Literary Analysis: "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" Essay

The author’s narrative, ripe with horrifying descriptions, is nonetheless told with compassion appealing to the emotions of the audience

As I read this short story in the beginning, the gist of what I have captured the narrator writing is whether the man with a strange habit does really exist or not. Or, if he did exist who was the man that was hitting the narrator in the story on the head without stopping. It sticks in my mind wondering who the strange man was to the narrator. Somehow, despite the agony of trying to understand the motive underlies the story; I was at first wondering what was the strange man had gone through

    In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens explores the perception that the value of a man increases with his attainment of material wealth. Dickens probes the truth of such a system of values through Pip's quest for material gain. This quest is the literal pursuit of a better suit of clothing but is conducted without regard for the kind of man wearing the suit. Thus Dickens poses the question: does it profit a man to gain the world at the risk of losing his soul. It is clear, we see, in Great Expectations, that the answer to Dickens's question is no.

In George Saunders essay “thank you, Esther Forbes”, he describes how an author who he read during his youthful age helped him to understand why and how sentences can be important. The essay is written on a more personal note about a nun named Sister Lynette who helped Saunders to develop his perception of sentences. In third grade at St. Darmian School, Saunders was given the novel “Johnny Tremain” by Esther Forbes and that was a turning point for him. This was because the book provided him with a different understanding of the joys of reading as well as writing. On the other, “escape from spider head” helps in providing an analysis of the strengths of a man being put to test. The limits presented in the story are classified as physical, emotional as well as moral. The theme of the story is searching for humanity which makes the readers ask themselves, what makes us human? According to “escape from spider head” humans are considered to be innately empathetic in nature and they are considered to be people who are against the infliction of pain as well as discomfort which is caused on another innocent human being. The aim of the essay is to elaborate more on the connection existing between “Thank you, Esther Forbes” and “Escape from Spiderhead” in terms of the details presented in the two stories.

Whereas the narrator of the “Tell-Tale Heart” heard many things that weren’t real, Ronald Adams of the radio play, The Hitchhiker experienced events were he saw things that didn’t quite match up with reality. All throughout The Hitchhiker, Adams repeatedly sees a hitchhiker , while others fail to notice or acknowledge his existence. “Did you see him too?/ See who?/ That man standing beside the barbed wire fence./I didn’t see anybody” (Page 98). The Hitchhiker quote depicted a scene, where Ronald had a girl hitchhiker in his car. While Adams tried to show her the hitchhiker he wanted to run down, she, however, had trouble seeing what Ronald had seen. This quote shows how Ronald Adams had trouble separating reality from fantasy, because he tried to run over a man, who the girl couldn’t confirm was actually present. While both characters of the two tales have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality, their sanity can be further questioned based upon their chronic

There are three principal sources of interest in narratives: suspense, mystery, and irony. In the narratives “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner and “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Ronald Dahl, irony is a primary source of interest. Irony is defined as a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result. In both of these cases, the use of irony by the authors greatens the impact the pieces have on their audience. In both “A Rose for Emily” and “Lamb to the Slaughter”, the authors have numerous pieces of irony throughout their respective stories; this use of irony creates a better reading experience for the reader.

A third-person narration story is a separation or indirect involvement of a narrator with the action of a story, and this type of narration can influence the content and the theme of a story. A third-person storyteller can sometimes be all-seeing, also known as omniscient, or they can be limited meaning to adhere firmly to the viewpoint of a specific character or characters. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s “Harrison Bergeron” are two good examples of third-person point of view stories. These two stories give the authors the liberty to influence their content and theme across to readers using third-person narration without being biased.

