The five boons of life 2

許絲媛

I think that this story is Mark Twain's observation about what happen to people who have one of these five "gifts". Expect Death, other gifts are positive. That is, people strive to have. However, each positive gift turns out to be false promises because they never stay.

First, pleasure makes the narrator's life disappointing because it is short-lived. Pleasure does not equal to happiness. People would get tired of the things which give you pleasure initially, so every pleasure turns out to be disappointments.

Second, love seems to be a reasonable choice due to beauty of it. Nevertheless, the narrator had plenty of lovers, and each of them died. Only when he lost the dearest and the last, he realized that the time he spent on grieving as many as he spent on love. The love eventually becomes a futility to the narrator. The love here becomes a inferior thing because it is not precious or valued. It becomes something could be achieve again and again.

Third, flame is the most intangible thing because others can destroy it in the blink of an eye. To me, it is also the last thing I want to have. Having flame is exhausting because you have to maintain it all the time. There are few people can have good reputation without being sabotaged.

Finally, the wealth is difficult to hold because it slips away eventually. Despite the ability to buy everything, it would never last. Those positive things are just borrowed. The dream of having all of them forever will never come true. Only death is inevitable, for no one can escape from it. No matter how many fame, love, riches, and pleasure you have, none of them are able to cure death.

The lesson of this story is that we need to work hard for those positive gifts. It never to last if a fairy just handed to you. Once you have these, you also need to maintain them carefully.

張育誠 翁誠泰 莊易哲

The author wants to express the idea that all of happiness are short-lived. The gift the young man choose is only about his benefits but without considering the consequences of his decision. At first, he chooses pleasure but only gets disappointing. Then he chooses love, but he only gets loneliness. After that, he chooses fame. For what he gets just envy, detraction, calumny, hate, persecution, and derision. Then, he chooses riches. However, he still gets poverty. In the end, the young man wants to choose death, but he has no chance to choose because he has already use all of the opportunities that the fairy has given. The young man experiences all the hardships, pain, poverty, grief, and shame. After that, he could not die immediately, but wanton insult of old age. In our comment, we think everyone would eventually die. Therefore, no matter how people get their fame, wealth, pleasure or love in real world. Once they died, they can’t bring their success to next world. Although the gifts are not eternal, most people still want to pursue them. For example, most of us want to get good jobs and get money. We think it is a kind of pursuit of wealth. We think that author is too pessimistic about this world. 4 of 5 gifts are seen to be good, but their consequences are tragic. The one which seems the only bad gift is the only good option. We think the author think that death is the only way to escape, but it only escapes from the hardships.

劉育榕

In my opinion, Mark Twain used a wise way to emphasize death. It shows man as wanting and desiring things we don’t have and those desires ending up still feeling empty. This reminds me that as long as I could face death bravely and seriously, I will be more optimistic about the other four gifts in life: Fame, Love, Riches, and Pleasure. Death can make people to seize the day and live in the moment. Among all the gifts showed by the fairy, Death is the only one that we as humans will certainly encounter and experience in our lives. In my case, Death has always been a warning sign. If we are aware of Death, we will cherish every moment and memory we had before, no matter it was a good or bad one; if we are aware of Death, we will remember the mistakes we had made and learn the helpful lessons; if we are aware of Death, we will work diligently to seek the other four gifts.

邱慧嬫 竹田彩音 陳建喻

The story is about choosing wisely from “Fame, Love, Riches, Pleasure, Death”. All the first 4 are related to happiness, but the last one “Death” is the only thing that is related to grief or sadness.

First, the man chose Pleasure. But, all the pleasures he had in the world was “short-lived” (59) and last for a while only. Feeling pleasure only lasts for a while because it can goes away in the future. For example, if you received a 100 on a test, the feeling only lasts for a while. In the future, the feelings already disappear.

Second, the man chose Love. And again, Love is only a temporary feeling. Like the phrase says “Love comes and goes”. Love only lasts for a moment for people. There are examples like ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend. So, love can be gone in just a moment.

Third, the man chose Fame. Fame is only there “for a little while” (60). When he is famous, people will get jealous and they will say fake things which could jeopardize his fame. People will say false statements to ruin his reputation and career.

Fourth, the man chose Riches. The man gets crazy because he chose wrongly the first three choices. He also gets crazy because of a large sum of money. Riches is also for a temporary thing only. While he gets rich, the money can be gone in an instant. So, Riches is not a wise choice.

The last one is Death. Because he chose wrongly in the first four, he has no option left but Death. If he chose Death in the beginning, he would not have felt pain or anger. He would just live life peacefully like having a very long dream.

All of the first four emotions are only temporary while Death lasts forever. So, Death is the only valuable one compared to the other four choices.

