Short Story Review - "There's Man in the Habit of Hitting Me on the Head with an Umbrella" by Fernando Sorrentino

This story was written in the first-person perspective. More specifically, the story is a dramatic monologue in which the narrator is responding to ambiguous questions asked by an ambiguous character. The narrator is a major participant taking part in the story as she is the main character, but she isn’t necessarily a reliable source of information because of her extremely emotional state of mind. She is repressing memories from the night of the incident and from her life in general, and this is shown when she says, “I hate to repeat it, my life” (41), and “I don’t want to talk about her” (43). The narrator is also highly unreliable because she isn’t even certain of the validity of the story she is telling. She says, “What? Did I say that?...Then maybe I do remember it, it’s all so confusing and…” (45). Because this story is first-person, we can know only what the narrator reveals. We don’t know the questions being asked of the narrator or the response of that person, and the narrator doesn’t always finish her sentences or thoughts, either. She drifts off and this is shown by the abundant use of ellipses. This is when the reader starts to speculate what is being left out of the narration. The narrator is repressing memories and refusing to talk about them, like when she says, “I don’t want to talk about it again” (41), so there is some

The narrator through out most of the short story comes of as a pretty shallow character. Besides his stereotyping tendencies he comes of as callous and un-imaginative. He shows his lack of

In the story “The Tell Tale Heart” the narrator wants to show the reader that he is not insane. As proof, he offers a story. In the story, the initial situation is the narrator’s decision to kill the old man so that the man’s “evil” eye will stop

Why individuals partake in certain acts has been questioned since humans were able to think for themselves. This very question is at the heart of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, wherein Jekyll, through chemical transformations, creates another version of himself named Hyde so that he could partake in certain acts that he felt were not possible as things stood. Jekyll’s creation of Hyde appears to be preposterous, but as Hyde, Jekyll is able to keep his reputation unharmed, indulge all his desires, and further study the human mind.

The narrator says he loved the old man who took care of him, yet he wants to kill him. He states, “It is impossible to say how the first idea entered my brain… I loved the old man. He had never wronged me… I think it was his eye(2)!” The narrator describes that when the eye fell upon him, his blood ran cold. The narrator plans on killing the old man because of his eye.

The theme of madness is demonstrated when the narrator is driven insane by the old man's “vulture-like eye” peering into his soul. The theme of obsession is shown by the narrator’s desperate

When thinking of two similarly powerful stories one may think of the short stories, “The Falling Girl” by Dino Buzzati and “There’s a Man in the Habit of Hitting Me on the Head with an Umbrella” by Fernando Sorrentino. These two stories have a unique quality about them. When reading them, there are hidden phrases and meanings that connect them together. Both stories show examples of how people come to rash decisions about their lives, but end up being afraid and disappointed.

During his walk, something starts nagging at him. His heart starts behaving irregularly and a sense of excitement takes over him. At the bed of the road, he encounters an astonishing sight. The house looks poorly painted and fake and unconvincing. However, the narrator knows that that is the house he is looking for. As he walks to the house he sees a man behind a little counter. He assumes he

One of the literary devices the short story has are point of view, style, imagery, symbols and a little bit of irony. For the category of point the view: the story is being told in first person. The style of the short story is meant to have an effect on the readers from the start of it all. When it comes to irony, the narrator has perfectly planned out on how to kill the old man without a single person knowing. "He insists that his victim suspected nothing"

In conclusion, this short story is very entertaining and interesting. Judging from the main idea of this story, the author's purpose of writing this, was to

The short story is told in a 1.person narrative and the narrator is explicit because we get a glimpse of the main character's thoughts and feelings, and we see the events through the narrator’s eyes, but the stories that are told from a first person narrative can also be unreliable, since we only see from a viewpoint.

In the middle of finally succumbing to the realization that living her life was harder, by far, than simply dying, she stood on the roof of his old apartment, barefoot and shivering, cradling a picture against her pounding chest. The cold rain beat over the worn portrait and the edges saturated. She could feel the photo weakening as she rubbed it between her thumb and index. Pieces of the photo began to stick to her fingers and roll up into little shavings. Thunder rumbled somewhere to the East, past the ozone of the city, past their home, but not quite to the coast. No one could hear her scream or cry or wheeze or snot... No one would look for her if she stayed right there, in the rain, listening to the nearby cracks vibrate in the pit of her stomach. She couldn 't look into the eyes of the child in the photo, but she held it up in front of her face sporadically to see the warbled image through her tears. She shook more, and the hairs on her arms stood erect and her nose ran and she cried. It didn 't matter what the cold concrete felt like on her knees, that it smelled like trying again, that it reminded her of the desert because it was not... There was nothing that mattered... Not the sound of the rooftop turbines surrounding her, clacking and sputtering water as the wind blew more. Her

He writes in a language, and he uses a lot of metaphorical features. We as readers are very confused about the way he has chosen to describe the story, but we are also very fascinated by the action. So whole this short story tells us that he has had a tragic life and how he helps others achieve a good life and you can say here that he has a good point.

Human beings have both a good and evil trait of their personality or nature. Therefore, to be marked as a right person, one has to suppress the evil desires and passions and only focus on the goodness in him or her. Nonetheless, most people are unable to shun away from their hopes and often live a double-edged life in which they publicly act in good faith and privately execute their evil desires. Additionally, some people are unable to hide their sinful nature, which becomes the dominant trait hence only indulge in evil deeds publicly and privately. In Strange Case of Dr. Jykell and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jykell manages to live a double-edged life as good person and also as Mr. Hyde executes the evil passions and deeds. However, the evil in Mr. Hyde dominates the good of Dr. Jykell which makes it vivid that giving in to evil desires often leads to embracing evil which dominates in an individual’s life.

Rain poured down, creating small streams flowing down the sides of the street. A leaf lay along the surface of the stream of muddy water, struggling to stay afloat as rain continued to fall. The wind moved the branches of the trees so forcefully it was as if they were trying to escape the swampy ground. Her concentration was broken as the white mail truck came into sight. Andy had been peering out the window in the den for what seemed like hours waiting for her letter to arrive. The mailman carried a blue umbrella covering his bag full of envelopes. He looked rather young. He attempted to jump over the stream, but he missed, landing right in the middle making the leaf drown. His head moved around as he checked to make sure no one saw. After shaking his legs to try and get the water out of his shoes he headed up the stairs to Andy’s house.