...The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 2 In The Importance of Being Earnest, almost every character is in pursuit of another; Jack is in pursuit of Gwendolen’s love, whom is in pursuit of Jack, who she believes is Ernest. Meanwhile in the country, Dr Chausible is in pursuit of Miss Prism’s love, and Cecily of Algernon’s love; similarly to Gwendolen’s situation, Cecily is fooled into believing Algernon is called Ernest. Wilde has created this situation to mock the upper class of the time and also uses it in various ways to build comedy throughout act 2. Within act 2, the audience witness many entrances and exits, one of the most significant from the Merriman during the dispute between Gwendolen and Cecily. During the dispute, Gwendolen and Cecily are disrupted by the Merriman, ‘followed by the footman’, with ‘the presence of the servants [exercising] a restraining influence, under which both girls chafe’. This builds the comedy within this scene as the Merriman sets the table slowly, with ‘a long pause’, further infuriating Cecily and Gwendolen; this creates anticipation within the audience, as they would be anxiously wait for the dispute to continue. One could interpret the entrance and exit of the Merriman as Wilde placing more importance in the servants than the people they are serving, another way to mock the upper class of the time. Another important exit in the act is when Cecily and Gwendolen ‘retire into the house with scornful looks’, expecting the men to chase after...
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...Bracknell, is coming for tea. The discussion turns to marriage when Algernon asks Lane why servants always drink the champagne during dinner parties. Lane informs him that bachelors always have the best wine. Algernon asks if marriage is so demoralizing. Lane informs us that he was married once but only as the result of a misunderstanding, so he is not sure. Lane exits; Algernon comments that Lane’s views seem lax and the lower orders have no use if they will not set an example. He comments that Lane’s class seems to have a lack of moral responsibility. Unexpectedly, Algernon’s friend Jack Worthing drops in. Jack resides most of the time in the countryside and is visiting town. Lane and Algernon are under the impression that Jack’s name is Ernest and refer to him as so. Jack is happy to learn that Lady Bracknell (Aunt Augusta) and her daughter Gwendolen are coming because he wants to propose marriage to Gwendolen. Algernon says that he will not be able to marry her because he flirts with her, which Aunt Augusta does not like. Furthermore, as Gwendolen’s first cousin he will refuse to offer his consent unless Jack settles a question for him. He has found a cigarette case that Jack had forgotten upon his last visit. There is an inscription, which states: "From little Cecily, with her fondest love to her dear Uncle Jack." Jack tries to pretend it is from an aunt. Eventually, he must admit that Cecily is his ward. To escape the...
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...Evanson Michel Fiction Paper 2/11/13 ENG 113 "More than meets the eye". Most are fimliar with the saying, but what does it mean? It means you have to search beyond what you see, there is a deeper meaning behind a story. This is the essence of sybmlism. I will be analizing the sybolism in the short story Hills like White Elephants. The story by Ernest Hemingway is about a couple who are disussing a abortion procedure, but it is not made so obviuos to the reader. As a result the author uses symbolism to communicate main ideas in the stroy through setting, description and dialouge. The setting of the story uses symbolism to give the reader hints about main ideas. For example, the story takes place near a railraod, which symbolizes couples relationship is at a crossroad. The man and jig are disagreeing on the abortion of the baby. The man wants to have the abortion, while jig is relectant to giving the baby up so easily. Another example is the landcape, the author goes on to write how jig notices the lines of hills. The hills looked white againts the brown and dry valley (Roberts, Zweig 350).The white hills that contrast with brown and dry barren valley represent the choice between life and death. Jig either has to keep the baby, life, or the abort the baby, death. When jig walks to other the end of the station, the author descibes the fields of grain and trees along the Ebro river (Roberts, Zweig 352). This symbolizes the life in her belly...
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...“I Spy” by Graham Greene (1930) Charlie Stowe is the main character of the story. He is a twelve year old boy and lives in England. He comes from a family where he does not really have a father. The father he has is unreal to him and they do not spend that much time together, they do not have a close relationship. In the beginning of the text we were told that Charlie does not love his father but when we get to the ending of the story Charlie finally realized that he loves him. But it was too late to tell him because he was taken away by the two strangers. Charlie now understands why his father had not been there for him. In a way Charlie “grows up” and learns how the world functions. However he feels the opposite for his mother. He adores and loves his mother truly, he feels a passionate love for her large boisterous presence and her loud charity filled the world for him. At the country school Charlie Stowe is bullied by his school mates because he had never tried to smoke a cigarette before. In that way they kind of pushes him to steal some cigarettes from his fathers tobacco shop because he wanted to prove himself to them and never be mocked again for not having smoked. He is encouraging himself to do it, he knows that it is a loose-loose situation, if he steals the cigarettes he will lose respect from his father and if he does not steal the cigarettes the boys at school will just continue to bully him. Even though Charlie knows it is a crime to steal he does it anyway...
