...When reading short stories, the authors need to draw you in quick to make their story successful. Reading stories that fail do this lack something, but what is it? Personally I feel that two characteristics that make stories successful are; the writers ability to make us envision the setting and to go beyond the five senses and use body language. First of all if you do not envision the setting then how do you really get in to the story? It would be like watching television with no picture. Furthermore if you can connect and make the characters unforgettable then you will have a successful short story. The setting I feel Is one if not the biggest part of the making a short story successful. If you cannot make the reader feel that they are in the story then you have little chance to be successful. Charlotte Perkins dose this in her story Yellow Walls. She gives a description of the house, “ A Colonial mansion a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house and a reach the height of romance felicity.” She also gets on to describe the landscaping, “ there are hedges and walls and gates that lock and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people. Characters make up every story, as a writer you need to try and make the reader connect with the characters and make them become unforgettable. James Baldwin uses this in Sonny’s Blues while describing a couple characters. He starts with Sonny’s friend, “He was sort of shaking, his head and his eyes looked strange, as...
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...contribution of every one who made the course a successful one. I have enjoyed and encourage others willing to purse it to continue with the ambition. It was too educative and informative enough and I really appreciate taking the course for the period. I have found that Inspiration comes from the environment we a living and therefore important for every interested person in these field to open up his or her eyes and ears to see and listen to it and this is in connection with the short stories and poetry I have read in this course. From the poetry work and the short stories ranging from the chrysanthemums by John Steinbeck, A worn path, The Tell-tale heart, and the “Araby” by James Joyce I have been able to understand the flow of writing story. Despite how short or long the writing is the following elements a very necessary in any form of writing. The character, setting, plot, and conflict are examples of the main elements of any story the author should put in to consideration at all time if his or her piece of work will come out successful. Setting is all about time or the place of action, character can be an individual or any other creature active in the story. The plot indicates the flow or series of events while the conflict is the struggle or an opposition that comes out in the story. I have discovered that the flow of the tension is very important and should be in such a way that it keep increasing throughout the story then the climax should be towards the end and then...
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... SET 1 1. Read the extract from the short story Tanjong Rhu. Then answer the questions. ‘Edward’, she said, crossing her legs, ‘come and join us?’ He refused, and was just turning away, when she noticed the binoculars he was holding, And asked what they were. ‘Oh, these,’ he said. ‘I bought theme today. For the children’. He could not think of anything better to say. (p.20) a) Who does the pronoun ‘us’ refer to? ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… b) Why do you think Edward or Mr Li refuses to join them? ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… c) In your opinion, why didn’t Edward tell the truth about the binoculars he bought for his mother? ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… d) What does this incident reveal about the relationship of these two characters? ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 2. Writing Task HOTS a) If you could change one part of the story, which would you change? Give reasons for your decision. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… b) Describe a character in the short story Tanjong Rhu who displays an admirable quality. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ...
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...women has become widely popular and successful in recent history. Women have stepped out of traditional roles of the housewife and mother to become the submissive doormat to more assertive natures. Many controversial issues surround women`s crusade of freedoms including the widely debated right to choose what they do with their body, referring to an abortion in “Hills Like White Elephants” and depression in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Gender roles had an impact on the woman in the short story “Hills Like White Elephants”. The personal evolution of the female protagonist can be divided into four major steps, the first revolves around the typical submissive and passive behaviour expected of a women. Through the ordering of drinks this demonstrates the gender role of male dominance and female submissiveness. The controlling manner displayed by the male character through ordering drinks is a stepping stone into his relentless pushing for her to receive an abortion. His oppressive nature is not only reflected at the bar but more importantly he displays a chauvinistic attitude in regards to the abortion as he states, “it`s really an awfully simple operation, Jig. Its not really an operation at all”(476). She attempts to downplay the procedure and with the continual pushing she agrees to do the procedure stating, “I don’t care about me. And ill do it and then everything will be fine”(477). The third stage takes strongly into account the setting of the story. She mentions earlier that the hills...
