Cecilia 's Death : The Virgin Suicides

James Hurst, the author of “The Scarlet Ibis”, and Edgar Allen Poe, the author of “ The Cask of Amontillado”, both display a theme of appearance versus reality.The appearance versus reality theme means that information one believes to be true may not be (at times). “The Scarlet Ibis” displays theme in relation to Doodle’s well-being while“The Cask of Amontillado” shows the lesson by how the use of verbal irony can be practiced to trick Fortunato, and how human emotions guide what Fortunato chooses to believe. Overall, “The Scarlet Ibis” and “the Cask of Amontillado” both effectively display the appearance versus reality theme in their own distinctive ways.

Each year suicide is becoming more common in the United States among adolescents, according to the Suicide and Mental Health Association International. The main reason why adolescents commit suicide is because they are depressed. In the article "Nightmare in the Mirror" by Scott Long, he explains that adolescence has changed throughout the years. An assertion he makes is that teens have "Angst and bouts of suicidal despair distinguish this gloomy figure…" (Long 156). Long explains that throughout the years, adolescents have become sadder and depressed. Adolescents, who suffer from depression and are suicidal, don't usually inform others. Those adolescents fall into the third quadrant of the Johari Window.

It is a well known fact that Edgar Allan Poe‘s stories are famous for producing horror or terror in his readers beyond description. However, it is one of this essay’s attempts to precisely describe these two characteristics present in The pit and the pendulum and The black cat. Horror may be defined as “the feeling of revulsion that usually occurs after something frightening is seen, heard, or otherwise experienced. It is the feeling one gets after coming to an awful realization or experiencing a deeply unpleasant occurrence.” On the contrary terror is described as “the feeling of dread and anticipation that precedes the horrifying experience” These two concepts are thought to be crucial when analyzing Poe’s writings. It is going to be

Unnerving, spooky, disturbing, frightful… All common characteristics of a hauntingly terrific tale by the famous Edgar Allan Poe. His story “The Masque of the Red Death” brought a grotesque taste to the horror genre throughout the 19th century with the use of literary devices. To summarize, Poe’s story discussed, in detail, the horrifying inevitability of death, which reveal the value of a device known as symbolism used by Poe in this literary work. As people are familiar with, Poe’s psychological weaknesses spurred his creativity to which he poured his problems into Gothic Literature, and he produced these unforeseen symbols as pawns of his life. In this popular short story, subtle objects are manipulated to reflect Edgar Allan Poe’s misfortunes. Symbolism is used throughout his short years of living as a narrative device for his eerie publications. Within this composition, I will be justifying how Poe’s influence on the use of symbolism constructed a disturbed and almost misleading

The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides, is a novel that deals with the complexities of being a teenager, dealing with related themes such as growing up, loss of innocence, adolescent sexuality, loneliness, unrequited love. These seemingly innocent themes however, develop a darker side, as they lead to the suicides of the main characters- Lux, Bonnie, Celia, Mary and Therese: the 5 Lisbon sisters. The themes of objectification and The Male Gaze also become relevant through the nature of the detached male narrative; The story is told retrospectively through the the viewpoint of an unknown number of anonymous boys, now middle-aged men, who grew up in the same middle class suburban neighbourhood in middle America as the girls. This first person plural narrative, as well as various stylistic devices such as diction, imagery, metaphors and tone all affect the way the Lisbon sisters are represented to the reader.

The Scarlet Ibis is a story about quietus and certain topics that symbolize death. The story helps the reader process the nature of death, understand that death is at every corner, and furthermore show the uncertainty of knowing when death will come. Thesis: In this essay, I will discuss how the scarlet ibis and the coffin represent moments of close death finishing in an unexpected end.

Horacio Quiroga's gothic romantic story “The Feather Pillow,” and other works such as Richard Matheson’s “Prey” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” all encompass the reoccurring theme of psychological issues. In “The Feather Pillow,” Quiroga illustrates the balance between life and death and a healthy versus tainted relationship. Alicia is mentally and physically destroyed by her marriage to Jordan. When Alicia is bedridden with an incurable disease, the nightmares and hallucinations slowly begin. One night while she was sleeping she was suddenly awoke and “her staring she was suddenly transfixed. After a while she opens her mouth to scream and her nostrils and lips were headed with sweat” (Quiroga 1). This continued to happen to Alicia. The parasite was sucking the life out of her. After being sick for some time, “Alicia began to hallucinate. The visions were confused and floating to start with and then came to ground level” (Quiroga 1). The psychological issues and hallucinations suddenly became worse.

In Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel the Virgin Suicides, isolation, ignorance, and selfishness are depicted throughout the story. In order to protect their precious daughters from the danger of the outside world, Mr. Lisbon and Mrs. Lisbon have came up with a solution, which is to basically isolate their daughters from the world. Even before the Lisbon sisters’ very first suicide attempt, which was done by Cecilia slitting her wrist in the bathtub, they have been isolating and restricting their girls in every way possible: how they dress, what they put on their face, how they smell like, where they go, what they do, what they say and listen to, and who they spend their time with.

