LOOK AT TEACUP
ENGLISH | THE MAGIC OF WORDS
Patricia Hampl
Class : 11
The essay ‘Look at a Teacup’, written by Patricia Hampl, shows how a simple writing helps in finding out great events. It is about the history of writer’s mother in a delicate teacup. The two major themes of this essay are relationship between a mother and her daughter and a connection between the past generation and present generation. Both these things are represented by a teacup.
The writer’s mother was married in the year 1939, the beginning of the Second World War. The same year she bought the teacups as gifts that were later given to the daughter. Hampel sees a connection between herself and her mother. The teacup reminds her of her mother’s history because her mother bought it in 1939. Through the cup the mother transfers the culture and history of her time to the daughter. So, the cup is historical memory only. It was made in Czechoslovakia, which was taken over and destroyed by the armies of Adolf Hitler.
The essay associates and removes the objective description and subjective feeling of author and teacup. The author expresses feeling and ideas making the teacup as a medium. She tries to compare the falling of flower in the teacup as destruction of beauty due to falling bombs. There was also cultural and social degradation. The style of this essay is stream of consciousness (stream of consciousness means a way of writing in which the writer narrates all the ideas like a flow of river without stopping for because thoughts never have punctuations, we put them later in the rules of grammar). So, the reader feels somehow puzzled to track down the plot of the essay. She expresses all her feelings and tries to compare each other. So, some sentences are fragmented. Logically they do not follow each other. The writing is beautifully decorated but the meanings are deviated.
There is symbolic meaning of the things. ‘Falling flowers’ implies the degrading situation and ‘teacups’ were human rituals and arts. Certainly the essayist refers the fall and break of culture. ‘Falling bodies’ were dying people in the war and ‘beds’ have meaning of the battlefield where the falling bodies lay. ‘The falling of bombs onto women’ means the tragic fate of these women. They had the disturbed married life. Fates of women were accursed by the war and their destiny was darkened by the war and their destiny. ‘Falling countries’ refers to the degradation of humanity, peace, progress, brotherhood, culture, etc. of the countries involved in the war. This essay presents the reality of war and shows the real picture of the world caused by the destruction due to war.
UNDERSTANDING OF ESSAY
Look at a Teacup, written by Patricia Hampl, is a complicated and quite motivating essay which shows the distinction between the traditional norms, notions and dogmas with the new ideology of modern world. There is generation gap between the old and new.
The writer is the speaker of the essay who says that her mother had bought a teacup in 1939. The highly decorated but plain looking cup is the major concern of the essay. Numerous ideas are connected and concerned with the tea cup, so it is the memento of entire events of the past. The speaker gives the specific emphasis to the teacup and its relation to art and architecture of the Mid-Twentieth century. The writer further associates the tea cup with the historic events, esp. in the time of Hitler and during the Second World War. Then, the speaker praises the tea cup, its charm and pictures of flowers that are painted in the teacup. The every discussion between the speaker and her mother are concerned around the teacup, it is the focal point of their discussion. As the writer’s mother was from Czechoslovakia, she bought the teacup in 1939, the same year she got married and the Second World War also began. The teacup reminds the mother as her own native country and the history of her native land. The outer and inner descriptions of teacup are highly praised by the writer. The teacup is considered as the golden one with its pale water-green color. There is also a band of gold on the inner circle of the saucer (plate), it is shiny and there are thin bands of gold around the edges of the saucer and cup on the borders of the cup and its saucer light sides of gold are outlines. The combination of color and flower inside and outside the teacup are very attractive. The flowers inside the teacup seem as if it is live and animated.
The essay gives the minute details about the tragedy caused by the war. When she describes the destructive war, she becomes sad and upset. They both have the contrasting opinion and ideas about the world and war. Apart from that they have also different opinion about the family and work. The daughter gives emphasis on work whereas the mother insists that the family is the most important thing in the world.
The major subject they discuss in the essay is the issue of marriage. The mother has the conventional opinion about the marriage but the speaker disagrees from her opinion. The mother often worries about the marriage of her daughter but the daughter shows reluctance about the marriage and stand firmly in the statement. The speaker might have detested the marriage as she had seen the forceful love attempts between her father and mother. The speaker once found her father pulled her mother’s back and hugged her and kissed her forcefully in the kitchen. The event detests her from the marriage. She wants the mutual understanding in marriage, but such type of unusual, self-centered and inappropriate steps form strong hate on the tradition form of marriage.
When the mother got married, the condition of the entire Europe was devastating. Firing, bombing and mass killing made her fearful that she would die. She escaped from her home country as it was destroyed by the war; likewise the factory of teacup was also destroyed. Everything destroyed by the Second World War but the tiny teacup she bought in the year of her marriage remained unbroken. The sky becomes cloudy from smoke of fire of bombs. So the teacup is the uncharred (not burned) finger from the mid-century bonfire.
The essay also shows the relation between the men and women. The women during the Second World War were maltreated and highly dominated. The writer said that the roses fell from the sky to destroy the life of women. Roses were thrown as bombs to women; it means the condition and plight of women were very low and miserable. The essay here shows the contradiction between the old traditions as represented by mother and the modern value and thinking as represented by the speaker (daughter). The opinion and beliefs on women have been drastically (radically, severely) changed nowadays and they are treated as equal to men in most part of the world.
This essay even claims that the writing can be the way of finding various details and perspective of people, discovering implication in apparently minor events, and of making associations between seemingly unequal elements. The mother has escaped the magnitude of history by retreating (withdrawing, moving back) into pragmatism (practicality, common sense, way of thinking result and way of evaluating theories). But Hampl has the positive ideas to escape history by fighting it. She slightly refuses to carry on old traditions like marrying and bearing children. There is the contrast between the old tradition and the new generation.
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English