In the short story “I’ll Pay You In Peaches” by Phyllis Fair Cowell, the narrator wants her sister to come home after she ran away. But when the sister, Cass, comes home, she gets into an argument with her parents. This makes Cass leave again. Doing this makes the narrator realize that Cass isn’t who she thought she really was. Cowell uses the narrator as a dynamic character who at first thought that her sister was the greatest person in the world, but by the end of the story the narrator thinks Cass is nothing but a delinquent. In the beginning of the story, the narrator thought that her sister was the o’ mighty great spirit. In the text it says, “I love Cass. She is the free spirit that I am not. She is always laughing, or dancing, or doing
The first-person point of view is crucial to the theme of Welty?s story. Sister is self-centered and melodramatic. Sister 's descriptions are exaggerated, and because of this we tend to view her accounts of events
One thing that helps the reader empathize with the narrator is the narrator observing Sheila Mant. As the narrator observes
At the end of the story, the grandmother only pleads for her life and never for her son Bailey or his family. “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?” (O’Connor 192).The mother never showed no remorse of her son’s death even after the other two men came back with Bailey’s shirt and then took his wife and daughter. She never pleaded for the men to stop and spare their lives. The daughter June Starr selfish characters are observed when she believes her way of living is right by stating to Red Sammy’s wife “I wouldn’t live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks! (O’Connor 189). For a very young girl she carried an arrogant attitude that was never fixed by her parents.
Cassia wants to make her own path, chose who she wants to be with, and in this small act she shows who she
Introduction: John’s domination over the Narrator is evident from the beginning of the short story. The Narrator remains unknown and takes the identity of John’s wife not an individual human being. This identity, further explored, becomes her personality because she obeys John’s every command.
To understand Cassia you have to understand that she is very protective of her friends and family. She always does something to make her brother either happy or safe. For example, she said “what I risk has a limit. I won’t risk Bram”. She is very loving towards Ky because she would always talk about him and how perfect he is. She is always very observant because she could notice things no one else did like the poison in the food when the old turns eighty.
In the short story “Miss Brill” the protagonist, Miss Brill, is a lonely and isolated woman who likes to spend her Sunday afternoon’s in the park observing everyone around her and listening to their conversations without them knowing. We can infer that Miss Brill has created her own fantasy world to escape the harsh reality of her own life. At the end of the story the audience can come to the conclusion that Miss Brill experienced an epiphany that will change her life.
Flannery O’Connor introduces her reader’s too unique short stories. They are “Good Country People” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, having too similar characters in different setting, but with the same symbolic meaning. The comparison between Hugla from “Good Country People” to the grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard to find” is interesting, because they both suffer the same fate. In every short story O’Connor has created a intellectual individual who comes to a realization that their beliefs in there ability to control their lives and the lives of other are false. They enviably become the vulnerable, whereas they assumed it would be different. O’Connor has placed two misguide characters, that deem themselves to be manipulative and compulsive. At the end up of each short story they become vulnerable. Hugla from “Good Country People” and the grandmother from “A Good
In the story, “Where are you Going, Where Have you Been?” the author, Joyce Carol Oates, uses literary devices to convey a message about the loss of innocence. To be more specific, Oates’s characterization of the protagonist, Connie, specifically shows the actions leading to her innocence being taken from her. The literary device of characterization gives a clear picture Oates thoughts at the time she wrote the story, expressing concern for young girls who are at risk of having their innocence taken from them.
