...Big in This” and “Funny in Farsi,” gives reader a glimpse into the real world of first and second generation Islamic Immigrants. DMHLBIT describes a Muslim Australian teens’ journey from childhood to adulthood. The plot begins when Eleventh grader, Randa, begins wearing the hijab full-time and follows the backlash from her family, school and crush. FIF is coming of age memoir that follows Fizoozeh Dumas in her journey from second grade immigrant into her interracial marriage. The memoir is written as short stories; these give reader a glimpse into the everyday struggles and joys of being a first generation immigrant. FIF and DMHLBIT debate inter growth to physical Growth while both show casing strong female character that...
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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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...I believe the two story features that are most essential to developing and telling a successful short story are descriptive detail and emphasis on a single character. Considering that these stories are short in nature these features, I believe, most greatly help to expedite the author’s intent. In short stories there is little time to fully develop more than one character. One character must drive the story without much aid from other characters, so descriptive detail has to help fill in the blanks. Emphasis on a single character is also vital. Contrasting with an antagonist or ushering in some form of conflict helps to develop a character without taking the attention away from them. This contrast brings out character flaws or highlights which makes the character and story more dynamic. Descriptive detail is highlighted in “Royal Beatings”. In this short story the detail helps to fill-out the character, to develop her; to give you a peak into her psyche. Rose’s imagination gives a great example of descriptive detail as it relates to her beatings “the blood came leaping out like banners” is a line that resonated with me. There is a sense of theatricality to the part she has to play in this story; “She plays his victim with self-indulgence that arouses, and maybe hopes to arouse” is a line that also lends heed to this notion. The descriptive detail in her thoughts are so vivid that you can’t help but visualize what she is thinking. You can understand and relate to her...
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...Guy de Maupassant, you certainly encounter surprise and anguish. This short story, The Necklace, is one that causes the reader to shake their head and embrace honesty over pride. Mme. Mathilde Loisel is a lovely woman that, forced by fate, “The idea that what people did and what happened to them were determined by natural forces external to themselves” (Corrie, 2013), to learn a hard life lesson in modesty. The narrator uses the setting of 19th century Paris, France, as an underlying way to narrow the idea of beauty and elegance. It is the need of obtaining this elegant lifestyle that causes the Loisels to meet with their dooming debt. The plot is essential in the world of fiction. It is a sequence of interrelated, conflicting action and events that typically build to a climax and bring about a resolution. Mme. Loisel's night of wonder ends when she returns home with her husband. “She took off the wraps with which she had covered her shoulders, before the mirror, so as to see herself once more in her glory.” Here we see the vanity in her character. “But suddenly she gave a cry. She no longer had the necklace around her throat!” Now our plot is unveiled. The climactic moment that will change the next ten years of her life, and her husband's too. “She turned to him, terror–stricken:—"I—I—I have not Mme. Forester's diamond necklace!” He jumped up, frightened—.”(Clugston 2010) The Guy de Maupassant story is written in the third-person objective point of view. The narrator is...
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...those topics there are different styles and moods or feelings that a style generates with solely the written word. Some genres that might stand a chance and sometimes seem to stand above all may be fiction and/or romance. But there is a new dark horse in the game; his name is Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s writing style and stories have survived long decades and centuries from book bags, libraries, to containers. Now we enjoy and...
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...Marcus Bryant English 1302 Spring 2012 Kafka’s Dream World In his short story “The Metamorphosis,” Franz Kafka tells the story of Gregor Samsa, a traveling sales clerk whom one day awakens to find himself transformed into a giant insect. His state prevents him immediately from living the type of life he would otherwise have been leading, causing a series of reactions from himself and his family that would eventually lead to his demise. Not only is the this short story a precisely worded, tense modern fairy tale that shows Kafka’s imagination, but it also acts as a vessel of analysis of not only Kafka’s personal life, but how he felt about his life and the times that he lived in. In “The Metamorphosis,” Kafka creates a dreamlike parallel between the world he has created and his own reality, historically and symbolically, and uses this to criticize himself and the world around him. Kafka connects the reality of his life to the fiction of his story to create a sense of reality in the dreamy feel created by the text of “The Metamorphosis.” Dr. Ianc Lulian writes about the many of the commonalities between Kafka and the character Samsa, especially around the time of Kafka’s life in which he wrote this particular story. (424) Kafka worked a job that he considered a waste of time, much like he describes the dead-end sales clerk position Samsa worked, according to Lulian. (424) Kafka works at the sacrifice of himself, much like Samsa, to provide for his family that he even lived...
