THE TOWERS OF PARADISE
INTRODUCTION
This text is extracted from ( an excerpt from) "Americans", a book published in 1978 by Desmond Wilcox. The author is head of BBC Television's General Features Department from which came the television series TEN WHO DARED and "AMERICANS", his new personal documentary series. Wilcox's purpose was to answer a intimidating question : what is an American? Both the TV series and book were made with a view to shedding light on a most enigmatic character, the American citizen.
To reach his purpose, D. Wilcox interviewed dozens of American citizens from all walks of life, such as trade-union leaders, businessmen, ( Voir "THE COMPANY PRESIDENT P 33), ordinary citizens......
In "The Towers of Paradise", the interviewee is Leon Stein, a 66-year-old New Yorker whose parents emigrated to America at the turn of the century. (Leon Stein's parents must have been Polish or German Jews.)
The scene is set on ELLIS ISLAND, a small island in New York Bay, next to Liberty Island) on which a vast Immigration Center was built in 1895. This Center (The GREAT HALL in the text) was a huge immigration control center through which millions of new immigrants had to go before setting foot on the American soil.
Therefore, Leon Stein's interview obviously focuses on the issue of immigration as forty per cent of all Americans can look back to an ancestor who passed through Ellis island's doors. Most Americans are descended from uprooted people who came to America to start from scratch. As John Kennedy once stated, the USA is " A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS", a country whose whole history and ideology were - and still are - shaped by immigrants.
My commentary will fall into three parts: the first part will be devoted to Leon Stein ( his life and career, his personal history, his experience and feelings). In the second part , I shall try to find out the reasons why America was - and to a certain extent, still is - a magnet for millions of hopeful immigrants. Last but not least, I shall attempt to relate what happened in the Great Hall, on Ellis Island, before immigrants were ushered into the New World, after the long perilous journey which had taken them to the shores of the Promised Land, the shores of Paradise.
* * * * *
I- Leon Stein
He is a fully-fledged American citizen, born and bred in New York. He is aged 66 and must have lived in N.Y all his life . Leon Stein could be depicted as a self-made man as, although his origins were very humble, he has achieved material and social success. In other words, as his parents were extremely poor, he had - and managed to - work his way up the social ladder. He eventually made it to the top as he now is a trade union leader, a newspaper editor and a writer.
Leon Stein, to a certain extent, embodies the AMERICAN DREAM. ( His - and his parents' dreams- have come true in America, the land of opportunity and wealth)
Although ( Because) Leon Stein is fully integrated into the American society - "an all-American family man" - he can't help but look back upon his - his parents', his country's - PAST. We may go as far as to say that Leon Stein is obsessed with his past, and his country's past history- epitomized, in his view, by ELLIS ISLAND. For more than 40 years, Ellis Island has been Stein's favorite topic for discussion. It is the reason why Stein -and Wilcox- deliberately picked Ellis Island as the place- the backdrop - for the interview.
Leon Stein finds it very difficult to distance himself from his past as New York is still teeming with immigrants from over 100 different nationalities, races or creeds. One might go as far as to say that New York looks like a Tower of Babel whose inhabitants speak various languages, share different sets of values. The paradox is that they all consider themselves as American citizens, and are frequently proud of their recently acquired American citizenship.
To put it in a nutshell, it should always be borne in mind that the American psyche has been - and still is - shaped by immigration.
II- AMERICA, "A LAND OF MILK AND HONEY", " A PARADISE", "A MAGNET"
From 1892 to 1922, sixteen million immigrants made the journey to America and passed through the doors of Ellis Island. This text enables to better understand the reasons which impelled "the tired, and the poor" to leave their native countries and risk their lives to start anew in America, "THE PROMISED LAND"
To begin with, most immigrants arrived knowing little about America. At most, perhaps they had read about the New World in a letter from a friend or a brother who had preceded them. But they made the journey anyway because they knew too much about the old world: too much hunger, too much tyranny. Most immigrants sought a new beginning in America, or as Leon Stein puts it, they left their native countries for a new homeland "to be born again". Most
newcomers dreamed of starting a new life in the New World which they regarded as "the Promised land", "a land of milk and honey". When they reached New York and saw skyscrapers on the horizon, they believed they were catching sight of "THE TOWERS OF PARADISE" (ironically unaware that they were actually looking at the East Side Ghetto, one of the slum districts of New York.)
Thus, millions of immigrants sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to start a new life in America, because their living conditions in The Old World were appalling: most fled poverty and hunger ( The IRISH, for example). Leon Stein illustrates his point by telling the amusing "HERRING" anecdote: his father "fell in love with a herring" on the boat bound for New York
When he was given a whole herring the day before he reached New York.
