THE BET

In The Bet, Chekov decides to analyze which is worse: life imprisonment or capital punishment. In order
to do this, he sets up a bet that would likely never take place in real life. This is typical of Chekov, who
likes to examine philosophical questions (against the backdrop of a simple plot) as they might play out in
real life, with real consequences, rather than simply examining them in the abstract.

Through this story, Chekov demonstrates the pitfalls of idealism and the foolishness of youth. Had the
lawyer been older and wiser, he would never have decided so impulsively to go through with this bet. Had
he had a family, a wife, childrenany support structure that depended on himhe would not have agreed.
So the bet also demonstrates the selfishness of man and youth. With nothing to lose, and two million to
gain, the lawyer cannot think of a reason to reject the bet.

It is very interesting that Chekov does not show the readers the thoughts of the lawyer as he makes this
bet. The only time that we see the thoughts of the lawyer clearly is later in the story, through a letter. We
never see the lawyer's thought process wholly unvarnished and unfiltered, as we often see the thoughts
of the banker. This allows the lawyer to remain a pure model of idealism, sacrificing years of his life to
prove his moral principles, something that most would find hard to stomach in real life. It lends the lawyer
a polished, holier aura.

The story also shows the toll that separation from human society can take on a person. Whereas at first
the lawyer was full of virtue, eschewing wine and tobacco, he later gives himself in to his vices, drinking
and smoking constantly. He has lost some of his idealism, even as he continues to seek to prove it, and
himself, right.

The story is left rather open-ended, with the reader left with a sense that the story hasn't finished. Chekov
may have done this on purpose, to prompt the reader into thinking about the consequences of the banker
and the lawyer's actions. What ultimately is the fate of the lawyer? Does he live out his days happily? Is
the banker able to live remorse-free, feeling no guilt over taking so many years away from a young, bright
man? Maybe the old banker realized the vanity and emptiness of his life; we will never know.

The banker does feel some contempt for himself, but the story does not give the reader much more detail
than that. It is possible that the banker struggles with his decisions for the rest of his life as he does choose
to hold onto the lawyer's last letter, but it is equally possible that he simply forgets about the lawyer in a
few years time, locking away all thought of him from his mind.

THE BLACK CAT

More than any of Poe's stories, "The Black Cat" illustrates best the capacity of the human mind to observe
its own deterioration and the ability of the mind to comment upon its own destruction without being able
to objectively halt that deterioration. The narrator of "The Black Cat" is fully aware of his mental
deterioration, and at certain points in the story, he recognizes the change that is occurring within him,
and he tries to do something about it, but he finds himself unable to reverse his falling into madness.
In Poe's critical essay, "The Philosophy of Composition," he wrote about the importance of creating a unity
or totality of effect in his stories. By this, he meant that the artist should decide what effect he wants to
create in a story and in the reader's emotional response and then proceed to use all of his creative powers
to achieve that particular effect: "Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart or the
soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?"

In "The Black Cat," it is obvious that the chief effect that Poe wanted to achieve was a sense of absolute
and total perverseness "irrevocable . . . PERVERSENESS." Clearly, many of the narrator's acts are
without logic or motivation; they are merely acts of perversity.

In virtually all of Poe's tales, we know nothing about the narrator's background; this particular story is no
exception. In addition, it is akin to "The Tell-Tale Heart" in that the narrator begins his story by asserting
that he is not mad ("Yet, mad am I not ") and, at the same time, he wants to place before the world a
logical outline of the events that "have terrified have tortured have destroyed me." And during the
process of proving that he is not mad, we see increasingly the actions of a madman who knows that he is
going mad but who, at times, is able to objectively comment on the process of his increasing madness.

In this story, the narrator begins his confession in retrospect, at a time when he was considered to be a
perfectly normal person, known for his docility and his humane considerations of animals and people. His
parents indulged his fondness for animals, and he was allowed to have many different kinds of pets.
Furthermore, he was very fortunate to marry a woman who was also fond of animals. Among the many
animals that they possessed was a black cat which they named Pluto. Since his wife often made allusions
to the popular notion that all black cats are witches in disguise, the name Pluto (which is the name of one
of the gods of the underworld in charge of witches) becomes significant in terms of the entire story. The
other popular notion relevant to this story is the belief that a cat has nine lives; this superstition becomes
a part of the story when the second black cat is believed to be a reincarnation of the dead Pluto with only
one slight but horrible modification the imprint of the gallows on its breast.

