| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: written documents and examine in detail the exact truth about these
things'--what is this but a literary trick by which Plato sets off his
narrative? Could any war between Athens and the Island of Atlantis have
really coincided with the struggle between the Greeks and Persians, as is
sufficiently hinted though not expressly stated in the narrative of Plato?
And whence came the tradition to Egypt? or in what does the story consist
except in the war between the two rival powers and the submersion of both
of them? And how was the tale transferred to the poem of Solon? 'It is
not improbable,' says Mr. Grote, 'that Solon did leave an unfinished
Egyptian poem' (Plato). But are probabilities for which there is not a
tittle of evidence, and which are without any parallel, to be deemed worthy
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: were sitting at either end of the couch, looking at each other as if
some question had been asked, or was in the air, and every vestige of
embarrassment was gone. Daisy's face was smeared with tears, and when I
came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with her handkerchief before
a mirror. But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding.
He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new
well-being radiated from him and filled the little room.
"Oh, hello, old sport," he said, as if he hadn't seen me for years. I
thought for a moment he was going to shake hands.
"It's stopped raining."
"Has it?" When he realized what I was talking about, that there were
The Great Gatsby |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: had been made blind, by another disease, to the
light and beauty of the world.
But anything he could interpret as a doubt--
any coldness of assent, or even a simple inattention
to the development of his projects of a home with
his returned son and his son's wife--would irritate
him into flings and jerks and wicked side glances.
He would dash his spade into the ground and walk
to and fro before it. Miss Bessie called it his tan-
trums. She shook her finger at him. Then, when
she came out again, after he had parted with her
To-morrow |