Leon Stein's father could eat his fill for the first time ever in his life. This "extraordinary" event was a harbinger of a bright future in America. Ever since that memorable day, Leon's father knew he had reached the land of wealth and prosperity he had dreamed of for so long. Leon's father, like millions of immigrants- was convinced he could "make it", "strike it rich" in America - provided ,of course, he worked hard to succeed.
Dismal economic conditions do not suffice to account for such massive migrations. Immigrants also fled tyranny, political or religious persecution and most of them "yearned to breathe free". When they caught sight of the Statue of Liberty - "their first real sight of the New World"- they knew that their dream had come true as they were about to enter the Land of Freedom and Wealth.
THE STATUE OF LIBERTY, which was given by the French and erected in 1886 on Liberty Island, in New York Bay, has come to symbolize the world over the irrepressible human yearning for freedom. It is probably one of the most potent symbols all over the world ( A few years ago, Chinese students and demonstrators built a replica of the Statue of Liberty to symbolize - and protest against- their struggle against the oppressive Communist regime)
When they saw the Statue, "the lady of Hope", one can easily imagine how relieved and happy immigrants were as their dangerous journey had come to a successful conclusion. But most were torn between happiness and anxiety as, first new immigrants had to face ELLIS ISLAND. Their expectations were so high that most immigrants came to America, dreading being deported back to the Old World.
III- ELLIS ISLAND ( You are expected to tell the examiner what immigrants had to go through in Ellis Island)
* * * * *
In conclusion, Leon’s journey to Ellis Island reminds the reader of the key part Ellis island played in American history. This vast immigration center came to symbolize for millions of Americans their past history, their dreams, which unfortunately did not always come true. Today, Ellis Island has been converted into a museum that is visited by millions of tourists every year.
lunes, 23 de febrero de 2009
lunes, 9 de febrero de 2009
The Monster's Sick oral presentation
The Monster’s Sick (oral sequence presentation)
1) (Introduction)
The text I’m going to talk about is entitled The Monster’s Sick which is an excerpt from the novel The Grapes of Wrath, written by American novelist and Literature Nobel prize winner, John Steinbeck, published in 1939. The scene is set outside a detrimental family’s farm located in the state of Oklahoma (which is right in the mid–south part of the country). The main characters involved in the story are the squatty tenant members of the poor family who cultivated cotton lands, the land owners and the monster, a metaphor word to refer to the banks. The text is about the struggling situation a country farm people faced during the outburst of The Great Depression in the US, but more importantly about the acts of unconsciousness which these materialistic organizations recur to in order to keep up with their profits, regardless the consequences.
2) May I read the text? / Would you like me to read the text?
3) I might divide the text into three parts.
First of all / Firstly / The first part, from line one to line 16, which is about the bad news brought up by the land owners to the already decrepit family in which they were being announced that they were evicted from their land due to dramatic changes to come as stated in line 13 where it is written that The tenant system won’t work anymore which means that that type of business is not profitable neither for the land owners nor for the banks, because a tractor man could accomplish what 12 or 14 families could do.
Second of all / Secondly / The second part deals with the numerous reasons the family men gave the land owners for which they should stay and keep the land. Nevertheless, the land owners refused to accept those statements and explained to them that the land did not belong to the people who inhabited it but to the ones who appeared on the legal papers.
A member of the family expressed in line 24, “An’ we was born here”. Where the author showed that the family was also illiterate, which was another weakness they had and that made it hard for them to get out of that precarious situation.
Finally, regardless their pleas, the poor family was recommended to go west to California where there might be work collecting oranges.
4) Summary
The text clearly depicts the struggling and desperation a great number of poor people passed through as a consequence of the chain reaction for an economical crisis.
From 1929 to 1939, there was an acute economical crashed in the United States of America known as the Great Depression. At that time, families living on rented lands; in this specific case, the ones in the state of Oklahoma which is located in the mid-south of the country, tried to grow crops such as cotton to scrape a meager living. Not only they confronted the economical difficulties but they also faced the drought phenomenon which clearly ruined the land. As the land was not profitable, the land owners were forced by the banks to sell it so they, the banks, could keep receiving their usual amount of tax money for them to remain strong or at least alive. That’s the way monsters act in order to get satisfied, metaphorically speaking.
As a result, the landlords asked the poor and famish family to move out from the property as soon as possible.
Even though a series of well sustained reasons were given to the landlords explaining why it was very unfair to make them leave their land, as they called it, stating that nearly four generations grew up, protected, cultivated and fought for that property, those were not convincing enough to change the land owners’ decision. Besides, the monsters were not men and they could control many people to do whatever they wanted. If the family didn’t leave they could even go to prison. Therefore, migrating to California was the only one option.
