...follow. Finally, it stopped. Layla and Ashlynn crept close enough to see what it was. It happened to be a grizzly bear. They ceased with fear. “I know you are there. You both fail at being sneaky.” Layla almost fainted. She whispered, “Did that bear just talk? It can’t be.” “Indeed I did, sweetheart.” “How can you talk?” Ashlynn demanded. “The same way you can, by opening my mouth. Humans are so naive to believe the conception that animals can’t talk.” Layla jumped back into the conversation. “Did you hear that awful scream?” “Yes.” “Do you know what happened?” Ashlynn asked. “No. You see when the scream took place, I was…uh…running…from a tiger. This must have been the fastest tiger alive.” “There are tigers in these woods?” “Of course.” “Well, why were you running from the tiger?” “Because….um…….I…..hit his brother. Yea, I hit his brother, so he started chasing...
Words: 715 - Pages: 3
...It also deals with the boundary between fiction and reality which can be quite blurred especially at this transitioning age. While fiction can help us understanding the world around us, the short story also stresses the importance of life experience in order to fully understand the fiction. These are all things the main character, Tess, has to deal with. Tess is playing the Nurse in her school’s staging of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. She is a fifteen year-old girl who lives in Winetka with her parents. Her father is a priest and her mother owns a fabric store. It is a very isolated community which bores and frustrates Tess: “Neither of them […] know what it’s like to have your whole world contained in the tenblock radius of the church, school, home, and the fabric store. This, I know, is why I act. I have to feel what it’s like in somebody else’s skin.”1 Tess desperately wants to leave Winetka and craves a more exiting existence in New York: “I want to worry about rent and the smelly man who sits on my doorstep. I want to have three lovers at three different theatres, one suicidal and the other two Caribbean”2 This sounds like something out of a book and Tess is definitely quite inspired by fiction, which makes her despite her own reality. Therefore she tries to escape the monotony of her community through acting, but this time finds it hard to identify with her character, the Nurse. It is inexplicable to Tess why the Nurse would care so much about the Capulets...
Words: 1735 - Pages: 7
...story A Sorrowful Woman by Gail Godwin you have family: wife, husband, and son. What makes this family different is that the mother is very mentally ill, she progresses and becomes worse and worse until the point she dies. She dies from mental exhaustion. When her body is discovered the young son’s response is “Can we eat the Turkey for supper? (Godwin 43) When I first read that I thought, “What a strange and emotionless response especially from a child.”. Most children would have cried, asked “Is mommy going to wake up? Is she okay?”. Maybe a normal child would have run over and thrown their body on their mothers, similar to what the husband did. “The father put down his face into her fresh-washed hair” (Godwin43); clearly he was grieving. The son on the other hand just wanted to know about dinner. He displayed no sense of what had just happened to his mother, or that he was never going to see again. He saw probably her as the-woman-he-calls-mom-and-lives-in-a-room-by-herself-who-he-used-to-see-at-bedtime. I believe the son acted this way because of the extremely distant relationship he shared with her. He never played with his mother, he only said goodnight and before she was shown pictures he made. He did not give the pictures to her himself, if he did it cause her too much anxiety (Godwin 40). Even just seeing him play from a window with his father or nanny set her off into mental instability (Godwin42). He was pushed so far away from his mother because of...
Words: 723 - Pages: 3
...Violence in a story makes the tale more captivating to the reader. Eventially Palamon manages to escape the prison and stumbles upon Arcite who reveals his love for Emily not knowing he is being heard. Hearing Arcite profess his love for Emily, Palamon becomes overwhelmed with anger. Preparing to fight, Palamon approaches Arcite and threatens to kill him. Their feeling for each-other are mutual and Arcite fetches weapons for them to use. They begin fighting over Emily yet again, cousin against cousin. “You might judge that Palamon in his fighting were a mad lion and Arcite a cruel tiger…up to the ankles they fought in blood.” (47) The drama increases expontentially while the close cousins turn their backs on each-other over a shared love. They are willing to die and kill their loved one to achieve a girl they don’t even know. Chaucer describes the cousins as wild animals to give the reader a glimps of the violent fighting going on. Chaucer uses violence to captivate the audience and pull them into the...