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...Idiomatic Expressions Idiomatic expressions can be problems for non-native speakers because the meaning of the phrase is not literally what the words mean. Also known as "colloquialisms," the only true way to learn them is one by one. A poor man's _____: Something or someone not as good as others is "a poor man's version. A writer who uses exotic locations but is not very convincing would be a poor man's Ernest Hemmingway. About-face : One who changes his or her mind completely is said to have done an aboutface. Above board : If things are carried out legally and properly, they are said to be done "above board." Achilles' heel : A person's weak spot is his or her Achilles' heel, so-named because of the Greek hero Achilles, who was invulnerable everywhere on his body except his heels. Acid test : Proves whether something is good and effective or not. Across the board : Something that applies to everybody applies across the board. Albatross around your neck : An albatross around the neck refers to a problem resulting from a past action that continues to keep one from being successful. Alter ego : A very close and intimate friend, from the Latin phrase that literally means "'other self." An old flame : A person with whom one once had an emotional, usually passionate, relationship—a person still looked on with fondness and affection. Apple of your eye : Something or someone very special to you. Costs an arm and a leg : Something very expensive. As the crow flies...
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...Colin Bodet Mrs. Jane Everest ENG 123.15 31 January 2012 The Sun Also Rises: The Design of an Alcoholic Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is permeated with a multitude of references to alcohol. Hemingway once described it as a “book about a few drunks” (qtd. in Dardis 163). Matt Djos, author of “Alcoholism in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises: A Wine and Roses Perspective on the Lost Generation” and English professor at Mesa State College in Colorado, goes as far as to describe the novel as a “description of the alcoholic mentality” (64). The copious amounts of alcohol consumed by the characters of the novel can presumably be attributed to boredom. As the official biographer of Hemingway Carlos Baker puts it, the characters are “floundering in an emulsion of ennui and alcohol” (Baker 90); he suggests that the characters actions are fueled merely by boredom and an unhealthy consumption of alcohol. However, the hedonistic over-consumption of alcohol by Hemingway’s characters cannot be blamed on boredom alone; there are millions of people on this planet that suffer from boredom every so often, and yet they do not all keep themselves occupied by drinking to excess. Regardless of the reasons, “the drinking behavior in The Sun Also Rises was pronounced and addictive” (Djos 65). As the characters develop, it becomes clear that Hemingway designed the characters of The Sun Also Rises with past lives and personality traits that predispose them to alcoholism. Before determining...
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...a13 Downloadet Engelsk fra Opgaver.com 18/12-08 The Shining Mountain Analysis and characterization The story is about Scottish girl called Pangma-La, named after a shining mountain so she would stand tall and be proud. Pangma-La's father was a famous mountaineer, so she promised herself that she would never disappoint him. When Pangma-La was tough enough, her father and she went to the shining mountain, to climb it as promised. When they arrived the Sherpa men offered to carry their loads, but they did not need porters. The Sherpa men got angry and told them that the mountain goddess would send them, winds, spindrift snow and avalanches. The father just laughed scornfully. Pangma-La climbed the mountain happily, but after a while she began to grow weary. Then an old Sherpa woman appeared and offered to carry her heavy sack, but Pangma-La declined. The next days the Sherp woman appeared and Pangma-La gave her more and more from each day in change for feathers. But the fourth day the roar of an avalanche thundered past them, and the Sherpa woman appeared as the days before, and this time she offered to take her heart, the lungs and the bones and replace them with feathers. The Sherpa woman had tricked Pangma-La and did not give back her heart this time. The Sherpa woman appeared to the father and changed looks, she was the mountain goddess. The fathers was angry and tried to strike her but was stopped. The goddess told the father that she had given him his heart's desire:...
