...The Tale of Two Stories Sheri O'Connell ENG125: Introduction to Literature Instructor: Heather AltfeldFisher September 25, 2011 The Tale of Two Stories Thesis Statement This paper compares two short stories, "The Story of an Hour" (Chopin) and "The Necklace" (Guy de Maupassant). "How little a thing is needed for us to be lost or saved?" [ (Clugston, 2010) ]. Both stories portray two different yet alike women. Both women struggle to find their independence. Both women find trouble just when they believe they have 'succeeded' in their search. Introduction The poem “the Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin is an impressive literary piece that attracts the feeling of the readers, as well as their minds. However, the story is very short and precise, but it is rich and complete, and every word of the poem has a deep thought and meaning (Charters 2003). Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" deals with a young American women's unanticipated sense of reprieve and independence upon hearing of her husband's death which enabled her to breathe the contentment during the last moments of her life with an anticipation, self esteem, and self consciousness. Mrs. Mallard's delight within her is termed as freedom in this story. (Jamil, 2009, 157) Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace" deals with a young woman who struggles with wanting what she can't have and the consequences for trying to be something she is not. Mathilde struggles with her low social and economic class, she dreams of...
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... The Rocking Horse Winners & The Destructors( Fiction) Graham Greene’s “The Destructors” and D. H. Lawrence’s “The Rocking Horse Winner”, are very different stories, but both contain similarities. “The Destructors” and “The Rocking Horse Winner” were both written by British authors . Both stories were written after a World War, so the living conditions were still miserable. The themes of the stories are go around the characters of the stories, especially on the children in each story. The characters in “The Destructors” are not as fully developed as the characters in “The Rocking Horse Winner”. The only two characters that Green developed were Trevor, better known as “T”, and Mr. Thomas, also referred to as Old Misery. Trevor was the quickly became the leader of the gang. Old Misery was an architect that lived in a crippled house, that is pretty much the only building still standing in that area. The destruction of this house becomes the challenge and the focus for Trevor and the rest of the characters who are grouped together as the Wormsley gang. They have grown up together and share the experience of bombs falling on their town. “The Rocking Horse Winner” has characters that are a little more rounded. Paul, the boy in the story, his mother, his Uncle, and Bassett the gardener are in constant turmoil over poverty. Paul has an obsessive desire to become lucky, due to the fact of his mother’s obsession with...
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...The Last Float Trip – analysis By Mads Brögger Klausen Summary The short story is about a 15-year old girl named Sam. Her father and she have been taking float trips as long as she can remember, but Sam has been offered a scholarship to a boarding school, and therefore this year’s trip seems to be the last one. Along with Sam and her father two others are joining them for the trip, Sam’s uncle Harry and a client of his, whose name is Laydon. With him Laydon is bringing a couple of guns, including a ‘’Nine-millimeter Ruger semiautomatic gun’’ which he intends to teach Sam how to use. She gets pretty good at it, but decides that her father must not know about the shooting. This little secret brings Laydon and Sam closer together and results in a creepy situation one night around the fire after Harry and Sam’s father have gone to bed. Laydon tries to touch Sam on some private spots, but she is clever enough to stop him and walk away. At the end of the trip Sam tells her father that she is now determined to accept the scholarship, maybe because he has discovered a bullet in Sam’s pocket just seconds before. Who is Sam? Sam is right on the edge of saying goodbye to her childhood and this trip makes her take the step to become a more independent and sophisticated young woman, this is also the story’s main theme. In the start of the float trip she is very nervous, shy and furthermore she is unsecure about her own person. At the end of the trip Sam has experienced a lot of new things...
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...Essay of ”A Fortune” One of the most important things in life is to feel, that you are worth something. Otherwise you will live your whole life longing for a future where people will recognize and appreciate the greatness of your being. But this acknowledgement is not to be found among other people. You have to find it in yourself, which can be an almost impossible challenge and the process towards self-knowledge can be both painful and confusing. This challenge is what the protagonist or the “I” of the short story A Fortune by Joy Monica T. Sakaguchi has to face on his way to accept himself. In A Fortune the story is told in first person, which means that the narrator of the story is the “I” and that the story is described from his point of view. As a result we can quite easily relate to the “I” and thus we almost immediately sympathize with him, because we know his each and every thought and feeling. The “I” is the kind of person who yearns for people, his father in particular, to recognize his worth and appreciate him. We see this in lines 13-14, where he talks about his father: “(…) I just didn’t want to know how much Pop thought I was worth.” After his father leaves the “I” keeps doing pickpocketing, because he wants to prove himself to his father by giving him all the money, when he comes back. The “I” is for that reason focusing on the future all along, which probably lies at the root of him being so excessively fond of fortune cookies, because they tell you...
