Literary Techniques In Leslie Rubinowski's In The Woods

Tim O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods is centered around the mysterious disappearance of Kathy Wade. Mysterious is the key word, as throughout the novel O’Brien plays with the fine line between ambiguity and reality. Kathy’s husband John Wade, the main character, is a Vietnam veteran and former politician whose participation in the infamous Mai Lai Massacre caused his fall from grace. Following a landslide defeat in the congressional elections, Kathy and John retreat to solitude in an isolated cabin in the Minnesota woods. Here, O’Brien highlights the stress that secrecy has had on their relationship. During their retreat, Kathy disappears in the middle of the night. Their boat is missing, but there are no other clues. O’Brien does

begins this writing from when she was eleven years old. Her mom and Granny were very

In his book, Last Child in the Woods (2008), Richard Louv illustrates his distaste for the widening divide between man and nature by his use of exemplification, narration and hypophora. Louv’s purpose for writing this book is to inform the audience that mankind should change its ways and move towards a lifestyle that is more appreciative of its surroundings. Louv uses a frustrated tone to invoke the feeling of guilt within the reader because they are responsible for making humanity unappreciative of nature.

In today’s society, artificial light is all over the place, wherever we go, there always is artificial light. Some people wish to see true darkness again, and one of those people is Paul Bogard. Paul bogard believes that natural darkness should be preserved and it is our job to make sure it is preserved. He builds a very persuasive essay using his memories and by asking many rhetorical questions to the reader. HE starts his essay of by remembering a time when he saw true darkness, untainted by artificial light. Then he uses facts to show how much the world has changed and how the next generation may never see true darkness. Than he comes back to his emotions and how he felt and that he thinks that we aren’t realizing the worth of true darkness, and if we don’t do something now,

Though this book is written from a young girl’s point of view, even in the first hundred pages there are various forms of

In his collection of short shorties, O’Brien writes in a style that is very vivid and often times causes the audience to find themselves accepting the events and details of these stories as the truth. O’Brien contrasts the truth to fiction by reminding the audience that within these short stories, the details are not the truth and are there to demonstrate the human emotions that can not be communicated as absolute facts.

By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain. (O’Brien 152)

She began to find herself wanting to stay in the house to read instead of going out to play. She first started reading to escape from the problems of her daily life. She would read books about black history, religion and love. When she becomes old enough to date boys she begins to read books about pornography, not knowing that these books were not fit for a girl her age. Then she begins to pleasure herself in private, but after her sisters catch her she begins to feel ashamed and never does it again.

This bitterness and sarcasm is revealed as strong characteristics of the narrator. Throughout the majority of the story, the narrator continues shows his distaste for any "happy" situation. Much like the hyphenated asides, Carver implements fragmented sentences behind description, to show the narrator pausing for a moment of color commentary.

At the beginning of the story, the narrator starts by remembering a childhood calamity. Her young playmate

After reading both stories, I found that I enjoyed Stephanie Ericsson’s, “The Ways We Lie” the most. This story was very interesting and made me think of many different things. I did not realize that there were so many different ways to lie. I was guilty of doing a few of them. After reading the section about the white lie, I realized that I do this sometimes without even noticing it. Ericsson gives the example of when your friend may look terrible one day, but you tell them that they look nice just so they would feel better. Most people, along with myself, do not see this as a bad thing because you are doing something good for someone else, but either way you are still lying. As I continued reading, I was also shocked about a few parts, especially

“By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but

When it comes to exploring the point of view of this story, you can ask yourself a few questions. “This story is told in the first person by a teenage girl. What are the strengths and limitations of such a narrator?” (cited in Clugston, 2010, sec. 8.2, para. 203) The second question would be; “Edie makes this statement in the opening of the last section of the story, “I didn’t figure out till years

In 2005, freelance writer Barbara Stewart of the Boston Globe fabricated a story about a Canadian seal hunt. She reported that the story had already happened, when in fact it had been delayed due to weather. She wrote as if she were at the hunt, when in fact she was not even at the site where the seal hunt occurred.

The writing style is very action-oriented. “When she talked English the maid’s face tightened. ‘Come, Signora,’ she said. ‘We must get back inside. You will be wet.’” It is also very colloquial, the sentences are paratactic and short. There is a complete lack of subordinate clauses, which makes the story seem very “staccato” and broken up. Hemmingway uses “The Iceberg Technique;” we only see the tip of the iceberg, the rest we have to interpret.