The tiger’s wife
The forty days of the soul begin on the morning after death. That first night, before its forty days begin, the soul lies still against sweated-on pillows and watches the living fold the hands and close the eyes, choke the room with smoke and silence to keep the new soul from the doors and the windows and the cracks in the floor so that it does not run out of the house like a river. The living know that, at daybreak, the soul will leave them and make its way to the places of its past—the schools and dormitories of its youth, army barracks and tenements, houses razed to the ground and rebuilt, places that recall love and guilt, difficulties and unbridled happiness, optimism and ecstasy, memories of grace meaningless to anyone else—and sometimes this journey will carry it so far for so long that it will forget to come back. For this reason, the living bring their own rituals to a standstill: to welcome the newly loosed spirit, the living will not clean, will not wash or tidy, will not remove the soul's belongings for forty days, hoping that sentiment and longing will bring it home again, encourage it to return with a message, with a sign, or with forgiveness.
If it is properly enticed, the soul will return as the days go by, to rummage through drawers, peer inside cupboards, seek the tactile comfort of its living identity by reassessing the dish rack and the doorbell and the telephone, reminding itself of functionality, all the time touching things that produce sound and make its presence known to the inhabitants of the house. Speaking quietly into the phone, my grandma reminded me of this after she told me of my grandfather's death. For her, the forty days were fact and common sense, knowledge left over from burying two parents and an older sister, assorted cousins and strangers from her hometown, a formula she had recited to comfort my grandfather whenever he lost a patient in whom he was particularly invested—a superstition, according to him, but something in which he had indulged her with less and less protest as old age had hardened her beliefs.
My grandma was shocked, angry because we had been robbed of my grandfather's forty days, reduced now to thirty-seven or thirty-eight by the circumstances of his death. He had died alone, on a trip away from home; she hadn't known that he was already dead when she ironed his clothes the day before, or washed the dishes that morning, and she couldn't account for the spiritual consequences of her ignorance. He had died in a clinic in an obscure town called Zdrevkov on the other side of the border; no one my grandma had spoken to knew where Zdrevkov was, and when she asked me, I told her the truth: I had no idea what he had been doing there.
"You're lying," she said.
"Bako, I'm not."
"He told us he was on his way to meet you."
"That can't be right," I said.
He had lied to her, I realized, and lied to me. He had taken advantage of my own cross-country trip to slip away—a week ago, she was saying, by bus, right after I had set out myself—and had gone off for some reason unknown to either of us. It had taken the Zdrevkov clinic staff three whole days to track my grandma down after he died, to tell her and my mother that he was dead, arrange to send his body. It had arrived at the City morgue that morning, but by then, I was already four hundred miles from home, standing in the public bathroom at the last service station before the border, the pay phone against my ear, my pant legs rolled up, sandals in hand, bare feet slipping on the green tiles under the broken sink.
Somebody had fastened a bent hose onto the faucet, and it hung, nozzle down, from the boiler pipes, coughing thin streams of water onto the floor. It must have been going for hours: water was everywhere, flooding the tile grooves and pooling around the rims of the squat toilets, dripping over the doorstep and into the dried-up garden behind the shack. None of this fazed the bathroom attendant, a middle-aged woman with an orange scarf tied around her hair, whom I had found dozing in a corner chair and dismissed from the room with a handful of bills, afraid of what those seven missed beeper pages from my grandma meant before I even picked up the receiver.
