...Alex Ortega Dr. Collar English 1302 16 November 2014 O’Connor Reflected In Her Short Stories Flannery O’Connor is considered by many in the world of literature to be one of the greatest authors of short stories in the twentieth century. She has the ability to present life’s moral and faith bound conflicts to readers in a profound way. Her own conflicts in life play a very significant role in the way she sees the world. O’Connor’s life and her faith play a key role in her short stories. Born Mary Flannery O’Connor on March 25, 1925 in Savannah Georgia, she is the only child of Edward and Regina O’Connor. O’Connor attended Catholic School until the age of fifteen when her father died of lupus. She finished her High School years at Peabody High School in Georgia where she also went on to attend the Georgia State College for Women. Beyond Georgia State O’Connor continues her education in literature at the University of Iowa where she receives her M.F.A. degree. Afterwards she would tour the country visiting several universities giving lectures and reading her short stories. O’Connor writes two novels and many short stories before diagnosis with lupus herself followed by her death on August 3, 1964 (420 -426). Flannery O'Connor having been raised by catholic parents and attended faith based grammar and high schools tells how deeply rooted her faith is in the following statement from her own book Mystery and Manners, "...for me the meaning of life is centered in our Redemption...
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...experiment only contains two dependent variables, one dependent variable being the sex label and the other dependent variable being the gender pronouns. Participants The participants were all close friends or family of 1st year psychology students studying at Teesside University. In total there were six participants, four of which were female and 2 male. The age range of participants was 23-71 years old with a mean of 41.00. Each participant completed consent forms to adhere to The SSS&L ethics committee who approved this study. Materials The stimulus used in this experiment was a picture of a soft toy, participants were provided with a pen and paper to describe the toy. There where two questions used in the experiment to obtain gender bias results. Certain inanimate words where used within the first part of the study in order not to try and manipulate the participant’s way of thinking about gender of the soft toy. Procedure The researcher explained all procedures before experiment commenced. Participants were then presented with a picture of a soft toy, they were then asked to write 3 or 4 sentences describing the beginning of a story about the toy, using inanimate language. After completion of the short story, they were then asked a question of “State whether the animal is a boy or a girl?” The last question then asked the participants “Did you use male (he/his/ him), female (she/hers/her) or neutral (it) pronouns in the story?” All participants were debriefed...
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...Task B Ursela Le Guin encourages us examine economic and social class identity in her short story, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. The story is about a fairy tale like society whose sublime existence relies solely on a mistreated child forced to live in deplorable conditions. The citizens of Omela know that the child exists in these conditions, and they know that without the child the blissful lives they lead would cease to exist. The child’s identity represents the poor, blue collar, lower class in Western societies exploited and under paid by the wealthy, upper class and large corporations. The happiness of the rich and powerful majority is dependent upon the under paid, over worked, and exploited minority. Le Guin illustrated this when she states, “It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science” (Le Guin, 1973, p.5). The author also lets us know that the child is better off in these heinous conditions and would be unable to thrive if let go. She states, “It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of treatment. Indeed, after so long it would probably be wretched without excrement to sit in” (Le Guin, 1973, p.5). Le Guin identifies with the co dependency of the economic and social classes. She shows us that they need each other in order to exist. Task C ...
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...Student Professor English date Jerry and Molly and Sam Growing up is a mandatory part of life and can be very overwhelming. There are situations and circumstances that can shape someone’s future and impact their life. These events can either be positive or negative. One event that has a negative impact on a person’s life is alcoholism. It changes the very essence of the family. The short story “Jerry and Molly and Sam” is about the main character Al and his family. The story reads as if the world is crashing down on Al with his personal and uncontrollable problems (Harrison 15). He is a severely depressed alcoholic (16). When his life starts spiraling out of control due to a turn of events, he puts blame on everyone else, expect himself. Alcoholism and depression do not mix and can ultimately break up a family. Al came very, very close to losing his. Alcoholism and depression doesn’t only effect Al, but his whole family as well. When Al was in fear of being laid off by his job, worried about financial issues, having an affair with a lonely woman, and issues with the new family pet, he turns to excessive drinking (18). During all of these events he never made himself accountable for these problems. So, he used the family dog, Suzy, as a scapegoat. He is doing this to Suzy only because he needed someone to blame and to take his frustration out on. Suzy was the easiest target because she was defenseless. Al is displacing his anger and resentment from his seemingly out...
