From Willa, With Love by Coleen Murtagh Paratore is told through the eyes of a young teenage girl, Willa, who helps her mother, Stella, and her stepfather, Sam run their popular business, the Bramblebriar Inn. It’s August time in Bramble, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts and Willa is enjoying her summer. She tries to keep herself busy to keep the thought of missing her dreamy boyfriend, JFK as she calls him, who is away for six weeks at a baseball camp and her best friend, Mariel, who is visiting her mother for the summer. To fill up her schedule she helps her mother plan weddings at the inn, spends time getting to know her newly discover half brother, Will, who is visiting, takes walks along the beach with her dog, Salty, and reads tons of books.
Marian Evans Lewes responds to the admiring letter of aspiring author, Melusina Fay Peirce through an admonishing tone as she discusses the development of an author and its adversity as Lewes recognizes her own role as an influence on Peirce and feels an obligation to exemplify the tribulations of writing. Lewes portrays how the development of a writer augments their decay of enthusiasm in an attempt to dissuade a hopeful writer from expecting complete exultation as she fluctuates the anticipation of the reader while introducing an emotional appeal.
Failure is a difficult concept for many people to accept because it is hard to understand what failure exactly is. The idea of failure can be seen in the concluding chapters of The Great Gatsby when Gatsby fails to achieve his dream of being with Daisy. The issue of failure exists within all people whether they are successful or not. The issue of dealing with failure is a difficult hurdle to overcome for many reasons, which includes ideas
Thesis: In the short stories The Charmer, Love Must Not Be Forgotten, and The Address, one’s past experiences have a profound effect on their development as an individual.
Stories give people new ideas and experiences along with lessons that they are unable to realize in their own lives. The narrator feels as though he is in the land of Balzac’s Ursule Mirouёt even though he has never before seen France. He is so fascinated with the story that he does not put the book down until he has finished the last page (Sijie 57). This allows him to experience life in an entirely different manner from which he is accustomed. From these stories, the boys gain insights into thoughts and emotions that are completely foreign to them. While Luo visits the Little Seamstress telling her of the stories he as read, the narrator feels one of these unfamiliar emotions. He states, “Suddenly I felt a stab of jealousy, a bitter wrenching emotion I had never felt before” (58). Although jealousy is not usually seen as a good feature and while this emotional awakening may seem like a negative effect of storytelling to some readers, it is actually an amazing accomplishment. Stories provide their readers with a new perception of life. They are able to feel what they have never felt, to see what they have never seen, and to be what they have never been. While these experiences may not be the most enjoyable, all experiences leave people with a more extensive idea of what life really is.
In the books Candide, The Glass Menagerie, Their Eyes were Watching God, and My Name is Asher Lev written by Voltaire, Tennessee Williams, Zora Neale Hurston, and Chaim Potok, they are all discernibly different stories, yet they all appear to share the common theme of perseverance in varying degrees to find that happiness is not always awaiting them. I have found that the various symbolic language combined with each author’s different style of writing not only makes each story unique, but they also affect each reader’s perceptions.
It does not matter how many times life knocks someone down, it matters whether or not they recover. As Winston Churchill once announced, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Life may cause numerous troubles, although, overcoming inadequate decisions can correct your fate. The Other Wes Moore, written by Wes Moore, is an exquisite example of how one poor decision does not need to determine one’s fate, and an individual has the power to metamorphose their fate. In addition, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a superior illustration of how confronting one’s mistakes and choosing to rectify them. The Other Wes Moore and The Scarlet Letter both portray the theme rising above challenges with the use of literary devices.
“A Rose for Emily,” “A Worn Path,” and “The Lottery” by William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Shirley Jackson all have similar writing styles in their literature. In these three short stories the authors all use contrasting nature within their literature to predict the outcome and to learn for the upcoming events in the readings. The authors take subliminal phrases and subliminal symbolic text to have the reader become more attached and understand more of what the characters, setting and theme of the story has to offer. Using these three stories the reader of this essay will understand and grasp the symbolic meanings in text of each these short stories.
