...Analysis of Two Short Stories Laura Cutler Ashford University Introduction to Literature ENG125 Instructor Rivera March 2, 2015 Analysis of Two Short Stories A literary analysis is important to assist a reader in knowing how or why an author writes a particular piece of literature, whether it is a poem, short story, novel , play, informational piece, etc. and then have the ability to relate to it as an individual. In the short stories 'Sweat' and 'Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been' the characters are from different walks of life, they both encounter conflict of: individual versus self, individual versus individual and individual versus society; many literary devices create theses stories that include the author's point of view, the conflicts that arise throughout and the resolution that takes place in the endpoint of view, the conflicts that arise throughout and the resolution that takes place in the end. The theme to any piece of literature is the basis for the whole story, in 'Sweat' and 'Where are Going, Where Have You Been' the story is centered primarily on one individual and what they each go through to survive an abusive/violent situation. The theme involves the survival of an individual through: external and external factors, that include the influence of society and the issue of class; sexuality of a women and men and the men's masculinity; suffering and the struggles that deal with violence, both physical and mental; family and religion....
Words: 2231 - Pages: 9
...Setting Read more Setting is a description of where and when the story takes place. In a short story there are fewer settings compared to a novel. The time is more limited. * How is the setting created? Consider geography, weather, time of day, social conditions, etc. * What role does setting play in the story? Is it an important part of the plot or theme? Or is it just a backdrop against which the action takes place? Study the time period which is also part of the setting. * When was the story written? * Does it take place in the present, the past, or the future? * How does the time period affect the language, atmosphere or social circumstances of the short story? Characterization Read more Characterization deals with how the characters in the story are described. In short stories there are usually fewer characters compared to a novel. They usually focus on one central character or protagonist. * Who is the main character? * Are the main character and other characters described through dialogue – by the way they speak (dialect or slang for instance)? * Has the author described the characters by physical appearance, thoughts and feelings, and interaction (the way they act towards others)? * Are they static/flat characters who do not change? * Are they dynamic/round characters who DO change? * What type of characters are they? What qualities stand out? Are they stereotypes? * Are the characters believable? Plot...
Words: 711 - Pages: 3
...Ice break - English essay Ice Break is a short story written by Astrid Blodgett. The story is told in a first person narrator and is from the main character Dawn's perspective. Dawn are at a ice fishing trip with her dad and her younger sister when the car falls into the water and her dad tries to safe them. The story is about a girl named Dawn and her family. Dawn, her father and her younger sister are going to ice fish with their uncle Rick as a family tradition. Her mother doesn't want go and her older sister is babysitting a kid down the street. The mother warned the father about going because it was late season and the ice wasn't good, and that's the reason she doesn't want to go, but in reality its because the parents have a lot of problems. They drive off to the frozen lake, looking for uncle rick. Suddenly the ice breaks and the car fall through. The father tries to help Dawn out of the sinking truck by pushing her out of the car window. Afterwards he tries to help the younger sister out but it's too late. The father and younger sister drowns in the car. In the end we hear about the younger sister Janie and their dad's funeral. The story ends very tragic. Dawn is a regular girl, she lives with her father, mother and her two sisters. Dawn doesn't want to go ice fishing with her father just the two of them. She doesn't like to spend time with her dad alone because she got uncomfortable when it's just the two of them, so she pays her little sister to go with...
Words: 935 - Pages: 4
...Short Story Analysis: “A Television Drama” Plot Summary The short story’s plot begins by introducing the main character Carolee Mitchell. Carolee is in her home doing her daily chores when suddenly she looks out her window to find many policeman, police dogs and police cars outside on her street. Carolee did not know what was happening so she continued on with her chores. In a few moments Carolee notices a young man drenched in blood in her garden outside. Carolee wants to call the police but questions what good it would be considering they are already on her street. She wants to call someone but none of her neighbors were home. Thinking that he was injured and maybe was not even the man the police were after, she looked out the window to see him stand up and walk towards the parking area where he tumbled to the ground. Soon after, the police and reporters were there. A couple seconds later on the radio a news bulletin was out saying that the man had robbed a bank, run a car into a tree, shot a policeman, and had been shot at. Soon after her husband Pete came home and Carolee explained everything that occurred earlier. After the explanation the couple turn on the tv to see a news report that summarises the event. Carolee now feels very differently of society. Characters St.Croix 2 In the story there were really only 2 main characters, Carolee and Pete. Carolee is the protagonist of the story. She is a dynamic character and seems like a normal person maybe oblivious and...
