Passage
All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men. But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house. (40)
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Sofia to Celie
Olinka
Tribe with which Nettie lives in Africa
Divinity of hell!
When devils will the blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows
As I do now. (87)
Othello by William Shakespeare
Iago gloating in soliloquy over his plan to take down Othello by insinuating the fact of an affair between Cassio and Desdemona
Unferth
Beowulf by unknown author, translated by Seamus Heaney
jealous Dane
"Her voice is full of money," he said suddenly.
That was it. I'd never understood before. It was full of money--that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it...High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl... (120)
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Gatsby to Nick about Daisy
"It was a cold-blooded lie that a god had lovingly made the world and set out the sun and moon as lights to land-dwellers, that brothers had fought, that one of the races was saved, the other cursed. Yet he, the old Shaper, might make it true, by the sweetness of his harp, his cunning trickery. It came to me with a fierce jolt that I wanted it....I wanted it, yes! Even if I must be the outcast, cursed by the rules of his hideous fable." (55)
Grendel by John Gardner
Cyprus
Othello by William Shakespeare
I say, Write.
She say, What?
I say, Write.
She say, Nothing but death can keep me from it.
She never write. (18)
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Celie about Nettie
handkerchief
Othello by William Shakespeare
It was a happy gathering. In my whole life
I have never seen mead enjoyed more
in any hall on earth. Sometimes the queen
herself appeared, peace-pledge between nations,
to hearted the young ones and hand out
a torque to a warrior, then take her place. (135)
Beowulf by unknown author, translated by Seamus Heaney
Beowulf describes the Dane's mead hall to the Geats upon his return
But jealous souls will not be answered so.
They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they're jealous. 'Tis a monster
Begot upon itself, born on itself. (139)
Othello by William Shakespeare
Emilia to Desdemona about the fact that Desdemona has never given Othello cause to be jealous.
Existentialism
Grendel by John Gardner
A theory that emphasizes the importance of an individual’s existence over any presumed natural essence and that tasks each individual with using their unqualified freedom to make of themselves whatever they choose.
I called my love false love, but what said he then?
Sing willow, willow, willow;
If I court moe women, you'll couch with moe men --
So get thee gone; good night. Mine eyes do itch --
Does that bode weeping?
Othello by William Shakespeare
Desdemona singing, then speaking to Emilia
Squeak
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Mary Agnes
A model of learning
He give me a lynched daddy, a crazy mama, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won't ever see again. Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful and lowdown. (192)
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Celie to Shug
"So it is goodbye now to all you know and love
on your home ground, the open-handedness,
the giving of war-swords. Every one of you
with freeholds of land, our whole nation,
will be dispossessed, once princes from beyond
get tidings of how you turned and fled
and disgraced yourselves. A warrior will sooner
die than live a life of shame. (193)
Beowulf by unknown author, translated by Seamus Heaney
Wiglaf to Geat warriors
Freawaru
Beowulf by unknown author, translated by Seamus Heaney
daughter of the Hrothgar & Wealhtheow, King & Queen of the Danes
of the people are white and so you just think all the people from the bible were white too. But really white white people lived somewhere else during those times. That's why the bible says that Jesus Christ had hair like lamb's wool. Lamb's wool is not straight....It isn't even curly.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Nettie explains her new understanding of the Bible as she studies to become a missionary in Africa.
Dan Cody
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jay Gatsby's mentor
"There are no schemes left. And so he waits like a man chained in a cave, staring at the entrance or, sometimes, gazing with sad, absent-minded eyes at [her], chained beside him. Who is one more trap, the worst. She's young, could have served a more vigorous man. And beautiful: need not have withered her nights and wasted her body on a bony, shivering wretch." (122)
Grendel by John Gardner
Grendel's perception of Hrothgar and Wealhtheow's marriage.
He must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarecely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about...like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees. (161)
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Gatsby waiting for Daisy to call...and encountering only George Wilson
Jared Hunt
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
pen name of Doris Baines, English writer turned anticolonial activist
From farther out on the Island came the Cheadles and the O. R. P. Schraeders, and the Stonewall Jackson Abrams of Georgia, and the Fishguards and the Ripley Snells. Snell was there three days before he want to the peitentiary, so drunk out on the gravel drive that Mrs. Ulysses Swett's automobile ran over his right hand. (62)
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Folkspants, Unlimited
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The company that Celie organizes to sell pants. She sells to any and all (folks) an article of clothing traditionally gendered male (pants) in a manner that defies traditional stereotyping/categorizing (unlimited).
Sometimes at pagan shrines they vowed
offerings to idols, swore oaths
that the killer of souls might come to their aid
and save the people. That was their way,
their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts
they remembered hell. The Almighty Judge
of good deeds and bad, the Lord God,
Head of the Heavens and High King of the World,
was unknown to them. (15)
Beowulf by unknown author, translated by Seamus Heaney
Danes in despair over Grendel's attacks