ipl-logo

Kellie Schmitt's The Old Man Isn T There Anymore

499 Words2 Pages

Travel Writer Kellie Schmitt wrote the essay The Old Man Isn’t There Anymore when she lived in China for two years. She writes about the death of a neighbor and a case of mistaken identity.
It begins with the news that a family in her communal apartment building has experienced a loss in their family. Her confusion with the layout of the building, the identity of her neighbors and their connection with each other, and her halting progress with the Chinese language sets the stage for her confused progress through this strange social world. Despite her fantasies of close friendships and kitchen tea parties with the locals, her repeated attempts to instigate a friendship with any of her neighbors were met with amusement or cold rebuffs.
It was with persistence that she was …show more content…

She wanted to make a connection with them, and leapt to the conclusion that the man who had nodded to her, a gift which she repaid with a brownie, must be the man they were mourning. His death was her ticket of admission.
Again, she approaches the situation with a gift, this time of sympathy flowers. When language fails, presents cannot be looked down upon. The family accepts them and invites her to the funeral.
When she attends, she is embarrassed by her own weeping. She is homesick, and has been making attempts to belong for so long, and this reminds her of what she left behind. The funeral ended at the crematorium, a symbolic act of immolation. It’s possible that her unease at this part of the ceremony is related to the dislike which Westerners have about facing mortality, but it could also be that the reminder of the limitation of time made her shallow attempts at connecting with others seem ludicrous. When the funeral guests leave, they toss their black armbands into a fireplace. This further symbolism of letting go contradicts the internal tension of forcing

Show More
Related

  • Theme Of Death In 'The Red Convertible'

    1015 Words  | 5 Pages

    When she learns the news of her husband’s death, she was sad and shocked by it yet it gave her a sense of freedom and feeling of opportunity of what was to come of her day to day life without her

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Woman Warrior: Memoirs Of A Girlhood Among Ghosts

    2005 Words  | 9 Pages

    Traditions are that of old family tells and stories from our grandparents and great grandparents, as they get passed on to generation after generation they tend to develop and modify to help aid who the stories are being told to and allow that person to benefit from them as the situation develops. This is very common in most ethnicities, however in the Chinese tradition it is important to listen and follow these talk-stories as their elders are telling them. In the memoir, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston, Kingston establishes a relationship between silence and finding ones voice through the talk-stories and Chinese traditions she encounters that truly forms her perspective on finding her own identity as a Chinese American.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of Behind The Formaldehyde Curtain

    495 Words  | 2 Pages

    But nobody knows what’s going on inside the preparation room, all they see is their deceased relative, good as new, when they walk by the open casket during the funeral. Mitford depicts the American funeral industry’s manipulation of death throughout the essay with either blatant or thinly-veiled verbal irony. In the last paragraph, Mitford states that the funeral director has put on a “well-oiled performance" where "the concept of death played no part whatsoever”, unless providing it was “inconsiderately mentioned” by the funeral conductors. This is extremely ironic because a funeral is supposed to revolved around death, and this makes us think about funerals and the embalmment process in a way that we usually don’t. These processes takes away the cruelty and brutality of death and make it seem trivial while making our deceased relatives life-like, with pink toned skin and a smile on their face, and death is not like that at all.

    Read More

  • Diction In Henry James 'The Funeral'

    123 Words  | 1 Pages

    In “The Funeral,” the narrator Henry James shows condescending and playful tone towards the people attending the funeral. But not being focus on the actual funeral and drawing his attention to the people, he grieve at all, as you usually do in a funeral. The author’s diction expresses his mischievous attitude toward the funeral. When the first arrives, he points out that the elements of “groteque” was noticeable.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Min-Zhan Lu's From Silence To Words

    1001 Words  | 5 Pages

    It came to dominate my understanding of the discussion on the social and historical scene and to restrict my ability to participate in that discussion.(444) If we go back and use the reference again of the electronic tool we can see the struggle of being at home and communicating with her family and having an influence of capitalistic viewpoints and living the life of a capitalist, then immediately having to communicate in a different language at school and being surrounded by socialistic views and living the life of a socialist. Her thoughts were constantly flip-flopping and this became very frustrating for her. If we bring all these struggles into one main purpose, Min-Zhan Lu’s mother falls into silence two months before her death and Min-Zhan Lu attempts to “fill up that silence with words that I have since come to by reflecting on my earlier experience as a student in China.(437) The struggles that she faced growing up in China as a student and her past experiences have really helped her overcome life obstacles and develop her as a better reader and writer.