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...“Animation”, the first word that arises within their minds is surely to be cartoons, in which they will conclude that all animation is for children. However if one pries in deeper and manages to see through the eyes of an experienced animator, they would understand that animation is more broad then they originally have believed. Furthermore, the focus of Japanese Animation “Anime”, can be explored in depth to show how its popularity managed to spread throughout the world beyond its origin. Anime in essence, is distinctly unique and easily distinguishable from “Western Cartoons” including the style of art, but most importantly the depth of plot due to the fact that much of Anime is influenced directly by Japanese culture. Death, angst, violence and the complexity of human emotions are frequent in Anime which helped its influences to stretch to adult audiences, broadening their market for all age groups. Some key models and figureheads of Anime include Osamu Tezuka, referred to as “the father of Anime” and Hayao Miyazaki, both of whom greatly helped achieve the success of Anime even outside of Japan. Conventions celebrating Japanese Animation is becoming more common, one of the biggest outside of Japan being Anime Expo in Los Angeles, the largest fan-base convention in North America with forty thousand attendees each year. Despite the variety of criticisms and hardships that Anime has received through time since its beginning in history, its influence has...
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...Barthelmeís mid-career novel The Dead Father (1975) not only represents the high-water mark of his skill as a technical master of postmodern prose, but that it also embodies the central neurosis/inspiration driving nearly all his work, from his first published story, ìMe and Miss Mandibleî in 1961, to his last novel, Paradise (1986).(Though The King is mentioned by Klinkowitz, it is clear he considers it to be barely part of the Barthelme canon.)For Klinkowitz, Barthelmeís near-obsessive goal as a post-modernist is to ìburyî his modernist father.For instance, Klinkowitz writes that, while at first glance ìMe and Miss Mandibleî seems a perfectly Kafkaesque tale of a man awakening to grotesquely transformed circumstances, in fact it is ì[f]ree of overweening anxiety and not painfully dedicated to existential questioning or angst ...î[1] ì[Barthelmeís] first inclination is to laugh at rather than flail angrily against the forms and themes of an earlier style ...î[2]Klinkowitz cites ìThe Indian Uprisingî and ìThe Balloonî as oft-anthologized stories which epitomize Barthelmeís work prior to The Dead Father; pieces which came to represent the postmodern short story with all its socially savvy and technically sophisticated style, yet stories whose primary tone is comic rather than the stilted existential dread of Barthelmeís modernist precursors.Thus anxiety of influence is defused...
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...Final Exam Essay: The Sammy in Me When I first read the short story “A & P” several moths ago, I remember feeling very identified with Sammy because I felt that I would have done the same thing if I had been working in the store. A 19-year-old cashier at an A & P supermarket, and the narrator of "A & P," he quits his job in a fit of teen angst and sexual attraction. I feel that Sammy and I connect because every male teen suffers from teenage angst at some point or another, especially when it comes to girls. Sammy notices everything around him, and he drinks in every detail of the girls’ physical appearance, from the texture and patterns of their bathing suits to the different boundaries of their tan lines (Updike 311). When I first met my former girlfriend, I too did the same thing; I began taking in how wonderful she was and the way she spoke gave me insights into her life. Sammy’s insights are equivalent to my insights in that both of us have focused observations of the opposite sex to whom we are attracted. I felt superior to others when I was dating my ex-girlfriend and the irony of it is that Sammy also felt the same sense of superiority. However in the eyes of the girl, Queenie, he must seem just like Stokesie and Lengel. Sammy to the girl, just like me to my former girlfriend, was just another guy. He needed to do something brave to win the girl’s attention and possibly love. His desire to set himself apart from Stokesie—to prove that he is different—compels...
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...“Fish Tank” by Andrea Arnolds “Fish Tank” is a film directed by Andrea Arnold and starring newcomer Katie Jarvis and Michael Fassbender. It chronicles teenage angst in poverty-stricken Britain. Anytime I watch movie I always go by the rule that first 10 minutes of a film must do something to draw me into the story. If I think of going to the bathroom or being hungry, chances are I will not enjoy it. I bring this up because in Mia's world, things were taking such and immediate turn from the start that I no time to think about anything else because I became genuinely interested in what the will happen to this girl. The film is loaded with amazingly memorable characters. The film stars eighteen-year-old Katie Jarvis as fifteen-year-old hip-hop dance enthusiast Mia Williams. Mia is a girl who is so fed-up with the world around her she's at war with it. She's friendless, has a younger sister whom I'm quite certain is possessed by Satan, and a mother who's a drunk, a hussy, and would just as soon slap Mia as look at her. She's a volatile girl in a volatile world. Within the first two minutes we learn a ton about Mia as a person. She makes a phone call to her friend -- a friend we find out quickly - Mia has lost to a falling out because she can't control her temper. After the phone call, she jogs to the same friend's house, and throws rocks at the girl's dad to ensure he leaves a message for his daughter. Immediately after this, Mia gets into a fight with a group...