Words: 1288 - Pages: 6
...280113 Normality just went out of the window for you, Didn’t it? No-one really panicked until that day The day that you got in your car But never came back You drove all the way to where you remembered Then walked the rest of the way Pretty far from home if you ask me That’s where you’re supposed to be… Home Our lives came spiralling down Nearly a week after you left When a man in a suit as dark as night Came through the door with a face Full of regret He bowed his head And told us you’d gone to a better place They tried their “hardest” he said Well Their hardest wasn’t good enough Forget the crimes I say Forget those who may have wronged String up the real criminals The ones who drive our loved ones away Find my Granddad’s silent assassin Please? Please! Lock him up Catch this killer Dementia is his name 01 Coffee licked the lips Searing pain A jolt to her sockets Extra wattage She envisaged a bitter strain Eyes shook Shattered Bitter, unlike god She’s kicked and bloody Another bolt shook her And encouraged walking 02 Opium lock Magic! Rebirth? I’m in pain Utopia surrounds Diamonds love and land I’d bow to the breeze and sun Light glistens in my hair Gold spell over the rocks of the kingdom No! Broken glass Beetles scatter over the hills Not calm, no serenity Orange crackle Gone! ...
Words: 1224 - Pages: 5
...Fitzgerald’s Bio When they met again, two days later, it was Gatsby who was breathless, who was, somehow, betrayed. Her porch was bright with the bought luxury of star-shine; the wicker of the settee squeaked fashionably as she turned toward him and he kissed her curious and lovely mouth. She had caught a cold, and it made her voice huskier and more charming than ever, and Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.--Ch. 8 Fitzgerald's own tempestuous relationship with his wife Zelda would be reflected in his many short stories and novels, first serialised in such literary journals as Scribner'sand the Saturday Evening Post. Their lives are a classic study of the American Dream in all its highs, lows, excesses, and joys. Highly lauded as a writer, Fitzgerald was often mired in debt because of his and Zelda's lavish lifestyle, living beyond their means.The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald's characters Daisy and Tom Buchanan, Myrtle, Jay Gatsby, and Nick Carraway epitomise the Jazz Age but is has also remained timeless in its examination of man's obsessions with and need for money, power, knowledge, and hope. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (named after Francis Scott Key, author of the United States' national anthem "The Star Spangled Banner") was born into an upper-middle class family on 24 September 1896 in St...
Words: 1557 - Pages: 7
...the language spoken locally? How did you feel? How did you manage to communicate? Now read the text 1. When I was a girl of about twelve, I used to stay in a village in north Karnataka with my grandparents. Those days, the transport system was not very good, so we used to get the morning paper only in the afternoon. The weekly magazine used to come one day late. All of us would wait eagerly for the bus, which used to come with the papers, weekly magazines and the post. At that time, Triveni was a very popular writer in the Kannada language. She was a wonderful writer. Her style was easy to read and very convincing. Her stories usually dealt with complex psychological problems in the lives of ordinary people and were always very interesting. Unfortunately for Kannada literature, she died very young. Even now, after forty years, people continue to appreciate her novels. One of her novels, called Kashi Yatre, was appearing as a serial in the Kannada weekly Karmaveera then. It is the story of an old lady and her ardent desire to go to Kashi or Varanasi. Most Hindus believe that going to Kashi and worshipping Lord Vishweshwara is the ultimate punya. This old lady also believed in this, and CBSE 3. 2. 3. ardent: showing strong feelings 3 Fiction her struggle to go there was described in that novel. In the story, there was also a young orphan girl who falls in love but there was no...