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...forever, immortality) 9. Personification of death and earth (expressed by polysemy) 10. Emphatic constructions Epitaph Epitaph Solemn Atmosphere Solemn Atmosphere Contrast: 1. Parallel constructions (+sentences with and without them) 2. Words with negative connotation 3. Tenses 4. Antonyms: traitors-heroes 5. Symbols: life-death, winter-spring 6. Thematic group: time 7. Polysemy :earth 8. Unusual collocations Contrast: 9. Parallel constructions (+sentences with and without them) 10. Words with negative connotation 11. Tenses 12. Antonyms: traitors-heroes 13. Symbols: life-death, winter-spring 14. Thematic group: time 15. Polysemy :earth 16. Unusual collocations Ernest Hemingway Rhythm is expressed by: 1. Choice of images 2. Choice of words 3. Thoughts 4. Parallel constructions 5. Repetition of – key words (death, earth) * modal verbs Rhythm is expressed by: 6. Choice of images 7. Choice of words 8. Thoughts 9. Parallel constructions 10. Repetition of – key words (death, earth) * modal verbs Categorical tone: 1. Modal verbs 2. Short declarative sentences 3. Repetition of words, structure, images, thoughts Categorical tone: 4. Modal verbs 5. Short declarative sentences 6. Repetition of words, structure, images, thoughts Specific composition: 1. Arguments 2. Shift of tenses 3. Growing hope (words, sentences, shift...
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...The Message behind “White Elephants” “Hills like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway represents a girl sacrificing the way she feels about white elephants, so she can have the guy “the American” can continue to love her as he did in the past. The girl “Jig” first introduces the white line of hills as white elephants. Throughout, the whole conversation the couple is drinking alcohol as they talk. The setting of the story and the couple’s conversation takes place at a train station in between Barcelona and Madrid overlooking the Ebro River. Consequently, the white elephant represents an idiom for something valuable of possession but it is not something one would desire. In this case, the white elephant denotes an abortion. The couple sat down and ordered drinks as the girl causally looked off in the sky, above the hills claiming that the hills looked like white elephants. “They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry” (Hemingway 229), it means that the white hills were prominent against the brown contrast and the shape of elephants in the hills popped out in the sky. “But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you’ll like it?” (Hemingway 231), by this comment, the girl hopes to save her relationship with him by following through with the abortion. She feels that, that is what the guy wants from her and by asking him if she follows through with the process, will everything will be back to normal. The girl questioning...
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...A Labovian Analysis of Ernest Hemingway’s The Faithful Bull Ernest Hemingway and his love of bullfighting require no formal introduction, however his short story, The Faithful Bull, is less well known. It is essentially a fable having been written for the child of a friend and published in 1951. Twenty-one years later, the famous linguist, William Labov laid out a framework outlining the progression of oral narratives in a six-part structure. The advantage of this Labovian method of analysis is that it can also be applied to literary narratives in general, not just to oral versions of personal experience. Using Hemingway’s 700-word fable, written in his inexorable, economic style and applying Labov’s six-part model (abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, result, coda), I intend to confirm the suitability of this form of analysis for the short story. The abstract of the narrative announces the initiation of a narrative and can, in effect, report the entire sequence of events, outlining the story. An abstract is not however an essential part of a narrative and can be omitted. A true explanatory abstract has no place in The Faithful Bull, it being a short story, but it does have a title. This three-word title does actually tell us very briefly what the story is about; a specific bull who is faithful and in this way, the title fulfils the norms of an abstract, albeit in a very transient way. It stimulates the addressees’ curiosity and focuses their...
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...Lit Crit: The Sun Also Rises In Ernest Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises, a different style of writing is clearly evident. To go along with this unique style, we see an unusual structure demonstrated throughout the novel. In William L. Vance’s “Implications of Form in The Sun Also Rises,” he addresses this structure and analyzes the writing much deeper than most would while reading. William L. Vance’s analysis focuses on the “episodic and circular aspects of the structure.” This is very evident for readers to realize after reading of the characters common actions. In the life of Jake, Robert, and the other characters of the novel it seems as though they follow the same routine from day to day. These routines include “drinking and bullfight watching for all, sex for some, and fishing for the rest. And talk and self-torture.” The role of relationships in the novel is brought up by William Vance. The character’s relationships are what illustrate the circular motion of events. The relationship between Jake and Brett is brought up as one of the few constants. William Vance states that their special love for each other is almost always existent no matter what is going on in either of the two’s life. The constant low of society is also brought up as constant. Throughout the novel it seems as though the characters never take a break from their drinking. William Vance uses Robert Cohn as the prime example of this misery due to his constant desire for Brett. His attraction to her...