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...father’s freshly murdered body into the basement and emerges with a neglected kitchen appliance. This subtle gesture marks the beginning of a killing spree that will drive Kit and Holly across the apathetic plans of South Dakota. A rampage that fictionalizes the true life story of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate as a violent portrait of myth and meaninglessness. Asserting its difference amongst other crime films,Terrence Malick’s Badlands departs significantly from classical Hollywood norms through conventions that portray a narrative in self conscious ways. In a quiet, subtle, and oblique way it transcends New Wave films by being radically different and...
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...The red line fremlæggelse - noter 3 hovedpersoner - fortælleren skifter synsvinkel gennem hele historien. 1. Vi får ikke hans navn, men han er en kikset type = the nameless man.. “He dreamt that one day he might go on television, do his routine and win a big prize, enough money to be able to afford to go to America, maybe even visit where Bob lived.” Tænker meget over hvordan han ser ud: “Twice a day he washed his hair, so that it gleamed like precious metal.” - Hans karaoke bliver udskiftet med en DJ.. :“Why couldn’t people just leave things alone, instead of wanting to change, change, change all the time?” - Afhængig af sit udseende, og af at blive set og få opmærksomhed /Narciscisme: “Desperate, he’d searched for another pub.” - Han tror han er bedre end alle andre (arrogant) = “The pub just filled with up with drunks, drug addicts, girls with dirty hair. He hated these people.” - Ser på Berto på en rascistisk måde (racist) = v“Who the fuck did he think he was, the greasy ape? Look at him. He was just the type who was ruining London”. 2. Berto = italiener som følger gamle traditioner og ikke forstår det moderne samfund. “She’d told him about something called a “trial separation” and an “open relationship”, and even though he looked the words up, he still didn’t understand what they meant.” ————— Er bange for “the modern society”. ———————...
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...Analysis on Son of Satan by Charles Bukowski, 1982 Hej skat. Du kan lige læse den igennem. Jeg ved ikke, om der er noget, der skal slettes eller tilføjes. Mangler din del til at kunne skrive den helt færdig. Elsker dig Are we born evil? Or is it something we are raised to be? Is it possible to be truly evil, do horrible things, show no remorse and not feel bad or regret your wrongdoing? Is anger such a strong feeling in some people that they have to act upon it in such ways that there is no turning back? And can a person really feel such hate for another human being just for behaving differently? These are all questions that start to form inside your head after reading the short story Son of Satan written in 1982 by Charles Bukowski. The story takes place in a small middle-class-type neighborhood near a larger city. It is summer, school is out and a group of three boys; the narrator, Morgan and Hass, in their early teens are sitting on the grass of the narrator’s backyard smoking cigarettes, talking about another boy, Simpson, who has claimed to have had sex with a girl under the house of the narrator. This leads to the decision of punishing him for lying: (Page 39, line 20-25) Though they are no more than eleven to twelve years of age, they do not behave as children like we know them. They do not play hide and seek or run about laughing or play video games. They swear, smoke and act like the grownups they see in video games. The protagonist does not mention his name...
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...Nothing engages a reader more than making them laugh. As an author, Flannery O’Connor has always been a master at utilizing humor in her work in order to draw her readers deeper into her stories and characters. Catherine Sustana wrote in an article about Flannery O’Connor’s use of humor that “because O’Connor’s humor is so engaging, it allows her stories to pull in readers who might not want to read…her stories at all” (1). Because of this, O’Connor has also attracted a sizeable amount of attention from scholars who seek to further analyze her humor in her writing. Through her exquisite use of Bergsonian humor in her writing, Flannery O’Connor succeeds at enticing her readers and scholars alike. Only the greatest and most renowned authors can pique the interest of other authors and scholars to the point...
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...2015 September 17 Araby: In James Joyce’s short story, “Araby,” an anonymous young boy narrates his attempt at abandoning an austere existence in exchange for a more exciting lifestyle; his opportunity arrives in the form of Mangan’s sister, whose charm persuades the narrator into traveling to the bazaar. Throughout the story, Joyce incorporates contrast in his setting to display polarizing moods. The intricate descriptions of the setting emphasize the narrator’s monotonous life in his neighborhood, the change in perspective caused by his love, and the heavy symbolism behind the closing bazaar. Joyce begins his story with descriptions of the lifeless street on which the narrator lives, creating a despondent mood. In the opening sentence, the narrator states that the street is quiet, “except at the hour when the Christian Brother’s School set the boys free” (1). This depiction not only asserts the generally desolate atmosphere of the setting, but also suggests the narrator’s mundane life in his neighborhood. He goes on to note the uninhabited house at the end of the street, along with other houses that “gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces” (1). The portrayal of the houses as having “imperturbable faces” conveys the uneventfulness of the narrator’s life. Everyday, the narrator and his friends run through the “dark muddy lanes behind the houses,” to the “dark dripping gardens,” into the “dark odorous stables” (1). Here, the repetition of “dark” depicts the...
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