She was a small, hot-tempered woman who wore a widow’s cap with strings floating at her cheeks, and when it was cold, a squirrely fur cloak and tiny fur-lined shoes. She was known to line girls up on the Idle Bench for the smallest infraction and scream at them until they fainted. I despised her, and her “polite education for the female mind,” which was composed of needlework, manners, drawing, basic reading, penmanship, piano, Bible, French, and enough arithmetic to add two and two. I thought it possible I might die from tracing teensy flowers on the pages of my art tablet. Once I wrote in the margin, “If I should die of this horrid exercise, I wish these

As I look into Omayra’s eyes her chilling image serves as a paradox. Her eyes mirror the horror of death as it stands before her yet, the rest of her visible body appears at ease. Frank Fournier captures Omayra as she sinks between the two extremes of life and death and her zombie like appearance alone makes her image so much more intriguing than Isabel Allende’s essay. However, without Allende’s essay, I would not have known the true story behind this image. Omayra is not acting and she is not a zombie either. In fact, based on Allende’s description, she has more probably experienced more mixed emotions during her time here than any other human being nearby. For this reason I believe that the image and the essay work well as a pair. Without the reading this image would have no certain direction and without the image this reading would not have such resonance.

Revenge can be analyzed, as it becomes the exhibited behavior of the Widow resulting from a number of causes. First cause is the harm done to her family; second cause is the Widow’s perception of violence during that time; and the third cause is her aggression toward the killer of her son. The first cause of her revenge is the most obvious reason why she avenged the death of her son, and this is because the killer caused pain to her family. Any mother would be committing the act especially that her son was the only company she has. The second cause pertains to the Widow’s perception of revenge during that time, and because at the time, wars and feuds were still evident in the French society, bloodshed for the Widow is not something to be scared of, given any means. This story was only successful in showing to its readers how the society thinks of death during those times, which can be achieved through any means, by which losing one’s life was not something to be thought of carefully. This just proves that during that time, morality was not given high regard as it is now. Death by any means can be accomplished by anybody, regardless of age, gender, and status in society. The third cause of the Widow’s behavior is her aggression toward the killer of her son, which was not literally shown or described in the story, but was evident based on

Although prostitution may be one of the world’s oldest professions to this day it is seen as a degrading and disrespectful career especially when regarding female prostitutes. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the town is very critical and strict about chastity and premarital sex. Maria Alejandrina Cervantes is the town madam which by society’s standards makes her to most marginalized, but ironically she is not brought down by her society’s rules. Gabriel Garcia Marquez uses characterization and irony to demonstrate Maria Alejandrina Cervantes’s contradictory role and to develop the theme of going against society in Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

Edgar Allan Poe practices literature within use of the intrinsic qualities that possess the many definitions assigned to the word ‘literature’. Poe is an artist of words. He uses aesthetic, creative works of fiction to tell stories of drama and often horror. Poe’s’ literary genius is translated most commonly through his ingenious poetry and short stories. Consequently, it is his tendency to lace parts of his own personal life and views into his story-telling that causes critics to downplay the true art of the work by Poe. In this essay, the short story “The Cask of Amontillado,” will be analysed to make the argument that Poe is a serious writer through his use of proper literary aspects.

Throughout the world of suburbia, there seems to be a persistence of communities who attempt to create a perfect, enclosed world for the whole of the community to live in. By providing for everything that the inhabitants would ever want, suburbia is able to close itself off from those around it that it deems unworthy of belonging. While this exclusivity helps to foster the sense of community, it can also bring with it isolation from the outside, and also from within, and have disastrous results. Throughout the semester, there have been a number of works that have dealt the issue of isolation, but the greatest representation of a work whose physical qualities in its representation of suburbia help to

With each letter in Les Liaisons dangereuses, Choderlos de Laclos advances a great many games of chess being played simultaneously. In each, the pieces—women of the eighteenth-century Parisian aristocracy—are tossed about mercilessly but with great precision on the part of the author. One is a pawn: a convent girl pulled out of a world of simplicity and offered as an entree to a public impossible to sate; another is a queen: a calculating monument to debauchery with fissures from a struggle with true love. By examining their similarities and differences, Laclos explores women’s constitutions in a world that promises ruin for even the most formidable among them. Presenting the reader glimpses of femininity from a young innocent’s daunting debut to a faithful woman’s conflicted quest for heavenly virtue to another’s ruthless pursuit of vengeance and earthly pleasures, he insinuates the harrowing journey undertaken by every girl as she is forced to make a name for herself as a woman amongst the tumult of a community that machinates at every turn her downfall at the hands of the opposite sex. In his careful presentation of the novel’s female characters, Laclos condemns this unrelenting subjugation of women by making clear that every woman’s fate in such a society is a definitive and resounding checkmate.