Analyzing How I Met My Husband By Alice Munro

characters are in many ways divergent, and it is in fact these traits that reveal the most about

Good authors can create wonderful stories, but it all starts with the setting. Without the setting, the story will have no plot and the characters will have no reason to be there because the setting is a crucial element. Barry Callaghan, the author of “Our Thirteenth Summer” can effectively use setting as an important part of a story. The setting of “Our Thirteenth Summer” is in Toronto’s Annex District during the 1840’s, when the Holocaust was occurring. The setting influences the behaviour of the characters and reflects the society in which the characters live.

Alice Munro’s “How I Met My Husband” uses the themes of secrecy and love just about throughout the entire story. In this story Edie is a fifteen year old girl who is employed by the Pebble’s family. She initially succeeds at

Women are taught from a young age that marriage is the end all be all in happiness, in the short story “The Story of An Hour” by Kate Chopin and the drama “Poof!” by Lynn Nottage, we learn that it is not always the case. Mrs. Mallard from “The Story of an Hour” and Loureen from “Poof!” are different characteristically, story-wise, and time-wise, but share a similar plight. Two women tied down to men whom they no longer love and a life they no longer feel is theirs. Unlike widows in happy marriages Loureen and Mrs., Mallard discover newfound freedom in their respective husband’s deaths. Both stories explore stereotypical housewives who serve their husbands with un-stereotypical reactions to their husband’s deaths.

The story, “Runaway”, written by Alice Munro, suggests how human beings try to escape from their problems when they cannot manage them. The story tells how a girl in a bad marriage who unable to deal with it runs from the situation but later came back, refuses a chance of escape from her abusive husband. Even the goat Flora who cannot be fully tamed as an animal runs away and Carla is described as a girl who wants the attention from her husband that she does not get and runs away from him. Carla’s nature is like the goat Flora because they both escape from their situations. Munro shows parallels between Flora and Carla, which argues that Flora’s behavior mirrors Carla’s relationship with Clark.

All character, usually the main ones, will have at least one aspect that will separate them from everyone else.

Sexuality and personal growth has and always will be a topic of conversation in real life and even in fiction short stories. The idea of sexuality has just recently not only became an open idea to discuss but one to also write and publish about. Both Alice Munro and John Updike both illustrate the idea of sexuality and personal growth in very different ways. “The Found Boat” by Alice Munro, deals with sexuality in an aggressive manner while “A&P” by John Updike, deals more with the idea of sexuality rather than sexuality itself. They also have very similar elements of fiction that include (but is not limited to) characters, theme and conflict. The characters relate in both

characters are unique. Throughout the movie, the main characters do not realize what was going

The minor characters in a story can play such a major role. In the novel, “The Strange Case of Dr .Jekyll and Mr.Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson, the readers are introduced to several minor characters, such as Lanyon, Enfield, Carew, and Poole, who help advance the plot. Hastie Lanyon was an old friend of Jekyll who wrote a letter to Utterson about what he witnessed, Richard Enfield told the story of the door , Sir Danvers Carew was murdered by Hyde, and Poole was Jekyll’s butler who got Utterson for help. These minor characters play a major role in the plot.

In the short story “How I Met My Husband,” there are several literary devices used to portray different emotions and twists. There are four of them, however, that stand out a great deal: romance, diction, empathy, and irony. Romance, which is the theme of the whole story, is used to bring a feeling of excitement and is often times relatable to readers in some way. Diction is used to “spice things up” you could say, bringing great word choice into the reading. Empathy, although not used as much as romance or diction, is still vital in portraying emotion in this short story. Finally, the irony is what can bring you the twists, turns, and humor you see throughout the story.

The Setting is an important part of any story, in the case of 'New Directions', it provides us with a peek into the background and knowledge of the writer and how this story may be close to her heart. 'New Directions' is set in a segregated Arkansas town in 1903; Angelou's home state, by this revelation one can conclude this story may be factually based. The Author also mentions several other locations; The One room house, Annies home and setting for the intro of the story. Two empty lots between a Cotton gin and a Saw Mill, where Annie first sets up shop and begins her venture, it eventually produces a stall equidistant between the two industries and finally a store. The author uses setting to symbolize life goals being reached, each place in the story larger than the last and closer to Annie's principal goal, being able to provide for herself and two toddler boys.

Not only do the roles of the characters compel a reader, they also illustrate the

I read How I Met My Husband by Alice Munro. This is a short story told in the first-person narrative. The theme of this story is a simple, but good one. The theme is love. Or to put it in broader terms, the theme could be described as while sometimes it may come from heartbreak, fate can bring is to the person we are meant to love forever.

Blin’s work throughout this article does not just develop into discussing the short story itself, but mainly focuses on the notation of the authors writing. This article, “Alice Munro’s naughty coordinators in Friend of My Youth” by Lynn Blin is an interesting read; by being able to use this article as a template for any other piece of writing while still being very useful and specific towards “Friend of My Youth”. She breaks down the sentences and words to understand the deeper workings of “Friend of My Youth”. Blin points out that Munro purposely leaves important information out of her story, leaving the narrator and the reader in the dark. “It is in… gaps that Munro not only enables us to play our role of active readers by inviting us to fill them in, it is in these gaps she constructs the space in her text to enable various narrative voices to be heard” (paragraph 71). By identifying those blanks the reader can come up with assumptions of what is really happening and thus can come up with a variety of outcomes.

The movie utilizes it superficial characters to the maximum to develop the story. For example, most of the characters in the movie serve the purpose of