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...The Story of an Hour Caprice Tarpley Kaplan University Professor Susan Zappia April 2, 2013 The Story of an Hour Introduction Kate Choplin in her mini story ‘The story of an hour’ depicts very beautifully the yearnings and longings of a woman in the 19th century. The story is short and beautiful, and the underlying message is that women are just as humans as men and they have the same yearning desire for freedom as the men in their life (Chopin, 1894). The story of Mrs. Mallard Louise Mallard is the major character of the story. She is represented as a fair and calm woman along with little indication of being strong. She was suffering from heart disease and that is why the death of her husband was disclosed to her after much hesitation. Her character envelops a mixture of happiness and grievance. It can clearly be observed when she got the news of her husband’s death. Despite of going into shock, she dramatically cried hard for a time (Jamil, 2009). Owing to the fact that she had a heart trouble, she must had went into shock, however, she was calm and started considering the new opportunities her life may pose her. She welcomed some mysterious things appearing to her from the sky and her actions show that she was feeling immense independence after her husband’s death. She was overjoyed with the fact that she could lead her life without any domination (Seyler, 2009). At start, the weaker side of her character was portrayed, whereas...
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...Introduction The title of the story is The Rain Came by Grace Ogot. The author of the story is Grace Ogot or also known as Grace Emily Akinyi. She was born on 15 May 1930, near Kisumu, central Nyanza Region in Kenya. In achievement, she became the first African woman writer in English who published fiction by the East African Publishing House. Her stories such as Land Without Thunder (1968), The Other Woman (1976), and The Island of Tears (1980) provides the traditional Luo life. Most of her fiction stories are according with the customs, history and traditions of the Luo tribe in Kenya, which has the second largest ethnic group. The Luo tribe lived for most part near Lake Victoria. Her formal writing reflects the addition of her formal learning with the traditions in her life. All her collections of writings reflect her personal love towards the stories of her culture. Grace Ogot passed away in April 2010. 1. Character and characterizations The main character or the primary character is Oganda which means “beans” due to her very fair skin. She is the chief’s only daughter around at the tender age to married and also the protagonist in this story. She is a very traditional and great woman where she willing to sacrificed herself so that the Luo will have rain. She also loves to imagine her future where she imagined which man should be the best man to married. Oganda is very disappointed on her people which they willing to give her up to sacrifice. Lastly, she...
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...Life vs. Death In the short story, “The Rattler”, a man and a rattle snake cross paths in the desert, and life vs. death is involved. The man has to decide whether he should kill the snake or not, and he decided that he is obligated to. Though we understand both sides of the story, the man should not have killed the snake. The snake was calm and alert, not trying to harm anyone, but still protecting himself. In the short passage, “The Rattler” , the personification of the snake, the point of the man, and details about the setting all lead readers to feel sympathy toward the snake, as well as sorrow and frustration towards the man. Readers feel sorry for the snake because it loses its life, even though it never threatens or causes the man any harm. The snake is calm. The snake is careful and watchful, but does not strike. The rattler had not moved; he lay there like a “live wire”. The snake has all potential to harm, but controls itself, not threatening the man. The snake even gave the man a second chance by hiding in the bush, as if saying “I don’t want to harm you, but I can, so leave me alone!” As we all know, snakes are very much able to harm, but the snake, being calm, chose to even hide in order to not harm the man. Readers can also see that the snake is very patient. The snake was patiently waiting for the man to “show intentions”. Instead of automatically striking, it decides to wait, to only harm as self-defense, so that he does not have to harm for no reason. The...
