Carol
by Vanviel Mak
Words Checked: 1540 Words in Oxford 3000: 94%
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Contents
About the Author....P. 3 Synopsis………P. 4 Chapter I ……….P. 5 Chapter II …… P. 7 Chapter III …… P. 11 Chapter IV …… P. 15 Chapter V …… P. 20 Chapter VI …… P. 22 Chapter VII…….P. 24
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About the Author
Vanviel Mak, who was born in June, 1990, had written this book in 2008. She is a student of Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages. This is an assignment of her English writing class.
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Synopsis
This is a tragedy telling about the conflict of religion in a family. Carol was a ten-years-old girl. was always weak.
Carol’s mother
Her family had tried any
ways to make her healthy.
Then they met a
missioner inviting them to church and believed in god after her mother conquered an incurable disease. Carol’s parents hoped Carol could go to the church and become a Christian, too, but Carol thought they were so ridiculous and became an anti-Christ.
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Chapter I It was an afternoon with bright sun and no clouds. Under the sunshine, there was a grave that has been covered with dust and hidden behind weeds which cis difficult to be pushed aside.
The woman
in that tarnished photo was looking even fainter.
Carol, who dressed in black as
usual, put a bouquet of chrysanthemums on her mother’s grave.
No clouds, no
birds, everything was clear in silence. “Before, I had been always angry -5-
about you. Now, you are quiet, but I can not guess what you are thinking. I wonder if you are still sensible.”
Carol
thought, “You may now be in a place called heaven, but if you are there, I will say that is ridiculous.
What have you
done during the empty ages except living with your own thinking and talking with your own god?”
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Chapter II It was not the first time Carol’s mother complaint about doctors. “I know I am sick.
How can you tell those
smart-ass doctors that this is all because of my neurosis?”
Carol’s father put down
his newspaper a little bit, looking at his wife and said, “Honey, they are professional doctors. If they said you’re all right, then you’re fine! You just need more rest and forget about the pain.” “I have always rested at home! -7-
People said that I’m idle because I didn’t do housework, but even I have rested a lot, I’m still sick!” Carol’s mother yelled angrily to her husband. ‘Then do some work!
Do some
excercise that will make you better. Don't’ just lie on the bed and keep thinking you’re ill.” “But I am ill,” she emphasized. ‘Working will just make me tired and even weak!’ ‘All right,’ Carol’s dad did not want to continue this argument, so he suggested -8-
her to go to another doctor next time.’ Carol’s mother visited doctors like shopping. Her room was full of medicine but some were already over-due and hadn’t been taken. She visited many doctors because she could trust none of them, but she had no idea about her illness either. To some degree, she also loved to buy luxuries. It cost a lot but that was what Carol’s father needs to pay after arguing with her.
Those glittering jelwery of -9-
which its beauty will last for long could always comfort her mind.
She cared
about her beauty a lot that she was so afraid the illness can simply deprive of her beauty.
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Chapter III One day, she returned to the jewelry shop. ‘The shop keeper said that I should go to church and get to know god,’ she said to her husband. ‘For what?’ Carol’s father said while he was reading the newspaper again. Although he was a white-collar worker who earn a stable income and never tried to put his money in stock market, he just thought this is the most important things. - 11 -
‘For my diseases, because you doctors can do nothing.’ ‘It’s up to you.’ As a doctor, Carol’s father never believed in that kind of thing, but there was no need to start another argument. ‘…She will take us there this weekend.’ ‘Do I need to go, too?’ ‘You’d better,’ she said at her husband, and ‘then sleeping in the house!’ Carol’s mother became a Christian - 12 -
since then. She prayed all the time, putting all of her hopes in god. She said affirmatively, ‘A Christian is different from a Buddhist, in that the latter believes that the more times they recite the scriptures, they will be forgiven and sent to heaven. ’ ‘Then why do you pray all the time and force us to join you?’ Carol asked, putting away her journal. ‘Because I’m devout, and God will hear me.’ - 13 -
‘Do you need to speak so many times to him in order for him to finally hear you?’ ‘No.