I was furious with her for not having told me that my grandfather had left home. He had told her and my mother that he was worried about my goodwill mission, about the inoculations at the Brejevina orphanage, and that he was coming down to help. But I couldn't berate my grandma without giving myself away, because she would have told me if she had known about his illness, which my grandfather and I had hidden from her. So I let her talk, and said nothing about how I had been with him at the Military Academy of Medicine three months before when he had found out, or how the oncologist, a lifelong colleague of my grandfather's, had shown him the scans and my grandfather had put his hat down on his knee and said, "Fuck. You go looking for a gnat and you find a donkey."
I put two more coins into the slot, and the phone whirred. Sparrows were diving from the brick ledges of the bathroom walls, dropping into the puddles at my feet, shivering water over their backs. The sun outside had baked the early afternoon into stillness, and the hot, wet air stood in the room with me, shining in the doorway that led out to the road, where the cars at border control were packed in a tight line along the glazed tarmac. I could see our car, left side dented from a recent run-in with a tractor, and Zóra sitting in the driver's seat, door propped open, one long leg dragging along the ground, glances darting back toward the bathroom more and more often as she drew closer to the customs booth.
"They called last night," my grandma was saying, her voice louder. "And I thought, they've made a mistake. I didn't want to call you until we were sure, to worry you in case it wasn't him. But your mother went down to the morgue this morning." She was quiet, and then: "I don't understand, I don't understand any of it."
"I don't either, Bako," I said.
"He was going to meet you."
"I didn't know about it."
Then the tone of her voice changed. She was suspicious, my grandma, of why I wasn't crying, why I wasn't hysterical. For the first ten minutes of our conversation, she had probably allowed herself to believe that my calm was the result of my being in a foreign hospital, on assignment, surrounded, perhaps, by colleagues. She would have challenged me a lot sooner if she had known that I was hiding in the border-stop bathroom so that Zóra wouldn't overhear.
She said, "Haven't you got anything to say?"
"I just don't know, Bako. Why would he lie about coming to see me?"
"You haven't asked if it was an accident," she said. "Why haven't you asked that? Why haven't you asked how he died?"
"I didn't even know he had left home," I said. "I didn't know any of this was going on."
"You're not crying," she said.
"Neither are you."
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"Rip Van Winkle" is about a man named Rip Van Winkle, who lived in a little Dutch town in the Hudson Valley. Everyone in the town was very fond of him because he would help anyone who needed help and he would play with the children. The thing he couldn't do was tend to his farm because it seemed that everything he did failed, so he would go out and fish or go to the town inn and listen to the gossip. His wife Dame Van Winkle would get angry at him for being lazy and not tending to the farm. One day he decided that he had one option to get away from his wife and the farm, which was to take his gun and dog and go into the woods and hunt squirrels.
He spent all day looking for squirrels, but couldn't find any. So he lied on the grass and after awhile he noticed it was getting dark, so he started back. As he did this, he heard someone calling his name and then he saw a ghost appear carrying a keg of liquor on his back. So they both went together down the woods until they came to this opening where they saw these weird dressed people playing 9 pin. Rip and the ghost walked up towered them and the ghost poured liquor into the flasks for the people to drink and Rip started to drink too until he passed out on the ground. The next mourning he woke up and didn't know what to tell his wife. He reached for his gun, but all he saw was a rusted out gun instead of the well oiled, shiny gun. Then he looked for his dog and he couldn't find his dog.