Interestingly, Pluto was the narrator's favorite animal and for several years, there was a very special
relationship between the animal and the narrator. Then suddenly (due partly to alcohol), the narrator
underwent a significant change. "I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the
feelings of others." To reiterate the comments in the introduction to this section, Poe believed that a man
was capable at any time of undergoing a complete and total reversal of personality and of falling into a
state of madness at any moment. Here, the narrator undergoes such a change. The effect of this change
is indicated when he came home intoxicated, imagined that the beloved cat avoided him, then grasped
the cat by its throat and with a pen knife, cut out one of its eyes. This act of perversity is the beginning of
several such acts which will characterize the "totality of effect" that Poe wanted to achieve in this story.

The next morning, he writes, he was horrified by what he had done, and in time the cat recovered but
now it deliberately avoided the narrator. As the cat continued to avoid the narrator, the spirit of
perverseness overcame him again this time, with an unfathomable longing of the soul to "offer violence
. . . to do wrong for the wrong's sake only." Suddenly one morning, he slipped a noose around the neck of
the cat and hanged it from the limb of a tree, but even while doing it, tears streamed down his face. He is
ashamed of his perversity because he knows that the cat had loved him and had given him no reason to
hang it. What he did was an act of pure perversity.

That night, after the cruel deed was executed, his house burned to the ground. Being a rational and
analytical person, the narrator refuses to see a connection between his perverse atrocity of killing the cat
and the disaster that consumed his house.

Again, we have an example of the mad mind offering up a rational rejection of anything so superstitious
that the burning of the house might be retribution for his killing the cat. However, on the following day,
he visited the ruins of the house and saw a crowd of people gathered about. One wall, which had just
been replastered and was still wet, was still standing. It was the wall just above where his bed had
previously stood and engraved into the plaster was a perfect image of the figure of a gigantic cat, and
there was a rope about the animal's neck.

Once again, the narrator's mad mind attempts to offer a rational explanation for this phenomena. He
believes that someone found the cat's dead body, flung it into the burning house to awaken the narrator,
and the burning of the house, the falling of the walls, and the ammonia from the carcass (cats are filled
with ammonia; Poe wrote essays on cats, their instincts, their logic, and their habits) all these factors
contributed to the creation of the graven image. But the narrator does not account for the fact that the
image is that of a gigantic cat; thus we must assume that the image took on gigantic proportions only
within the mind of the narrator.

For months, the narrator could not forget about the black cat, and one night when he was drinking heavily,
he saw another black cat that looked exactly like Pluto except for a splash of white on its breast. Upon
inquiry, he found out that no one knew anything about the cat, which he then proceeded to take home
with him. The cat became a great favorite of his and his wife. The narrator's perversity, however, caused
him to soon change, and the cat's fondness for them began to disgust him. It was at this time that he
began to loathe the cat. What increased his loathing of the new cat was that it had, like Pluto, one of its
eyes missing. In the mind of the narrator, this cat was obviously a reincarnation of Pluto. He even notes
to himself that the one trait that had once distinguished him a humanity of feeling had now almost
totally disappeared. This is an example, as noted in the introduction, of how the mad man can stand at a
distance and watch the process of his own change and madness.

After a time, the narrator develops an absolute dread of the cat. When he discovers that the white splash
on its breast, which at first was rather indefinite, had "assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline" and
was clearly and obviously a hideous, ghastly, and loathsome image of the gallows, he cries out, "Oh,
mournful and terrible engine of Horror and of Crime of Agony and of Death!" As we were able to do in
"The Tell-Tale Heart," here we can assume that the change occurs within the mind of the mad man in the
same way that he considers this beast to be a reincarnation of the original Pluto.

One day, as he and his wife were going into the cellar, the cat nearly tripped him; he grabbed an axe to
kill it, but his wife arrested the blow. He withdrew his arm and then buried the axe in her brain. This
sudden gruesome act is not prepared for in any way. It has been repeatedly pointed out that the narrator
loved his wife very deeply. Consequently, this act of perversity far exceeds the hanging of Pluto and can
only be accounted for by Poe's theme of the perversity of the narrator's acts.