Words: 2919 - Pages: 12
...Myths The Fox with the Nine-Tails The Fox with the Nine-Tails – Korea In the spirit of Halloween, I asked a teacher if Korea had any scary stories. “Kumiho, the Fox with the Nine-Tails”, he said. Of course my interest was peaked and so he said, “Kumiho is a nine-tailed fox who eats the hearts of humans in order to survive. She digs up graves sometimes to find hearts or attacks men.” He couldn’t tell me much more so I dug up some info. Unfortunately it all seems like the information is taken from a commentary on a book that holds the oral stories of Korea, Compendium of Korean Oral Literature. This is more or less taken from Wiki and all other sources that say the same basic information: A fox that lives a thousand years turns into a Kumiho, like its Japanese and Chinese counterparts (the kitsune and the huli jing). The current Japanese kitsune can sometimes be evil and sometimes good, but the Korean counterpart over the years has become a symbol of evil. Legends tell that while the Kumiho is capable transforming its appearance, there is still something persistently fox-like about it. In Transformation of the Kimono, a Kumiho transforms into an identical likeness of a bride at a wedding. Not even the bride’s mother can tell the difference. The Kumiho is only discovered when her clothes are removed. As the mythology of the Kumiho evolved it was later believed that a Kumiho had to consume human hearts in order to survive. Another version of the mythology, however...
Words: 6342 - Pages: 26
...A SORROWFUL WOMAN The following short story is a study of the gradual disintegration of a human personality. In keeping with the "once upon a time" lead, the style is similar to a fairy tale except that "happily ever after" does not happen. The reader should consider the monotonously repetitive tasks taken over by the husband and later shared with the live in girl and compare these with the usual tasks of men in their jobs at the office or wherever. Then, consider how all of this relates to the final "legacy" of food, laundry, and sonnets. Once upon a time there was a wife and mother one too many times One winter evening she looked at them: the husband durable, receptive, gentle; the child a tender golden three. The sight of them made her so sad and sick she did not want to see them ever again. She told the husband these thoughts. He was attuned to her; he understood such things. He said he understood. What would she like him to do? "If you could put the boy to bed and read him the story about the monkey who ate too many bananas, I would be grateful." "Of course," he said. "Why, that's a pleasure." And he sent her off to bed. The next night it happened again. Putting the warm dishes away in the cupboard, she turned and saw the child's grey eyes approving her movements. In the next room was the man, his chin sunk in the open collar of his favorite wool shirt. He was dozing after her good supper. The shirt was the grey of the child's trusting gaze. She began yelping without...
Words: 3328 - Pages: 14
...a clock-ghost in the long halls of memory, like a hive of intellectual bees swarming after the Spirit of Summers Lost. Sometimes still I feel the smile I learned from her, printed on my cheek at three in the deep morn ... All right, all right! you cry, what was it like the day your damned and wondrous-dreadful-loving Grandma was born? It was the week the world ended ... Our mother was dead. One late afternoon a black car left Father and the three of us stranded on our own front drive staring at the grass, thinking: That's not our grass. There are the croquet mallets, balls, hoops, yes, just as they fell and lay three days ago when Dad stumbled out on the lawn, weeping with the news. There are the roller skates that belonged to a boy, me, who will never be that young again. And yes, there the tire- swing on the old oak, but Agatha afraid to swing. It would surely break. It would fall. And the house? Oh, God ... We peered through the front door, afraid of the echoes we might find confused in the halls; the sort of clamor that...
Words: 12306 - Pages: 50
...1 It was Wang Lung's marriage day. At first, opening his eyes in the blackness of the curtains about his bed, he could not think why the dawn seemed different from any other. The house was still except for the faint, gasping cough of his old father, whose room was opposite to his own across the middle room. Every morning the old man's cough was the first sound to be heard. Wang Lung usually lay listening to it and moved only when he heard it approaching nearer and when he heard the door of his father's room squeak upon its wooden hinges. But this morning he did not wait. He sprang up and pushed aside the curtains of his bed. It was a dark, ruddy dawn, and through a small square hole of a window, where the tattered paper fluttered, a glimpse of bronze sky gleamed. He went to the hole and tore the paper away. "It is spring and I do not need this," he muttered. He was ashamed to say aloud that he wished the house to look neat on this day. The hole was barely large enough to admit his hand and he thrust it out to feel of the air. A small soft wind blew gently from the east, a wind mild and murmurous and full of rain. It was a good omen. The fields needed rain for fruition. There would be no rain this day, but within a few days, if this wind continued, there would be water. It was good. Yesterday he had said to his father that if this brazen, glittering sunshine continued, the wheat could not fill in the ear. Now it was as if Heaven had chosen this day to wish him well. Earth...
