Analyzing Brodsky's Less Than One

The author uses tone and images throughout to compare and contrast the concepts of “black wealth” and a “hard life”. The author combines the use of images with blunt word combinations to make her point; for example, “you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet”. This image evokes the warmth of remembering a special community with the negative, have to use outdoor facilities. Another example of this combination of tone and imagery is “how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in”. Again the author’s positive memory is of feeling fresh after her bath combined with a negative, the fact that it was a barbecue drum.

Her language become more and more crude, especially when she mentions how her “flesh seems to bond to the seat” (181). The reader can easily detect her ever-mounting anger with the situation she has put herself in and what at first seemed like a heroic act ends up being one leading to pure defeat. As an extension to this idea, Ehrenreich shows the reader how certain hardships can make it difficult to try new things. In multiple instances throughout the essay she uses crude language to display her disgusted thoughts and sense of hopelessness, but it can be seen specifically in the introduction. The introduction is based off of her entire experience; after her jobs at Hearthside and Jerry’s. She compares the environment at Jerry’s to a human body, and not in a very pleasant way: “The kitchen is cavern, a stomach leading to the lower intestine that is the garbage and dishwashing area…” She also uses descriptive items of food to depict its scent, combining strange and appalling odors such as “decomposing lemon wedges [and] water-logged toast crusts” (179). These phrases themselves create a negative image of the restaurant, commanding the readers to question how she could have possibly been forced to work in such horrible conditions. Ehrenreich’s rough language effectively shows certain emotions brought out by the transition from writer to waitress, a white collar to a blue collar job, and the hardships that it brought.

The city, Toronto in this case, presents a web of streets and geographical space that threatens to lock its citizens in a certain demarcated way of life and conduct. The four key characters in this narrative - Tuyen, Carla, Jackie, and Oku - each feel blocked in by the constrained locality that they have been born into and each attempts to escape it in his own way.: Tuyen by being an artist, Carla by being a courier; Oku by being a student and Jackie by working in a store. The first two not only attempt to escape by means of their profession using their profession to either flee the spaces and squares (by bike) or transcend it via imagination (by art) but they also adopt profession that go against societal expectations. These societal expectations were created by, and exist within the geographical space they live in. Toronto of the late 20th century had an internalized set of expectations for immigrants and its citizens. The parents of the characters succumbed to it. The protagonists, however, resolved to step out of their boundaries and most of them succeeded.

In Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Blackberries,” a youthful speaker seems to be living past the boundaries of city life and exhibits qualities of rural living. The poem tells of the speaker’s adventure of picking blackberries from a thicket and encountering the duality of urban society. Readers of “Blackberries” might at first be puzzled by the speaker’s youthful memory of picking berries, but a closer analysis of the poem allows readers to recognize that the speaker’s internal conflict originates from strict societal boundaries and the loss of his childhood innocence.

Baldwin gives a vivid sketch of the depressing conditions he grew up on in Fifth Avenue, Uptown by using strong descriptive words. He makes use of such word choices in his beginning sentences when he reflects back to his house which is now replaced by housing projects and “one of those stunted city trees is

In Elia Kazan’s 1951 film, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” many intense elements are incorporated, including those of a heartless antagonist, a whimsical protagonist, and several supporting characters who help to portray the principle themes and advance the plot. In this film, the genre of Southern gothic, the setting in a miserable, cramped apartment building in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, and the overall plot contribute to the main underlying themes of human cruelty and kindness.

Williams' Use of Imagery and Symbolism in A Streetcar Named Desire Williams uses figurative language in his lengthy stage directions to convey to the reader a deeper, more intense picture than a description alone could express. In the opening stage direction Williams illustrates the area around Elysian Fields. He uses personification to describe "the warm breath of the brown river" (P1). I think this creates an atmosphere that is decaying yet at the same time welcoming and affectionate.

When acknowledging the turnout of Chicago’s fair, Larson uses figurative language to demonstrate the contesting forces of good and evil and to examine the extent to which Chicago stretched the fair’s potential. Larson writes, “Chicago has disappointed her enemies and astonished the world” (30). Larson uses personification when he says that “Chicago has disappointed her enemies…” and is giving Chicago a human behavior. This strategy emits a positive connotation to the reader . The use of figurative language makes the reader look at Chicago as having achieved a great honor by hosting the fair. It also shows that Chicago can create something so miraculous in a time of such hardship and need for ingenuity and amidst the evil waiting within the shadows of the White City. When describing the tension in the top floor of the Rookery while the architects were revealing their drawings for the fair, Larson writes “As the light began to fade, the architects lit the library’s gas jets, which hissed like mildly perturbed cats” (115) and he uses figurative language to help the reader grasp the importance and anticipation of this moment. By comparing the library’s gas jets to “mildly perturbed cats,” the reader gains a sense of agitation, anticipation, and the anxiety that the architects were feeling in that moment. Larson creates a negative and rather comforting connotation by using this simile to describe the room’s tension. The way that Larson describes this moment leads the reader to imagine it to be

