...No Angel The short story No Angel is written by the Bernie McGill in 2010. She is an author who lives in Northern Ireland, where the story also takes place. It is from the anthrology The Best British Short Stories 2011. The story is about grief, loneliness and how to recover from a death of a loved one. People got different ways to move on, but no matter what, it is terribly painful to lose a loved one, because you suddenly are alone. On the one hand you recover by trying to forget about the pain the loss has brought, but on the other hand you want to remember the one who passed away, because of the fear of loneliness and because the death is hard to accept. Others don’t want to accept the fact that they’re gone and will never be here again, and thereby they find a rather special way to keep the memory of the lost person. They create the lost one(s) inside their head, and pretending they see the dead(s) as ghosts or angels. This makes them able to talk to them and get advices from their beloved, even though they are no longer here. This is the way our main character of No Angel is using to handle her sorrows of her family’s death. The main characters name is Annie. You get to know it when the father says “Have you forgotten what they did to your brother, Annie?...”(p. 3, l. 63). Annie has lost her brother and both of her parents and deals with being left on her own without them to support, guide and, most of all, love her. She still sees them after they’re dead as angels...
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...great part of your life knowing that the world and your surroundings won’t drastically affect your way of living and your state of mind. The feeling of having everything in place in your life and the certainty of being able to deal with whatever might wait for you in the future. Some people will face minor challenges and some people will face major challenges in their life, and when that happens decisions have to be made. Decisions you make based on what you believe is the right thing to do. Consequently, decisions however won’t always be fulfilling because the outcome of whatever you choose to do won’t always positively affect yourself. The short story “Our Nicky’s Heart” written by Graham Swift, depicts how a family is forced into a tough situation where the magnitude of the decision they have to make is almost beyond themselves. The story revolves around the themes death and technology - how technology is used as sustenance. We’re firstly introduced to a family consisting of a father whose name is Frank Randall, and his three sons Michael, Eddy and Mark. The father earns a living by having a farming business and believes that his three sons are a good investment for it. Frank has a wife whose name we don’t know, nevertheless we do know that she urgently wants to give birth to a fourth child namely a girl. “But she could have done with a daughter to leaven the male dough” (Page 105, lines: 13-14). She becomes pregnant and secretly names the baby Sally. However the baby turns...
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...owner. Though only 11, he will attempt to stand up for what he believes despite what the law may state. With the help of his caring family, over the course of this story the main character must solve complicated ethical dilemmas. In doing so, he is attempting to achieve justice for this dog. The story begins with the main character, Marty walking through the woods. He discovers a dog which ultimately follows him home. He and his father return the dog to its home and according to the combination of the dog's reaction to physical contact and Marty's impressions of the dog's owner Judd, he concludes that the dog may be abused. After a number of days, the dog who has been named Shiloh by Marty returns to his home after running away from a fox hunt. This time, Marty is determined to keep Shiloh away from his owner. In an attempt to keep Shiloh a secret, he creates a pen on a hilltop his father owns. Despite his crafty lying and sneaking food from the dinner table...
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...Mullin Mrs. Nugent English II September 18, 2012 Contents of a Dead Man’s Pocket Jack Finney starts off the story with Tom Benecke sitting at a desk in the living room of his eleventh floor apartment, typing a memo for work. His wife Clare is preparing to go to the movies alone. With difficulty, Tom opens a stubborn window, and a gust of wind blows his paper out of the window onto a ledge. We see how Finney casually introduces that his apartment is on the eleventh floor of the building, in the great city of New York. Before you even begin reading the story, you get an eerie feeling just from the title of the short story. Then when you begin to read the story, and he introduces the setting and the 11th floor apartment so nonchalantly, you begin to get a feeling of suspense. Finney continues on with Tom seeing Clare off, and him explaining he must work rather than go with her, in the hopes of bettering himself at work. While the door to the apartment is open for Clare to leave, a current of air from the hallway enters the apartment. It blows a sheet of paper out the window, landing it on a ledge below, out of his reach. The paper contains all the data Tom needs for his memo proposing a new grocery-store display method. ]He reasons it would be simple to retrieve the sheet of paper from the ledge, compared to all the work he has put into it. At this point in the story, things begin to pick up, building the sense of suspense. Now that we know he is going to go out onto the ledge...
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...they’re gone and will never be with us again. Sometimes, our loss can even be so great that our imagination creates person who passed away and makes us able to talk to them as if nothing ever happened, as if they never passed away. This is exactly the case of the main character of the short story “No Angel” from 2010 by Bernie McGill, who deals with the loneliness and grief of losing her family. The short story is told from a first person limited point of view, and the events are seen through the eyes of our main character, whose name we aren’t told. We jump back and forward in time with flashbacks and flash-forwards, and there’s no chronological order to the story. This is further proven when the story starts in medias res with a very important event. The story starts with a flash back in time to when our main character meets her father in the bathroom for the first time after he had passed away. Our main character is taking a shower, when her dad suddenly appears in in the bathroom, standing in front of the sink and the mirror with a razor shaving. Her dad is described in a way that indicates she knows him very well, from top to toe: “He looked more or less the same. When he turned his face to scrape the razor along his jaw, I could see that the scar was healing well, where the surgeon had removed the growth from the side of his nose” (p. 1 l. 11). It also indicates that they were very close; close enough for her to be able to notice the difference, and also close enough to recognize...
