Food and Drink in literature

Ñòðàíèöà: 2/3

Food during the war became just a source of getting energy, no more. People forgot about delicious food, just to treat themselves. In this connection let us turn to one description of food those terrible days, which shows us all the details: “I’m going to describe our food rations: Food is a difficult and important problem not only for us in the Annexe, but for everyone in Holland, all of Europe and even further away. We’ve lived here for twenty-one months, and often at any one time there was only one kind of food to eat. For example, one kind of vegetable or salad. We would eat it with potatoes, in every possible way that we could think of. But now there are no vegetables at all. We have potatoes, and brown beans. We make soup – we still have some packets and stores to make dishes which are a little bit more interesting. But it’s beans with everything, even in bread. The most exciting moment is when we eat a thin piece of sausage once a week, and put some jam on our bread – no butter, of course! But we’re still alive, and much of the time the food tastes good too”.

The last mention of food appears to us when we read about events happening on 5th of June 1944: “The are new problems in the Annexe now. There’s a quarrel between Dussel and Franks. We can’t agree how to share out the butter”.

Time during the war was very hard to survive in. We can see it by the reading this story by Anne Franks. Description of food shows us how much difficult it was it get it.

Now let us turn on to the theme of Drinks. For this purpose I’ve decided to use compositions of famous Irish poet Thomas Moore. Irish people themselves like drinking a lot. Nowadays their favorite drink is beer I guess. Having read some pieces of Moore’s poetry I understood that it was wine earlier. So let’s now analyze meaning of this drink in the poetry of Thomas Moore.

“Come, send round the wine”.

“Come, send round the wine, and leave points of belief

To simpleton sages, and reasoning fools;

This moment ‘s a flower too fair and brief,

To be withered and stained by the dust of the schools’.

Here wine appears as a symbol of enjoyment and lighthearted attitude towards this life. Author tells us not to be maybe even serious, but just take this life as it is, not to worry about the future. If we followed this ‘commandment’ I think we would live unconcerned about what will happen, until something would happen! But here Thomas Moore stresses upon brevity of life. We can find the following idea: don’t think about the future, life is too short, live the present moment, enjoy yourself. Wine has always been a symbol of joy, but sometimes it can even be a sign of sadness. Here wine certainly plays part of thing that brings pleasure to man.

“Fill the bumper fair”.

“Fill the bumper fair!

Every drop we sprinkle

O’er the brow of Care

Smooths away a wrinkle.

Wit’s electric flame

Ne’er so swiftly passes,

As when thro’ the frame

It shoots from brimming glasses.

Fill the bumper fair!

Every drop we sprinkle

O’er the brow of Care

Smooths away a wrinkle”.

Here the author emphasizes on ‘healing’ function of wine. People can forget about all their problems if they drink wine, here it is like medicine, which help us to recover not from the physical pain, but a ‘spiritual’ one. “Wrinkle” here is a symbol of sadness, worry or disappointment. So wine helps us to “smooth” this “wrinkle”. That means not dealing with the problem, but just healing the soul for some time. The poet shows us that every time we feel unhappy we can just “fill the bumper fair” and all our problems will leave us, we will be in a good mood. Look, doesn’t it solve our problems? Everybody thinks of his or her own answer. People are different and it depends whether person wants to leave his problems in the cup with wine, or just continue solving it till it’s done.

Ðåôåðàò îïóáëèêîâàí: 29/05/2008