books, etc. and enchanted with the kindness and loveliness of Sarah and other female staff members, the well-educated and quick-witted protagonist offers a fresh perspective on "institutional" care.

Much of Patrick’s story, however, concerns Daniel, a war-time buddy, and other soldiers in his embattled unit prior to and during the hellacious Battle of Verdun. Several soldiers are carefully and memorably drawn by the stories they tell about life at home and their aspirations. Daniel stands out as Patrick’s closest friend in the trenches, a young man who is courageous, rational, fearful, and in love with Julia.

Like his peers, Patrick listens to Daniel’s lyrical recollection of the woman others can only imagine. Patrick realizes that he has fallen in love with Julia’s image. Most of the men, including Daniel, are killed brutally in one of the war’s most savage battles. When Patrick’s post-war efforts to find the elusive Julia fail, he marries, works as an accountant, and has two children. Like the war, Julia remains, however, a constant shadow throughout his life.

When a war monument is constructed ten years later on the site of the last atrocious battle, Patrick, his wife, his toddler son, and his sister-in-law journey to Paris. With his family happily detained in Paris, Patrick goes to Verdun alone for the monument’s unveiling ceremonies with many other veterans and grieving family members. It is here that Julia appears and the two become lovers during the time at Verdun and then for a short time in Paris.

The story, non-sequential in its presentation, weaves the various elements of aging, memory, war, love, and loss together for readers to untangle and follow.

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