Contents Of The Dead Man's Pocket Short Story

An author’s main goal is to have the reader intrigued by the text with suspenseful and/or dramatic scenes happening throughout the story. The authors of all three stories (“The Sniper”, “Ambush”, and “The Trip”) all portray this expectation flawlessly. Even though the stories have a great chronological order with amazing characters, they also share similar themes and subjects. The following reasons explain why.

Death, the narrator of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief is an imperfect character. He certainly has ideals for himself, makes them evident, and strives to fulfill them within the novel. Through the use of foreshadowing in The Book Thief, Markus Zusak, speaking through Death, transforms the reader’s emotional response to events in the book to be similar to Death’s ideal emotional response. This can be supported through examining Death’s ideals, his use of foreshadowing, and their combined effect on the reader’s emotional response to tragic events in the text.

     The author wrote this story as a literary genius. There is an extreme level of suspense that leaves you wanting

The protagonists of both texts rely on the power of companionship to overcome obstacles in order achieve their goals and dreams and similarly, when faced with their dream alone, they are

George Saunders tells his story “Victory Lap” in the most intriguing way. He brings to life the characters thoughts instead of having a character tell readers the story. “Victory Lap” is a story about a young girl being taken by an older man who believes he can claim her as his. The boy next door comes to her rescue at the last moment. Saunders cleverly uses a twisted point of view to alter the cognitive and emotional response of the reader towards the characters of “Victory Lap”. Readers not only get to experience the emotions of the young girl, but the boy and the kidnapper as well. This has a powerful effect on readers feelings towards the characters.

While each story had their contrasting elements, the base theme of each was remarkably similar; Both of the authors manipulate the theme of motherhood to examine the ideas of slavery, home and forgiveness during two very different time periods.

We have been assigned many great stories to read while in this class. In this paper we will cover and analyze three different short stories and quickly compare and contrast things they have in common. This paper will analyze “A Rose for Emily”, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, and “The Cask of Amontillado”. We will analyze the different symbolism throughout all the stories such as “the elusive definition of a good man” which comes from “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, also themes in the different stories like traditions people follow, and the power that death has.

Beautiful imagery laced amidst a wondrous storyline, accompanied by memorable and lovable characters are all elements pertaining to enjoyable works of fiction. Tales that keep one up late into the night forever reading just “one more page” forever propelling the intrinsic imagination for a novel enthusiast. Yet, at times there are deeper meanings hidden between the lines. Symbols, analogies, and latent parallels all connecting to real life events and situations being portrayed by the author. Using literary theory can bring a more profound understanding of the reading material at hand, as well as unique insight as to what the author was feeling or intending to portray at the time of writing.

All three stories could have the same theme. They all teach us that things don’t always go to plan. In, “Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket,” the last sentence includes, “As he saw the yellow paper…”, “Sail out into the night and out of his life, Tom Benecke burst into laughter….” After being so close to death for that paper, he laughs because he didn’t expect it to end that ay at all. At the end of “The Trip”, “the guard takes him to a moldy cell…” This didn’t pan out the way he thought it would at all. In the beginning it even says, “We spent hours thinking about what he would do once he was on the other side, imagining the job, the car, the house.” Jail was definitely not part of

“The Book Thief” presented a story filled with various themes that comprised a powerful plot line. Although there were many themes in the story, there was one that stood out to me more than others. In the process of reading the book, the theme of suffering affected me the most. The definition of the word suffer is to experience or be subjected to something bad or unpleasant. Different characters within the story are subjected to dreadful feelings and are therefore suffering. Through my analyzation, I observed the three different types of suffering that the characters experienced: guilt, feelings of emptiness, and anxiety. The characters of “The Book Thief” experience these three types of suffering in different ways.

The purpose for this book is to bring together stories that have not been put together before. Larson brings together two opposite types of storylines and combines them into a unique perspective of writing to inform readers that many things can happen in one location as well.

In recent decades, Cormac McCarthy has staked his claim as one of the all-time titans of American literature through publishing masterpieces like Blood Meridian, Suttree, and The Road. In his works his advanced level of technical mastery becomes apparent through his expertly harmonized coordination of literary elements toward certain narrative ends, such as the generation of suspense. In this light, McCarthy’s literary style is a practical one, in that he organizes literary elements in his works toward actualizing particular goals. In The Road, for instance, McCarthy directs his style throughout the text so as to maximize the feeling of suspense that readers experience throughout the book. This kind of stylistic maneuvering is expressed on pages 105-110 and pages 118-123 of the the text. But, it must be noted here that the generation of suspense in these passages does not result from similar stylistic approaches. McCarthy uses style in differently in Passage A and Passage B but ultimately toward the same end, namely generating suspense for readers of The Road. Passage A relies on dialogue to develop its suspense, whereas the style of Passage B relies on narrative action for its suspense.

Short stories can share themes, motifs, symbols, consequences, and plot lines, even if there is never any intention to share a common element between the stories. The stories can be written close together or in different decades and still be linked to the one another. They can also be worlds apart with different meanings in the end, but that does not stop them from having similar ideas expressed within them. The following three stories, “Lagoon” by Joseph Conrad, “The Rocking Horse Winner” by DH Lawrence, and “The Lady in the Looking Glass” by Virginia Woolf, are three totally different stories that share common threads that make them the stories that they are.

Are you ready to analyze three stories? Yes? Awesome! No? Too bad, because here we go! The three stories in question are The Leap by Louise Erdrich, The Contents of a Dead Man’s Pockets by Jack Finney, and Ambush by Tim O’Brien. The authors of these stories use aspects of their stories to shape the plot, show the theme, and to change the views and opinions of the characters in the stories.

Connell and Finney use similar rising action in their stories to engage the reader. Intense action in both stories cause the reader to continue reading. For example, the main character Tom in “Contents of A Dead Man’s Pocket” finds himself in a precarious situation. “Elbows slowly bending, he began to draw the full weight of his upper body forward, knowing that the instant his fingers slipped off these quarter-inch strips he'd plunge backward and be falling” (Finney 32). Through this quote, the reader detect some of the life-threatening action. Finney uses descriptive vocabulary such as plunge and falling to evoke anxiety and concern for the character in peril. Compelling action also asserts itself in “Most Dangerous