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...displays the initial dependent human longing for protection and love in the presence of a mother. As the mother is everything a child needs when it is born, the mother also only needs the child in that moment. That bond is more precious than anything in the world, which is why every mother tries to have her children as close to her as she can. Every mother loves her child. They can argue, discuss intensely, the can even fight, but at the end of the day, a mother will always love her child. Because of the love, a mother has for her child; it is hard for her to let go. Some will tell their children how they feel, and some will just what do they think is the right thing for the child and hope that the child will understand. Motherly love is a topic we find in the short story “Where the Gods Fly”, written in 2012 by Jean Kwok. The short story is from the anthology “The Shortlist” which was one of the short stories that won The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award in 2012. Briefly, the short story is about a mother: fearful that she may be losing touch with her, and that she may be losing all that is inherent in her culture. A Chinese mother takes the drastic step of removing her daughter from ballet school. This paper contains an analysis and interpretation where part of the paper focuses on the structure of the story and the use of contrasts. The mother in the short story narrates the story, which means, the point of view in the short story is a limited omniscient...
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...It is normal for people to face obstacles in their lives that force them to grow up and mature. The protagonists Vita, from Wendy Kaufman’s short story “Helen on Eighty-Sixth Street”, and Lizabeth, in Eugenia W. Collier’s short story “Marigolds”, face similar challenges of maturing and taking on the responsibilities of being an adult. In both stories, the main characters find what is holding them back in their lives, whether it be the absence of a family member or poverty, and they work to remove it In Collier’s and Kaufman’s short stories, both authors reveal the importance of finding oneself through maturing; accepting new responsibilities will allow one to become a new independent person. In the story, “Helen on Eighty-Sixth Street”, the...
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...A Gab of Sky “It is dark, but the wrong dark. Something is wrong with the dark”, sounds the opening sentence in the short story “A Gab of Sky” which is written by Anna Hope in 2008. Ellie is parties all nights with some friends. In these parties Ellie and her friends take several drugs. Because of these parties and drugs and the alcohol, Ellie is having trouble getting up of her bed and do her assignments. Because she knows there will be consequences if Ellie does not make her assignments. “She needs to get some printer ink, if she's going to do this essay. And if not? Will they really kick her off the course? Or will she have to repeat the year?” (P.2, ll.47-48) In the short story we follow Ellie’s adventure, on her search for printer ink for the essay. Ellie’s adventure is located in London. Ellie is having a hard time to think straight and concentrate about her “mission”, to get the printer ink for her essay assignment. She gets distracted by things on her adventure, like the British Museum, she has never been there, so she decided to visit it. Ellie comes sometimes to the thought that she can’t do the assignment or get printer ink. And when these thought crosses her head, she is fading, getting grey. But the thoughts of that the University College London kicks her out frightens her and give her some kind of confidence to complete her mission. She can’t get her head together, all the pain is killing her; “Ellie's head is throbbing and her skull feels as though it might...
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...In Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour”, Louise Mallard is one of the main characters and one of the only that we get to know the most throughout the story. She is the main character, and the story focuses on her thoughts and feelings. At the end of the short story, Louise Mallard’s destiny does not end well when Chopin decides there is not another choice for her than death. “When the doctor came they said she had died of heart disease- of joy that kills” (Chopin 130). After acknowledging the news of her husband death’s, the thoughts and feelings she has while in front of her sister, Josephine, and her husband’s friend, Richard, are very different than the one she has while in her room by herself. Because of the way she acts and thinks, Louis Mallard’s death looks as pure disappointment of the loss of her thoughts about freedom. Her death is ironic because the tone of the last line, readers can tell that she did not die of a heart disease. Readers of the short story can assume she dies because in the beginning of the story, Louise is introduced as someone...
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...“August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury is a short story that takes place in an automated house where a family of four once lived. The family consisted of a girl, a boy, a mom and a dad, who all died from a nuclear bomb, the only memory they have is the imprints of them on the wall. The theme of the short story is about nature and technology. Bradbury shows the truth about humanity and how the human civilization is becoming too dependent on technology. The technology that ran the automated house was useful, perhaps, caring at times. The family used technology to protect themselves; not even a bird could touch the house. Since they were so unaware of their own surroundings, their lives were snatched away from them, because they did not pay attention to the nuclear threat. Bradbury also hints that humanity is putting too much faith in technology, which will destroy us. The automated house ran the family’s lives, but failed to protect them in the end. However, the technology did not acknowledge they were gone it kept on doing its duties like nothing happened. The story gives the reader a sense that if humanity were to become extinct, nature and technology would not care it would just carry on, there is no contrast between the society they lived in, and the one we live in today. In our society, humans simply forget about the pollutions and the natural disasters that is destroying the world, such as, earthquakes, and hurricanes. It shows that humans have become too...