In life there will always be those moments that we most value and those that we wish to avoid. Misfortunes are the situations or events that we wish to vanish from our lives because we view them in a negative way. However, what many choose to avoid is actually something that defines who we are. Misfortunes develop one’s character and it identifies us as a person. Everyone goes through different situations and because of that each and every person develops their own unique character based on those misfortunes. The essays “Flavio’s Home” by Gordon Parks, “What I’ve Learned From Men” by Barbara Ehrenreich, and “Common Decency” by Susan Jacoby all explain to us in detail the situation that a particular person is going through which in the end reveals how the person’s character was developed by that misfortune.
People one can never really tell how person is feeling or what their situation is behind closed doors or behind the façade of the life they lead. Two masterly crafted literary works present readers with characters that have two similar but very different stories that end in the same result. In Herman Melville’s story “Bartleby the Scrivener” readers are presented with Bartleby, an interesting and minimally deep character. In comparison to Gail Godwin’s work, “A Sorrowful Woman” we are presented with a nameless woman with a similar physiological state as Bartleby whom expresses her feelings of dissatisfaction of her life. Here, a deeper examination of these characters their situations and their ultimate fate will be pursued and delved into
Throughout the tragic yet romantic novella, “Ethan Frome”, written by Edith Wharton, the protagonist, Ethan Frome, experiences frequent loss of hope in his life. The story follows his daily struggles and how those defeats in human nature impact him, as well as others, later on. Furthermore, the author reveals how his decisions lead to irreversible mistakes, which shows the irony in his situations.
Short stories have fully developed themes but appear significantly shorter and less elaborate than novels. A similar theme found in short stories “Winter Dreams” written by Scott F. Fitzgerald and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner included the social and environmental influences that encouraged and controlled the character’s life and decisions. In “Winter Dreams”, the main protagonist-- Dexter-- fell into a fixation over a young, whimsical blueblood, Judy Jones. His obsession led him to believe that Judy Jones reciprocated his feelings for her, leaving him bare and mortal-- despite prior beliefs. Following her father’s death, Miss Emily fell into a dark obscurity due to the pressure and compulsion of having to carry on the honorable family name. While using a unique point of view (first person peripheral), “A Rose for Emily” followed a mysterious and desirable woman named Miss Emily as her hometown tried to understand her peculiar ways and began to find her disgraceful. By comparing and contrasting these two literary pieces, a similar organization-- including the writers’ purpose and themes-- should become clear. By using literary devices-- such as point of view, dramatic irony, detail, and figurative language-- Scott F. Fitzgerald and William Faulkner conducted two short stories similar in aim and reasoning, probable for contrasting and comparing elements within the parallel writings.
Many of the characters we studied in this summer had a very difficult situation caused by themselves. Undoubtedly, each person has their own defects, however this does not mean we have to be slaves of our weaknesses and fears. Pitifully, some fears can become so strong that they can turn a person's life miserable. In addition, people who are victims of their own fear and sins can commit insane things to the people who are around them. Some clear examples of this type of people are Mathilde Loisel, Mrs. Mallard and the Narrator of the Black Cat.
Has anyone lived a life without misfortune? Doubtable; even the person with what could be described as the ideal life deals with some form of adversity. The novel, Speak, and the short story, The Third and Final Continent, both use plot as a way to convey themes of hardship. Moreover, these texts both use symbolism in order to develop their themes as well. The Art of Resilience and Speak utilize characterization as a method of developing their respective themes. Speak, The Third and Final Continent, and The Art of Resilience each deal with the theme that all people must learn to cope with adverse situations.
In the poems “The Wanderer” and “The Dream of the Rood,” anonymous authors give way to the idea that an Almighty God will solve every problem a person has by doing two things: 1) drawing upon the memories of a warrior who has lost everything near and dear to him due to war, and 2) entering the dream of a man who has been exiled and isolated. Each piece takes its reader through the trials and tribulations that one may not relate to in this era, yet the reader is still there alongside the character wanting them to find peace with their world and themselves. Initially, it is believed that the characters will overcome their hardships and achieve the happiness they seek. However, as the reader delves deeper into the character’s story, there is an overwhelming sense of incompleteness. What actually happens at the end of each piece is not written in stone - telling us the story is not whole - nor has a conclusion been reached. The intrapersonal thoughts being shared with the reader reveal the obstacles that keep an overall wholeness from occurring.