Everyone has dreams and desires, but sometimes these can make it hard to think of someone besides one’s self. In the story “Raymond’s Run,” Squeaky is a determined and confident girl who is in the process of refining her value and personality. At the beginning...
Raymond Carver’s preferred method of delivering information to readers in his short story “Cathedral” is one that is entirely coherent with the underlying theme of the impact of alienation and isolation upon those who fail to master the art of communicating with others. Carver employs...
In Raymond Carver’s short story “A Small, Good Thing,” the Baker’s helplessness is caused by his apparent class status and by an unknown financial stability, which results in a sense of isolation and loneliness. The baker resolves his sense of helplessness when he realizes that...
In “Sweat” and the accounts of Zora Neale Hurston in, “How It Feels To Be Colored Me”, there are many elements of the modernist period in play. The most important being the welfare state of African Americans in America at that point in time. However,...
Hurston’s Sweat is a short story that represents not only the constraints of a racially divided society but also, and more notably the oppression of women in a patriarchal society. Delia is a microcosm for women of the time, physically inferior, meek at times, but...
The short story “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston details the finer points of the abusive relationship and failing marriage of Delia and Sykes Jones. Hurston presents Delia as a hardworking woman and a faithful wife, but the same cannot be said of Sykes’ character. Sykes...
Considered to be blueprint for the mechanics of tragedy, Aristotle’s Poetics revolves around the assumption that great works of tragedy must include a generous number of mimetic elements, or elements which readily imitate human life. In addition, well-organized tragic plots combine both reversal of fate...
Hawthorne marks his characters as potential usurpers of God who are undermined by an inability to negotiate with human chaos. Confronted with examples of imperfection or fragmentation, the scientific minds of “The Birthmark,” “Rappaccini¹s Daughter,” and “Ethan Brand” attempt to efface or fuse flaws as...
On the surface, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” is a story about several troubled adults who are given the chance to go back to their youths and enjoy their former, more beautiful selves. The idea of youth in this story, however, is much deeper than...
Critical readings of Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark” tend to focus mainly on Aylmer’s attempt to overpower the hand of God, and the boundaries between science and nature. In the vast array of scholarship on the story, however, little has been said of its racial undercurrent. Written...
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” is a tale of opposites and upset expectations. The ideal of the country or rural life is met by the overpowering, even corrupted nature of city life. Robin, the protagonist, the country boy striving to make it...
Within Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” and “Young Goodman Brown,” the presence of laughter is used repeatedly across both narratives, often for dramatic effect, showcasing the act’s many facets and qualities. Most typically, laughter is associated with cheer or general happiness. It...
Laden with allegories, dualisms, and symbolism, Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark” makes light of a variety of multi-faceted and complex issues, foremost among them those of sexuality and humanity. While the character of Aylmer seems both emotionally and intellectually secure, his obsession with perfection when applied to...
Much as his name suggests, Owen Warland wages a battle on society in The Artist of the Beautiful by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Throughout the story, he strives to create the Beautiful, a lifelike butterfly, and overcomes many setbacks to succeed briefly, only to have it destroyed...
Throughout his works Young Goodman Brown, The Minister’s Black Veil, and The Birth-Mark, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses symbolism to show that all humans are inherently flawed and are sinful by nature, and teaches the lesson that you can not obsess over it or try to defeat...
In his short story, “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” Nathaniel Hawthorne explores such fundamental themes as good, evil , sin, family, pride, and penance. However ,from the onset he warns us, “my tale is not of love”(Hawthorne 25). This is instead a tale of the depths of...
There exists an entirely different dimension, where illusion and deception form people’s personalities and rule their lives, and that dimension is exists here, everyday of our own entire lives. We all live lives only according to what is in our own heads. Whether it be...
In the short story, Brokeback Mountain, by Annie Proulx, page 11 describes Alma’s one encounter with Jack. After witnessing her husband kiss another man, she faces them both quietly and uncomfortably, but does not otherwise convey any dramatic emotion and remains surprisingly collected. She attempts...
Sadaat Hasan Manto was one of the most consequential and controversial writers of his times. He has produced over 20 collections of short stories, a novel and a series of radio plays; despite such prowess, he was severely criticized for his erotic style of writing...
The short story “Letters from My Father”, written by Robert Olen Butler, and the poem “The Writer”, written by Richard Wilbur, both depict family struggles. “Letters from My Father” is about a Vietnamese girl who grew up without a father because of troubles with immigration...
Robert Olen Butler’s story “Titanic Victim Speaks Through Waterbed” is narrated by the ghost of a victim who died on the Titanic, whose spirit continues to haunt the waters in which he dwelled. Making his way from the ocean, to a cup of tea, and...
The connection between history and art is similar to the law of Causality in physics, otherwise known as the “cause and effect” law. As history progressed through multiple ages, fashions, and mentalities, so did artistic styles and tendencies. Art is important to the historic field...
Dorothy M. Johnson’s short story “A Man Called Horse” transgresses some of the conventions of the classical Western genre. In this sense, Johnson’s text can be read as a “revisionist Western”, in so far as Johnson does not merely adhere to the dominant norms and...
Societal dictum and etiquette are fluid concepts, changing and differing dependent largely on location, culture, time period, and other factors. With reference to carting a carriage of Peaches through rural Japan in the middle of a cold winter night, the narrator of Abe Akira’s Peaches...
Chekhov’s stories often describe the little intricate moments in Russian life, focusing in on one character’s experience of a normal event and in doing so commenting on the character themselves. Agafya is one of Chekhov’s longer short stories, and is told from the perspective of...
Walker Brothers Cowboy, a short story written by Alice Munro, presents the pivotal (and perhaps formative) experience of a young, unnamed, female narrator. Munroe filters the girl’s visual and olfactory-enriched memories through the present tense thoughts of a markedly matured voice, creating a nostalgic effect...
In an oft-cited review of Alice Munro’s fourth published collection, critic John Gardner asks a pertinent question regarding “whether The Beggar Maid is a collection of stories or a new kind of novel.” While this question is not only germane, but even imperative to interpretation...
In the short story The Shining Houses by Alice Munro, Mary is a young inquisitive mother who explores the lives of her neighbours in the community. The story follows her day on the way to a child’s birthday party, the characters in the story all...
Tom Perrotta’s Bad Haircut is a collection of short stories about Buddy, a boy growing up in New Jersey in the 1970s. In these stories, Perrotta often introduces characters who bear false facades that do not resemble their true selves. Later on in the book,...
People will always revert to what is most comfortable, reliant on their natural state. In Celeste Ng’s coming of age short story, “Girls, At Play”, the debate of nurture versus nature lies in the struggles between four girls. The theme of “Girls, At Play” is...
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