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...Indian School Days The School Days of an Indian Girl is a short story written in 1900 by a Sioux Indian, Zitkala-Sa, also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin. This story is auto-biographical, detailing Zitkala-Sa’s experiences in leaving the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota to attend a charity boarding school in Wabash, Indiana. This short story was published in the Atlantic Monthly, a nationally-renown magazine with a large audience, particularly amongst progressives in the intellectual and academic communities. The Atlantic Monthly, although not a political magazine, was known for publishing stories and essays containing controversial ideas or subjects as well as great literary pieces. By 1900 the United States had been largely successful in subduing the Native American tribes. The Native Americans had either been killed, contained on reservations, or had otherwise been forced to assume a ‘civilized’ American lifestyle. Even with their success in eliminating any threat to a ‘civilized’ lifestyle that the Native Americans had posed, whites continued to ostracize them, believing they were an inferior and savage race. The Native Americans who opted to leave the reservations and assimilate with other cultural groups found in American cities suffered extreme discrimination. This discrimination severely limited their social opportunities in terms of education, employment, and lifestyle. Despite the large progressive movements in the United States during this time, the troubles...
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...Demonstration Lesson Plan in English Grade 7 Luna I.OBJECTIVES At the end of the lesson, students should be able to: a. Arrange chronologically the events in the story; b. Describe the main character in the selection; c. Relate the story in real-life situation and d. Give the theme and moral lesson of the story. II.SUBJECT MATTER A. Topic: Princess Urduja ( Short Story) B. Reference: English Communication Arts and Skills through Philippine Literature by Lapid and Serrano,pp.119-122 C. Instructional Materials: textbook, chalk and chalk board, visual aids, pictures of famous and powerful Filipino women leaders, video, projector, speakers and slide presentation. D. Values: Leadership Women Empowerment Critical Thinking III. PROCEDURE A. Preliminary Activities 1. Prayer 2. Checking of Attendance 3. Passing of Assignment 4. Short Recall Ask the students the following questions: a. What are the common purposes of writing? b. Define paragraph. c. Enumerate the two basic features of a paragraph. 5. Motivation Post the improvised briefcases which contain the pictures of famous and powerful Filipino women leaders who have great contribution to our country. Call on volunteer students to choose a briefcase. Open the briefcase and let them identify each photo. Then, ask them to give a short description and information about the person....
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...delayed feedback. One has to be aware of the delay, otherwise more actions are required to correct the same problem. Sometimes - progress made cannot be seen. Management Principle: In a sluggish system, aggressiveness produces instability. Organization, group or person has to be patience or make system more responsive. Business Story: Real estate market: developers /builders kept building new properties without having enough buyers in sluggish market. There are plenty of properties available in the market and having enough additional properties still under construction, resulting in a glut. Limit to growth: Description: A process feeds on itself to produce a period of an exponential growth or expansion. Growth begins to slow and comes to a halt, and may even reverse itself and begin to collapse quickly. The growth phase can be caused by reinforcing the feedback process(es). The slowing arises due to a balancing process that came to play as a “limit” is approached. The limit can be a resource constraint or external or internal response to growth. Management Principle: Don’t push growth –remove the factors limiting growth. Business Story: New Startup Company that grows rapidly until it’s reaches a size when more professional management skills and a formal organization is needed. So the company with a new product team that worked until it’s success caused it to bring in new employees with new work style, and different values than the founding members –leading it to...
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...In the short story “Job History” written by Annie Proulx, we follow Leeland Lee from the time of his birth, until he is about fifty years old. In the short story we follow Leeland through his harsh life, with ups and downs, in the form of thoughts, feelings, incidents, etc. Leeland is born in a ranch in Wyoming, and lives there with his wife Lori. Leeland does not look particularly good, in fact he is a very unattractive man; (page 91, line 12)“Leeland’s face shows heavy bones from his mother’s side. His neck is thick and his red-gold hair plastered down in bangs. Even as a child his eyes are as pouchy as those of a middle-age alcoholic, the brows rod-straight above wandering out-of-line eyes. His nose lies broad and close to his face, his mouth seems to have been cut with a single chisel blow into easy flesh” I liked that it was short and to the point but at the same time I wish that some of the details would have gone a little bit deeper than just brushing the surface.Leeland's story was less of a recollection and more of a list of facts. In those few pages, we are told where he came from and what he has become. We are shown the type...
