In addition to the structure, White uses many literary devices to keep the audience engaged and to get his point across. The juxtaposition between the use of the body part, the hands, the “standing ovation” for his talent, and the “handcuffed” hands makes the reader think about how being in the “wrong place” can change the entire scenario. When White is on stage, his morals and…
A widely acclaimed author named Edgar Allan Poe is known for his bizarre stories on murderers, madmen and mysterious women. In his short story, “The Tell Tale Heart”, the narrator leads us through his thoughts on himself and the actions he took on the old man. The narrator cunningly devised a plan to kill an old man because of his vulture-looking eye. For him, the eye was very disturbing and he decided to forever get rid of it. He doesn’t even find himself mad for doing so. Isn’t it funny how the insane never admit to them being crazy? “The Tell Tale Heart” shows us a fine example of how insane people view themselves and what we think of them as. Thus, this essay will elaborate on the differences between the narrator’s perception of himself and the reader’s perception of him.…
The protagonist of the novel Charlie Bucktin is an innocent little boy until he encounters the ‘fearful’ character Jasper Jones when he appears at Charlie’s bedroom window one night by surprise. Charlie changes his thoughts from right to wrong completely. The town’s thoughts of Jasper are unbearable and should stay away from…
With her words “to the hard of hearing you shout, for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures,” Flannery O’Connor explains her literary style (O’Connor). She feared without the bold approach of grim situations and ridiculous characters, her audience would miss her true messages which she felt vitally needed to be understood. She wrote during The Modern literary period and through common speech and ordinary settings, O’Connor presented comically unrealistic circumstances in hope of somehow portraying her concerns (1-2).…
A young girl and boy take their first steps toward forging their identities. In Julia Alvarez’s “Dusting,” a girl decides that she wants to be more than a diligent housekeeper like her mother. In Alberto Rios’s “In Second Grade Miss Lee I Promised Never to Forget You and I Never Did,” a boy catches his first glimpse of romantic love by listening to his unconventional teacher. Both of these children learn important lessons about life from significant adults. And both Alvarez and Rios use strong figurative language to convey their feelings about these important formational moments from childhood.…
Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, presents to the reader a psychological depiction of a narrator who describes his crime with detailed accounts. This Gothic short story shows the dim side of individuals. The story is narrated in first-person; as a result, the reader is not able to conclude a great deal of what the narrator is saying is true. Poe utilizes his words prudently throughout the story to expose a review of paranoia, insanity, and mental declination. The story is stripped of additional elements as a method to intensify the narrator’s fixation with certain and unembellished objects like the eye of the old man, the heartbeat, and his assertion to sanity. Even though the narrator constantly affirms that he is not insane, the reader could presume otherwise due to his bizarre way of thinking, actions, and dialogue.…
“Charles” and “The Open Window” book center around mystery and `dishonesty, but “Charles” is a more relatable story. “Charles” and “The Open Window” are short stories filled with youthful imagination. Both short stories have interesting endings that you wouldn’t expect. The ending in “Charles”, you could expect to happen. “We don’t have any Charles in the kindergarten” (Jackson 232). Meanwhile, the ending in “The Open Window” was clear as you continued to read. These short stories have different personalities, settings, point of view and age range.…
Life is not only stranger than fiction, but frequently also more tragic than any tragedy ever conceived by the most fervid imagination. Often in these tragedies of life there is not one drop of blood to make us shudder, nor a single event to compel the tears into the eye. A man endowed with an intellect far above the average, impelled by a high-soaring ambition, untainted by any petty or ignoble passion, and guided by a character of sterling firmness and more than common purity, yet, with fatal illusion, devoting all…
In many of Faulkner’s stories, he tells about an imaginary county in Mississippi named Yoknapatawpha. He uses this county as the setting for his story “Barn Burning” and it is also thought that the town of Jefferson from “A Rose for Emily” is located in Yoknapatawpha County. The story of a boy’s struggle between being loyal to his family or to his community makes “Barn Burning” exciting and dramatic, but a sense of awkwardness and unpleasantness arrives from the story of how the fictional town of Jefferson discovers that its long time resident, Emily Grierson, has been sleeping with the corpse of her long-dead friend with whom she has had a relationship with.…
In the article “What is Southern Gothic Literature?” the author mentions that one of the key elements of this genre is the grotesque, an element of the narrative that is "irregular, extravagant or fantastic in form". Then he writes that, “a grotesque character may possess an exaggerated personality trait or characteristic for the purpose of eliciting both empathy and disgust in the reader” (Volz, par. 3). To put it differently, in Southern Gothic genre, the stories normally concentrate on grotesque themes. Although they may include supernatural elements, they mostly focus on harmed and complex characters. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” is a great example of Southern Gothic literature in which such events and characters are clearly identified. Over the years, the story was in the middle of critical analysis, but still “it is virtually impossible to fully “report” the history of the critical discussion of this fascinating story” (Mays 514). From my point of view, one of the reasons is that the story is told through the eyes of an unnamed townsman who describes a woman named Emily, the main character of the story. As a result, many of the story's problems, with regard to its critical analysis, originate from the limited perspective of the narrator. Additionally, this issue reminds me of the story “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street,”…
Though the short stories “A Rose for Emily” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” differ in plot, theme, voice, and many other aspects, both contain similar characters and settings. The authors of these highly acclaimed Southern Gothic works, have skillfully and eloquently created intricate characters and imagery that portray many elements of Southern life. Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” tells of the tragic events that take place during a family’s road trip to Tennessee, which ultimately ends in their unsightly demise at the hands of a notorious serial killer. Equally as morbid, William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” takes place following the death of well-to-do woman Emily Grierson, as a town recounts her bizarre and insane behavior throughout her lifetime, and makes a gruesome discovery of a rotting corpse in her bedroom. Throughout both stories, O’Connor and Faulkner employ the use of various literary techniques, and successfully create typically southern atmospheres.…
Although the idea of a grotesque has negative connotations, grotesques come in several forms and can actually have positive effects on characters. It has become the norm among grotesques to teach a lesson on what not to do, however Kate Swift, of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, is a divine example of the theory that grotesques can lead to a deeper understanding of the world. Kate Swift attempts to aid in George Willard’s ability to throw his heart and soul into his writing, to love deeper, and to see past the words that humans use as a blockade to the inner workings of their mind.…
To begin, the motif of hands is how Bradbury expresses the disconnect between the actions and thoughts in society. Their thoughtless actions lead them through challenges that otherwise could have been avoided. The society is stunned and confused at their consequences since they do not think before they act. This…
"The Handmaid's Tale" - Consider what techniques Atwood uses to create a sense of empathy between the reader and the text.…
In writing, much like in painting, the act in itself is, in simplest terms, the transfer of image/thought from the writer/painter to its reader, its spectator, us. And in writing just like in painting, the image is conveyed by showing us the components, bringing the mood into the room we are sitting in, taking us there to same mind setting that the writer/painter is in. In painting the image/symbol is deciphered in actuality, on a physical creation, but in writing we are painted an image not on canvas but in our minds. Just like some art works create a heavy impression to the eye, a novel like Frederick Douglas’s “Narrative of The Life of An America slave” creates such an impression in the mind. The masterful use of imagery and symbolism employed by Frederick Douglas in this novel achieves the type of emotion the greatest works by any artist at his peak would evoke on those who witness its beauty. Both techniques are combined in Frederick Douglass’s “Narrative of an American Slave” to such a brilliant level, that audiences in years since its initial publishing have revered it as one of the most moving tales that births compassion and humanity in its reader and exemplifies what one man can do.…