The library was the crown jewel of the house. It was at the center, and occupied both floors with a cherry wood spiral staircase connecting both the floors. It also had a great balcony off the second floor that overlooked the whole estate, and her parents hosted a multitude of social gatherings with “important, respectable people” whose names Essily couldn’t be bothered to remember. Every wall of the library was covered with bookshelves that were either filled with books, or various souvenirs her parents had acquired through the years, such as a large globe or a painting of some idyllic city. It was all lit by an enormous chandelier.Waiting at one of the tables in the center of the library was her tutor, Mr. Smith, and her

This story begins to drive the sense of emotion with the very surroundings in which it takes place. The author starts the story by setting the scene with describing an apartment as poor, urban, and gloomy. With that description alone, readers can begin to feel pity for the family’s misfortune. After the apartments sad portrayal is displayed, the author intrigues the reader even further by explaining the family’s living arrangements. For example, the author states “It was their third apartment since the start of the war; they had

The idioms of everyday American speech in a middle-class domestic situation are used in showing the events and relationships of the Berlin family. In contrast to the conversations of Becca and Stan, usually presented as straight dialogue, the discussions among the three sisters are conventionally presented, often with “she said” and other interpolations to give explicitly the emotional level of the sister’s disagreements. Madga, the Polish student who acts as Becca’s guide to the death camp site speaks fluent English but at times awkward English “Oh, they are much in appreciation” she says when given a pair of jeans. Contrast between the formal, traditional language of the fairy tale and childish, informal chatter is shown when the children comment or question as Gemma proceeds with her Briar Rose fairy tale story telling. Her contrast revisiting of just this one fairy tale shows the reader that while her conscious memory has buries the details of her past horrors, she cannot help returning to the fairy tale allegory. Contrast is also shown between the warm, happy imagery of life in the Berlin house and the bleak, harsh details of the holocaust.

In the reading, “McTeague,” by Frank Norris, a dentist named McTeague watches the day to day lives of San Francisco’s various laborers through the bay window of his Dental Parlor. McTeague noticed that the street was always occupied by people with different kinds of people at specific times of the day. Since San Francisco is described as full of energy because of the people in it, it is inferred that the city has a personal, tied connection to its inhabitants. Frank Norris portrayed the city as full of liveliness and excitement to showcase how San Francisco itself is its own main character with human-like characteristics, ultimately suggesting that capitalism makes a city thrive.

Additionally, by including less detail, Spiegelman makes his characters easier to relate to, or as McCloud references, more universal. After Vladek recalls the hanging of a few of his associates, Spiegelman illustrates a very plain, bleak image of him mourning their loss in present day. The image consists of the most basic character features, making it effortless for the reader to mentally input their face on Vladek’s. Overall, this “amplification through simplification” (McCloud), aids the reader in feeling the emotion of the character, finding a deeper connection to the story as a whole, and can reveal universal truths.

Melissa Hamilton, a journalist for the Australian newspaper recently wrote an article tilted This (Transplanted) Life, which is a physical, inner and spiritual journey. It is a recount of her journey home, it’s written in first person to personalize her journey and evoke mood and tone with her audience. The composer uses juxtaposition to compare the city to her country home, “When we arrive I stumble with soft city feet over the gidgee stones” and to compare the people of the city and country “the quite is loud enough to keep them up at night.” Through her thorough description of the country surroundings and the lifestyle of the people that live there, she takes us on a spiritual journey of her hometown. The composer also uses creative language such as exaggeration, repetition, alliteration, personification and a metaphor to establish her love and knowledge of

Robert Pinsky’s “Poem About People” is just that, a description of the people around the speaker. Thoughtfully Pinsky moves through narrative points of view to give individuality to the subjects in the poem. The use of diction in an everyday form as well as to convey colors and contrasts in light and dark are prominent especially in some of the main images. Pinsky also utilizes quatrain form with no rhyme scheme to express a dichotomous relationship between control and lack of control. This paper will also discuss the article written by James Longenbach on “Robert Pinsky and The Language of Our Time”.