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...children, do the cooking, and run the errands while the wife earns the income. The biggest change over the years is that husband and wife both work to make-endsmeat. In comparing and contrasting James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and Tristan Bernard’s “I’m Going! A Comedy in One Act” I will show through differences and similarities in the content, form, and style how these different stories both have the same theme. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber is a short story that was originally written in 1939. This story revolves around the lives of two characters Mr. and Mrs. Walter Mitty and Mrs. Mitty’s constant henpecking toward Mr. Mitty. Mr. Mitty daydreams to remove himself from his wife’s badgering. He imagines himself in heroic scenes as the center of attention, as US Navy Pilot flying his crew out of a hurricane, then as a renowned surgeon performing delicate surgery on a billionaire banker and a Royal Air Force pilot who has volunteered to be a suicide bomber in an effort to blow up an ammunition dump. “I’m Going” by Tristan Bernard is a short play written between 1866 and 1947. This play also revolves around two characters Henri and his wife Jeanne. A comedy that focuses on Henri and Jeanne arguing...
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...classified as a 'short story'. The characteristics for this branch of writing is that the story will often center around a single event, and that it has an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Furthermore, short stories are often, due to their limited word count, written with great precision. If we look at the text, it does indeed meet all of these criteria. The short story is written in a 1st person narrative, the 'storyteller' being the perpetrator himself, Gavin Pollard. The lack of a 3rd person omniscient narrator makes it impossible for the reader to know which parts of the story are true, and which aren't. The whole thing could easily be a lie, but to analyze the text, we have to trust that at least parts of it is true. We are introduced to Gavin Pollard, an actor from London who has fled the country after assaulting 'Alex', the star of a play in which Gavin was an understudy. The entire three pages are supposed to be a letter from the attacker to the instructor of the play, Malcolm, in which the understudy tries to explain his actions, and the reasoning behind the committed crime. Judging by the language used, and the mention of a Golf GTI (which, it turns out, is a car), it can be determined that the story takes place in the present time. From the text, we know that Mister Pollard comes from a lower class family (page 2, line 21; "my parents aren't middle class). We are told that his sister, in stark contrast to him, is apparently quite successful in her career,...
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...make an analysis of the short story entitled, “The Vendetta”, written by Guy de Maupassant. “Vendetta”, which means “revenge” in the English language, is the core of this short story, and the concept from which the main character depends upon in order to survive. The story revolved around the revenge of the Widow Saverini because of the death of her son Antoine Saverini. Antoine was killed by a man named, Nicolas Ravolati, who was the object of revenge of Antoine’s mother. The death of her son, and her plot for revenge made her restless and sleepless at nights, thus, motivating her to avenge the death of Antoine. The development of the story involves the important role played by Semillante, the dog of Antoine, which the Widow used in order to get on with her revenge. The plan of the widow is to starve the dog for two days, and using a scarecrow made of straw, she trained the dog to attack it by using a smoking sausage she tied to the neck of the straw man. She trained the dog for several months, and when she believed that both of them were ready to execute her plans, she went to the town with the dog to look for Nicolas Ravolati. Her plan was a success, as she already avenged the death of Antoine, thus, giving her peace after returning home. This short story was a simple story, with a simple plot and theme, which depicts what really happens in real life. Three important points can be recognized in this particular story, namely, the emphasis on...