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...that of a father for His son” – This quote can be related to the short story crossing, which is written by Mark Slouka. The father (Narrator) has a past where he failed a lot on the family-front, now he is trying to make things better by trying to improve his bond to his son. A relationship between a son and his father is difficult to maintain when the sons father and mother are divorced. The custody is typically awarded to the mother of the child. How would a father behave when he get the chance to strengthen the bond between his son and himself? Mark Slouka has used third-person limited omniscient narrator. This means a few things for the narrative technique. Typical for a third-person narrator is the use of pronouns like “he, she, they, them” which is shown in the short story Crossing. EX: “When the first car appeared he could see it from a long way off…” “When they came out of the trees and onto the stony beach…” Third-person limited omniscient narrator also means that the narrator knows everything but he does not necessarily disclose everything, which is to make the reader want to read the story to get all of the veiled parts of the story. The omniscient narrator is also shown here, because the reader get to know what he thinks.“… he thought, maybe – maybe he could make this right” The short story takes place in the state Tacoma, Washington, USA. This can be seen in the very beginning of the short story, “It was raining as they drove out of Tacoma that morning” Tacoma...
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...sacrifice, marital unhappiness and escapism are often themes involving men and women in English Literature. Throughout history, stories have been filled with main characters living out fantasies and dreams, hoping for more out of their own lives, only to find they had what they wanted right in front of them, all along. These aforementioned these are the main focuses of the two stories I am going to write about, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” by James Thurber and “The Necklace,” by Guy de Maupassant. The main characters in these two stories are, Walter Mitty, in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and Mathilde Loisel in “The Necklace.” Both characters are dreamers of a different, fancier or exciting life, which ultimately cause problems for each character. This paper will compare and contrast these two stories by showing, although each was written very differently, both are from different time periods, different languages, different social settings, and each have different outcomes, they are still very much the same. In “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” it portrays the inner soliloquy of a man’s mind flowing in and out of fantasies as he completes his routine tasks on an otherwise routine day. Walter Mitty is trapped in an unhappy marriage with an overbearing wife, who runs his life in every moment she is present in the story. Walter’s story begins deep in a fantasy battle, operating a Navy aircraft, showing his commanding officer he has no fear in his tasks. He is...
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...Cat in the Rain by Ernest Hemingway | Summary The short story "Cat in the Rain" was written by Ernest Hemingway in the 1920´s. It is about an American couple that spends their holidays in an Italian hotel. It is a rainy day and the American woman sees a cat in the rain, which she wants to protect from the raindrops. When she goes out of the hotel, which is kept by an old Italian who really seems to do everything to please that woman, and wants to get the cat, it is gone. After returning to the hotel room, she starts a conversation with her husband George, who is reading all the time, telling him how much she wants to have a cat and other things, for instance her own silver to eat with. Her husband seems to be annoyed by that and not interested at all. At the end of the story there is a knock on the door and the maid stands there holding a cat for the American woman in her hands.Peculiarities of the introduction The first thing that caught my eyes was the long description at the beginning. First there is a description of the environment in good weather, which means spring or summer, then a description of the momentary situation in the rain. This description creates an atmosphere that is sad, cold and unfriendly. To create this atmosphere Hemingway uses words such as "empty" or "the motorcars were gone". Later on, by looking at the relationship of the two Americans, you can see that this description was a foreshadowing of the state of the couple´s relationship: First it was...
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...Gene are still good at heart despite the bad things they may have done. In the novella The Pearl by John Steinbeck, Kino is a young Mexican man who finds a valuable pearl. Before finding the pearl, Kino has a peaceful life with his wife, Juana and his son, Coyotito. Kino finds a pearl and people try to take advantage of him to get their hands on the pearl. Because of this, Kino is driven to do things he normally would not and the mood of the story turns dark. He beats a man who tries to attack him, he beats his wife for trying to get rid of the pearl and the bad luck it is causing Kino’s family and finally, he kills a man who tries to take the pearl away from him. This story is told from a third person point of view that allows the reader to get to know Kino before and after he finds this pearl. The reader sees that Kino is a good person who, because of the bad fortune this pearl is bringing him, is forced to do things that he normally would not. Despite all of his mistakes and the bad things that happen in the story, Kino is still a good...
