| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: Folk," on whose behalf Wagner turned out in 1849, are effectually
excluded; and the Festival Playhouse must therefore be classed as
infinitely less Wagnerian in its character than Hampton Court
Palace. Nobody knew this better than Wagner; and nothing can be
further off the mark than to chatter about Bayreuth as if it had
succeeded in escaping from the conditions of our modern
civilization any more than the Grand Opera in Paris or London.
Within these conditions, however, it effected a new departure in
that excellent German institution, the summer theatre. Unlike our
opera houses, which are constructed so that the audience may
present a splendid pageant to the delighted manager, it is
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Animal Farm by George Orwell: understand the nature of life on this earth as well as any animal now
living. It is about this that I wish to speak to you.
"Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it:
our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are given
just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us
who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength;
and the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end we are
slaughtered with hideous cruelty. No animal in England knows the meaning
of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in England is
free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.
"But is this simply part of the order of nature? Is it because this land
Animal Farm |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: hillock, the plainsman leaves as little as may be to chance. No
faintest movement could escape the sheepman's eyes, no least stir
fail to apprise his ears. Yet for many minutes he waited in vain,
and the delay told him that he had to do with a trained hunter
rather than a mere reckless cow-puncher. For somewhere in the
rough country before him his enemy lay motionless, every faculty
alive to the least hint of his presence.
It was the whirring flight of a startled dove that told Bannister
the whereabouts of his foe. Two hundred yards from him the bird
rose, and the direction it took showed that the man must have
been trailing forward from the opposite quarter. The sheepman
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