The beginning of the short story enlightens the reader into the relationship that Connie has with her mother. Connie’s mother does not agree with her admiration for herself. This is due to Connie’s mother’s own insecurities. Oates writes, “Her mother had been pretty once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie” (Oates 3043). Connie was aware that her mother was jealous of the way she looked and envied her young adolescence. Her mother was nagging her daily and constantly comparing her to her sister. The constant comparison and nagging left Connie to deal with internally judging herself. Oates expresses Connie’s strong unhappiness with her mother by stating “…but around his bent head Connie’s mother kept picking at her until Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over” (3043). Connie’s frustration with her mother lies deep within her internal judgments. She repeatedly obsesses over her mother’s words and desires attention from older males. Even though she does not feel as if she fits in with her sister June, there are some characteristics that she likes about her sister. One of these characteristics is that June is older. Since June is older, Connie is allowed to go out when her sister does which allows her to embrace her rebellious adolescence. She wishes she was older and battles with her internal misconception of her age. In the story, Connie is at an age where she is experimenting with her surroundings. Young girls are regularly comparing themselves to their friends and their elders. The obsession of comparison leaves Connie continuously striving to be better and to increase her attractiveness. Her misconceptions suggest to her that she needs to be more sexual. Her varying internal conflicts leave her with a void that she tries to fill otherwise.
To begin with, Connie’s an adolescent rebellion, always disobeying, and breaking rules. She believes herself to be the most gorgeous in her family, that all boys are attracted to her, and her life is a fairytale. This causes her to focus on the wrong beliefs, which gets her into danger later. Everyone knows Connie feels the most entitled in her family and this causes her to get into disputes with her mom, or put her in unfavorable comparisons with her sister, June. “June did this, June did that, she saved money and helped clean the house and cooked and Connie couldn’t do a thing, her mind was filled with trashy daydreams” (36). Connie, who is always in her sister’s shadow, can never do anything right in her mother’s eyes. Oates explained, “She spent hours with him, at the restaurant where they ate hamburgers and drank Cokes in wax cups” (36). Connie would be physically attracted to any boy she set her eyes on, so she adored sneaking into drive-ins with men, and cherished precious time alone with them. Perfect happily ever-after’s and fantasies would always be running through
is shown as selfish and not trustworthy. Nick Carraway, the narrator, realizes this also. While
In a world where showing a bit too much shoulder was forbidden, came Susan Glaspell. Glaspell was an American playwright, born in the cruel times of oppression. This influenced women’s opinions on certain subjects which caused them to be silenced by fear of rejection from society. “A Jury of Her Peers” was based on an era where women felt as though it was unreasonable to speak up if they felt it was not absolutely dire. Harboring these pent up feelings could cause a person to act antagonistic. Minnie Wright was an example of this. She killed her husband and was subjected to the judgement of her peers. As the group investigated Mr. Wright’s death, there were two stories unraveling. The in depth explanation that the women figured out and the simplistic version the men had seemed to pick up (Glaspell). People would benefit from reading this story to begin to understand the struggle of what this and other women had gone through. Penn Manor American Literature students would benefit from having Susan Glaspell’s story “A Jury of Her Peers” in their curriculum because of how she expressed feminism through her writing at a time when it was new and discouraged; her ability to emphasize the themes with her settings and characters; and her literature that follows a protagonist that navigates through a sexist world.
By writing it through her point of view, the reader is allowed to feel what she feels and understand what hardships she is facing and how much they are affecting her, “I was too tired to cry, I was too tired to feel anything,” (74). If the story had been written through anyone else’s point of view, the reader wouldn’t be able to understand how hard it was to be carrying someone’s baby who may not make it out of jail alive.
The second voice in the novel, according to Peach, belongs to a black kinswoman who narrates the sections introduced by excerpts from the primer (26). She is an omniscient narrator who is able to provide a perspective that Claudia could not have given. She has access to information that involves characters that are beyond Claudia's immediate range of experience (26). While Claudia's narration is confined to the present and does not attempt to enter the minds or houses of the other characters, the omniscient narrator moves freely into both of these areas (Bellamy 23). She takes the reader into the Breedlove home in "Autumn" and into Geraldine's house in "Winter," and she enters the minds and lives of Pauline and Cholly Breedlove and Soaphead Church in "Spring" and the mind of Pecola in "Summer." In order to make her story more convincing to the reader, the omniscient narrator uses firsthand sources, such as Pauline's fragmented monologues, Soaphead's letter to God, and Pecola's internal dialogue with her imaginary friend. Thus, the reader can be sure of the accountability of the narrator's story.