Imagery and Metaphor as Resistance in Miguel Asturias' The President

One’s commitment of immigrating to a new country for a better life indicates that oneself is ready to risk the life given to them by facing many hardships along the way. In the novel Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario, Enrique does exactly that, risking his own life at the age of seventeen in order to reunite with his mother who left him when he was five in order to obtain a better job in the US and give Enrique and his older sister everything she thought they deserved. Nazario utilizes an emotional appeal and metaphors to inform readers of the arduous situations migrants experience on their long and tiring journey in search of a family member and a better future.

Enrique had to get on he tops of freight trains to begin his journey which meant risking his lift due to the hazards from fast paced the freight train and possible bandits along the way. Many people on the freight trains encounter bandits or thugs that nearly kill them. “They slam him [Enrique] facedown. All six surround him.

The way Pelayo and his wife treated the angel throughout the whole story emphasizes some aspects of the theme. In the beginning of the story, Gabriel García Márquez described the very old man by mentioning that he had few teeth and hairs left. He compared his attire to a “ragpicker” and his overall state to a great grandfather which can only accentuate the fact that the angel looked extremely old and in a very distressing condition. According to the author, the very old man spoke an unrecognizable language which made communicating with the villagers even harder. Seeing how pitiful the state of the angel was, Pelayo and his wife concluded that he is a survivor from a ship that has been wrecked by some storm. However, even after making such conclusion they couldn’t decide whether to help him or not. They couldn’t lend a hand to an old man covered in mud. This shows how humans could be a little cruel but mostly shows how humans fear the unrecognizable and the unknown which in this case is represented by the very old man in enormous wings. Even when they started to discern what he might

The author’s frightening story, “The Storm” has all the expected things that a good scary story should have. It has a story line that gains suspense throughout the story, there is irony, and there is lots of

In Garcia Marquez’s short story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” we find ourselves involved with a variety of problems varying from a ridiculous crab infestation to a much more severe one such as their newborn being terribly sick. To make matters worse, Pelayo (the husband) discovers a very old man with wings like an angle lying on his courtyard. News quickly travels of this new fallen angle so people come by the hundreds to see this miracle. To their disappointment the angle seems to ignore them and eventually the crowds no longer come. However, due to crowds, Pelayo and his wife charged an entry fee that allowed them to quit there jobs and buy a new house. Years pass and the winged man still resides with the family much to Elisenda’s disapproval. Eventually, the family believes the old man is about to die, but just like that he recovers and vanishes into the sunset. Since this story was told from a third person perspective we are limited to the amount of insight we get from each character. Another interesting element of the story is the symbolism presented. There are numerous symbols in the story, but the most significant is the storm and I will discuss this further later in my analysis.

The push west was not always as glorified as many 1950s western movies would portray. Rather, there were complicated politics that often led to the disenfranchisement of the native peoples who lived on the lands the Americans were essentially squatting on. There are a number of stylistic elements embedded within Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton's 1885 work that lead credence to this theme. Using realism and naturalism to show how the social environment of an oppressed people will forever hinder their character development, Amparo Ruiz de Burton exposes the greed and lack of concern in American policy for the native people it was essentially stealing land from.

The Spanish Roulette is a fictional account of events in the life of a young Puerto Rican named Sixto who swears to avenge for his sister’s assault. According to the story, Sixto’s sister had been raped by a local gang member who Sixto assures must suffer the same pain as his sister before he can finally kill him. Evidenced by the story, Sixto fights the thought of killing his sister’s tormentor while loading his revolver, but finally, snaps and decides to go ahead with his plan thereby leaving any logic and moral reasoning not to kill the gang member. The author, Ed Vega’s epic account of the life of Sixto closely resembles his first-person account of the life in Puerto Rico where the street is controlled by gang members who could rob from innocent families, handle drugs and unauthorized weapons including guns, and go about their business without being interfered by people in the community or the police (Lee). This essay asserts that based on the author’s argument and character representation, revenge is the only hope for the weak in the face of trouble when even the society cannot intervene and this argues that Ed Vega proved as creative and a competent writer by using the various features of poetic writing to create the intended image, environment, characters, and build on the theme of revenge.

