Throughout the short story collections in Robert Butler’s A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain and Junot Diaz’s Drown, the most prominent differences between these short stories were 1) poverty versus enough and 2) a healthy versus destructive home and family life and other surroundings. 1. Poverty vs. Enough Drown illustrates a narrator growing up in a very low income Spanish home with the bare minimums to survive, “We lived south of the Cementerio Nacional in a wood-frame house with three rooms. We were poor. The only way we could have been poorer was to have lived in the campo or to have been Haitian immigrants, and Mami regularly offered these to us as brutal consolation…We didn’t eat rocks but we didn’t eat meat or beans, …show more content…
You couldn’t look him in the eye either—that wasn’t allowed” (Diaz, 26). The narrator expresses the lack of having his father as a part of his child hood; “I lived without a father for the first nine years of my life…I didn’t know him at all. I didn’t know that he’d abandoned us. That this waiting for him was all a sham” (Diaz, 69-70). Further, the narrator describes deceit and exposure to infidelity at a young age while his father has an affair on his mother; “…we both knew Papi had been with that Puerto Rican woman he was seeing and wanted to wash off the evidence quick (Diaz, 23). I met the Puerto Rican woman right after Papi had gotten the van (Diaz, 34). I don’t remember being out of sorts after I met the Puerto Rican woman, but I must have been because Mami only asked me questions when she thought something was wrong in my life (Diaz, 42). I didn’t say anything to Mami either…Later I would think, maybe if I had told her, she would have confronted him, would have done something, but who can know these things” (Diaz, 43). Most stories within A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain show narrators who are exposed to a gentler, more caring and moral home and family life in which there was not deceit or overpowering superiors. The narrators often make reference to their lineage of Catholic faith and
Authors of great stories often use good technical writing skills. The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast two short stories: Where Are you going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates and Hills Like White Elephants by Earnest Hemingway. The comparison and contrast will be done based on their use of plot, point of view and character development.
When one thinks of a children's picture book, one usually thinks of bright colors and a story that involves a princess and a prince charming. One of the most classic children's books, Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are, however, neither uses bright colors nor a traditional love story. Instead the readers meet a young boy, Max, who, when sent to his room without dinner, imagines a far off land. We meet his friends, "the wild things", and learn that Max is the "most wild thing of all". Those aforementioned trends are not the only aspects that set Where The Wild Things Are apart from other children's picture books. Its structure, plot, and message all
Drown; a compilation of short stories, by Junot Diaz portrays the integration of fiction and truth. Yunior, narrator, as he tells his stories, he exaggerates and jumps from one period of his life to another. The characters of the story can relate to many young adults. Their experiences and the journeys of their lives are what most Hispanic teenagers go through. The 10 different stories explain the different themes shown throughout the book. The Hispanic community faces many problems and Diaz states a couple of them; gender immigration, violence, drugs, family, cultural identity, and the Latin experience.
In “The Cheater’s Guide to Love”, Junot Díaz presents a story about love that goes sour after the primary character, Yunior’s infidelity is discovered. But beyond just an emotionally bleak story, Díaz also uses the background of a love story gone bad to explore issues of race through Yunior’s narrative style, second-person point of view, and the characterization of the various women Yunior meets.
