...Growing up is difficult; everyone can agree on that. It's something that everyone has to go through, but it is needed to become a more emotionally mature adult. The narrator of "Once More to the Lake" realizes how much he has grown up when he takes his son to "a camp on a lake in Maine". The narrator grows up, but everything at the camp is mostly the same. Symbolism of the setting, characterization, and the structure of the story, reveals a theme of growing up is difficult to accept until it happens. Everything about "[this] camp on a lake in Maine" is mostly the same physically, but for the narrator, it's emotionally different. "[He] could tell that is was going to be pretty much the same as it [had] been before." He remembered everything about the camp like how it was when he was younger, but he was no longer a child. He was now an adult. He was seeing his new experience at the camp through his son's eyes, but now he was the father in the situation. "[The...
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...Michael Richards Just Like That is a short story written in 1987 by Michael Richards. It’s about a man and a boy, whom are out shooting kangaroos. The purpose is transforming the boy into a man. The story takes place in Australia. Language: The language is easy to read and understand. There are some direct speech but mostly it’s storytelling. Narrator: It’s a third omniscient narrator from the boy’s point of view. We know how he feels and what he thinks about the events that are happening. Themes: Growing up. Pressure: the man pressures the boy. Characters: The boy is on his first kangaroo hunt, I believe. Read: p. 25 l. 40 – p. 26 l. 2. He seems very fascinated by how easy it was to kill the kangaroo. When the boy uses the rifle it’s like he’s dead for a second – read: p. 26. l. 24-25. He can’t remember pulling the trigger. At first I don’t think the boy likes shooting kangaroos but later he becomes this sort of machine, which just does it. The man might be the boy’s father, we don’t know that. The man puts a lot of pressure on the boy. When he wants the boy to do something he says: if you can’t do it now you never will. (Ex. p. 26 l. 17) Symbolism: The man in the story says several times: don’t walk behind me. I think that he knows what it does to a person, when they start shooting. I mean, the boy gets really fascinated about it, and how easy it is to kill another living being. Ending: Read: p. 29 ll. 18-21. We don’t know exactly what happens, but I kind...
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...Symbolism in To Kill a Mockingbird Whether it is in literature or even shown in pictures, when people use things to represent something with a deeper meaning, it is called symbolism. By doing this, the reader is able to obtain a better and deeper sense of what a writer is trying to convey. In the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, different symbols are used that are reflective throughout the book relating to equality either directly or indirectly. Often, the symbols that she uses are tied to the ultimate theme of the book, which is being able to understand someone from his or her point of view. The most apparent reoccurring theme is equality that is symbolized through the people, the birds, and even the inanimate objects that...
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...called Kim. It starts like it’s to stories we’re reading at the same time and ends up as one. Payton is driving on the interstate. He’s driving faster and faster. He is drinking while driving. He has got a cobra tattoo on his biceps. He hates the priest for encouraging him to tell the police what he has done. At the same time a girl called Kim is running away from her parents. She’s tired of being yelled at by her parents. She hopes by running away her parents will be more understanding and her friends in school will get sympathy. Suddenly when she’s hitchhiking Payton drives by and stops. She walks towards the car…. Essay Payton is a grown-up man with anger. Doesn’t seem to be aware of what consequences his reactions could cause. His I driving while intoxicated (DWI). His heart is filled with hate. He has done something terrible which he won’t tell the police. He thinks the priest is a pain in the neck. Maybe he feels remorse. One thing is for sure; we don’t know what he’s capable of. There are some excellent metaphors in the text. The Author has thought a lot about using symbolism. For example, Payton who has got a cobra tattoo and Kim who eats an apple. That’s a metaphor for Adam and Eva. The tattoo is the snake and the apple is of course from the tree in paradise. The short story is written in present and it takes place on the interstate. Both Payton and Kim are on the interstate. Payton is driving and Kim is hitchhiking. It’s a third person omniscient narrator...
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...described as a beautiful summer day. The story takes place in the woods behind Myop’s house. Myop’s mood develops from a good to a bad mood. I can see that in the beginning “she felt light and good in the warm sun”. When you feel light and good warm sun, its symbols of something good. First Myop is picking flowers in the wood, she is happy. When she later gets further in to the woods “she finds it not as pleasant as her usual haunts”. But then she steps into a man’s face. She realizes that he is dead. She picks up a pink rose and put her bundle of flowers down. But after she had experienced with the innocent man, she had a bad mood and all the fun was over. The text ends with “the summer was over”, and it’s like Myop is growing up and could not have fun anymore. Her life is changed. She could never be the same again. In the beginning of the story the setting is important to understand how it affects Myop’s development. The tone in the beginning is good. It’s described in the text as “the days had never been as beautiful as these”. The quote shows that Myop’s mood is good. In the beginning of the story she is in the garden. She moved to the wood by...