So he went back in town and everyone stared at him like they didn't know him. He looked at himself to see what everyone was staring at and he saw that he had a beard a foot long. He looked around the village and nothing was familiar, even his house which looked like a run-down shack. He went to the tavern to see if he recognized anyone, which he didn't. Then he started calling the his friends names to see if anyone has heard of them and they all said that they were have moved on or dead. Then he asked if they have heard of the name Rip Van Winkle and they all pointed to his son, which looked just like him. This made Rip think that he had woke up someone else because his son looked just like him.
Then a woman with a child in her arms came to see the man. Rip had overheard the name of the child was Rip and he asked her who was her father and she said her father was Rip Van Winkle, who left when she was a child twenty years ago. Then Rip told her that he was her Events, no matter how small can change a society, a culture, and an outlook in the blink of an eye. Whether it is in a war, a speech, a gesture, or even a novel. Washington Irving made an incredible impact from his short story "Rip Van Winkle", drawing the events surrounding him to form a simple story with deep meaning. To bring to a pinpoint, the story shaped the American culture as the American culture shaped the story.
From this folklore, others have grown from it. Some believe that Rip in fact did not fall asleep, but took adventurous journeys in foreign lands with strange people. Art and child-like fantasies have been the median to which the stories have been communicated. Drawings consist of fairy-like areas and magical settings have attracted children and adults alike.
"Rip Van Winkle" has affected elements across the board. It shows up everywhere. Since 1819, the story, the name, and what it stand for has touched all parts of the arts, literature, education, and culture. The number of editions that the story has accumulated is higher than most and comes in all forms of literature from cheap paperbacks to elaborated illustrations that have become classics. Mentioned in other literature, in politics, and in a variety of languages, it is used to define what our country became after the revolutionary war and how the British perceive the Americans. The fact that Rip fell asleep due to the effects of a drink. England felt that the Americans were lazy alcoholics that would fall apart if not for the British authorities controlling them.
The story of Rip Van Winkle has almost come to the point where it has become commercialized. If one travels into the Catskills, they will come across an array of tourist attractions ranging from hotels, to Lakes, to gas stations. There is a tour company that travels from New York to the Catskills. There one will find a famous garden with the same name.
In conclusion, the story Rip Van Winkle has affected and in turn, been affected by American society. How can we apply this to modern day society? Are we still able to compare that way that are government has evolved? Not only was it new beginning for a new style of writing it was a new start for a country. Washington could in no way have known how much his story would effect our culture.
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"Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is a major American writer Mark Twain in the United States children's life as the main written. The story background of the times, a nineteenth century the United States Mississippi River in St. Petersburg. Tom is a hero of the story naive, lively and playful yet the typical American teenager. He and Wild Child Shack, the dry out a lot of wonderful things spectacle of himself. Tom ordered to paint the walls, like, actually Shi out of tricks, not only the work of other children willing to replace him, but also automatically brings in Xie. Eventually we escaped to a desert island to the Shack, people thought they were drowned, and was the church for their funerals, but they are hiding in the church's bell tower on the eavesdropping. These naughty moves, although we do not give a model, but he interests of justice, resolutely to come forward as a witness, to rescue the innocent criminals Mo Fu Bide. And naughty while, actually, and Shack cracked a murder case, has become the admiration of the little hero. It seems that Tom is also worthy of our study areas. In fact, naughty kids sometimes are embodied in the child's innocence. Such innocence after a difficult childhood Zaixun, allow us to find, only a little bit of occasional sweet memories will remember. I believe that, even if your childhood again hard, in retrospect you will be very happy. Who has not done one and a half pieces of a child so stupid? The more you grow, the more you will find these stupid fun. I said that childhood is like a jar of rum, but after longer taste more fragrant, more pure, the more people aftertaste. People always grow up, in addition to tall stature, and body strong, the outside people's thoughts are long. Your view of the world is different, sensible, and is no longer naive. But people have to get better is. Adventures of 10 million can not be like that inside the ruthless scoundrel Lovejoy, he did a bad thing to do, disgusting. But in the end he Eyouebao got one starved to death in caves end. 《汤姆索亚历险记》是美国大文豪马克·吐温以美国少年生活为主体写成的。故事的时代背景，是十九世纪美国密西西比河的圣彼得堡。 故事的主人公汤姆是个天真、活泼而又顽皮的典型美国少年。他和野孩子夏克，各干出了许多令人捧腹的妙事。像汤姆被罚粉刷围墙，竟施出诡计，不但使别的孩子心甘情愿代替他工作，还自动奉上谢礼。后来和夏克逃到荒岛去，人们以为他们淹死了，正在教堂为他们举行丧礼，而他们却躲在教堂的钟楼上偷听。这些顽皮的举动，虽然不能给我们做模范，但是，他为了正义，毅然地挺身出来作证人，拯救那无辜的罪犯沫夫彼得。并在顽皮之余，居然和夏克破获了一桩谋杀案，成为众人钦佩的小英雄。看来，汤姆也有值得我们学习的地方。 其实孩子的顽皮有时候正好体现了孩子的天真烂漫。 这种童真过了孩童时代就很难再寻，能让我们找到的，就只有一点点偶尔才会想起的甜蜜回忆。我相信，即使你的童年再艰苦，回想起来你也会很开心。谁没有在小时候做过一件半件的傻事？当你越长大，你就会越觉得这些傻事有趣。 我说童年就像一罐甜酒，时隔越久，尝起来就越香，越纯，越让人回味。 人总是会长大的，除了个儿长高了，身子强壮了以外，人的思想也在长。你对世界的看法不同了，懂事了，不再幼稚了。不过人是要越变越好才是。千万不能像历险记里的那个心狠手辣的坏蛋卓伊一样，他坏事做尽，人见人憎。但最后他还是恶有恶报，得到了一个活活饿死在山洞里的下场。