Likewise, in the novel, there are also examples of being poor and people struggling financially. "Spanish Harlem needed a change and fast. Rents were going through the roof. Social services were being cut. Financial aid for people like me and Blanca who were trying to better
Charters notes that the “second person narration, you, is less common” and used to create a “dramatic intimacy” (Charters 1684). This intimacy created by Diaz’s work through his choice to use a second person point of view is to create a self-reflective work, appearing as if the narrator is looking back on a younger version of himself, as if a letter to himself at fifteen years old. This is apparent in the opening paragraph of the text, in which Diaz writes “wait for your brother and your mother to leave the apartment” (Diaz 394). It is safe to rule out that the narrator is talking to a brother, as it is unlikely that the narrator would refer to himself in third person. If the narrator was talking to another relative, such as a cousin, it is still assumed that he would refer to his aunt in a more affectionate way than “your mother”. Even more so, the mention of the audience’s “tia who likes to squeeze your nuts” (Diaz 394) is a very intimate detail that would not be public knowledge shared to those outside of the encounter. Another aspect that leads to the claim that the narrator is looking back on a younger version of himself is the narrator’s awareness of the Central American customs found within the audience’s home, for instance, the “basket with all the crapped-on toilet paper under the sink” (Diaz 394). This
Drown; a compilation of short stories, by Junot Diaz portrays the integration of fiction and truth. Yunior, narrator, as he tells his stories, he exaggerates and jumps from one period of his life to another. The characters of the story can relate to many young adults. Their experiences and the journeys of their lives are what most Hispanic teenagers go through. The 10 different stories explain the different themes shown throughout the book. The Hispanic community faces many problems and Diaz states a couple of them; gender immigration, violence, drugs, family, cultural identity, and the Latin experience.
Smith, Paul. A Reader’s Guide to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co. 1989. Print.
This essay will go through and explain the comparative and contrasting points of the two short stories I read in my English Lit and Comp class.Two men who come from families with a long history of rivialry amongst each other have to work together in order to try and get out of their fatal condition. While we also have a woman with critical health issues and doesn't have a loving passion with her husband. These two stories sound to most about very different topics, and that they are but I will show you the comparitive and contrasting points from each story. Starting with the short story The Interlopers, two men who come from different families, feuding over a stip of land flourishing in game, they poached on eachother and rallied over. Now jumping
While the classic consequentialist and the Bodhisattva concept are very different, they promote almost the same ideology with the exception that the Bodhisattva demands self-sacrifice. In terms of the duty to prevent/eliminate bad things (suffering) and do it in a way that seeks to maximize good and extend efforts to all, such situations are extremely demanding of the moral doer. Neither view commits to any notion of empathy, but relies on rationalizing, sacrificing, and orienting towards results.
She sometimes sits out by the creek and remembers her father telling her “I am your father, I will never abandon you.” (Cisneros 1) She remembers this only after she is a mother and this is when she realizes “How when a man and a woman love each other, sometimes that love sours. But a parent’s love for a child, a child’s for its parents, is another thing entirely.” (Cisneros 1) Surely by now she feels her love souring. She can not understand why Juan must drink all time and why he continues to beat after he promises that he will never do it again.
Every immigrant has a personal story, pains and joys, fears and victories, and Junot Díaz portrays much of his own story of immigrant life in “Drown”, a collection of 10 short stories. In each of his stories Diaz uses a first-person narrator who is observing others to speak on issues in the Hispanic community. Each story is related, but is a separate picture, each with its own title. The novel does not follow a traditional story arc but rather each story captures a moment in time. Diaz tells of the barrios of the Dominican Republic and the struggling urban communities of New Jersey.
One thing all human beings have in common is the struggle for self identity. Children are raised by parents or guardians who have struggled and fought for their own identities. In many cases, parents are still trying to figure it out, while raising their own children. Such is the case with the characters in Junot Diaz’s, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The theme of identity is conveyed through the characters’ Dominican culture, social standing, and in finding love. Oscar, Lola, and Yunior are three central characters in Oscar Wao, who’s Dominican cultural and familial expectations were major obstacles as they struggled to establish their identity.
Earnest Hemingway is one of Americas foremost authors. His many works, their style, themes and parallels to his actual life have been the focus of millions of people as his writing style set him apart from all other authors. Many conclusions and parallels can be derived from Earnest Hemingway's works. In the three stories I review, ?Hills Like White Elephants?, ?Indian Camp? and ?A Clean, Well-lighted Place? we will be covering how Hemingway uses foreigners, the service industry and females as the backbones of these stories. These techniques play such a critical role in the following stories that Hemingway would be unable to move the plot or character development forward without them.
"Cat In The Rain" is set in an Italian hotel where we meet an American