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...I was super amped this year because I would be spending the night trick or treating with Tristan in Woodlake. As a kid, I just knew this gated neighborhood as the place with the wealthy old people who gave out lots of candy each year. My poor naive self had expectations to the moon regarding how totally awesome this would be. Unfortunately, reality was about to squish my hopes like a roach in a boot factory. When I arrived to his not-so-humble abode; I was greeted by a mass of people who were all taller, cooler, and older than I was. Long story short, I was ignored the whole night as well as being forgotten at houses multiple times. This was obviously very devastating to insignificant amount of self-esteem that I had for the time...
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...My Little Bit of Country In the first clause, I will introduce the story “My Little Bit of Country”. The Authors name is Susan Cheever, she was an American writer who was born in 1943, who wrote the essay. She is the daughter of the famous novelist and short story writer John Cheever. The essay is from the selection called “Central Park”, which was released in 2012. The writer has written as a first person narrator through out the text. We met our main character Susan Cheever when she was very young. Her father has just returned home from the WW2. We are told by Susan that her family’s almost commonplace visits to Central Park Zoo and Central Park. Susan’s father started writing and because of the big success he had and the fact that they as parents wanted one more child, the family moved to the one of the suburbs of New York City. Susan was not very enamored of it, she loved to be in the enormous city, to skate on the ice rink and to visit the yak in Central Park Zoo. After they had moved, she eventually moved back the New York City and became an adult who raised her own kids, in the way that she wanted to be raised. In this analysis, we will focus on the writer’s use of contrast. We will also analyze the central- themes, which are explored in the text, and we will in the end put some comments on the title of the essay. In this paragraph, we will comment on the title. “My Little Bit of Country” was the title of the essay. The title was inspired by Andy Warhol, who Susan...
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...Married Woman’s Complex In 2012, the University of Chicago conducted a “well being” study and it was found that 97% of married people are “happily married”. If this study were conducted a century ago, 97% probably would have reported being unhappy in their marriage, the majority being women. These dutiful wives and repressed mothers were not allowed any personal or intellectual freedom. These oppressed, married women are the types of characters feminist author, Kate Chopin, revels in. During the production of “Kate Chopin: A Re-Awakening” at Emory University, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese said Chopin was “nonetheless a woman who took women extremely seriously, she never doubted women’s ability to be strong.” The characters in Chopin’s short stories’, “The Story of An Hour” and “The Storm”, are unfulfilled and desire more in their marriage. They have no validation in life and may have husbands that love and provide for them yet they are still unhappy. They are all invested in their marriages and families yet at some point realize that they ultimately yearn for a single and free life. Louisa Mallard ironically felt more liberated when she learned of her husband’s death and Calixta and Clarisse are involved with the same man yet want different things from him. In such few words, Kate Chopin is able to illustrate the oppressiveness women of the late 1800s felt in their marriages. Louisa felt more obligations in her marriage than love. Chopin describes her as, “young, with a fair, calm...
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...THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS – Novel Response The book of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas starts out simply with things we can all relate to. Bruno’s almost-teenaged sister, Greta, is a ‘Hopeless Case’ moving from scary dolls to fussing over boys. He’s moving house and gets in scrapes; he misses his grandparents and best friends, which are problems we can all relate to. They’re mundane (everyday) problems, though to nine-year old Bruno, they’re rocking the centre of his world. We feel for him - as we all were nine once, less wise and less able to cope. We might have nine-year old brothers or sisters. He seems very innocent and vulnerable. He has no control over the elements in his life. In short, it seems like an everyday book. If you read the blurb though, there’s a disturbing mood even before you start reading. We’re told we’ll go on a ‘journey with a nine-year old’ but that this ‘isn’t a book for nine-year olds’ - as if it’s not suitable, or too scary. What’s horrible about this is that the boy in it is nine, which makes us afraid that his life is too scary for him. John Boyne builds up the mystery from the start. The blurb says ‘we think it’s important that you start to read without knowing what it’s about.’ Not knowing is unsettling. The first scenes of the film of the novel clearly show Nazi flags, and soldiers in a town. But in the book, there are no clues at first. Because we don’t know their true identity, we’re lulled us into a false sense of security. We think...