　　美国文豪马克·吐温代表作《汤姆·索亚历险记》中的主人公。下面是关于《汤姆索亚历险记》英文读后感的内容，欢迎阅读！

　　《汤姆索亚历险记》英文读后感1

　　I believe that one of the factors that makes a piece of literature or even a movie a masterpiece is how well the reader can relate to the story. This is definitely a book everyone can relate to.

　　The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a literary masterpieces, written in 1876 by the famous author Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer is a mischievous young boy who lives in the small town on the Mississippi River called St. Petersburg. The story line is simple, the book reads like a biography or a memoir of a summer in Tom Sawyer's life.

　　Tom Sawyer seems to be the precursor of and the template for misfit kids such as Dennis the Menace, Malcolm in the Middle, and Calvin and Hobbs. What makes this story great is that Tom Sawyer represents everything that is great about childhood. The book is filled with Tom's adventures playing pirates and war with his friend Joe Harper. Tom has a trusted friend, Huck Finn, who few of the adults approve of. The book is filled with ideas of how the world works, such as how pirates and robbers work, that are so innocent, they could only come from a child. It is a story filled with action, adventure, ingenious ideas, love, and schoolyard politics. The whole story is seemingly a complication of what people did or wish they did during their childhood.

　　The book is a little difficult to read at first. Personally, it takes me a little while to get used to the 19th century dialect in the book. Other than referring to persons of African decent in derogatory terms (which I'm sure uses terms even young children already know), the book would be an enjoyable read for people of all ages. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking to feel young again, if just for a few hundred pages.

　　《汤姆索亚历险记》英文读后感2

　　"Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is a major American writer Mark Twain in the United States children's life as the main written. The story background of the times, a nineteenth century the United States Mississippi River in St. Petersburg.

　　Tom is a hero of the story naive, lively and playful yet the typical American teenager. He and Wild Child Shack, the dry out a lot of wonderful things spectacle of himself. Tom ordered to paint the walls, like, actually Shi out of tricks, not only the work of other children willing to replace him, but also automatically brings in Xie. Eventually we escaped to a desert island to the Shack, people thought they were drowned, and was the church for their funerals, but they are hiding in the church's bell tower on the eavesdropping. These naughty moves, although we do not give a model, but he interests of justice, resolutely to come forward as a witness, to rescue the innocent criminals Mo Fu Bide.

　　And naughty while, actually, and Shack cracked a murder case, has become the admiration of the little hero. It seems that Tom is also worthy of our study areas. In fact, naughty kids sometimes are embodied in the child's innocence. Such innocence after a difficult childhood Zaixun, allow us to find, only a little bit of occasional sweet memories will remember.

　　I believe that, even if your childhood again hard, in retrospect you will be very happy. Who has not done one and a half pieces of a child so stupid? The more you grow, the more you will find these stupid fun. I said that childhood is like a jar of rum, but after longer taste more fragrant, more pure, the more people aftertaste. People always grow up, in addition to tall stature, and body strong, the outside people's thoughts are long.

　　Your view of the world is different, sensible, and is no longer naive. But people have to get better is. Adventures of 10 million can not be like that inside the ruthless scoundrel Lovejoy, he did a bad thing to do, disgusting. But in the end he Eyouebao got one starved to death in caves end.

　　《汤姆索亚历险记》英文读后感3

　　The first impression that the boy Tom gave me was a naughty, mischievous boy, just as what Aunt Polly said. He never lacked the curiosity to explore new places, sometimes even risking his life, which I did not dare to! There were some great adventures of him with Huck or Joe. Huck was an orphan, and Joe was Tom’s classmate. Everybody in the small village knew Tom, mainly for Tom’s—you know kind of gallantry!

