W. Somerset Maugham's "The Appointment in Samarra

We come to know lots more(prenominal) nearly death in the portrait by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm in their tale "God initiate Death." The Grimms' Death is a much more personal, much more involved entity than Death as envisioned by Maugham. Death in Maugham's sketch, as we have seen, is a more or less detached creature who goes ab away her business with minimal involvement with her "guests." She reminds this commentator of a pie-eyed businesswoman, an executive who both enjoys an afternoon shopping and going distances to hold open appointments. And, especially, she is a woman who volition keep that appointment with her client, whether that client wants to keep it or not. Her power is quiet and efficient and professional. at that place are no compromises and no extenuating circumstances which she will con officer.

The Grimms' Death is an new(prenominal) character entirely. This is a Death who is preferably willing to make compromises and is most capable of involving himself in the brio of the client at hand. Death is not an efficient businessperson in the view of the Grimms', but instead has the capacity for humaneness. He is a much more active force in the life of the client, as opposed to Maugham's Death who merely shows up on time at the appointed place.

Death in the Grimms' story is a cum of relief and hope for the father and son. For the father, Death comes along with the promise

Hughes is obviously writing a poem meant to reassure himself and other desolates that there is a continuity connecting them to their ancestors, a continuity which is the source of much strength, courage and hope. The message is that blacks in 1926 (when Hughes wrote this poem) should not be discouraged by injustices based on race, because that race has a powerful and enduring history which transcends time and place and circumstance, no matter how dreadful those circumstances might be.

Finally, the feeling of business organization or dread comes when we consider the potentially destructive expiration of so many dreams deferred over so long a time. There is an implied warning in the last line, "Or does it spark off?" (Hughes 943).

That warning is that so many people frustrated for so long will at some point enlarge in violence. Hughes (writing this poem in 1951) was certainly proved determine in the 1960s when riots of rage and destruction broke out across the nation in response to racial injustices. We do not know if the future holds in store more of the same, or worse, as the result of additional dreams deferred.

The feelings engendered in this reader by Langston Hughes' "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" are hope, inspiration and a perceive of the interconnectedness of generations of people through the centuries.

Maugham, W. Somerset. "The Appointment in Samarra." Literature. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and genus Dama Gioia. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. 4.

There is also generated the spiritual feeling that relates to the poet's course about his soul and the soul's kinship with both the earth and the spectral realm---through the literal and metaphorical uses of the image of "rivers." Hughes wants to bring the reader a feeling of strength derived both from the great history of the black race and the spiritual/religious legacy which accompanies that history.

---Death does take the amend instead. But before he does, Death reveals another side of himself lacking in the portrait of death by Maugham.
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