On The Sidewalk Bleeding Symbolism

Autumn has been a dance for her entire life, and planned to apply for Juilliard. Tyler always loved to watch her dance until Autumn started hanging out with Sylv. They started dancing together, and Tyler no longer loved to watch Autumn. Her love for dance is a symbol in this book, because when Tyler is almost ready to take his life he decided to take her happiness. Tyler knew she took his happiness, so he took her’s and shot her in the knee. That prevented her to ever dance again. Another object was the gun. For him it was like a microphone in the auditorium, when he was holding it all eyes were on him. He had all control. Lastly, I think the chalk on the front cover were used for symbolism. It shows a bullet going through them, and that could show the teachers in the auditorium trying to help, but only getting shot. They tried their hardest but only ended up not getting anywhere with Tyler. The objects used for symbolism in this book were pretty hard to find, but if you comprehended the book well you could probably find

Murder usually happens because people can't accept others. However, in the short story, “On The Sidewalk Bleeding”, if at least one person would have considered helping Andy and not turn their backs on him. He would have lived. “On the sidewalk” Bleeding was written by Evan Hunter. Evan hunter's lesson of the story is self-identity, this is the main theme of the story because it is built around why Andy was stabbed. Andy was stabbed because he was wearing a purple jacket with the word royals on the back. The royals are a gang, their rivals are called the guardians. The author showed a few symbols in the story, but the main one is Andy's jacket. The jacket is the main symbol because without it there would be no story.

From the beginning of the story, Hunter sets the scene up and there is already a feeling of sympathy for Andy, the boy lying on the ground with the “wide gap in his flesh.”(Hunter 1), and the “rain drilling his jacket and drilling his body”(Hunter 1). The author is using very descriptive language in these two sentences to create a very horrific, but realistic sight in the reader's mind, inevitably building up a feeling of sadness for Andy. Towards the middle of the story, Andy still remains lying in the pouring rain with intense pain and Hunter describes Andy’s body as feeling “hot all over,”(5). This portrays very vivid image and feeling that the author intentionally creates in the reader. By using powerful imagery, the reader pictures and experiences a more realistic and moving image, creating lots of

“I do what I can for them, but it is not enough… though their bandages unravel… believe me I love them…” establishes conflict and insight on the complex relationship between the novelist and the characters in the novel “Marching Through a Novel” by John Updike. Updike shows the complexity of being a novelist and creating characters through personification and metaphors.

In the story “The Hitchhiker,” Lucille Fletcher uses flashback to build a mood that is a mood of unknowing . Six months ago I left Brooklyn to drive to California.... ( Fletcher 2 and 3)“Mother I’ll be back. I’ll only be on the coast three months”. ( Fletcher 2 and 3) This shows that Adams is flashing back to six days ago when he left Brooklyn. Another example for the story would be “I suppose not.What, ah-er-ah-What about hitchhikers.” ( Fletcher 6) This shows that Adams is flashing back to remember that he saw a hitchhiker and he is asking the man that is working the store if he saw any hitchhiker around lately. For a follow up it the story it said. “After I got the car back on the road again, I felt like a fool. Yet, the thought of picking him up, of having him sit beside me, was somehow unbearable. At the same time I felt - more than ever - unspeakably alone.” (Fletcher 8) This also shows that the author Lucille Fletcher used flashbacks in the story “The Hitchhiker.”

In Walt Whitman’s poem, “The Wound Dresser,” the moments expressed throughout take place during the Civil War and are experienced by an old, devoted wound-dresser. The poem begins with the wound dresser having to make a choice on whether he should tell a group of children what he went through “or silently watch the dead” (17). Through the poem, the narrator captures the internal struggles he faces when dealing with a numerous amount of wounded soldiers day by day while at the same time trying to do his job. It is when the narrator is having these inner struggles that the poem distinctively uses punctuation and diction to fully capture unforgotten flashes imbedded in the mind of the narrator.

The main theme of the story “On The Sidewalk Bleeding” is identity. Andy is frustrated at everyone for not giving him a chance of how people identify him. He wants to die known as just Andy, not a member gang of the ‘Royals’. In the line “He was not a Royal. He was simply Andy” tells me that Andy was a person who had dreams like getting married to his girlfriend Laura, having kids and travelling, living in Bronx. But since he’s in a gang and wore a Royal purple jacket with pride, people assumed he was just another gang member. They didn’t realise Andy was a regular guy wanting to live a normal life. When Andy joined the ‘Royals’ he felt so proud and accepted, little did he know in the end it would be that main reason that cost his life.

Authors often create texts that share common themes to teach readers importance of certain aspects and hardships of life. Theme may be expressed through an author’s use of rhetorical devices and many other contributing factors such as figurative language and repetition. The essay, “Once More to the Lake” written by E.B. White and the poem “Forgetfulness” written by Billy Collins, both contain a theme of identity loss. In “Once More to the Lake” E.B White connects to a lake at young age and when returning with his son years later is unable to identify himself. In similar theme “Forgetfulness” describes different factors of human life and everyday things being forgotten and lost. Both White and Collins use repetition and metaphors to further push the theme of identity loss throughout the texts.