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...The story under the title “Cat in the Rain” was written by Ernest Hemingway, one of the most favourite American novelists, short-story writer and essayist, whose deceptively simple prose style has influenced wide range of writers. So, the story begins with the description of the hotel where two Americans stopped. It was raining, that’s why the couple stayed in and just a cat in the rain attracted the young woman’s attention. She wanted to get the cat inside but failed and was brought another cat. The problem of the story lies very deeply and we are to uncover it. The story is written in one mood which constantly and directly increases. It starts from the beginning where it’s created by a persistent and repeated use of the “rain” with a number of phrases associating it, such as puddles, deserted square, glistening war monument. Repetition is one of the widely used and favourite stylistic devices of Hemingway. Here he applies it to reveal the relationship of the protagonist to the old hotel owner (she liked ... , she liked...). As the verb “to like” is not used to characterize relations of the wife to her husband, this contrast is full of the concealed but easily read meaning. Though the cases of repetition in the story may seem a bit obtrusive, their modifications enter into the core of the narration very organically. They carry emotional character, however penetrating the story the deep sorrow becomes evident gradually. We realize that little, as if meaningless, capricious...
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...Courtney McClure – Carr Mrs. Mann English III H February 18, 2012 Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway is the man that did it all; known as an American author, adventurist, and reporter, he is also known to have had quite the relationship with a fellow writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Hemingway was exceptionally intelligent and yet he was cursed by his poor eye sight, preventing his hopes for becoming a war hero – his father’s male dominant teachings. Feeling obligated to follow his father’s methods, yet unable too, he moved to his mother’s love of culture and began writing. In the midst of his first novel he married a woman named Elizabeth but his travels lead to affairs, which lead to more wives, and more to cope with. Writing was his ‘way out’ so to speak, the only way he could deal. Though he wasn’t yet known by many, or what one would say all that successful, he continued his pursuit of writing; soon luck would find him. While on a trip to Paris, in 1925, he found himself at the Dingo where he met F. Scott Fitzgerald who had just published his newest novel The Great Gatsby, and was now interrogating Ernest about his sex life and whether or not he and his most recent wife ‘saved it for marriage’. Obviously uncomfortable, but impressed by such conversation, Hemingway answered and gave Fitzgerald advice on ‘love’ and wrote a chapter about it in his writing The Moveable Feast. He opens the chapter with the following passage "His talent was as natural as the pattern that...
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...The Presentation of Selfishness: Similarities and Differences in To Room Nineteen and Hills Like White Elephants Selfishness is a shared theme in the short stories To Room Nineteen by Doris Lessing and Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway. The topics of suicide and abortion are points of similarity between the two, illustrating Susan’s and the man’s selfish thought processes and decision-making. The stories do have considerable differences, however, in how they present and develop selfishness within the characters and the storyline itself. Both stories involve the decision to end life. In To Room Nineteen, Susan struggles with the home life she and her husband have created, seeking to temper her feelings with intelligent reasoning. Slowly she distances herself from her family until she finds herself on the brink of suicide, feeling hypocritical for “worrying about the children, when she was going to leave them” (Lessing 890). As she lay down with the gas filling the room, “she was quite content”. In Hills Like White Elephants, the man is working to convince his partner to undergo an abortion: “They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural” (Hemingway 663) While she does not seem happy with the idea, he continues to reassure her that “We’ll be fine afterward. Like we were before. … It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy” (663). In To Room Nineteen, Susan’s life is “grounded in intelligence” and ruled by “sensible discrimination”...
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...“A Clean Well-Lighted Place” Analysis “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”, by Ernest Hemmingway, is a story of two waiters working late one night in “A Clean, Well-Lighted” cafe. The image of the café is central to the story; we get a feeling that outside this place the world is chaos. The story opens with two waiters discussing an old man who frequents the café where they work. He constantly stays late into the night drinking. One of the waiters, a younger man, expresses his dislike of the old man while the older waiter sympathizes and relates to the old man. The younger waiter wants the old man to go home while the older waiter doesn’t seem to care one way or another. This story is a tale of despair and loneliness and how different people deal with it. The older waiter defends the old man him because he can relate to his despair. Loneliness and old age are the common bonds that the older waiter shares with the old man. In time he will be old, unable to work and feel lonely because his lack friends. The old man seems to think there is no meaning to his life. It is like he has given up. There is no good or bad; no right or wrong, the only thing that may matter is making what time he has left somewhat bearable. The fact that he gets drunk every night and stays late at the café shows he has nothing better to do with his last bit of time. Depression puts a negative spin on everything, including the way you see yourself, the situations you encounter, and your expectations for the future...
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