English Literature & Theology

 "Action Will Be Taken" ("Es wird etwas geschehen") is a brilliant satirical short story by the Nobel Prize-winning German author Heinrich Böll, published in 1954. It is a sharp, ironic critique of modern industrial society, corporate culture, and the post-WWII German economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder), where busyness was often equated with worth. Summary The story is told in the first person by an  unnamed narrator. The narrator introduces himself as someone constitutionally unsuited for hard work. He has an innate inclination toward "inaction" and contemplation. However, due to severe financial distress, he is forced to look for a job. He applies for a position at a large, bustling factory owned by a man also named Wunsiedel. The factory’s core philosophy is encapsulated in its aggressive slogans: "Action will be taken!" and "Let’s have action!" During the job interview, the narrator realizes that the environment rewards the appeara...

  Ecology By AK Ramanujan The day after the first rain, for years, I would home in a rage, for I could see from a mile away our three Red Champak Trees had done it again, had burst into flower and given Mother her first blinding migraine of the season with their street-long heavy-hung yellow pollen fog of a fragrance no wind could sift no door could shut out from our black – pillared house whose walls had ears and eyes, scales, smells ,bone-creaks , nightly visiting voices, and were porous like us, but Mother, flashing her temper like her mother's twisted silver, grandchildren's knickers wet as the cold pack on her head, would not let us cut down a flowering tree almost as old as her, seeded, she said, by a passing bird's providential droppings to give her gods and her daughters and daughters' daughters basketsful of annual flower and for one line of cousins a dower of migraines in season. Summary  The poem begins with a sense of annual dread as the speaker returns home...