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...story structure, and symbolism to convey the movies themes and ideas. The film opens up in the everyday life of a 13-year-old boy, Josh Baskin (David Moscow, Tom Hanks), who’s going through the typical motions and struggles that a 13-year-old would be expected to go through. He still acts like a child but doesn’t want to be treated like one by his parents, he can’t catch the attention of the girl he likes, and he’s just not “big” enough to go on rides or be taken seriously. Feeling too small and insignificant, Josh makes a wish through a fortunetelling machine and wakes up the next day as a fully grown man. Now, he must figure out how to act grown enough to make his way through the scary, unfamiliar world of adulthood if he wants to be able to be a child again,...
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...Commentary of “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro Alice Munro is a Canadian short-story writer. She grew up in a rural environment such as is featured in the story “Boys and Girls”. This story is collected in her first collection of short stories, “The Dance of the Happy Shades”, which has been published in 1968. In the story, the protagonist experiences a process in which she leaves childhood. However, if we have to sum up the main idea of the text in a sentence, it would be the title with a few words more, “The education in boys and girls”. Therefore, we can see that the whole text is subordinate to this concept: characters’ attitude, characters’ comments, character’s name, indeed the style and the horses that appear in the story. Firstly, we will focus on the style. It is a first person narrator who shows us all the thoughts and impressions of the protagonist, this fact help us to understand how the influence of the other characters affects her. Secondly, we have to stress two characteristics of the personages that normally have unimportant role. One feature is the character’s names or more specifically the lack of name in some of them, because no female characters have a name, neither the main, so this fact helps to emphasize the distinction between women and men. Although neither the father has name, this could be explained in the sense that the author wants to stress that Laird, the son, is the winner because this sexist education is favorable to the men side. The other...
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...subconscious mind, which is where all our truly desires are suppressed. These desires can be expressed differently. To take an example: Writers are often able to access a collective unconscious and use it to create artistic literary work filled with symbolism and features which are interesting to the psychoanalytic critic. One of those writers is Neil Gaiman and in his short story Troll Bridge many psychoanalytical symbols can be interpreted. The story follows the protagonist and first-person narrator Jack and his life development. Every time Jack is in a changing period of his life he meets a troll, who says he wants to eat him. First time they meet, Jack is a 7-year-old boy who is out to explore the countryside. His surroundings change as he goes and he gives a detailed picture of what his curious eyes see. When he sees a bridge he is surprised that there is any token of the existence of humanity, so he must be quite far out. It’s under this bridge Jack meets the troll who completely untraditionally introduces himself with “I am a troll” (p. 3, l. 32). The Troll lives under the bridge, which can symbolize some sort of rite of passage. Jack is a little boy who has come to learn about his fears and his desires, which is a big part of growing up. He must face these and the troll to become a developed young teenage boy. The troll symbolizes his fears: “He was all my nightmares given flesh” (p. 3, l. 36). To save his own skin Jack offers the...
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...“Distinctive voices in texts present to us thought-provoking ideas about the world” Ideas about the world can often be thought provoking and challenge our initial views through distinctive and unique voices that are presented to us throughout texts. This notion is evident within “summer of the Seventeenth Doll” directed by Ray Lawler, which provokes ideas about the world, influenced by unique characterisation that portrays the role of Men and Women in Australia during the 1950’s. Similarly, the ABC’s television episode, “Stand Up” in the series ‘Redfern Now’ aims to capture and recreate the diverse and changing nature of the Australian Voice. Significant voices are evident in both of these texts as they force the reader to adopt stimulating ideas regarding our beliefs on the current world. The Doll demonstrates a range of distinctive voices that confronts the reader with thought provoking ideas in regards to the roles of men and women in society. Through the distinctly gendered voice of the character Roo, Lawler exposes his proud and dismissive approach in order to protect his masculinity. The Australian slang used in the line “I won’t bludge off you” demonstrates Roo’s defiant refusal to accept money off his partner Olive. Traditionally, it is a male’s duty to be the financial provider therefore if he was to depend on Olive it would be seen as emasculating. This expresses Roo’s adherence to the social expectations of men within a patriarchal society, which ultimately...
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...In the 1960 novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”, author Harper Lee implements an extensive array of symbolism that associates itself with many characters throughout the novel. While the title of the book itself may not mean much literally when trying to connect it to the plot of the story, it does in fact have a lot of symbolic weight to it. In the book Ms. Maudie explains why it was a sin to kill a mockingbird. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but . . . sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” In the novel, a mockingbird symbolically represents purity, and innocence. And to kill a mockingbird means to rid some one “mockingbirds”, one for example is Tom Robinson, in the novel it stated that he was an honest hard...