5) The author’s intention‘s on this excerpt is to criticize the corporate system and compares it with a sick monster as it is stated in the title of the text which means the banks have to have profits all the time or they will die.
Paradoxically, people were hoping for the American dream to come true and the banks were taking away that dream by leaving many of them homeless and starving.
6) I agree with the author when he means that corporations do not care for anything else but themselves, in the story, the poor families are literarily kicked out of their lands when these don’t produce or when cutting expenses are needed, regardless the consequences as long as they are not affected. That situation is stilll happening everywhere nowadays.
7) To conclude, the American dream was washed away by the hungry corporations that didn’t care if families were left abandoned on the streets as long as they were making profits.
8) That brings to my attention something very familiar I saw on the news not long ago in Colombia where many people lost their properties to the banks because they couldn’t continue paying the high interests these corporations demanded, although the properties were already paid in full.
9) To wrap it up, I Hope this awful crisis that the world is experiencing again, won’t turn into an even bigger nightmare for the population of the planet.
1) (Introduction)
The text I’m going to talk about is entitled The Monster’s Sick which is an excerpt from the novel The Grapes of Wrath, written by American novelist and Literature Nobel prize winner, John Steinbeck, published in 1939. The scene is set outside a detrimental family’s farm located in the state of Oklahoma (which is right in the mid–south part of the country). The main characters involved in the story are the squatty tenant members of the poor family who cultivated cotton lands, the land owners and the monster, a metaphor word to refer to the banks. The text is about the struggling situation a country farm people faced during the outburst of The Great Depression in the US, but more importantly about the acts of unconsciousness which these materialistic organizations recur to in order to keep up with their profits, regardless the consequences.
2) May I read the text? / Would you like me to read the text?
3) I might divide the text into three parts.
First of all / Firstly / The first part, from line one to line 16, which is about the bad news brought up by the land owners to the already decrepit family in which they were being announced that they were evicted from their land due to dramatic changes to come as stated in line 13 where it is written that The tenant system won’t work anymore which means that that type of business is not profitable neither for the land owners nor for the banks, because a tractor man could accomplish what 12 or 14 families could do.
Second of all / Secondly / The second part deals with the numerous reasons the family men gave the land owners for which they should stay and keep the land. Nevertheless, the land owners refused to accept those statements and explained to them that the land did not belong to the people who inhabited it but to the ones who appeared on the legal papers.
A member of the family expressed in line 24, “An’ we was born here”. Where the author showed that the family was also illiterate, which was another weakness they had and that made it hard for them to get out of that precarious situation.
Finally, regardless their pleas, the poor family was recommended to go west to California where there might be work collecting oranges.
4) Summary
The text clearly depicts the struggling and desperation a great number of poor people passed through as a consequence of the chain reaction for an economical crisis.
From 1929 to 1939, there was an acute economical crashed in the United States of America known as the Great Depression. At that time, families living on rented lands; in this specific case, the ones in the state of Oklahoma which is located in the mid-south of the country, tried to grow crops such as cotton to scrape a meager living. Not only they confronted the economical difficulties but they also faced the drought phenomenon which clearly ruined the land. As the land was not profitable, the land owners were forced by the banks to sell it so they, the banks, could keep receiving their usual amount of tax money for them to remain strong or at least alive. That’s the way monsters act in order to get satisfied, metaphorically speaking.
As a result, the landlords asked the poor and famish family to move out from the property as soon as possible.
Even though a series of well sustained reasons were given to the landlords explaining why it was very unfair to make them leave their land, as they called it, stating that nearly four generations grew up, protected, cultivated and fought for that property, those were not convincing enough to change the land owners’ decision. Besides, the monsters were not men and they could control many people to do whatever they wanted. If the family didn’t leave they could even go to prison. Therefore, migrating to California was the only one option.
5) The author’s intention‘s on this excerpt is to criticize the corporate system and compares it with a sick monster as it is stated in the title of the text which means the banks have to have profits all the time or they will die.
Paradoxically, people were hoping for the American dream to come true and the banks were taking away that dream by leaving many of them homeless and starving.
6) I agree with the author when he means that corporations do not care for anything else but themselves, in the story, the poor families are literarily kicked out of their lands when these don’t produce or when cutting expenses are needed, regardless the consequences as long as they are not affected. That situation is stilll happening everywhere nowadays.
7) To conclude, the American dream was washed away by the hungry corporations that didn’t care if families were left abandoned on the streets as long as they were making profits.
8) That brings to my attention something very familiar I saw on the news not long ago in Colombia where many people lost their properties to the banks because they couldn’t continue paying the high interests these corporations demanded, although the properties were already paid in full.
9) To wrap it up, I Hope this awful crisis that the world is experiencing again, won’t turn into an even bigger nightmare for the population of the planet.
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