Help to check my essay, please?

Question

This is a comment on Peter Carey's The Rose.
refer to: http://spaces.msn.com/xatom

Answer 1

(I have not read Peter Carey's "The Rose"...)

Your story is very good, and I hope I’m not too late to have a look at it. (I thought there might be others who would want to have a go at editing it before me!)

I hope I have got the gist of it correctly; do you actually mean “glasshouse”, or would “greenhouse” be better all the way through? In the UK we would normally use “greenhouse”.

Well, here is how I would say it – just a few minor corrections:

The story is about how a former Commandant of Auschwitz hid himself in an isolated mountain village, passing his days by growing a black rose, (would you put, instead, “passing his days by growing a black rose, in fear of his fate….?) and his fate of being captured by the government. The story is set in a poor Mediterranean town twenty-five years after World War II. The former Nazi Commandant turned into an old man who made (a helmet while living in a shabby room/home/ house? Not clear!) He was afraid that the locals would identify him as a demon (try “criminal”, or “war criminal”), so he lived a simple life by growing roses. As the town was (I would keep the tenses consistent) rural, aliens (or, more colloquially, “newcomers”?) were not very welcome, even though the old man (had?) lived there for twenty-five years. In the story, there are contradictions between repentance and forgiveness; fear and hope; awe and fortune.

The settings of the story are rather vague.

The reader can only infer that the place is an isolated mountain village in which the locals spoke Spanish very badly. It seems that the place is somewhere in the Mediterranean. There are only about two sentences implying where it is: “I have looked for the village in an atlas and cannot find it”; “He spoke Spanish very badly”. Such a vague description of place creates an atmosphere of loneliness that reflects the old man’s life.

The time is precise in detail but vague as a whole. The author does not imply the exact time when the old man arrived in the town, but just says: “after twenty-five years”. This shows that the longer the old man stayed there, the more horrified he felt. In the story, the clock the old man sent to the school as a gift stopped, and “its hands were still showing eighteen minutes past seven when two more foreigners arrived in the village fifteen years afterwards”. The description of the precise time shows the destiny of the old man while the author does not give the exact time. The time is just a symbol.

Symbolization is the most important feature of the story.

The old man planted roses and nurtured a tremendously large, black rose. Roses are ancient symbols of love and beauty. In the story, the black rose has its own special symbolic meaning, analysing it by its context. First, as a true black rose is impossible to produce naturally, to grow one represents slavish devotion. The old man put all his time and energy into growing roses in an intricately-wrought glasshouse, so that he produced a black rose twice the size of a man’s fist. Black roses in subculture mean tragedy. At the end of the story, the old man was captured/caught as a war criminal. In addition, the black rose might denote shame and dishonour. Why was the old man willing to be teased by the idle clerk? Why did the old man look fragile and pitiful? Maybe he felt shame for what he had done before in his life. He might have wanted to atone for his crime by growing roses. Furthermore, the black rose might symbolize the dark side of a person. The old man knew that being captured was his destiny, no matter how he concealed his past, but the instinct of survival motivated him to take the chance. Finally, the black rose in the story has an implication of hope of life. The black rose was left while the old man was taken away, and its descendants were carefully nurtured by the locals. They, in turn, show complex feelings towards the rose: on the one hand, they called it the “Auschwitz Rose”, for from it emanates the smell of death. This is a fear of the Holocaust. On the other hand, they celebrated their (good?) fortune. This is their awe of the rose.

There are other symbols in the story as well as the black rose. Auschwitz is related to the enormous horror and tragedy of the Holocaust. This is the only clear information (we are given?) in identifying the old man as a war criminal. Kew Gardens is the UK’s largest and most important botanical garden which, in the story, refers (alludes?) to the old man’s glasshouse. The “Auschwitz Rose” shows the complexity of the locals’ feelings.

Comparison and contrast are used abundantly to produce various effects which serve the theme of the story.

In the description of the place where the old man lives: “The house was as bleak and unremarkable as any other house in the village”, the sentence shows that the old man deliberately hid himself amongst the common people, so that the police would not find him; in fact it did work to some extent, because he had lived in the town for twenty-five years. However, his glasshouse is compared to Kew Gardens in London. There is also a contrast with (to?) the house in which the old man lived: that is, his house was shabby while the glasshouse was “intricately-wrought”. The comparison and contrast show two ideas: one is that the old man was well-off, otherwise he would have been unable to build or buy a glasshouse comparable to Kew Gardens; the other is that he intentionally did not show his wealth by living in a house as shabby as the others, for fear that the locals might be suspicious about his identity.

Why did the old man own such a luxurious glasshouse? The sentence: “If the ashes in his stove were often white and cold, the furnace for the glasshouse never died through the winter” explains by another comparison that he devoted his whole heart to growing roses, and such devotion was beyond the average.

Although the old man did try to conceal his identity through the twenty-five years he lived in the village, his foreign accent prevented him from being accepted by the locals. “He was seen as more of a pest than a novelty”: this comparison tells why the malicious post office clerk teased him with a game that “gave him less pleasure than teasing the old peasant woman who waited for letters from her son”. There is an implied sharp comparison in the story that happened in the post office; that is, the once-dictatorial Commandant was played tricks on by the idle clerk.

The technique of prediction is used skilfully by the author.

The first two paragraphs create a gloomy atmosphere. The grey stone, bleak house and dull (not “gloomy” twice!) weather imply that the story is a tragedy. Glasshouse is a pun, because it refers literally to the greenhouse, while it can also be interpreted as “military prison”. Therefore, the glasshouse where the old man lived implies that he would be finally put into prison. Then what is the purpose of the clock of inferior quality? The time at which it stopped is the time when the old man’s freedom ended. All these predict the fate of the old man. The story thus becomes complete with the seemingly unrelated events.

An individual’s penitence can never relieve the pain that war brings to human beings. In other words, the crime that a nation commits leaves painful wounds both in the victims and the criminals. From the “Auschwitz Rose” emanates not only the sweet smell of peace but also the grievance of the dead. The grievance is so strong, and the wound is so deep, that they will last forever to warn human beings of the crimes.

Answer 2

so amazed that I found this topic already answered! It is like you read my thoughts!

Answer 3

Not really sure