Words: 858 - Pages: 4
...Assignment 8 Can a close friendship be the means to cope with life and overcome fears and challenges? This seems to be the case in Jackie Kay’s short story “Owl” written in 2012, where the two main characters together experience a very hurtful childhood event overlapping with an encounter with an owl. The story tells us how both of these incidents shapes the friendship between the main characters and how it becomes a lifelong walk together in this life but also a journey into a fantasy world of their own. The short story is written in the first person. This means that the story is told by the main-character Barn, or Anita as she is really called. It is characterised by a heavily use of dialogue and direct speech. This dialogue is almost entirely between Barn and Tawny (Tawny’s real name is Marion). This literary device is a way to illustrate that it is only about the two of them, Barn and Tawny – the rest of the world does not really matter: The fact that we only get an insight and hear about the two women life for example their childhood, creates a closer relation with the two of them and at the same time we as readers gets distanced from everyone else. This is also why that the narrator makes heavily use of the personal pronoun ‘we’. It forms an affiliation between the reader and the main-characters, which is Barn and Tawny. The close relation between the two of them is also seen in the following quote: “”It’s only scary because we all want to be perfect. It’s not scary...
Words: 1828 - Pages: 8
...Analysis of G. K. Chesterton’s short story «The Sign of the Broken Sword» «The Sign of the Broken Sword» is a short story by G. K. Chesterton featuring his famous characters Father Brown and former criminal Flambeau. In the centre of a story is a mysterious death of General Sir Arthur St. Clare, who was hanged on a tree with his broken sword hung round his neck. It is a detective story and throughout it Father Brown reveals to us the mystery of General St. Clare. The story starts with the description of landscape and the description of St. Clare’s monument, which is a sort of exposition, where the main hero of the story and the place where the story will begin (or, more accurately, one of the stories) are presented. Then two other characters, Father Brown and Flambeau (who are not presented properly because they are heroes of the cycle thus there is no need to introduce them in each story) appear and the plot starts with Father Brown’s question: “Where does a wise man hide a pebble?”. It is necessary to say that author turns to retrospective, thus creating a framed structure of the story - the priest and his companion are narrator and listener and from Father Brown’s lips we hear the true story of St. Clair’s crime. So, there are two settings also: the past and the present. In both stories the exposition is scattered: in modern times Father Brown mentions he «dug up in holes and corners» bits of evidence that helped him to solve the mystery while Flambeau remembers...
Words: 1034 - Pages: 5
...Alexander Vollmers-Hansen 2. F This essay is an analysis of the short story “Every good Boy” by David Nicholls. I will analyse the main theme, characterize the narrator, the composition, the role of the piano and the ending. Introduction We have all been there, and for some, it is still a main struggle; what are we good at? Will we ever be good at anything? Michael, the main character and the narrator of this story, is in that situation; he was literally not good at anything at the age of nine. He was remarkable for being entirely without any abilities, but maybe, he had just found the cure for his problem. “It’s a piano” is the first sentence in the text, and at the same time, it is what Michael thinks, is his breakthrough chance to be good at something. The whole story is about, how he learns to play the piano, because he thinks that this is something he could be good at, but in the end he finds out that, it actually was not. Composition The story is build up with flashbacks about events that appeared in chronological order in the past. The language in the text is normal and understandable English. The story probably takes places, sometime between 1964 and 2006, because an old TV-show called “Top Of The Pops” from 1964 is mentioned. The geographical location of the story would most likely be in London. The theme There are several themes in this text, but the main theme is the quest for a personal skill. Throughout the whole story, Michael is trying to learn to play the piano...
Words: 819 - Pages: 4
...Who is Sammy? In the short story “A&P”; Sammy serves as the protagonist, main character and narrator. The story is told from his point of view, which I believe is very interesting because the narrative changes if this story is told from one of the other character’s point of view. This story takes places in a small conservative community with conservative views. Sammy is a 19 year old who works as a cashier at A&P grocery in a small town. Sammy can be described in many ways. He is very opinionated and observant of his surroundings. From the beginning of the story Sammy is seen as somewhat immature. Sammy seems to be very uninterested in his job but rather taken with its customers. I can relate to that somewhat. Retail can be so boring and mundane at times that you have to do something to help the time go by. He comments on everyone and everything. This serves as his entertainment to get through the day. In the story he quickly analyzes the girls as they come in the store. In fact, in the very first sentence Sammy says “in walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits”(Updike 32). It is quite an attention grabber. Sammy finds most people in town are followers and do the same thing. However, he notices “Queenie” is different. He is almost infatuated by her “sweet broad soft-looking can”(Updike 33). Based on the way he describes the girls he seems to judge people based on appearances. He depicts everything from the texture and patterns of their bathing suits to...