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...meaning. The way he tries to explain things by using symbolism. For example, “Words can be like X-rays if you see them properly-- they’ll go through anything.( Huxley p.70) You read and you’re pierced.” Throughout the passages he constantly has a sense of want of what would be the opposite in the dystopian world. “...because, after all, I know quite well why I can’t-- what it would be like if I could, if I were free-- not enslaved by my conditioning.” (Huxley p.91) In the dystopian world there are people like him who’d want everything to be different, and others who go along with it and don’t have the same desire of feeling free. The ways Huxley uses satire are mainly to both criticize and expose how the conditions of the dystopian world affect the citizens living in it. Huxley’s tone is also very dramatic. He extends what he’s trying to say in a way it’s almost poetic which is something he enjoys and wishes there was more of, so it makes sense. He...
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...Re-appropriated Fashion Cultural re-appropriation is extremely predominant in society today, especially in regards to fashion. One only needs to wait a couple decades after a trend goes out of style to eventually see its return into the hegemonic world. Many of the clothes in my own closet are derived from an ancestor that held an actual function or symbolism which over time has been recreated into a piece of clothing that is nothing more than a mainstream aesthetic apparel. High-waisted shorts were reintroduced in 2011, and oddly have been embraced by young women all across the nation, despite the previous norm of low-rise denim. Levi brand jeans first manufactured this unique style of short apparel in the early 1940s for women who were working in the fields while the men in their families were at war (Alvaranga 1). The high waist was designed to cover a woman’s midriff while still providing the comfort of wearing shorts in the heat. This functional garment carried into the 1950s as a fashion trend. Now, over 70 years after their inception, high-waisted shorts are designed in a variety of fabrics and styles for all occasions. A more controversial example of re-appropriation in today’s fashion is the use of “tribal” designs. Native Americans are known for their use of feathers, beading, and geometric patterns in their attire. This was first re-appropriated during the hippie movement of the 1960s. Hippies wore clothing from Native traditions as an expression of a generation...
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...Throughout the semester, I have explored various concepts revolving around critical thinking. By exploring concepts like symbolism, bundled lore, evidence based knowledge, and hyperreality, I have learned that the majority of information that the average American believes to be true is based off of illiterate knowledge rather than literate knowledge, but more importantly, when critically thinking it is not the result that is most important, but rather how you get there. Critical thinking involves gaining background knowledge on a subject, taking multiple factors into consideration, searching for credible sources, and using these techniques to form an idea or opinion based off of it. It is easy to form and share an idea or opinion based on...
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...The Symbolism of the Journey ENG 125 Introduction to Literature According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” The journey is a central focus of Robert Frost’s “The Path Not Taken” and Jean Rhys’s “I Used to Live Here Once,” although the destination is also an important part of the latter. While both stories have similar themes, they have different points of view; both show that life can change during the journey. In addition, both stories illustrate that things aren’t always as they seem. This paper will compare and contrast the two stories and how despite the different viewpoints, there is one thing in common; regardless of the journey a person takes, there are many obstacles and hurdles. Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” has been often interpreted with different meanings but is one of the most quoted poems of all time. Many interpretations of the poem believe it encourages individualism and self-reliance. There are others that believe it is not what the author intended. Upon closer examination we can determine that Frost’s intended message is that life choices are inevitable, a natural part of the life process, and that we cannot know whether the decision was the right one until we are in the future looking back at that particular moment in time, nor can we ever know what choosing the other path would have meant for our future. As the poem goes on, we see the author lamenting over his choices at the beginning of the final stanza: “I shall...
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...Racial issues have been an underlying cultural and social issue in historical times and in modern day. The ways these issues are expressed have changed over time, but one thing has remained the same, racism issues will continue to often be expressed through music. The one thing about music that doesn’t apply to any other form of expression is that an artist can say almost anything that he or she wants to say, with little to no repercussions. Music continues to fully express the feeling or thoughts of individual cultures or a society as whole. Racism continues to be a major focus of music. “Say it loud” (I’m black and proud) by James brown (Brown, 1968) Brown uses a “call and response format in this song. The name of the song is a call to power. It is a call for blacks to embrace the fact that they are black. The song came out in the perfect time. The civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965 had just been passed, much to the dismay to many whites. That is very important when analyzing this song because James Brown was standing up to the views and opinions of his white counterparts. Brown seemed to portray through the lyrics of this song that just because blacks were told they had equal rights and blacks could vote, didn’t necessarily mean they were equal . This song also addressed issues about an overwhelming number of blacks continuing to live in poverty, James calls blacks to rise up and become economically, self-sufficient. What very interesting about this...
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