Words: 115121 - Pages: 461
...The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald Download free eBooks of classic literature, books and novels at Planet eBook. Subscribe to our free eBooks blog and email newsletter. Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry ‘Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!’ —THOMAS PARKE D’INVILLIERS The Great Gatsby Chapter 1 I n my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’ He didn’t say any more but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon—for the intimate revelations of young men or at least...
Words: 49879 - Pages: 200
...THE DAY THEY BURNED THE BOOKS by Jean Rhys - Dominica Source: Tigers Are Better-Looking (1960s, collection of stories). My friend Eddie was a small, thin boy. You could see the blue veins in his wrists and temples. People said that he had consumption and wasn't long for this world. I loved, but sometimes despised him. His father, Mr Sawyer, was a strange man. Nobody could make out what he was doing in our part of the world at all. He was not a planter or a doctor or a lawyer or a banker. He didn't keep a store. He wasn't a schoolmaster or a government official. He wasn't — that was the point — a gentleman. We had several resident romantics who had fallen in love with the moon on the Caribees — they were all gentlemen and quite unlike Mr Sawyer who hadn't an 'h' in his composition. Besides, he detested the moon and everything else about the Caribbean and he didn't mind telling you so. He was agent for a small steamship line which in those days linked up Venezuela and Trinidad with the smaller islands, but he couldn't make much out of that. He must have a private income, people decided, but they never decided why he had chosen to settle in a place he didn't like and to marry a coloured woman. Though a decent, respectable, nicely educated coloured woman, mind you. Mrs Sawyer must have been very pretty once but, what with one thing and another, that was in days gone by. When Mr Sawyer was drunk — this often happened — he used to be very rude to her. She never answered...
Words: 2236 - Pages: 9
...One of the main themes of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is the problem of evil. In this chapter Ivan makes the cases that God could not possibly exist given the suffering in the world. Well, not exactly but something along those lines, you’ll have to read it to see exactly what he says. This is a useful piece to read as it takes us beyond the intellectual discussion of the logical compatibility or incompatibility of certain claims and forces us to actually confront the suffering, feel it, and struggle with how hard it is to reconcile the suffering in the world with the existence of a loving God. Part II. Book V: Pro and Contra Chapter 4: Rebellion “I MUST make one confession” Ivan began. “I could never understand how one can love one’s neighbours. It’s just one’s neighbours, to my mind, that one can’t love, though one might love those at a distance. I once read somewhere of John the Merciful, a saint, that when a hungry, frozen beggar came to him, he took him into his bed, held him in his arms, and began breathing into his mouth, which was putrid and loathsome from some awful disease. I am convinced that he did that from ‘self-laceration,’ from the self-laceration of falsity, for the sake of the charity imposed by duty, as a penance laid on him. For anyone to love a man, he must be hidden, for as soon as he shows his face, love is gone.” “Father Zossima has talked of that more than once,” observed Alyosha; “he, too, said that the face of a man often hinders many people...
Words: 5076 - Pages: 21
...The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald Download free eBooks of classic literature, books and novels at Planet eBook. Subscribe to our free eBooks blog and email newsletter. Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry ‘Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!’ —THOMAS PARKE D’INVILLIERS The Great Gatsby Chapter 1 I n my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’ He didn’t say any more but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon—for the intimate...
Words: 49879 - Pages: 200