Like the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart," the narrator here realizes that he must get rid of the body. He
thought of "cutting the corpse into minute fragments," he says, as did the previous narrator in "The Tell-
Tale Heart," but rather than dismemberment, he decided to "wall it up in the cellar" in a similar way that
Montresor walled up his victim in "The Cask of Amontillado."

The walls next to the projecting chimney lent themselves to this type of interment, and after having
accomplished the deed and cleaning up in such a way that nothing was detectable, the narrator decided
to put the cat to death. Unaccountably, it had disappeared. After three days, the narrator decided that
the "monster of a cat" had disappeared forever; he was now able to sleep soundly in spite of the foul deed
that he had done. This lack of guilt is certainly a change from what his feelings were at the beginning of
the story.

On the fourth day, a party of police unexpectedly arrives to inspect the premises. As in "The Tell-Tale
Heart," when the police arrive unexpectedly, we never know what motivated the police to come on a
search. And in the same way, the narrator here is overconfident; he delights in the fact that he has so
cleverly and so completely concealed his horrible crime that he welcomes an inspection of the premises.

However, here, in an act of insane bravado, he raps so heavily upon the bricks that entomb his wife, that
to his abject terror, a "voice from within the tomb" answered. At first, it was a muffled and broken cry,
but then it swelled into an "utterly anomalous and inhuman . . . howl . . . a wailing shriek, half of horror
and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the damned
in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation."

The police immediately began to tear down the brick wall, and they discover the rotting corpse of the
narrator's wife and, standing upon her decayed head was the "hideous beast whose craft had seduced
me into murder . . . I had walled the monster up within the tomb."

The final irony, of course, is that the cat which he had come to so despise the cat that might have been
the reincarnation of Pluto serves as a figure of retribution against the murderer. By the end of the story,
therefore, we can see how the narrator, in commenting on his own actions, convicts himself of the
madness which he vehemently declaimed at the beginning of the story.

THE WILL COME SOFT RAINS

Over the course of history, mankind has only used atomic weapons in war twice due to the overwhelming
devastation they cause. The bomb mankind created was too powerful for humans and its use would only
lead to our demise. Ray Bradbury knew this, as he lived through the development and use of the original
atomic bombs. While famously known as a science fiction author, Bradbury hated being classified as such.
Science fiction holds some basis in science, whereas Bradbury prided himself in creating works of fantasy
and horror (Bio). In many of his works Bradbury infuses fantasy in the form of technologies that do not
yet exist and horror in the form of vivid scenes of death and destruction in the not-too-distant future.
Bradburys short story, There Will Come Soft Rains, describes the extinction of mankind after a nuclear
holocaust in the year 2026. The story follows the actions of an artificially intelligent house that continues
along its daily duties despite the death of the owners. Through descriptive literary techniques Bradbury
tells a cautionary tale of mankinds demise when technology outpaces humanity, ultimately affirming that
nothing of man or machine can prevail against nature.

Bradbury is not a fan of machines that take away human involvement in the world. When
interviewed about one of his most famous works, Fahrenheit 451, critics concluded that Bradbury
heavily explored themes of censorship and conformity. He disputed those, arguing instead that his goal
was simply to explain how television and technology drives interest away from reading, learning and
curiosity. He was quoted as saying Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was (Bio).
He portrays his idea, when applied to There Will Come Soft Rains, in the main theme that before the
destruction of the human race technology begins to outlast and outpace humanity. The story features a
house that cooks and cleans entirely by itself. It does everything, from watering the lawn and preparing
cigars to reading bedtime poems to its users. But, like in Fahrenheit, Bradbury does not promote the house
or what it stands for in the literary interpretation. He instead specifically shows how the house has
removed human interaction by describing daily activities that the house performs religiously despite lack
of inhabitants. The disposal of the dog (discussed in detail later) shows how cold and emotionless it could
be. Bradbury describes the house in these ways to portray it as too rigid and too robotic in its motives.
Here, the house is almost used as a warning from Bradbury, in that if we continue down our current path
where technology evolves faster than our humanity we will eventually be obsolete to our own houses.