In the short story “The Town Dump”, by Wallace Stegner, the reader is introduced to a collection of memories of the author when he was younger. Stegner focused on one specific place where most of his learning and memories come from, a town dump. Initially, the readers of this piece might have a negative conjecture of the dump. However, Stegner’s descriptive techniques provide a unique perspective of the dump through the lens of a young version of himself. The techniques that allow the author to transform how the reader views the dump include paradox and semantic cohesion.

The setting of Alice Walkers short story” The Flowers” is important for us, the readers to obtain a perspective of how life was like growing up for a 10 year old African American girl by the name of Myop. The title of the story is “The Flowers.” When you think about flowers, you instantly compare them to being beautiful, pure, and innocent. The title of the “The Flowers” is a symbolism that correlates to Myop who is the protagonist of the story. Myop is just like a flower in the beginning of the story. She’s a pure and innocent child but that pure innocence changes when she discovers something that’ll change her life forever.

The interplay of dark and light motifs underlies the narrator’s most recent hardship. On his way home on the subway, the narrator comes across his brother’s name in a newspaper and “stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside” (Baldwin). Riding in the light of the subway car, the author makes the non-suspecting narrator subject to suffering, unguarded by the protective cloak of the outside darkness. Made vulnerable by the exposed light and people surrounding him, the narrator is hit harder by the unexpected news than if he had read it in the darkness of his private room. Under the “swinging lights,” the narrator is not prepared to cope with the troubling news. This emphasizes the importance of light as a symbol for one’s need of camouflage to properly cope with tragedy.

As the poem progresses, the misplaced or forgotten items become concepts such as names and ideas, and therefore carry more of an impact. For example, forgetting someone’s name, however not uncommon, can be associated with feelings of embarrassment from the forgettor, and annoyance from the forgotten when they discover that they were not important enough to be remembered. The speaker simply shrugs off these losses because “None of [them] will bring disaster,” as mentioned in line 9. Emotion, often associated with memories is introduced in line 10 when the speaker announces, “I lost my mother’s watch.” An item such as a mother’s watch holds sentimental value, unlike the previously mentioned keys; however, the speaker repeats, “I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster,” (line 15) indicating that the watch was merely a material possession crowded with memories. At this point, the reader recognizes the feeling of missing something associated with greater losses of objects and ideas the speaker regards with more emotional attachment.

The main character Matt, along with his wife and children, had to deal with the death of one of his sons Frank. At the beginning of the story, Matt seems to have an unbearable amount of grief, stress, and pressure. Most of this is caused by his wife who seems to not want her son's killer out walking the streets. By the end of the story, Matt had killed Strout, his son’s killer, and the last line was “he shuddered with a sob that he kept silent in his heart” (Dubus 74). This line alludes that Matt ended up worse than when he started, almost to the point where he has more guilt and regrets what he did. In addition to character development, Dubus uses imagery as well. The descriptive words in this short story allow the reader to get into the scenes with the characters, and to feel what the characters felt. In the midst of one of the flashbacks, Dubus sets up the scene very well, and makes the reader feel like they are there. For example, “They were sitting on the living room floor watching television, Frank sitting on the couch, and Mary Ann just returning from the kitchen with a tray of sandwiches” (Dubus 65). This set up the scene before Strout came in and shot Frank, and Dubus uses this continuously throughout the story. The imagery used allows you to have the possibility to understand why the killers

There are more significant symbols in the novel such as The Boy. The Man and Boy fight to survive many hardships, but through the darkness there is light, The Boy. He is very mature and cares for every stray person they pass. One person he cares for is a man named Ely, an old man with nothing but the clothes on his back, until he meets The Boy and his father." 'You should thank him you know, I wouldn’t have given you anything' "(McCarthy 173). The Boy wants everyone to survive and is willing to share his supplies even if it means he won`t have all the things he needs to live.

“Big Two Hearted River”, a semi-autobiographical short story by Ernest Hemingway, is a story about the main character, Nick, returning to Big Two Hearted River in order to recover from his inner wounds. Nick Adams goes on a journey alone in nature for a therapeutic purpose as he suffers from PTSD. However, Hemingway purposely avoided any direct discussion regarding to Nick’s mental wounds. The absence of the discussion is contributed by Hemingway’s writing style, the Iceberg principle. Hemingway focuses explicitly on what occurs on the surface without mentioning actual theme. This indicates that the theme of self-healing cannot be uncovered by simply looking at the text itself. In order to comprehend the actual theme of the story, the character development of Nick must be examined. This is possible since Nick Adams is a recurring character of Hemingway’s stories. The two preceding stories of “Big Two Hearted River”, “Now I lay me” and “A Way you’ll Never Be”, directly discusses Nick’s suffering from shell-shock and how he comforts himself by returning to Big Two Hearted river in his mind. The two short stories will be analyzed and connected to “Big Two Hearted River” in the essay first. This will provide a strong understanding of Nick’s psyche and the reason behind his return to nature. Then, “Big Two Hearted River” the short story itself will be carefully analyzed.