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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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...Fiction and the Work Environment Paper When reading a short story, poem, or even novel the author often attempts to provide the audience with some type of personal connection to a variety of components to the reading. An author may select very personable, hardworking, and unselfish characters to allow the audience to connect in some way with the main or subordinate characters; or the author may elect to provide a common type of setting to provide the readers an additional way to connect to the literature. Mona Simpson’s short story entitled “Coins” (Scheckner & Boyes 2008) is a story which provides many opportunities for the reader to make some type of personal connection by providing a story of an untraditional family setting. Simpson’s story provided a few important lessons that people need to keep in mind as they go about their daily lives. The short story sheds light to what should be important in a person’s life; what should be a priority, the lessons taught to children through hard work and love. After reading Simpson’s “Coins” I was face to face with the lessons that the story presented, forcing me to take a look at my priorities and family, thus allowing me a moment to reflect on what I truly cherish in my life, which is the love for my family and the importance of teaching my children the qualities of hard work in order to appreciate all that we have. The story of Lola, the housekeeper/nanny, was one that I was easy to make personal connections to and provided...
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...experience losing an acquaintance. To loose someone you love can be difficult to overcome. The question is how we handle the loss of a loved one. In the short story, “No Angel” Bernie McGill tells about how a woman handle her grief after she has lost her whole family. As written previously, a woman loses her family tragically. The first family member she loses is her seven teen year old little brother, Robbie. He was murdered on a cold December night. After short six months, she loses her mother, who could not bear the grief of losing her only son. The only person, who is left in the woman’s life for now, is her father. Twenty-two years past the death of her mother, her father also passed away, because his lungs did not work anymore. The woman is now going through a very difficult time. The loss of her family, make her create her own vision of her dead family, so she can talk to them. The short story is told in first person narrative, where the narrator is our character. The point of view are limited because we do not hear the name of the woman, but we hear her inner and outer thoughts. Among other things, the short story says that the woman has a good lecturing job. We hear that she is attentive soft spoken and afraid of darkness. The composition is not chronological because there are flashback and flash forward. The story starts in media res where the ghost of her father visits her. “The first time I saw my father after he dies, I was in the shower […]( p. 1 l.1) The situation...
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...LECTURE 2 – POWELL THE WRITING PROCESS KINDS OF WRITING/DISCOURSE TYPES: THE BASIC PURPOSES OF WRITING ARE TO INFORM, TO PERSUADE, AND TO ENTERTAIN. Prose is ordinary written/spoken language without poetic structure. Prose that informs is called exposition/expository writing. Expository writing explains how things work, ideas, how to solve a problem, facts about everyday life, history, controversial issues. Expository writing is constructed LOGICALLY – organized around structures like cause and effect, true and false, less and more, positive and negative, general and specific, sequences or series of steps/procedures, chronology, etc. Ideas in exposition are moved along by connectives like therefore, however, but, in fact, and, for example. An example of expository writing is the information report – facts about a subject with descriptions, definitions and classifications, e.g. scientific reports or business reports with diagrams, technical language or jargon (words/expressions specific to a particular profession). Certain descriptive and narrative writing can also fall under the category of writing that informs. Descriptions of the details of experiences, people, places, situations, processes should be arranged into a meaningful pattern, and narration should give an account of related events/incidents as in a report and in a logical sequence. Prose that persuades is often called argumentative writing. The writer takes a stand, proving an opinion/argument...
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...Details in “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” The complicated details used by Ernest Hemingway made a stroke of genius of secrets in his story "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber". The anonymous secrets does not reveal itself to the reader until the end of the story, yet it leaves a lot to the imagination. At the end of the story Margaret Macomber kills her husband by accident, in order to save him from being attacked by an enormous Buffalo while trying to kill it in the safari in Africa. The anonymous secret is whether or not this killing was truly accidental, or premeditated with an accomplice Robert Wilson. If it would of to be considered premeditation; therefore, it would certainly have to be evidence in the story suggesting such, with a clear motive as well. What makes this story so unique is the conflict theories that Hemingway gives the reader a very virtuously instances that would lead the reader to create a standard motive, yet Hemingway shows the reader that this killing or accident could not have been premeditated. From a virtuously impartial analysis of the story, the reader would see far more evidence supporting the theory of a premeditated killing rather than an unintentional criminal act. The narrator of “The Short Happy Life”, Wilson, is very blunt, tough hunter and tourist. He is a realistic and static character whose awareness, thoughtful environment and impartiality to those around him greatly aid his telling of the story. His current custodies...
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...Danielle Evans, esteemed American fiction writer, portrays the ultimate form of sacrifice and selflessness in her intriguing short story, “Robert E. Lee Is Dead”. Throughout the story, Evans highlights the positive and negative effects of dependent relationships amongst best friends in a southern, lower-class setting. Her story demonstrates multiple instances of reliance, peer pressure, and loyalty, while also having an interesting and superior plot. Evans’ main characters, Geena and Crystal, grow together throughout the story, despite their opposite personalities. Geena, a troublesome teenager, becomes best friends with a smart, shy girl named Crystal. Their friendship faces multiple obstacles, yet each girl relies on the companionship...
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