From the beginning of the story to the end, Bradbury uses specific word choice and descriptive
techniques to give clues telling of humanitys fate. The story begins at seven oclock in Allendale, California
on August 4th, 2026. Rain taps echo through the house. A voice-clock informs an empty house that it is
time to start the day with a healthy breakfast. An automated kitchen begins to prepare food, specifically
eight pieces of toast, eight eggs, sixteen slices of bacon, two cups of coffee and two glasses of milk.
Through this breakfast menu we can assume 4 people live in the house, specifically two adults and two
children, based on the beverage orders. At ten oclock the sun comes out, and the reader is told that the
house stands alone is a city of rubble and ashes (Bradbury). At night, the city emits a glow that can be
seen for miles. The reference to rubble and ash, combined with the information about a radioactive glow,
begin to point more clearly to mankinds fate. This casts the city of Allendale, California in the readers
mind as a glowing, radioactive wasteland with one house that sits alone among the ruins after a massive
bombing of some sort. Bradbury later adds more evidence to describe our fate as a species after using
such devastating weapons of mass destruction. The story moves into the backyard at ten fifteen to
describe the houses exterior.

The reader is told sprinklers doused the charred west side of the house. The usage of west is sometimes
notable when performing literary analysis as it can symbolize the death of things, as it is where the sun
goes to die on a daily basis. The use of west could also be alluding to which direction the bombs came
from. When Bradbury wrote this short story in the 50s our nation was locked in the Cold War with the
USSR. If the Russians ever launched their weapons they would send many of them east across the Pacific,
and the first Americans to be hit would be Californians. Returning to the story, the entire west side of the
house is black except for five silhouettes: A man mowing the lawn, a woman picking flowers, and two
children at play beneath a thrown ball. This ratifies Bradburys earlier hint at a family of four, and further
informs the reader of how they died. Their images were burned on the wood in one titanic instant, a
description rich with information (Bradbury). The images burned on the wall refer to what is known as a
Hiroshima Shadow, a silhouette caused by an object interrupting the flash of thermal radiation from an
atomic bomb (Oki). The Hiroshima Shadow was first discovered after the dropping of Little Boy on
Hiroshima, Japan in World War Two. After the bombing of Hiroshima silhouettes of Japanese citizens going
about their daily lives were found burned into walls that faced the blast. The Hiroshima Shadow was born,
and became instantly notorious for capturing a subjects final moments of life before being cruelly burned
alive in a nuclear fire. Hiroshima Shadows were well known as a sign of the destructive power of nuclear
weapons when Bradbury wrote Soft Rains in 1950, and even today they portray the destructiveness of
the bomb.

THE VISITATION OF THE GODS

The analysis of the story is about the reality of the process of death of Filipino idealism in the
administration of public schools. It shows the difficulties of sustaining ones interest and motivation in
improving the standards of education in the country. It highlights the visitation of the officers who act as
assessors of the efficiency ratings of the teachers and the schools.

The setting is in the provinces where the bureaucracy in the education system is very evident. The
importance of obtaining a high efficiency rating by the school, its faculty and students has compromised
the principles of most of its administrators. It not only affects the efficiency of the schools and their faculty
but it also contributes to the decline in the actual performance of students.

The story also shows how the activity can be turned into an opportunity to punish insubordination by
assigning the most problematic and difficult tasks to the most not-liked teachers and students.

The story also exposes the Filipinos mentality towards competition. Sometimes ones pursuit for personal
and professional growth can be mistaken a threat to another mans job or authority. More likely, it would
be interpreted as showing-off. Unfortunately, the conflict between different interests not only affects
those involved but usually extends to all the faculty, which in turn causes polarization in the workplace.

A visitation announced a month in advance defeats the purpose for such an activity, as was clearly shown
in the story. It gives the school administrators the opportunity to prepare and hide the infirmities of their
respective schools. The results are usually not reflective of the true status and situation of the schools
because only the good things are highlighted while the bad things are hidden. Sometimes overnight
makeovers are resorted to so that there will be the appearance of compliance with the educational
standards. The whole activity boils down to making an impression and satisfying a group of assessors, who
are treated like gods by flattery and gift-giving.
The irony of this is that the death of idealism starts from the school, which is supposed to be its cradle.
Students are exposed to the practice of conformism and favor-currying by their teachers. The school is
supposed to protect the students from such corrupt practices.

Due to this kind of bureaucratic practice in the public schools, the standard of education is lowered. The
true progress of our educational system can not be assessed. Teachers are not promoted based on
efficiency, competence, professionalism and other criterion used in the merit system.