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...job that pays is rare, leaving many people in poverty unable to bounce out of it. Peter Edelman, who was a former Clinton administration official, says, “There are literally millions of people… out there working… not getting out of poverty.” Although there have been some remarkable stories with people breaking the chain, it is rare and extremely difficult to do so because the economy has been declining for a long time. Since jobs for even the educated middle class are hard to come by, people in poverty have little hope to find a welcoming workplace. The National Employment Law Project states in “Below the line: Poverty in America”, that “Since 1979, the American economy ‘has lost about one-third of its capacity to generate good jobs.’” This statement demonstrates the idea that since the 1980’s, America has slowly had a declining job market, and that less and less jobs are being produced for American citizens. This results in an influx of poverty because people are left jobless, and unable to do anything about it. Another issue is the government’s system for assisting people in poverty. The government’s system does not help support people to get back on their feet, but rather to help them for short periods of time. Missy Nash from the article “Below the line: Poverty in America”, said “‘Once you're making enough to make ends meet, they pull all your food stamps and child care and you’re back to Square 1.’” She also went on to say, “‘We have poverty but no proper bridge to get people...
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...Richter 1 Ryan Richter English V01B 7 March 2014 An Unwelcome Lesson In nearly all tales, myths and stories, a hero is set on a journey into the unknown. The hero acquires knowledge and skill, his mettle is tested, and by success or failure he learns something about himself or the world he lives in. Often the acquisition of skill and knowledge is obtained via the work of a guide or mentor. In both “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara and “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the protagonist is visited by a maligned guide who exploits their vulnerabilities, manipulating each towards a sobering epiphany, and thereby changing their world view for better or worse. Each of the two protagonists perceives their guide as a foe. In “The Lesson” Sylvia is a willful and irreverent young girl, who is immediately distrustful of her guide in the story, Ms. Moore. Ms. Moore is an oddity in the unnamed slum of New York. She always dresses like she’s going to church, she’s college educated, and inordinately concerned with the educational welfare of the children in her neighborhood (654)1. It is this outsider status that initially puts Sylvia on guard. However, Sylvia is not impervious to the machinations of her teacher. Though Sylvia loathes Ms. Moore’s condescending questions, they are ultimately effective in their goal. Sylvia is also vulnerable due to her need of a social medium. Sylvia is at the top of the pecking order among her friends, and has a sense of responsibility ...
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...Frederick Douglass. It explains both slavery for slaves and slave owners. Douglass tells the story of his most important and inspirational moments and he tries to explain one of the most lethal and sad years of our country's times. He was the odd one out of all the slaves, he had hope. He believed that freedom for slaves was possible and he would do anything in his power to make it come true. One of Douglass first steps to freedom was to learn how to read and write and Mrs. Auld had covered that for him until she had been blinded by the power of controlling people, slaves. Douglass has gone through many adventures and has seen what it means to be free and not to be free. He has...
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...follows the story of Jurgis Rudkus and his new family as they move to America in search of...
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...accordingly to the roads they have traveled. The roads I’ve taken have taught me to stand up and make people take notice of me. People are all following their own paths growing and changing as they go. We all take roads and each road will take you to a different point. Joseph Campbell came up with “The Hero’s Journey” to illuminate these changes a person goes through. These are a set of stages a hero, or person, go through during a significant time. Campbell writes, “Stories of these mythological adventures are really metaphors and symbols for the “journeys” in life that all of us go through as we pass from one stage to another” (par.2). Everybody goes through these stages one way or another. That’s life. We see these stages in Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use.” Mrs. Johnson, the hero, changes from a quiet, unconfident, passive woman to a woman who at the end of the story finally stands up for herself. She changed because of the situation and people that were placed in front of her. Mrs. Johnson begins the story “Everyday Use” as unconfident and passive. Her oldest daughter Dee is coming home for a visit and she doesn’t believe Dee will appreciate all that she is. She doesn’t seem to think much of herself. She describes herself as “a larger big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands” (Walker par.5). Her words make it seem as if it is a bad thing to be sturdy. Mrs. Johnson is timid. She makes a remark about who could look a white man in the...
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...THREE MEN IN A BOAT By Jerome K.Jerome In the history of English literature Jerome K. Jerome occupies a modest place. He is famous for his art of story-telling, his vivid style and his humour which is generally expressed in laughter-provoking situations often based on misunderstanding. With sparkling humour he criticized the weak sides of human nature. Jerome Klapka Jerome was born in England on May 2, 1859 into the family of ruined businessman. Jerome's childhood was poor and sad. He could not finish school because his father died in 1871 and the boy had to begin working to support his family. First he worked as a clerk. Later he took up teaching journalism and acting. For three years he was an actor and had to play different parts. He had very little money and often went hungry and had no place to sleep. In his free moments Jerome tried to write. He wrote plays, stories and articles, but nothing was published. His first literary success was a one-act comedy which was performed in the Globe theatre in London in 1886. In 1889 a collection of his articles was published. They were published as a book under the title "The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow". This book became very popular in England, and it was published 105 times in 4 years. In 1889 Jerome's best book "Three Men in a Boat" also came out. "The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" and "Three Men in a Boat" made the author famous. The books were translated into several European languages. In the following years Jerome...
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