　　I should tell you the adventures. The origin of the attempt was that Tom and Huck was getting curious to the world of outside, and they made an effort to run-away. However, when they were in the graveyard, some people appeared. They were Injun Joe, Huck’s father, named Potter, and a doctor. Tom and Huck quickly hid behind the bush, and they saw them digging the coffins out, probably finding something valuable. They did not realize that what they witnessed was a murder! Tom and Huck were extremely afraid, and they ran away rapidly. On the court, Potter was being accused of the murderer; however, Tom declared that it was Injun Joe who used Potter’s knife to kill the young doctor. On hearing this, Injun Joe broke the glass and ran away! This scared everybody, and Tom’s brother, Sid, said that he always heard Tom mumbling something when he was asleep, and sometimes even shouting. Indeed, the accident was fluttering everybody in the town with fear.

　　Before, Tom once fell in love with a girl called Lawrence. And he showed off in front of the girl, trying to win the girl’s heart, but Lawrence ignored Tom’s appearance, and it made Tom sad. At present, Tom went for another girl for Becky. Yet, when Becky knew that Tom once loved Lawrence （it was probably childish thoughts）， she refused Tom. Tom got so depressed that he resolutely committed the second escape.

　　He made contact with Huck and Joe that afternoon, about where to meet, the code words of meeting, and the route, and so on and so forth. Each of them brought some food, and Huck brought some pipes （remind that Huck had no real home, and I had no ideas where he got the things）. At midnight, they met at the place, and they took a raft down the river. After drifting for about several hours, they finally reached the destiny. There they lived for about several weeks, and while everybody thought they were drowned, they had a great time. They were no problems of food or water shortages. They promised to be a pirate, and would live there forever.

　　If you were out from your relatives for a long time, wouldn’t you miss home? It was the same for those children. After several weeks, Joe felt that he missed home very much, and Tom could not seem to stop him. On this, Tom brought Joe and Huck his secret—

　　On one night, when the rest of the boys fell asleep （of course they slept outside）， Tom crept from the camp, and headed toward the town. He sneaked to his aunt’s room, and hid under the bed, while everybody- Mary （Tom’s sister）， Sid, Aunt Polly and Joe Harper’s mother were having a meeting. There were a lot of tears, about how the boys were killed, and how they would treat the boys if they ever lived again, such things. Tom almost wanted to get out of the bed and hug Aunt Polly, but he couldn’t. At last, everybody went to sleep. Tom went out from the bed, and flew to the camp. That was the secret— that the boys will go to their own funeral!

　　While the boys were outside, all of the people in the town were discussing about the accidents. The town was immediately covered with a sense of doom. So the funeral was raised. Everybody wore a black suit, and they prayed something along with the priest. Just then, they saw somebody entering the gate, and what they saw was unbelievable. Three young souls came out from their coffins and showed up in front of everybody! The change of the atmosphere was imaginable. Aunt Polly, Joe Harper’s mother, Mary and Sid were astounded to find that Tom came so vivid in front of them, and so Tom and Joe became a hero in the school, even in the town.

　　The real adventures of Tom were finding the treasures.

"Adventures of Tom Sawyer "is the American writer Mark Twain to the United States as the main body of juvenile life written. The story of the historical background, is the nineteenth century, the Mississippi River in St. Petersburg in the United States.
Tom the hero story is a naive, lively and naughty typical American teenager. He and Wild Child Shack, the stem is laugh a lot of wonderful things. Tom to paint the wall like a fine, the trick has facilities, so that other children will not only willing to replace him work, but also automatically offer Xie. Shack later and fled to a desert island, it is thought that they drowned, was held at the church for their funeral, and they are hiding in the church bell tower on the eavesdropping. Those naughty moves, although we can not give a model, but he to justice, took out a witness to come forward to save the innocent criminals foam. While in the naughty, and even cracked a Shack murder become the admiration of the little hero. It appears that Tom is also a place worthy of our study.
Always a great president, in addition to height long high, a strong body, the person's thinking is also long. You view the world different, thoughtful, and is no longer naive. But becoming a good person is to be. Adventure must not like that in the very cruel and ruthless villain, he did a bad thing to do, hate everyone. But in the end, he was evil, to be starved to death in a cave at the end.
After reading the "Adventures of Tom Sawyer," I really envy Tom to have such an interesting experience. It seems this book with relish, and even sleepless nights. I would like to, "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" In a time when you may be bored smile solution allows you to worry about 1000.