The story is a microcosm of the corruption existing in our country. Apparently, corruption is already in the
grass roots. It would seem that the only way a person can climb the bureaucratic ladder is to allow himself
to be eaten by the system. Good people in the government are usually punished for doing their jobs, while
bad people are rewarded for doing things other than their jobs.

Indirectly, the story shows the direct proportionality between success in the government and the ability
of one to compromise his principles, values and character. The more one compromises his principles,
values and character, the more likely he will succeed.

Justice is indeed hard to find in the Philippines. Those who sacrifice and dedicate their lives for the good
of the country usually end up getting nothing and having nothing. In the end, its always the children who
will suffer. They are the ones who will taste the products of the mistakes of their fathers. Ironic though
because fathers usually resort to these malpractices to ensure a good future for their children.

HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANT

Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" tells the story of a man and a woman drinking beer and
anise liqueur while they wait at a train station in Spain. The man is attempting to convince the woman to
get an abortion, but the woman is ambivalent about it. The story takes its tension from their terse, barbed
dialogue.

First published in 1927, the story exemplifies Hemingway's Iceberg Theory of writing and is widely
anthologized today.

HEMINGWAY'S ICEBERG THEORY

Also known as the "theory of omission," Hemingway's Iceberg Theory contends that the words on the
page should be merely a small part of the whole story. The words on the page are the proverbial "tip of
the iceberg," and a writer should use as few words as possible in order to indicate the larger, unwritten
story that resides below the surface.

Hemingway made it clear that this "theory of omission" should not be used as an excuse for a writer not
to know the details behind his or her story. As he wrote in Death in the Afternoon, "A writer who omits
things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing."

At fewer than 1,500 words, "Hills Like White Elephants" exemplifies this theory through its brevity and
through the noticeable absence of the word "abortion," even though that is clearly the main subject of
the story. There are also several indications that this isn't the first time the characters have discussed the
issue, such as when the woman cuts the man off and completes his sentence in the following exchange:

"'I don't want you to do anything that you don't want to -- '"

"'Nor that isn't good for me,' she said. 'I know.'"

HOW DO WE KNOW IT'S ABOUT ABORTION?

If it already seems obvious to you that "Hills Like White Elephants" is a story about abortion, you can skip
this section. But if the story is new to you, you might feel less certain about it.

Throughout the story, it is clear that the man would like the woman to get an operation, which he
describes as "awfully simple," "perfectly simple" and "not really an operation at all." He promises to stay
with her the whole time and promises that they'll be happy afterwards because, "That's the only thing
that bothers us."

He never mentions the woman's health, so we can assume the operation is not something to cure an
illness. He also frequently says she doesn't have to do it if she doesn't want to, which indicates that he's
describing an elective procedure. Finally, he claims that it's "just to let the air in," which implies abortion
rather than any other optional procedure.

When the woman asks, "And you really want to?" she's posing a question that suggests the man has some
say in the matter -- that he has something at stake -- which is another indication that she's pregnant. And
his response that he's "perfectly willing to go through with it if it mean anything to you" doesn't refer to
the operation -- it refers to not having the operation. In the case of pregnancy, not having the abortion is
something "to go through with" because it results in the birth of a child.

Finally, the man asserts that "I don't want anybody but you.

I don't want anyone else," which makes it clear that there will be "somebody else" unless the woman has
the operation.

WHITE ELEPHANTS

The symbolism of the white elephants further emphasizes the subject of the story.

The origin of the phrase is commonly traced to a practice in Siam (now Thailand) in which a king would
bestow the gift of a white elephant on a member of his court who displeased him. The white elephant
was considered sacred, so on the surface, this gift was an honor. However, maintaining the elephant
would be so expensive as to ruin the recipient. Hence, a white elephant is a burden.

When the girl comments that the hills look like white elephants and the man says he's never seen one,
she answers, "No, you wouldn't have." If the hills represent female fertility, swollen abdomen and breasts,
she could be suggesting that he is not the type of person ever to intentionally have a child.
But if we consider a "white elephant" as an unwanted item, she could also be pointing out that he never
accepts burdens he doesn't want. Notice the symbolism later in the story when he carries their bags --
covered with labels "from all the hotels where they had spent nights" -- to the other side of the tracks and
deposits them there while he goes back into the bar, alone, to have another drink.

The two possible meanings of white elephants -- female fertility and cast-off items -- come together here
because, as a man, he will never become pregnant himself and can cast off the responsibility for her
pregnancy.