In the fall of 1929, just before the stock market crash, Augie goes to work for a local businessman named William Einhorn. Augie calls Einhorn ‘‘the first superior man I knew’’ and becomes the ‘‘arms and legs’’ of his severely handicapped mentor. The Einhorn fortune was made by Einhorn’s father, the Commissioner. Augie is essentially…
Plot Summary of The Adventures of Augie March: Chapters 1, 2, 3 & 4
The first four chapters of The Adventures of Augie March introduce us to Augie and his family and the immigrant, Jewish world of his section of Chicago. Augie, the narrator and main character, declares in the opening sentence that ‘‘I am an American, Chicago born . . . and go at things as I have…
The Adventures of Augie March: A Brief Introduction
Published in 1953, Saul Bellow’s sweeping, comedic novel The Adventures of Augie March, was heralded by many reviewers as an instant classic, and it established its author as a major voice in American fiction. It is a bold, ambitious novel that claims that the story of a young, poor, fatherless, Jewish man belongs at the…
Surrealism in Charles Simic’s Classic Ballroom Dances
The word surreal has entered the everyday vocabulary of English and is often used to mean ‘‘odd,’’ ‘‘unusual,’’ or ‘‘unexpected.’’ Originally, however, it was derived to denote an artistic movement called surrealism. The word joins realism to the prefix ‘‘sur-,’’ which generally means something like ‘‘over’’ or ‘‘above’’; thus, the word surmount means ‘‘to overcome.’’…
Grammar & Style in Charles Simic’s Classic Ballroom Dances
Normally, readers do not think about traditional grammar when they read poetry. Poetry routinely bends the rules of traditional grammar to create new and interesting verbal effects. Such is the case with Simic’s ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances.’’ The poem, consisting of four four-line stanzas, comprises a single sentence, but the sentence is incomplete, for it lacks…
Major Themes in Classic Ballroom Dances by Charles Simic
Old Age ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances’’ is a poem that does not lend itself readily to thematic analysis. In the first place, the poem consists of just a single sentence, and the sentence is not even grammatically complete. Thus, it never really makes a statement. Rather, the poem consists of a series of images. Nevertheless, it…
Poem Summary of Classic Ballroom Dances by Charles Simic
POEM TEXT Grandmothers who wring the necks Of chickens; old nuns With names like Theresa, Marianne, Who pull schoolboys by the ear; The intricate steps of pickpockets Working the crowd of the curious At the scene of an accident; the slow shuffle Of the evangelist with a sandwich board; The hesitation of the early-morning customer…
Charles Simic: A Brief Biography
Charles Simic has come to be regarded as one of America’s most important poets—a remarkable achievement given that English is not his native language. ‘‘Classic Ballroom Dances’’ is the title poem in Simic’s 1980 collection of poems, Classic Ballroom Dances. The collection won the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award and the Poetry Society of America’s di…
Medicine, Healing & Pilgrimages in Shakespeare’s time vis-a-vis All’s Well That Ends Well
In Shakespeare’s time, medicine was little more than trial and error mixed with a great deal of superstition. Little was known about proven treatments, and disease and germs were not understood. Sanitation and hygiene, even among the upper classes, was rudimentary at best. Streets were filled with garbage and raw sewage, which spilled over into…
Traditions of marriage at the time of the writing of All’s Well That Ends Well
In Shakespeare’s time, marriages were usually arranged. A love match was unusual, and even more unusual was a woman choosing her prospective groom. Bertram’s objection to marrying Helena is rooted in these traditions. Because he is a count, he would have expected to marry someone of a similar status, not a commoner with neither wealth…