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...Successful Change Management — Kotter’s 8-Step Change In 1996 John Kotter wrote Leading Change* which looked at what people did to transform their organisations. Kotter introduced an 8-step change model for helping managers deal with transformational change. This is summarised in Kotter’s 8-step change model. For The Heart of Change* (2002) John Kotter worked with Dan Cohen to look into the core problems people face when leading change. They concluded that the central issue was changing the behaviour of people and that successful change occurs when speaking to people’s feelings. In this article Martin Webster explains how Kotter’s 8-step change model gets to the heart of how successful organisational change actually happens and answers the question “how do you go beyond simply getting your message across to truly changing people’s behaviour?” You’ll also learn how The Heart of Change can alter the way organisations and leaders approach change management. Since this guide covers a lot of ground and is a long read (3,000 words) you may want to check out the table of contents below for some quick jumping around. And if you want to read more high quality articles please sign up for email updates and never miss another post. Want to read something shorter? Visit our related post: The Heart of Change. Or download the ebook of this article from our member resources section. Table of Contents * Successful Change Management * Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model for Leading...
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...of kindness centrality, separate, and permanence. Within these three failures of kindness, Saunders expresses centrality in two unique ways. Centrality is the concept that our story is the only story that matters. Centrality is a main element of both Saunders commencement speech and “Girl”. The authors have chosen to represent centrality differently. Kincaid displays centrality in “Girl” by having the mother act as if her opinion is the only one that matters. Having the short story centered around the mother and daughter’s relationship is another way to display centrality. Saunders on the other hand, portrays centrality by telling his audience a story about a girl named Ellen, and how he didn’t make an effort to be friendly with her. Saunders also depicted centrality by making the theme of kindness the focal point of his speech. In addition to centrality both of these authors alluded to success as a major theme in their pieces. Kincaid wrote about materialistic success while...
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...ENG 125: Introduction to Literature Instructor: Wanda Deffenbaugh October 8, 2012 A “Welcome” Read The Welcome Table, by Alice Walker is an image-filled short story that restores the past and reveals human nature. As an avid reader, I look for a story to capture me in the first several paragraphs. This story did just that. Immediately, Alice Walker establishes a graphic picture of a scenario that takes place during the racial segregation period. She creates a sympathetic mood that captivates the reader throughout the story. She truly illustrates the ideas of hope and change. Literature must hold up to a plethora of standards to be considered a successful piece of work. A formalist approach focuses on the actual form of the literature. It takes note of the development of the storyline and analyses the very features of the story itself. Our text points out “Every writer chooses particular literary tools to create a representation of something that exists in his or her imagination.” (as cited in Clugston, 2010. section 16.2, para 3.) A formalist approach can identify these literary tools. Alice Walker used a plethora of these literary tools to express her imagination and form her touching literary tale. The Setting The setting for a story to denote such magnitude must be clearly defined. The story is set in the South during the Civil Rights movement. This was a time when public places (including restrooms and churches) were still segregated. The war was...
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...Essential Elements of the Short Story There are a few key elements essential to any successful or engaging story. But a well-crafted short story should have two central characteristics. Firstly, it must have a strong, albeit condensed, narrative. A novel can indulge in slow plot development but the short story must immediately delve into the drama. The short story needs to progress quickly from conflict or crisis, to climax and subsequent resolution. Secondly, the short story must have an affable or at least relatable protagonist as the primary character. If the reader can recognize the ‘hero’, empathize with their plight, or emotionally connect with their journey, the short story remains intriguing. This essay, using examples from two classic short stories, illustrates how narrative and character development is intrinsic to a good short story. James Baldwin’s short story, “Sonny’s Blues”, begins with “I read it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work. I read it, and I couldn’t believe it, and I read it again” (37). The mystery of what the narrator read immediately draws the reader in and an engrossing plot unfolds quickly. A series of recollections and flashbacks reveal the internal conflict of the narrator as he struggles with his family obligation to his drug-addicted brother. An argument between the brothers is the climactic moment as angst gives way to anger and frustration. There is almost a moment of suspense before the narrator hears Sonny play at the club for...
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