張昱 杜杰穎

In the story, a fairy gave a man five gifts, which was pleasure, love, fame, riches, and death, to choose. He chose in the order written above but couldn’t get the last one, death, after experiencing all previous four. In the fourth paragraph, the author gives us the four antonyms of pleasure, love, fame and riches, which were pain, grief, shame, and poverty. These antonyms are the things the man has suffered from, and finally was seeking for death. However, there was no such a gift remained, he can only but to keep his life going.

It seems that it is about to choose wisely, but for me, it is what you do after you have chosen that matters. Since you can only choose from death or sufferings, why don’t you try to suffer less? At least try to live a life that you can die without suffering mentally.

陳姮伉 門欣瑜 黃韻茹

That man chose pleasure, which means he already has his own happiness. But he still wants to chase the happiness from the outside. This is the reason why he feels that happiness is short-lived. The only way to be happy is to have contentment. The man chosed love but whoever he was with, everyone would leave him. The only thing he got was grief. Therefore he thought it was meaningless and he should pursuit something else. Then the man chose fame. However, fame is fleeting, even if the whole world spreads your name and admires your name, but in the end he can only enjoy this short-lived satisfaction, and he also invites jealousy, hatred, and even ridicule. Fame will only take you step by step to the abyss, and gradually to misery. The man felt that all gifts were just loans, and that none of them were long-lasting, happy ones. The reason he chooses wealth is that he wants to buy happiness and to make those who laughed at him miserable. But after three years, he has spent all his wealth and he is still unhappy. Honestly, wealth isn't a sin, it's depends on how people use it. The fairy saw through the man's greedy and unworthy personality, and the fairy decided to earnestly that the man will live in pain until he grows old. This story expresses people's greed, dissatisfaction, and the fact that happiness is all around, but people want to pursue happiness outside. This is a worth thinking story.

陳依琳 王妍方 林晶瑩

The story is about a good fairy who gave a man five gifts to choose from; Fame, Love, Riches, Pleasure, Death. The man chooses pleasure at the first, but happy times are short while disappointing, vain are always appear. Then, the fairy gives him another chance to pick the remaining gifts, and the man chooses Love and Riches. Still have the same ending, feeling empty all the time. The story is telling us that every coin, everything , every cloud , is a loss for every plus. The man chooses pleasure that looks like a great choice, but it makes the man like go to hell, same as he chooses love and riches. So the most important thing is to trust the fairy to ask her to choose for it. In my opinion, this story is really interesting and fosters the ability to study on my own. Because my dad and many teachers mention that studying hard and finding a good job to be rich is the most important thing in life. But this story tells us wisdom is the most important thing. If the man have wisdom, he will ask the fairy to help him choose wisely, instead of “there is no need to consider” and choose the wrong boon

鈴木拓磨 蕭振恩

The Five Boons of Life ,is a fable signifying the meaning of life. The tale is a series of interactions between a fairy and a man who grows to learn the lesson the fairy tries to teach him, only to understand the moral before his death. The five boons of life- fame, love, riches, pleasure, and death- are the gifts the fairy offers to the man who is allotted one choice. The story gives light to the point that life should not be squandered away on meaningless frolics, and the importance of wise choices. Twain organizes the story into chapters, each encompassing a new trial for the man who cannot seem to find peace in his heart.

This story is an interesting perspective on the importance of life and priorities. Although the ending is not a joyful one, the fable does effectively teach a lesson. The story signifies the importance of wise choices, and the importance of not squandering your life away. Twain reaches readers in a universal resource of a story, and in a compelling tale persuades readers to live their life out to the fullest.

陳品洋 霍恩蕎 黃凱祈

The man in the story finally chose death, realizing that he had nothing to live, and that the other "favors" were not gifts, but short-lived, and certainly not satisfactory. Pleasure left him disappointed and vain. Love makes him realized that whoever he loved would leave him and will never return in the form that he loved them. Then love becomes a curse and is rewarded in grief and tears. Then he chose fame, which brought his downfall. Then, when he chose fame and other favors, he chose riches against those who brought him down. He becomes a pauper and realizes that death is the only compassionate gift worthy of being called favor. When one realizes that everything in life is temporary and illusory, death is the surest fact of existence. When a child is born, no one knows what its life will be like, but everyone is confident that even this child will die one day. Therefore, the most precious thing in our life is death, which everyone must face.

游宗諭，簡康益，王廣捷

The story “The Five Boons of Life” is like a microcosm of human’s life. The five boons, Love, Pleasure, Death, are something which every human being will experience sooner or later, on the other hand, Fame and Riches are something that lots of people are looking for. Mark Twain use a fairy tale way to spread out his thoughts of how a life should work, he reminds us that we should have a strong sense of death, so we will know how short human life is, and then forced us to cherish it. Once people been though the series of hard work, we would get the pure love and happiness of success. People do not need to get a lot of fame and money to fulfill the life, instead, consider every day seriously and cherish every moment in life is the key to live a life with no regrets. After reading this story, I think that only people who have correct values and correct out look of life would have the correct attitude and methods to face any challenges and accept all the results. Most importantly, enjoy your life.