He always listens to me.’
‘Has he replied once?’ ‘No.
But he is listening to me and
will do something.’ ‘Like what?’ ‘We don’t know.
We are humans.’
‘Oh, then you don’t know that he probably thinks you are very annoying…’
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Chapter IV At first, when she became a Christian, many brothers and sisters from the church came to their house every night to pray for her.
But after few months, none of
them came because Carol’s mother became fed up of with them.
They
sometimes persuaded Carol’s mother to go outside and do exercise while coming to her house or talking on the phone. ‘They don't understand how I have been suffering,’ she said, ‘but God knows.’ - 15 -
Therefore, she was doing church shopping again.
She could not stay in a church for
over three months since too many people will care about her and interfere with her life. Carol’s father had been forced by his wife to pray every day with her.
Carol
did not know when he became a Christian , too. She found once when her father asked her to pray for her mother. Carol felt empty, as if she were losing something.
Before, she used to agree - 16 -
with her father when talking about her mother’s unjustifiable arguments. She thought there was a tacit understanding. When her father prayed with her mother, she thought he was just acting, and she always laughs at them.
She sometimes
despised her father since he was so afraid of his wife as he had better follow all that his wife said because he had never won an argument. She thought her father was only a spineless intellectual. - 17 -
She could not
believe that her father had become a Christian. She does not know when he became blind in faith and believed in such an old tale. The most unacceptable is when a preacher talks about Jesus’ miracle. ‘Every religion had some strange tales. It could be a simple coincidence, or something else.’ When the preacher claimed that Christian miracles are done by god and the others are Satan’s power, Carol feels even ridiculous. ‘It is - 18 -
preposterous to think that you can even make up this story to justify yourselves.’
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Chapter V The disease was cured.
Carol is not
sure whether it was a miracle or her mother’s imagination. She believed that there was no problem with her mother’s health from the beginning to the end. If there was, those problem must be psychological. She pretended to be sick, and her husband has been duded.
She could
successfully get anything she wanted by using her husband’s commiseration. In - 20 -
Carol’s mind, her mother was a formidable woman who could always get what she wanted in the end of the play. “What a plot.” Carol felt like that her mother was no differences than tricksters.
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Chapter VI However, the miracle did not last long. After six years, her mother died from familial heart disease. She lied on her bed as usual at the point of her death.
Her husband was
praying beside her. Carol saw her lips were pale in a round like trying to speak something. Her eyes flashed mysterious blue lights like Carol’s but more frenzied.
Carol
just watched her calmly with the abstruse - 22 -
eyes but could find no emotion. Ultimately God did not listen to her parent’s prayer.
Her mother died with no
tears because the disease made her no tears to cry, or simply she had no strength to cry. Her father cried for a night, but just for a night.
Perhaps her mother’s death
could be the end of an absurdity.
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Chapter VII They did not follow the Christian way of holding a funeral, so none of the sisters and brothers from church had been invited. The funeral was basically held by Carol.
Her father didn’t have time to
care about it.
The family came and cried
and left. They received some white envelopes, but the little amount of money couldn't comfort them.
Maybe it was not the time - 24 -
to show their pleasure, either. Her mother would love them, if she were still alive. However, she has just gone to a place they do not know. They used the money to buy some paper money made for the ancestors in Chinese culture and burnt it.
It was not
because they missed her mother or they wished blessings from her mother.
It
was simply because they did not need the money. - 25 -
They lived as usual after her mother’s death.
Nothing seemed to have
changed except her father turned inwardly and Carol had nothing more to argue with him about.
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This is a tragedy telling about the conflict of religion in a family. Carol was a ten-years-old girl. was always weak.
Carol’s mother
Her family had tried any
ways to make her healthy.
Then they met a
missioner inviting them to church and believed in god after her mother conquered an incurable disease. Carol’s parents hoped Carol could go to the church and become a Christian, too, but Carol thought they were so ridiculous and became an anti-Christ.
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