    Read More

  • How Is Frankenstein Similar To Mary Shelley's Life

    1068 Words  | 5 Pages

    Her friends were all she had, without them she felt extremely isolated and

    Read More

  • Lion Movie Analysis

    837 Words  | 4 Pages

    When I was nine years old (2010), death touched my family through my older sister, Margot Kate Jackson Fowler, known by many as Katie Fowler. This affected me in tremendous ways which will stay with me for life. Whenever I see or hear of death regarding family members, I draw instant connections to the death of my sister. When guddu and Saroo were separated that night, not knowing that it would be their last moment together; they didn’t say goodbye. I can relate to this on a personal level as I never got to say goodbye to my sister.

    Read More

  • The Old Man Isn T There Anymore Short Story Summary

    1032 Words  | 5 Pages

    When Schmitt moved into the building Schmitt wanted to show her appreciation by making brownies. When Schmitt found out that “Grandpa had died she wanted to get sympathy flowers. Little did Schmitt realize, in China when someone passes away white flowers are associated with death ( Schmitt 109). After the funeral when “ Grandpa” was being cremated the family paid extra so that “ Grandpa” could have a private burning without getting the wrong ashes of a stranger. After the funeral the family drank sugar water .

    Read More

  • The Joy Luck Club Cultural Analysis

    521 Words  | 3 Pages

    As seen by the mothers’ and daughters’ behavior towards each other in The Joy Luck Club, it is difficult to preserve one’s culture when one is exposed to a new environment or country. With a difference of two distinct generations between them, the four main pairs often come across cultural collisions. Other than facing the age gap, these mothers and daughters also have to deal with a language and communication barrier. Already, at the beginning of the story, Jing-Mei Woo is able to understand how the mothers of the “Joy Luck Club” are displeased with their daughter’s rejection of their Chinese culture. She speaks to herself, admitting that “they are frightened.

    Read More

  • Native Guard By Natasha Trethewey Analysis

    1728 Words  | 7 Pages

    She is also visiting her mother’s grave in, what is assumed to be, complete solitude. There are no mentions of others with her or other people present. It just the narrator and the ants. It seems everyone else has moved on, especially since the graveyard is described as being very unkept with “weeds and grass grown up all around” (9). Only the narrator and the ants visit her mother now.

    Read More

  • My Bondage And My Freedom Frederick Douglass Literary Analysis

    616 Words  | 3 Pages

    The story begins with Mrs. Mallard getting the news that her husband had died in a terrible train accident. At first Mrs. Mallard was racked with grief for the loss of her husband. As the story progresses, Mrs. Mallard says, “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know.”

    Read More

  • Mrs Morrison And The Gluttony Case Study

    1072 Words  | 5 Pages

    Mrs. Morrison was too busy to die. A woman well into her eighties, Mrs. Morrison still had much to do; The crochet club was going to meet next week to discuss plans on a fundraiser, a son’s graduation was to be attended, and an unfinished will was lying around somewhere. Furthermore, she was still waiting for a birthday gift from her neighbor that was long overdue. Her life was far from over. So whenever Death came knocking at her door, Mrs. Morrison would give it a good beating and send it back where it came from.

    Read More

  • The Old Man Isn T There Anymore Short Story

    133 Words  | 1 Pages

    "The Old Man Isn't There Anymore", is a rather interesting story. While it depicts a short story about an American woman somewhat lost in a small knit Chinese community, she lives in an apartment building in Shanghai, surrounded by all Chinese people. Their's countless differences between these two cultures. With these variations of beliefs, the author, who is an American woman, struggles to fit in with her new neighbors in China. The author barley understands the Chinese language, "Do you know why the neighbors, I paused.

    Read More

  • The Contrast Of Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

    520 Words  | 3 Pages

    When Richard’s heard the news of her husband’s death, he assumed Mrs. Mallard would be devastated. While everyone knew Mrs. Mallard was “afflicted with heart trouble” (57), him and her sister, Josephine, wanted to give her the news with “great care” (57). Josephine broke the news to Mrs. Mallard in “broken sentences”

    Read More

  • Chinese Realism In Tolstoy's Poem

    1903 Words  | 8 Pages

    The boredom pushing Emma to the limits of life and the shame butchering Anna’s reason are replaced by a feeling that is very much a keystone in Chinese post-Maoist Literature, nostalgia. We can’t possibly have it in Flaubert’s and Tolstoy’s novels because the protagonists left off the stage a few years too early, but Wang is conceived to be a relic from the past, she is trapped in it even when it melts away. Common trait of the zhiqing generation , nostalgia in Wang, author and character, is a feeling confused with rage for a time never lived or for a time not lived long enough. In the socialist era Wang misses the culture of the colonial era, the seduction and the grace of Shanghai in the 30s, in the post-socialist age she suffers the economic reforms resulting in the destruction of the city physical and spiritual past. The electric trolleys are gone, their tracks parqueted with cement; the buildings have turn black, the water of the river polluted, the alley’s lamps smashed.

    Read More

More about Kellie Schmitt's The Old Man Isn T There Anymore

Open Document