蔡一澈 林紘毅 劉子睿

In real life, it's mostly full of pain and suffering, so it would make sense for the youth to choose pleasure, love, fame and riches. But I think what Mark Twain is telling us is that these elements are merely temporary and trivial compared to eternity and death, and people tend to waste their lives on them only to find out that it's vanity. At the end of the story, the youth only wanted to choose death to escape eternal sufferings, only to be mocked by his own foolishness. So death created time to grow the things that it would kill, and people are to suffer the consequences of the old age. Ironically, death becomes a gift for those who live their lives to their fullest, but a curse for those who are afraid of it. Just like the story depicts, life is a journey about choice. We all want to choose a ideal life but we always forget one thing that we choose the life and the life also choose for us. We could have many choices, but there are more and more things that we are left no choices. Fame, love, riches, pleasure all are not eternal but all are worth in life. Therefore, though they will all disappear someday, we still should cling them when we still could. And, death, is the last grace of life and is a thing we have no choice at all.

方妍蓁 張簡仁豪 楊柔恩

When the man choose the pleasure which turned to short lived and disappointing. When the man chose love, all the people he loved left him in this life. When the man chose riches, He found out he can not buy everything with riches. When the man chose Fame, the man is disappointed to find that fame has only decayed to being envied and hated by others. Notice how all the gifts were temporary, except death. They lasted as long as fate allowed them to, while death and life are everlasting. When the man develops a right worldview, mindset of life, and values, then he would face the pleasure, love, rich, fame and so on that life gives in the right way. A person treasure this short and beautiful life while having a strong consciousness of death. Through fighting to create spiritual wealth and develop simple but beautiful relationship. Enjoying these which brought us tears and happiness, and this is the process of life.

林珍金，劉有福

Today’s short story, titled “The Five Boons of Life” was written by Mark Twain during the realism period. Briefly explain, it is talking about a man that granted a wish out of five choices which are fame, love, riches, pleasure, and death. The wish granter which is the fairy, told the man that only one of them is valuable. Long short story, every wish the man chose wrong, The Fairy came again at his desperation granting another wish but this time, the options are less, since the man have already chose some of it. Eventually at the end of the story, the man already wished for fame, love , riches, and pleasure, but yet he haven’t find a true happiness out of it. Pleasure led to vain and emptiness, her beloved died(love) and the other left him one by one, fame led to envy, and detraction, and wealth is also short lived. Logically, the only option left is death, but unfortunately the fairy already gave it to someone else which left him no more choices but to live his old life.

From this story, we can learn that sometimes we didn’t give thanks for every joy we get. W only know how to complain and complain for every misfortunes even that it is very small compared to the joy we already got. can also learn that sometimes, we don’t really know what is the best thing that we can get or what do we really need even after reflecting to our self for a very long time like the man did in the story. At the end of the day, the best thing we can do is be grateful for every joy we have received even that it’s not the best thing available and stop complaining about what we can’t do or don’t have.

黃成閔 黃仲祺 姜易辰

In the story, the man always makes the wrong choices, although he thinks his choices are right and sensible, for my perspective, we should consider not only about the moment but the future.

There are several boons the fairy offers to the man.

The man chose the pleasure at the first time, but it turned to be short-lived and disappointing, vain and empty. Secondly, the man chose loves, then the desolation swept over him. On top of that, the man chose fame, and it came envy, mocking. The man chose wealth lastly. after he chose wealth , the man becomes gaunt, wan and hollow-eyed. It seems that he has already made some bad choices. In the end, the fairy left the man no more boons but wanton insult of Old age because of his wrong decisions.

Judging from the aforementioned story, I’m tempted to draw a conclusion that everything should be included in your considerations, not about the moment you live but the future you will encounter, the fairy had gave the man lots of reminding me about making choices like the tears and the sigh, but the man did not notice. It is what the story brings to me.

賴品妤

When we can choose those gifts for ourselves, people's desires become more and more difficult to satisfy, so even if he gets something, he will end up feeling bad and dissatisfied. I think this story tells me that only by cultivating a correct outlook on the world, life, and values, can a person face and accept the joy, love, fame, wealth and other beautiful things that life has bestowed upon us with the correct attitude and method. But the contradiction is that no one wants to choose death first, and it is very unreasonable to die without enjoying anything, but it is because of these unreasonable places that there is room for readers to imagine and discuss.