Words: 1107 - Pages: 5
...LITERO-STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF SELECT SHORT STORY PIECES OF BIENVENIDO SANTOS By FERDINAND BULUSAN CAGAYAN STATE UNIVERSITY Lal-lo Campus Sta. Maria, Lal-lo, Cagayan Valley fgbulusan_gmail@yahoo.com 0927-786-3510 ABSTRACT This study stylistically analyzed select short stories of Bienvenido N. Santos, a Filipino writer during the American regime. Specifically, it determined the rhetorical devices present in the three short stories (The House on a Hill, The Miracle, and The Early Harvest), the frequently used rhetorical devices, their grammatical violations, and how they beautify the literary pieces. The study aimed at benefitting the English teachers, literature and second language learners, amateur writers and speakers, future researchers, and English major students. Further, the study used descriptive-analytical method. The instruments used in this study were the Handbook of 60 Rhetorical Devices and the Grammar Book by Murcia (2010). It likewise employed library search and trend analysis method. Findings of the study revealed that there were 30 rhetorical devices in the three short stories categorized as follows: on repetition, on construction, on addition, on omission, on resemblance, and under tropes. Five frequently used devices were simile, metaphor, appositive, epizeuxis, pleonasm, and tautology. On the other hand, faulty parallelism, absence and excessive use of conjunctions, and redundancies were the grammatical violations. Rhetorical devices had specific purposes...
Words: 253 - Pages: 2
...Lecture : Discourse Analysis SIDE BY SIDE By Peter Panepento Melissa Meely dropped in to a chair in front of her manager’s cherry veneer desk. “I don't know how people with kids can do this job,” the 25-year-old radio advertising sales rep said. Her boss, Laurie Thompson, had heard such self-doubt before. Her six sales people in Connoisseur Media in Erie, in the shores of Lake Erie in Pennsylvania, often popped into her office to vent frustrations about a tough day of cold-calling. On this Wednesday in June 2006, as the late afternoon sun cast rays of light through a wall-lenght window, it was Melissa (Missi to her friends) who led the caravan into Laurie’s office. Laurie nodded. She didn't have children, devoting herself instead to a sales career, running marathons, cycling, sailing and spending tme with Chuck, her husband of nearly 20 years. “I don't think I’ll ever have kids though that would really disappoint my parents,” Missi said. “why? Because you're an only” laurie asked. Missi said her parents would be disappointed because they wanted grandkids. Then she added, almost as afterthought, “I was adopted.” From the time she was tiny, Missi knew that she was adopted. Doug and Sandy Meely were always open with their daughter about where she came from. “you weren’t had – you we chosen,” Doug would tell her. After they got married in October 1972, Doug and Sandy learnt that they were unable to conceive. But they longed for a family. So they sought out and adoption...
Words: 2059 - Pages: 9
...Everyone in the store wonders why these girls are walking in the grocery store with bathing suits, when there is not a beach for miles. He starts to observe them as they walk up and down the aisles. Who out of the three girls is the boss? Why are they here? As he starts to feel that it is his job to observe every move they make, he starts to describe them in more detail. Sammy finds out that his friends are being demeaning towards the girls and decides to take action. Sammy gains the confidence to quit his job and become Mr. Hero after viewing this misogynistic nature. He feels that they are beautiful in their own different way. The girl’s uniqueness is what caught his attention, thus showing Sammy’s unique mindset. From the beginning of the story he starts to describe the first girl he sees. He states “The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it… (1013).” He starts to talk about what she had on then talks about the tan she had. Why did he care about her tan like that? He was trying to say that her tan was not fully complete because she had parts of her body that the sun did not hit. Maybe she was not in the right position for the sun to hit her entire body. He was so focused on observing her, that the customer that he was ringing up started to give him hell because he could not remember if he had already scanned the idea or not. “There...
Words: 1230 - Pages: 5
...The writer acquaints with the peruser the four characters: Mel McGinnis - a cardiologist, Terri – his wife, the writer himself, yet with the name Nick and his fire – Laura. Each of them is a grown up individual with the little age contrast, who has officially accomplished something in his or her life. It is fascinating, that every one of them have had the involvement in marriage. The topic itself begins with the tale about Terri and her ex Ed, who debilitated her and attempted to slaughter her. Is it safe to say that it isn't a terrifying starting? Presently the plot thickens. Despite the fact that we live in a humanized world, the hard treatment of the men with their wives is these days a typical case for a few families. No one can tell precisely why such circumstances occur. It is possible that it is the presentation of affection to a lady or it is the onset of mental ailment, which the analysts call schizophrenia. Evidently, a few occasions in Ed's youth left its stamp on his identity, for example, the issues with his companions or some family occasions. We can assume that Terri was his first love and he feared losing her. In any case, Terri doesn't think Ed was debilitated. She is positive about his affection and even legitimizes him. On the substance of it, we can comprehend her and sympathize with her emotions, on the grounds that we discover that Ed arrives at an awful end. He couldn't acknowledge her leaving and chose to harm his own particular life, as well as the...