I wake up to see Lennie standing over my bed and staring at me, and poking my arm. He keeps saying my name over, and over again trying waking me up. I get up and push him off of me because he is getting too obsessive. I get out of my burlap sack, and instantly feel A knot in my back. I shake it off, and pull all the ticks off of me. Lennie asks me what we are doing today even though I already told him what we were doing last night. Then I tell him that we are hauling bags of grain to the barn. I put on a rugged pair of denim overalls with a dirty white shirt underneath that stinks. I ignore the smell because I have gotten used to it. We go and get or company brekfast of slop with a side of slop. Lennie digs right in without a second thought, I on the other hand can barely choke it down, but I need the protein. Then after almost regurgitating my food Lennie, and I head off to a long day's work.

The world is a massive place full of endless literature, beginning from ancient scrolls to daily news articles, filled with many secrets, perspectives and surroundings that help connect literature to an individual’s daily life. Some writers use the skills of literary elements to express and discuss an event that has happened to them or what has happened to others. This helps others to comprehend the perspectives of the author’s understanding toward an incident that one might experience. For instance in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, she uses many literary elements to express her views over most of her stories. O’Connor expresses her views in her short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by using the literary elements of point of view, irony, and setting.

Of Mice and Men is a novel set on a ranch in the Salinas Valley in California during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The title of the book is a reference to Robert Burns's poem To a Mouse. (1759 - 96):

Most stories are not just stories written to entertain the reader. Intentional or not, writers are often commentating on the world around them. Social commentary is interwoven in the fabric of novels, and it is often up to the reader to determine what they take away from any given work. Although written for entertainment’s sake, stories usually include the social or political views of the author and serve as a platform for their views to be made known.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat was written by Oliver Sacks who is a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University. Sacks writes about his studies of a man named Dr. P who has an unusual brain disorder. Sacks tries to figure out what is exactly wrong with Dr. P and prescribe him with something that can help him; but he can’t seem to figure out what will help Dr. P. His only solution is to prescribe him with “a life which consists entirely of music. Music has been the center; now make it the whole, of your life” (Sacks 688). Dr. P’s main problem is that he has lost judgment in his life which Sacks is scared

Short fictional story, Margaret Atwood’s Bread (1981), emcompasses multifarious literary techniques, written in a confronting manner to explore and question the extent of the representation of realism. The multifaceted story contains perspectives encompassing a symbolic loaf of bread, conveying conflicting versions of reality through indifferences, thus positioning the assumptive privileged reader in belief of their own culpabilities. Furthermore, through examining the equivocal second-person narrative, Atwood experiments through narration, point-of-view and the use of stylistic devices in representing the ‘real’ within literature. Within Bread, Atwood alters the narrative voice and point-of-view to emphasise the importance of implicating the audience in the action and discomfort, thus using the realistic technique of representing the actual and ordinary experience reflecting the social world of the common reader.

The short story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver is told from the perspective of a first-person narrator. Throughout the story, the narrator is self-absorbed in his own thoughts and emotions and fails in his willingness to overlook personal insecurities in order to accommodate others’ discomfort, i.e. predominantly his wife and the blind man. In general, the story lacks figurative language and is told in short, direct sentences. This basic structure leaves a lot for the reader to interpret on his or her own. I focused on two paragraphs within Raymond Carver’s short story. The first section is the fifth paragraph in the story beginning with “But instead of dying...” and concluding with “all I wanted to.” To make it less complicated throughout my paper, I will refer to this segment as ‘Section 1.’ The second section I used is the seventh paragraph in the short story, which begins with “Beulah had gone to work...” and ends with “Pathetic.” I will refer to this segment as ‘Section 2.’ Both of these paragraphs hold significance both in themselves alone as well as when applied together.

Character development within novels with complex plot structures proves to be a difficult task necessitating the author to add their own inner thoughts and experiences to weave a more realistic story. The historical background of a writer helps glean on information about that person’s unconscious and subconscious processes that become apparent within an author’s literature. As the author develops their thoughts throughout a novel attempting to paint a clearer picture of their purpose, their own persona becomes a part of the literature. Psychoanalytic theory attempts to further this claim by taking information from one’s childhood, inner taboo thoughts and hidden motivations, and synthesizing them for a better picture of the author’s