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UNIVERSITY DAYS
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UNIVERSITY DAYS James Thurber NOTES PREPARED BY SATHEESH Thurber’s fame as a humourist rests on both his writings and his drawings. His writings are remarkable for their sublime humour, pathos and psychological insight. In his childhood an accidental arrow left him blind in one eye. Eventually, a ‘sympathetic opthalmia’ took over his other eye. Owing to this, his early life was filled with a certain melancholy and introspection. He unleashes a masterpiece of humor and subtle mockery in ‘University Days.’ The essay amuses his audience with the follies and foibles of himself and his peers at the university. 1. Thurber could never pass botany. He never once saw a cell through a microscope. The instructor would begin patiently explaining how anyone can see through a microscope. He would adjust the microscope for Thurber. But he would always end up in a fury claiming that Thurber pretended that he couldn’t see. The student was supposed to see ‘a vivid, restless clockwork of sharply defined plant cells.’ What Thurber saw looked like a lot of milk. Thurber used to complain that the microscope took away the beauty of flowers. He was not solely concerned with the mechanics of flowers. He was more interested in the aesthetics of flowers. 2. Thurber took a deferred pass and waited a year. The next year the professor came back from vacation brown as a berry and fit as a fiddle. He was determined to make Thurber see cells this time. Students to the right of him and to the left of him were seeing cells, but not Thurber. The professor pulled himself together and began patiently. He declared that he would try every adjustment of the microscope known to man.
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