A Short Story

Every individual has traditions passed down from their ancestors. This is important because it influences how families share their historical background to preserve certain values to teach succeeding generation. N. Scott Momaday has Native American roots inspiring him to write about his indigenous history and Maxine Hong Kingston, a first-generation Chinese American who was inspired by the struggles of her emigrant family. Kingston and Momaday manipulate language by using, metaphors, similes, and a unique style of writing to reflect on oral traditions. The purpose of Kingston’s passage is to reflect upon her ancestor’s mistake to establish her values as an American

“They walked and talked of the strange light on the sea… talked of how sultry it was after a hot day” and discussed employment and birthplaces (897). After departing from Yalta, Chekhov details Gurov’s dreary life of “children [having] breakfast and getting ready for school… entertaining distinguished lawyers... walking his daughter to school” (901, 905).

In fitful sleep, she dreamt dreams of Indians, palmettos, cotton, tobacco, rice, indigo, and eagles flying through the skies calling to her, telling her to take this trail or that, and her reaching up, trying to catch them before they flew away. The next morning, she helped Nancy build a fire under the big, black iron pot out back of the cabin and then fill it with water so they could wash clothes. About an hour later, as they hung the first of the wash on the line, they heard a rider coming up the back trail; the trail that led down to Fort Charlotte.

When Alma and her family move to America, they begin their new life in a place that is strange and confusing, one that is unaccommodating, and causes Alma’s misery and guilt to almost overwhelm her. After the Rivera’s first day in America, they find their appartment and try to go to sleep. Arturo and her daughter Maribel fall asleep right away, but Alma lays awake in bed, wondering to herself if they ”had... done the right thing, coming here?” (6). In the morning, they wake up, confused, “bewildered, and disorientated, glancing at one another, darting [their] gazes from wall to wall. And then we remembered. Delaware. Over three thousand kilometers from our home in Pátzuco. Three thousand kilometers and a world away” (6). Alma and Arturo left their home, not because they wanted to come to America, but because they wanted to be able to help their daughter, Maribel. She had an accident that caused a traumatic brain injury, and Alma feels that the accident is her fault, and has been consumed with grief ever since. Although the Riveras came to America to help Maribel, Alma still wonders to herself if it was the

In the dead of winter, in the year 1936, snow as covered the frozen ground. There stands a big white and blue sign that reads, Winchester’s Manor. Standing on this land right in the middle of the wheat field is a coffee colored WOMAN holding a five-year-old GIRL. The woman is looking around and swinging a stick back and forward as if she sees something that is not there. The woman places the little girl who is wrapped up in a blue wool blanket on the snow-covered ground. Suddenly, she runs off as if she is casing away something, the little girl is crying and reaching out toward the woman.

They were in front of a big flat boat near the paddlewheel river boat. Insects swarmed up and the mule’s tail lashed her as he tried to swish them away. Alma liked the look of this boat. It was already sitting pretty heavy in the water and there were squealing pigs and chickens crated and stacked in the back of the boat while the front

It wasn’t enough that at sixteen, Ava’s life had become as gray and bleak and lifeless as a winter tree. But, the day she was bitten by a fox, she knew things could only get worse.

Through the Whiskey trench these cars drove through while angry white Oka townspeople await them with large stones in their hands. The stones broke windows and damaged cars but worst of all injured the retreating children, mothers and Elders when the dodgeball sized stones broke through the glass, “Nobody ever expected that to happen... “ says one of the victims during a car during their retreat, how could someone ever expect an ambush? Although the townspeople of Oka were mad at the Mohawk people, they never knew or could have prepared for what was coming. A little girl who rode in with her mother and family says,”I don’t know what I would do if it happens again… to someone in my family… but I’m scared that- I think it’s going to happen again to me”, she says through tears obviously traumatized from the whole ordeal.

Later that evening, Nell Guthrie sat on the town dock with her beau, Asa Davis. A rain cloud had passed over and drenched Beaufort while Nell was eating supper with her mother and father, but now the western sky was streaked with a sunset of orange, fuchsia and hints of chartreuse. The cloudburst washed the movement out of the air, leaving behind a humid tranquility. Leaning toward her, Asa nuzzled his paramour’s ear, making her tremble. “Where you been hidin’ out, lover? Has your daddy been working you hard?”

Sometimes the provincial workers refused to sell their crops as a form of political protest. As a consequence, several kulaks began to slaughter their livestock and destroyed their farms rather than have the state taken over their property. Moreover, the beginning of a civil war in Russia developed between the military and the provincial works;

Her determination to find her father is amazing. She leaves the cart, knowing that the NKVD officers are out there, and risks her life, just to see her father once more.

In the course of the story, the two Russians come and go, telling their own tale of sadness. Otto and Jake leave as

Less than three months later, Ivinskaya and her daughter were sentenced to a Siberian labor camp again” (Mitzi par. 13). The comparison between the events in Doctor Zhivago and the impossible to predict events documented by history are uncanny and suggests Boris Pasternak wrote Doctor Zhivago to accurately represent a life in Soviet Russia.

A distant figure was approaching Bertha and Cornelius. It was their close friend Bill coming to tell them that his crops had been stolen. He had beads of of sweat running down his pale face as he told them what had happened. Soon after Bill told them, all three of them ran to his farm. Bertha and Cornelius stood in awe as they saw the multiple empty barrels of wheat and corn in Bill’s trashed barn. BIll was just a farmer who had no enemies at all so they were confused as to why his had happened. Nevertheless, they started to clean up. Since they were engrossed into their work, they lost track of time and forgot to go to church. When they finished cleaning, Bertha and Cornelius headed back home, had supper, then went to bed. The next day on her way to Bill’s farm to check up on him, Bertha felt millions of eye on her.

The Magyar's thunderous and baritone laugh jolted Ava. She flinched. The Magyar's wife winked at her and continued dusting as her husband blurted out, “Expulsion! That's what they give you. The damnation of the Roma. More grievous than death itself.”