John Updike

A&P is a story about a 19 year old teenage boy that works at a supermarket and acts childish. In this story Sammy’s attitude is sexist and judgemental towards the customers coming in and out of the store. When the three girls walk in the store half naked with their swimsuits on, Sammy is shocked because he hasn't seen anyone wear swimsuits in public place before. The girls are in the aile’s shopping and Sammy is examining them to see how they shop and how they act, he says “ Sheep's pushing their carts down the aisle” (Updike page 17 A&P) he refers to the girls as sheep’s.

In "Player Piano", John Updike uses personification to give life to a 'unhuman' piano. By using diction to communicate his ideas, he effectively allows the reader to explore the psyche of a "Player Piano". In the first couple lines of the poem, assonance and consonance are present. In line one, these musical devices dominate the sentence as there is a repetition of the "ick" sound in "stick", "click", and "snicker" suggesting to the reader the sharpness of the piano, also reminding readers of the constant clicking sound found in mechanical devices. The harsh "k" sounds of the second line in "chuckling", "knuckle", and "key" suggest the abrupt sound of air passing through the paper roll of a player piano. In the next line, the word flicker is a phonetic intensive, closely associated with word 'flame'. Since the 'flame' is a symbol of life and light, it gives the reader a feeling that the piano is alive, further adding to the effect of personification in this poem. In

At 11 years old, I sat outside Mr. Tilman Singleton’s porch waiting for my piano lesson. From outside the front door, I could hear the frustrated comments and the occasional bangs of his hands pounding on the piano. Slowly, I stood up off the bench and opened the door. “You never improve! This is trash and you know it. Your lesson is over. Next Victim.” I assumed the victim was me. At first glance, my piano teacher Mr. Singelton was a tall, startling skinny, man with thinning hair and a large pair of glasses. I still remember what he wore my first lesson: turquoise dress pants perfectly creased, and a pink plaid button down shirt. Every outfit looked straight out of an 80s magazine. He was the definition of eccentric. Today, I will be commemorating my former piano teacher Tilman Singleton; the man whose character, perseverance, and friendship will forever inspire my musical dreams.

In August Wilson’s Piano Lesson Berniece struggles with the past of her family and the violence that is within her family. She de-contextualizes the piano by not telling Maretha about her relatives, whose images are carved into the piano and keeping her in the dark when it comes to her family and the past. With Berniece struggling to keep Boy Willie from selling the piano for land she slowly starts to realize that maybe the uplift that the family needs is just remembrance of their family and their past. The piano is symbol for the legacy or past of relatives and by playing the piano at the end of the play shows that remembering your family’s past or carrying on their Legacy in the smallest way shows that wherever they are that they’re rejoiced

In The Piano Lesson, by August Wilson, Berniece struggles with her personal connection with the piano. Her families past reveal her relationship with the piano. The piano meant a lot of things to a lot of different people over the years. The piano is a complex and multilayers symbol; its meanings are both personal and political. For example, Berniece was affected by the piano positively and negatively. She had a sentimental connection with it and never wanted to get rid of it. But the piano had a lot of history behind it and it also carries a lot of meaning to it. Berniece stopped playing the piano for a while because of all the spirits inside of it and how they started to haunt other people. Berniece saw Boy Willie getting attacked by Sutter’s ghost and that made her realize she needs to let go of the past and play the piano again. But what was ironic is that she tried her best to forget the family history that came with the piano, she can never let go of her families past no matter what she does. This reveals that people should come to good terms with their past and learn to overcome it.

Both Poems are faced with the problematic situation of inner hassle. Piano’s narrator struggles with his oppression of his emotions in sentimentality. When he is listening to the sounds of the chant from the women singing he says “In

Whether by going to a soccer game, or even reading a wife’s poems, because everyone wants the support of their loved ones, especially while pursuing their dreams. This is a poem that cannot be taken at face value. Lockward took traditional poetic elements such as rhyme, sound, and stanzas and put a unique spin on them. Her use of rhyme doesn’t follow the “traditional” guidelines and that is very refreshing. The rhymes she uses do not leap out when read, this poem but must be carefully consider and studied, which is fantastic.

August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, tells a story of a family haunted by the pain of their past and their struggle to find peace to move forward. The story begins with character Boy Willie coming up from the south visiting his sister Bernice. Boy Willie introduces the idea of selling the family’s heirloom, a piano, to raise enough money to buy the land on which his ancestors were enslaved. However, both Boy Willie and his sister Berniece own half a half of the piano and she refuses to let Boy Willie sell it. Through the use of symbolism, Wilson uses his characters, the piano and the family’s situation to provide his intended audience with the lesson of exorcising our past in order to move forward in our lives. Our past will always be a

There are many ways to analyze a literary work. These ways are called Schools of Criticism or Critical Theories. Schools of criticism occur when groups of readers and critics come together and declare allegiance to a similar core of beliefs. And, when they do, they ask a particular set of question about a literary work. Each different way of analyzing a literary work elicits a different set of questions.

Some fancy that it is easiest to believe that things mean precisely what they appear to on the surface. However, to understand the world and thoughts of others in a more profound way, it is necessary to accept the fact that things may not always be just as they seem. It is imperative that one adopt this same attitude when reading poetry. One poem in particular that exemplifies this is John Updike’s “Telephone Poles”. Within the work, telephone poles are compared to trees by way of extended metaphor. “Telephone Poles” conveys the message that when nature is destroyed to make way for technology is harmful to nature itself and humankind as well by using an extended metaphor; this is enhanced and made clear by Updike’s usage of supporting metaphors, similes, verbal irony, and imagery.

Title Piano represents music, which is used to convey all sorts of emotions. Paraphrase Stanza 1) The author remembers his mother's singing, which brings back his memories from childhood. Stanza 2) As the emotions overflow, he recalls details from his past.

The Piano Lesson by August Wilson is not only a captivating play, but it also encompasses a deeper truth. The play tells the story of how a piano holds a family’s past, and because of it, creates conflict. Berniece, a pivotal character in the work begins as a person who puts all of her feelings and history behind her, but in the end learns to embrace her past to move onto the future. August Wilson uses the growth of the character Berniece throughout the play to convey his central message of, you cannot move forward until you accept the past, otherwise it will burden you.

The poem starts off with the speaker recounting an event that occurred the other day. We see him moving about a blue-walled room “ricocheting slowly” from one thing to the next (1). He seems to be in search of something, perhaps inspiration for his next poem, as he moves from items like the typewriter to the piano, from the piano to the bookshelf, then to an envelope on

‘The Pianist’ is a cinematic masterpiece by the Polish director Roman Polanski. One of the key ideas that appear throughout much of the film is that of ‘hope being instrumental in our survival’. This idea is portrayed through Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish pianist, as he struggles for survival in Warsaw as everybody that he once knew and everything that he once had is lost. The idea of ‘hope being instrumental in our survival’ is worth learning about as it allows the audience to realise the importance of hope in todays society – and to understand how Polanski uses music to symbolise ‘hope’ for Szpilman in the film. Polanski effectively utilises an array of visual and oral text features such as music, dialogue, and lighting to build further

The fact that enjambment is used throughout the poem such as in the lines, “like a colour slide or press an ear against its hive” portrays a lack of structure and therefore emphasizes the initial enjoyment one feels when reading a poem before the chore of analyzing it begins. This is also emphasized through the fact that the poem is a free verse poem.