As children grow up in a dysfunctional family, they experience trauma and pain from their parent’s actions, words, and attitudes. With this trauma experienced, they grew up changed; different from other children. The parent’s behavior affects them and whether they like it or not, sometimes it can influence them, and they can react against it or can repeat it. In Junot Díaz’s “Fiesta, 1980”, is presented this theme of the dysfunctional family. The author presents a story of an adolescent Latin boy called Junior, who narrates the chronicles of his dysfunctional family, a family of immigrants from the Dominican Republic driving to a party in the Bronx, New York City. “Papi had been with

Lazarillo de Tormes is a famous work of Spanish literature published anonymously. The novel is written in the first person. Lazarillo de Tormes is known as a picaresque novel in that the novel is written about a character of the lower-class instead of a hero or upper-class character. The novel has several themes, but the theme that is constant throughout the novel is appearance versus reality. The author utilizes several rhetorical devices in the novel which add emphasis to the story. The novel, which was banned by the Spanish Crown during the time of the Spanish inquisition, is the story of the birth and life Lazarillo de Tormes as he serves various masters and his struggle for survival. His struggles are real. Many of the rhetorical devices serve to add humor to the novel as well.

"The Cask of Amontillado" is one of Edgar Allan Poe's greatest stories. In this story Poe introduces two central characters and unfolds a tale of horror and perversion. Montresor, the narrator, and Fortunato, one of Montresor's friends, are doomed to the fate of their actions and will pay the price for their pride and jealousy. One pays the price with his life and the other pays the price with living with regret for the rest of his life. Poe uses mystery, irony, and imagery to create a horrifying, deceptive, and perverse story.

Spain during the 16th century has been described as a time of oppression, a time of exploitation of the subordinate class. For example, in the text of The Life of Lazarillo De Tormes a gluttonist priest offers Lazarillo scraps of an Eucharist bread, that was nibbled by mice. The priest tells Lazaro to take the bread, stating “There, eat that. The mouse is a clean animal.” This shows the how the higher class sees the lower class, it shows how they believe in offerings coming from them should be taken as a gift, even if a literal rodent has tampered with it. Most who could live during this this time usually were those who held high levels of intelligence and were also devious. Due to this, Lazarillo, being a man who holds the fore told

A storm can represent and symbolize many different meanings. The impact of the word can be brought about in many different views and aspects that arrange themselves to create and portray detailed information and great definition to the subject of the short story as a whole. By using the storm as a symbol, it gives way to a passage that will encounter the relationship and parallel aspect of both the fervent thunder that occurs and the sexual passion that is encountered throughout the story. Kate Chopin opens up an interesting view and tentative explanation of human sexuality and the strong point of view of regulations placed on human sexuality as well as the aspect of trying to control a storm. By tying up these two ideas with one word,

Marquez sets the tone of the story with an occurrence that is unusual and unsolicited: a newborn caught in bad weather. The introductory writing style is striking as Marquez gives a hint of the bad weather: “The world had been sad since Tuesday.” (Márquez 13) He introduces a supernatural element by describing a bizarre old man with massive wings. He shatters the assumption that angels are powerful and divine by describing the old man stuck in the mud as, “…impeded by his enormous wings” (Márquez 13) and unable to free himself.

Location also tells us that it is economically and socially underdeveloped, and is reinforced with the image of isolation given to us when Garcia Marquez writes of Father Gonzaga having to write and send a letter to the bishop. The time period of the story is established as modern day when it is written “…in determining the difference between a hawk and an airplane…(Garcia Marquez 442).” The town’s people are portrayed as simple, primitive and crude as demonstrated when Garcia Marquez writes  “…they did not have the heart to club him to death.” and then instead Pelayo “…dragged him out of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the wire chicken coop (441).” After the child’s fever breaks Pelayo and Elisenda “felt magnanimous and decided to put the angel on a raft with fresh water and provisions for three days and leave him to his fate on the high seas (441).”

Pedro Paramo is a novel that cannot be fully understood without consideration of its rich cultural background. It is this Mexican background, which informs so much of the novel, providing the main conflict. The narrator of the tale remarks “some villages have the smell of misfortune” while describing the locale of Pedro Parámo, the small Mexican town of Comala where the story plays out on many levels (83). On the surface level, this story is merely about a tyranical man who ruins his hometown of Comala. But in reality he does much more than that, his presence detroys the town completely, driving everyone out and converting the town to a type of purgatory. This deeper harm that he causes, by damning the rest of his townsmen is the evil