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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: group, of the family, colourable and plastic, fashioned by the
words, the looks, the acts, and even by the silences and
abstentions surrounding one's childhood; tinged in a complete
scheme of delicate shades and crude colours by the inherited
traditions, beliefs, or prejudices--unaccountable, despotic,
persuasive, and often, in its texture, romantic.
And often romantic! . . . The matter in hand, however, is to
keep these reminiscences from turning into confessions, a form of
literary activity discredited by Jean Jacques Rousseau on account
of the extreme thoroughness he brought to the work of justifying
his own existence; for that such was his purpose is palpably,
 A Personal Record |