讀書筆記
讀書心得
I read the article “ Letter from India” in the book “ East and West” writing by Pearl.S.Buck. This article tells the story of the aid of spirit. A female biologist who devoted herself to science and was seriously injured and hospitalized due to an explosion during an experiment. She thought to put an end to her life. At this moment, she received a letter from India. The writer told her that he once wanted to kill a white man because he was bullied by the white man. He sent a letter to the magazine refuting the article written by the white man that slandered Indians, and she replied to the letter. Through their communication, he realized that there are many good people in Western country. He shouldn't hate white people. His mood calmed down. He thought she saved him. And now she's injured, he wanted to the aid of spirit, he welcomed her to India. And she wanted to live after read the letter.
(1 ) (A)Gozeal was lying on the hospital bed. She received the seventh letter from Nath, she didn’t let her mother read the letter. Her mother Mrs. Brant thought it looks queer to get letter from unknown man in India.
Gozeal was thirty five years old, worked in a laboratory as a biochemist. When she was twenty five years old, she committed herself, she must devote her life to her long experiment , not married to Bruce or any other man , she had hurt Bruce ruthlessly.
The experiment was absorbing her, body and soul. She had taken a year from the experiment to invent, patent, and manufacture a superlative instrument of her own- the Brant Double Lens Super-microscope.
Six months and seven days ago, a bright spring day, there had been a explosion. When it was over, she found herself in the hospital bed, bandaged from head to foot.
“ Don’t worry about me”, she said to her mother. It would be easy to put an end to her life as soon as she could be alone again.
(B) when her mother was gone, she brought out the letter, she asked the nurse to read.
“Your last letter has made me anxious. I had rather have your own handwriting than that of another, I feel you weakening. I come to the aid of your spirit”
“ I felt the whole western world hateful and corrupt, because a white man had once more maligned my people, that white man had written an article in a magazine, which fell into my hands. I sent a letter to an unknown address to reply the article, the letter fell into your hands, you replied. For the first time I understood that in your Western world there could be one like you.”
Gozeal remembered the argument with Ray Barclay, a doctor who had spent one year India in a American camp. Ray had come back to condemn the whole India as a nation of people scarcely worth keeping alive. He had tossed aside Nath’s letter one day in the office, and she had seized upon it. She had read three Nath’s letter with her own eyes.
The nurse read again: “ when I went to the provincial school to study, I learned to hate a white man there, arrogant, narrow and proud. He managed unjustly to send me away, and I came back to my father’s village. That white man was sent to here as our governor. At every turn he despised me and refused me. I determined to kill this white man, even though it cost my life. I would make a grenade, I would throw grenade at my enemy”
“Then come your letter. Your quiet words met my eyes. ‘ Dear Unknown friend’. The mercy and the understanding contained in your words overwhelming me. While you lived, I could not be hate.”
“ After this year in which we have come to know one another’s minds, you saved me. Because of you, I have been able to help my people to remember that the white man is only one creature and that there is one like you. You tell me that there are many like you. When some had cried out their hatred, I read to them your letters.”
(C) “ When your own sorrow fell upon you, now I could comfort you. I am Nath, your friend. We are all your friends. Should it be you cannot return your work, then come to us. What we eat shall be yours and all that we have is yours”
“That’s all”, the nurse said.
Gozeal lay with the letter warm in her hand. She could see Nath as clear as if he stood here in the room. Suddenly, she wanted to live.
(2) I think：（A)the aid of spirit is good. When a person is facing pain, they need to be warmed by others. When a person feeling hurt and impulsive, they need guidance from others .
(B) But I don't agree with what the book says about endure oppression. In P.149, “Under the sublime justice of your words, our hatred has died away and we have been strengthened to endure”. The United States used to be a colony of Britain, but the American people did not bear the oppression of Britain and instead achieved independence through war.
Discussion Prompts
1. “Letter from India” seems a rather strange story to me. Did you find it so? If so, In what ways? What about the story most captured your attention?
2. Are the characters in this story sufficiently developed to be effective?
3. How important is Gozeal’s blindness?
4. What roles have the mother and nurse in this story?
5. Did the name of the main character, Gozeal, which appears in the very first line of this story, strike you as odd? What are we to make of it? Do its possible origins and meanings mentioned in my research notes help to clarify, define the woman’s character?
6. What about the name of her “pen pal” from India? Does the meaning of Nath suggested in my notes seem to suit his role in this story?
7. What kind of experiment might have Gozeal been working on?
8. How effective is the use of the letter device as a writing strategy?
9. Toward the end of the story, Nath declares: “For one thing I know—design, not chance, rules our lives.” How does this thought run through and unify the story?
10. Does “Letter from India” share any common threads with “India, India,” one of the stories from last year’s discussions?
11. Feel free to add insights and/or questions not reflected in these prompts.
No doubt the names of the main characters in this story grabbed your attention, as they did mine. I hopped onto Google as soon as I could to check out Gozeal and Nath, and here is what I found. The name Gozeal can belong to a boy or a girl. Although its exact country of origin is unknown, it is likely either Turkmenistan or Azerbaijan. The name is pronounced just as it looks: Go-zeal. It is said to describe a very social person, a great companion, someone who is optimistic, outgoing, energetic, creative, and articulate, a person of good mental and emotional balance.
Nath is a Sanskrit word meaning lord, protector, or master. It was also the name of a spiritual movement going back to the Middle Ages, the primary goal of which was to achieve liberation while alive and entry into a divine state at death. Its practitioners aimed to avoid reincarnation. A Wikipedia article added that Nath is also used as an Indian surname, commonly found among Bengali Hindus and Assamese Hindus.
? Peter Conn tells us in his biography of Pearl that she “suspected that Americans had only a halfhearted commitment to democracy” and constantly reminded them of her faith in American democratic dogma, demanding equality between men and women, black and white Americans, Asians and Westerner. (263).
? “She inhabited a well-lit ethical world, in which self-evident principles led to straightforward conclusions about right and wrong. It would be ‘easy to have a better world,’ she said to her sister Grace, ‘if only a few clear things were said and done’” (Conn 263).
? “‘I am extremely frightened,’ she once wrote of ‘any theorist, political or religious. I have a deep belief in the average person of all countries.’ She assumed that good will would make practical measures self-evident” (Conn 263-264).
? “She told her sister Grace that ‘in the night, or a dozen times a day, I find myself thinking furiously about the peoples of the world, as if they were my personal responsibility’” (Conn 264).
? You will recall that Pearl became the leading American spokesperson for Indian liberation from British rule in the 1940s.
U.S. and Indian Relations
?In January 1950, India achieved full implementation of its constitution, making it a republic, and ending its ties to the British monarchy. In April of that same year, the American Ambassador to India sent a message to the U.S. Secretary of State in which he spoke of open feelings of unfriendliness on the part of the Indian people that had been strengthening over several months. Criticism in the press and elsewhere took aim at real and fancied weaknesses of the U.S. government, including treatment of American Negroes, U.S. support for colonialism, its striving for continued supremacy of white peoples, and its assumption of superiority based merely on its higher standard of living.
?He added that the Indian public generally were disappointed at the failure of economic assistance from the U.S. to appear. They resented that we had not given and did not intend to give India any substantial economic assistance during this trying period in their history