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...interest with the lyrical musical expression and tone in the beginning of the short story. This writing also has a symbolic meaning for the African American culture. It describes the fight for freedom and cultural equality. “The Welcome Place” is written about the slavery time period and how African Americans were treated. According to Clugston, 2010, “The point of view is called "omniscient" when the story is being told by someone who is not a character but knows the thoughts and feelings of the characters in the story. The omniscient technique is used in this story and is particularly effective in allowing the reader to understand the old woman's predicament and how she, and the others, dealt with it.” (sec.3.1) This short story pulls the reader in, engages them and allows them to imagine themselves at the church. The story captured my imagination, drawing me into the slavery time period. It was curiosity and emotion that drew me into the character. It provided me with a desire to escape a present association. This literary piece motivated me to continue to understand the heartache, pain and torment African American slaves endured. The connections I make to the characters are to change how the elderly and seniors are cared for, thought of and treated by society in general. Additional comparisons are made to current ambiguous societal racial tendencies. The analytical approach used to analyze this short story will be the reader-response methodology. There are two analytical theories...
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...A Short Essay A Man is a Man, A Woman is a Woman Tabitha Ponder Ashford University ENG 125 Introduction to Literature Professor Carla McGill February 4, 2013 A Man is a Man, A Woman is A Woman Some may say that a man is a man and a woman is a woman; and they should stay in there prospective places at all costs. Gender roles can sometimes be reversed. Specifically, I am going to address the gender reversal in marriage. Several factors may contribute to role (gender) reversal. It depends on the personality of the individuals involved, and how they learn to interact with one another (or not). Also, a change in circumstances or a chain of events can force a gender role reversal. For example, the husband may get hurt on the job and now the wife who is accustomed to staying home with the kids now is forced to go out and provide for the family. Let’s define gender roles within a traditional marriage between a man and a woman. Traditionally, the husband is the one who provides for the family financially. He is the bread winner. Because he is the bread winner, normally he is the final voice of authority in the home concerning any issues that may arise. The wife is the one who is the caregiver. The wife is the nurturer; she takes care of the children and the husband too! She is also takes care of the affairs of the home. The depth of most people’s belief in gender-role stereotypes is often overlooked. A husband may have the need...
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... Reading a story, a poem, or a play introduces you to an imaginary world (Clugston, W.R. (2010). When reading literature we must enter the imaginary world; enter the world the author is creating. The story “A Worn Path” by Eudora Welty in 1941 and the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost in 1916 both use the theme of journey to symbolize life decisions. One speaks of a “Path” the other a “Road” the theme that each of these writings share is presented differently throughout the piece of literature. These two pieces of literature symbolize a journey, through using content, form, style, symbolism and imagination, although used differently in many ways they both are symbolizing a journey through life. The theme in a story is a representation of the idea behind the story (Clugston, W.R.(2010). In the pieces of literature I have chosen, the theme is speaking of journeys, one journey for love and the other life, but both having to make life decisions. The authors took different approaches in showing the reader the journey, the life decisions that had to be made. Both works have characters making a journey. In the poem “The Road Not Taken”, the narrator has been traveling and has reached a point where the road divides. The narrator is a traveler. Likewise, in the short story “A Worn Path”, the main character is on a trip to town. She is travelling from home through the pines up the hill and down the valley. In both the poem and the short story, the characters are...
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...interesting facts about him, so let’s go find out!! Roland Smith was born on November 30’Th, 1951 in Portland, Oregon. Roland likes nature, so he likes to write about nature. Roland was a zookeeper and senior research biologist for 20 years. Roland studied English, and biology. When Roland wrote novels, one of them was on TV! Roland give’s descriptive detail into events of the story, so you can understand the story better. It helps the story come alive to you. Example: when PEAK has to go to a school where people are sent for being bad, or has disabilities, it explains in the book, why he is going to the school, because he was skyscraping. Roland has suspense in his stories; he puts events in the stories to draw your attention, to keep you interested into the story. Example: “we arrived at base camp, just in time to see Josh get in a fist fight.” That is an event to draw your attention too, and keep reading, to find out what’s going to happen next. Roland puts flash backs into his stories, so you can understand the story better, and to understand the event that is going on. So the story will make more sense. Example: in Jack’s Run, Jack’s sisters were threatened to be killed by 3 guys, in the past, and now in the present, the 3 guys are after jack’s family, so Jack is trying to get his family away from the 3 guys. Some people may think Roland Smith is a...
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