Words: 495 - Pages: 2
...Name ENG 106 Professor 13 June 2011 The Linkage between “Teddy” and “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” J.D. Salinger’s stories “Teddy” and “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” share similarities between the main characters, the tragic fate of the main characters, and the author’s continued theme of the shallowness that existed in American culture in the 1950’s. In another of Salinger’s stories “Seymour: an Introduction,” it is mentioned that Seymour’s brother Buddy wrote “Teddy,” and described Teddy as having Seymour’s eyes (Kaufman 132). Buddy also says the people tell him his stories are all about Seymour, which further suggests a link between the two characters (Kaufman 132). Seymour and Teddy are both outcasts that share their lives with people that they are emotionally disconnected from. They are unable to assimilate into the world around them and therefore their stories come to a similar conclusion. Seymour and Teddy share many similarities that lead the reader to assume Salinger was attempting to provide a linkage between the stories. Seymour appears to be mild mannered though it is obvious he is disturbed mentally. He lives in isolation from his wife and from others in his social circle. Even doctors that are treating him cannot understand or help him recover. His wife dismisses Seymour’s mental stability in her conversation with her mother, and is more concerned with talking about the psychiatrist’s drinking habits and his wife’s ugly dress, than to ask him questions...
Words: 1579 - Pages: 7
...Search Results a Character Analysis On Kerima Polotan-Tuvera's The Virgin www.termpaperwarehouse.com › English and Literature Feb 15, 2014 - Read this essay on A Character Analysis on Kerima Polotan-Tuvera's the Virgin . Come browse our large digital warehouse of free sample ... Kerima Polotan Tuvera's The Virgin: The Feminist Approach ... ezinearticles.com › Book Reviews › Short Stories Mar 31, 2014 - Kerima Polotan Tuvera was a renowned Filipino author. ... and discovery of the story or any kind of literary piece using character analysis. lit102: philippine literature: The Virgin by Kerima Polotan lit102.blogspot.com/2007/08/virgin-by-kerima-polotan.html The title of Kerima Polotan's "The Virgin" gives us the subject-virginity, female virginity, a cherished value of Filipino Male culture. By presenting its protagonist as ... The Virgin By Kerima Polotan Tuvera Story Analysis Free ... www.studymode.com/.../the-virgin-by-kerima-polotan-tuvera-story-anal... The Virgin by Kerima Polotan-Tuvera Kerima Polotan-Tuvera's “The Virgin” is a short story that is centered on two characters namely Miss Mijares and The ... Analysis Of The Short Story Th Virgin By Kerima Polotan ... www.studymode.com/.../analysis-of-the-short-story-th-virgin-by-kerima-... The Virgin by Kerima Polotan-Tuvera Kerima Polotan-Tuvera's “The Virgin” is a short story that is centered on two characters namely Miss Mijares and The ... ...
Words: 509 - Pages: 3
...Brooklynn Stilwell Dr. Redfield English 112- 20 November 2014 MLA Annotated Bibliography: Rhetorical Analysis; the Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin, characters, setting. “KateChopinorg. Kate Chopin International Society. N.d. web. 20 Nov. 2014. http://www.katechopin.org/the-story-of-an-hour/ This website is from the Author herself. There are many beneficially things from this website. She has a list of characters, the time and place, the themes, when this book was published, etc. It has a lot of helpful information and the story behind this story. I thought what was really neat on this website was there is a place for a question and answer box. This is a very important source because this particular website was written by the author of the short story I chose. There are many websites that can be helpful to have credible sources. But, when you have a source that is from the author herself, it is helpful and more credible. Lorcher, Trent “The Story of an Hour”: Analysis of the symbols & Irony.” Bright Hub Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Nov. 2014. http://www.brighthubeducation.com/homework-help-literature/60196-the-story-of-an-hour-irony-and-symbolism/ This educational website out of the many that I read over, was informative. As many of the websites state, the symbolism in this story is not as obvious as you may assume it is. Reading this states that the initial heart condition that Mrs. Mallard has is a symbol of...
Words: 664 - Pages: 3
