The Hourglass

The short stories "A Distant Episode" and Blaise's "A Class of New Canadians" both shares certain similarities and dissimilarities. These two short stories, one being the adventure of a linguistic professor abroad and the other, the life of an English teacher in Montreal, Quebec share a strong connection. To follow, there will be a detailed and through look at the two characters' lives, they're psychological aspects – their state of mind, and how they intend to curb reality into a certain form of fantasy that would rather seem plausible to their own eyes and fulfill their needs and desires.

An obvious similarity between the linguistic professor and the English teacher is that of their occupation, both being linguists – living off language. The two characters share pretty much the same ethnical background, being from the Westernized part of the world and having lived in the same kind of society. The linguistic professor went on a trip within the Middle East – a completely different world with a different culture.   The English teacher runs off to Canada, Quebec precisely; this is an important thing since Quebec is a French-speaking province. "When stopped on the street for directions, he would answer in French or accented English." (Blaise, p.96) This clearly gives an image of arrogance about Dyer, the English teacher and how insulting and rude his act was. In Bowles' "A Distant Episode", the story read: "He paid him an enormous tip, for which he received a grave bow." (Bowles, p.122) This demonstrates that the professor is undoubtedly thinking he can buy other's respect thus making him think he is a superior being. This behavior is also seen with the English teacher who thinks of himself as a form of divinity, "He was a god two evenings a week […]" (Blaise, p.96) and who assumes that his students love him: "They love me […] I love myself." (Blaise, p.96) The idea of assumption plays a great role in analyzing these two characters. Both the linguistic professor... [continues]

Read full essay