So Long See You Tomorrow Themes

Moral intentions can be explored while contemplating bits of memories. As the narrator reflects upon his past relationship with his father, he starts to acknowledge

“Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are two stories that reveal the consequences of individual suffering. These consequences include estranging relationships, bitter behavior, and even illness, addiction, or death. Throughout each of these stories, Sonny and John’s wife, known as the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, continue to suffer due to John’s and Sonny’s brother’s, known as the narrator of “Sonny’s Blues”, failure to meet obligations and familial compassion. Neither the narrator in “Sonny’s Blues” nor the husband, John, in “The Yellow Wallpaper” serve as the villains of the stories, however, I believe we are able to see how both their inabilities to effectively

Throughout the play we follow the fortunes and misfortunes of the two boys who's lives eventually intertwine and they become the best of friends much to their mothers' disapproval.

In the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe creates the guilty character of an unnamed narrator through indirect characterization. Using the components of actions, dialogue, and motivations, Poe depicts a story about immorality and reveals confidence can cause a person to lose their awareness of a situation.

The first passage reveals the parallel suffering occurring in the lives of different members of the family, which emphasizes the echoes between the sufferings of the father and the narrator. The narrator’s father’s despair over having watched

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, a short story about internal conflict and obsession, showcases the tortured soul due to a guilty conscience. The story opens with an unnamed narrator describing a man deranged and plagued with a guilty conscience for a murderous act. This man, the narrator, suffers from paranoia, and the reason for his crime is solely in his disturbed mind. He becomes fixated on the victim’s (the old man’s) eye, and his conscience forces him to demonize the eye. Finally, the reader is taken on a journey through the planning and execution of a murder at the hands of the narrator. Ultimately, the narrator’s obsession causes an unjust death which culminates into internal conflict due to his guilty conscience. The

“It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder, that life might be long.” (Chopin 17). “"Poof!"… gave a revealing look at the victims of domestic abuse and how they wrestle with overcoming their fear and their doubts after suffering years of abusive treatment.” (Toomer 5) Loureen unlike Mrs. Mallard, witnesses her husband’s death first hand during a marital argument. Loureen goes through denial questioning whether her husband’s death. She is happy her husband is dead but also feels guilty, because she knows how a mourning wife should react, but the joy of his demise is greater,” I should be praying, I should be thinking of the burial, but all that keeps popping into my mind is what will I wear on television when I share my horrible and wonderful story with a studio audience…”, Loureen’s husband, Samuel, was physically abusive, as revealed by Florence, Loureen’s best friend and neighbor. “Did that mother***** hit you again?” (Nottage 1563) This abuse, physical by Samuel and mental by Brently, is what allows Loureen in the drama “Poof!” and Mrs. Mallard in the short story “The Story of an Hour” to have the shared freedom they feel in the release from their respective abusive relationships.

The dark and eerie tone of the murder story and its unusual setting contribute to the story’s theme of defense of one’s honor and avenging wrongdoing. The haughtiness and conceited attitudes of the two men create an extension of this theme in which Poe wants to show how far some men will go when they receive a blow to the ego. The story’s setting in the

Guilt is a powerful emotion that can greatly affect the course of a person’s life. Dunny’s character, in Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business, first experienced guilt at an early age due to a tragic accident. A snowball that was meant for Dunny hit a pregnant woman, Mrs. Dempster, causing her to go into premature labour. Although her child, Paul Dempster, survived, the guilt that Dunny experienced from his part in the situation would stay with him for the rest of his life. Guilt stayed with Dunny’s character throughout his life, and continually affected all of his actions.

They each tell their side of the story, letting the reader into their thoughts. These multiple narrators contribute to help the reader understand each main character from different perspectives and show how and why things happened the way they did. Bailey also uses both a prologue and an epilogue to contribute to the richness of the story, which is a style quite common in the ancient Greek plays. In the prologue, Susan Hazen, Kevin’s mother, tells the reader in retrospect about the morning of the hunt and forewarns the reader of the tragedy that is to come (7). After reading the prologue we know that something horrible will happen, but Bailey leaves us wondering what the tragedy will be. Bailey also incorporates an Epilogue to bring closure to one of the characters.

One’s moral duty is often conflicted with an emotional drive or a strong passion. The drive it takes to deviate from knowing what is right and wrong can lead to unfavorable outcomes, such as suffering. Not only does this engagement establish a war within the mind, but it also hinders certain responsibilities. In Edith Wharton’s novel Ethan Frome, the protagonist, Ethan, encounters a dilemma: his strong feelings for his wife’s cousin, Mattie, compels him to reconsider his devotion to Zeena. Ethan allows himself to seize feelings for Mattie, through which he disregards his moral duties to his wife, typifying that addressing a private passion over responsibility can lead to suffering.

From as early as 408 B.C.E., iterations of the adage ‘misery loves company’ have appeared in written texts. First attributed to Sophocles in Athens, this popular dictum has traveled far from Greece, and has found itself at the core of Ethan Frome. In Edith Wharton’s tragic novella Ethan Frome (1911), the titular protagonist’s infliction of suffering encompasses the key principles of Naturalism. Illustrating this, Ethan forces Zeena, his wife, to disengage from her environment and retreat into silence. Further, he recklessly pursues Mattie, Zeena’s exuberant cousin, and dulls the radiance which first attracted him. And as the final nail, Ethan cages himself in obligation, desperately rattling its bars, but never stepping past them.

In the past three years, and always during the month of November, Mark Stormrider a well-known, successful, wealthy writer finds himself facing the possibility of death to only come out of it somehow unscathed. November is getting nearer and nearer again, and Mark for some unknown reason, besides a strong gut feeling, has within him that if anything happens, this time, it will certainly be fatal. Haunted by such feeling, Mark has spent quite some time now, going over the fifty-five years of his life in search for any wrongdoing and pain he must have caused others, and in doing so came up with a list of old time friends with whom he has lost contact over the years and feels that he must reunite in order to apologize for any sorrow he might have

The Scarlet Letter, a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, depicts a woman ostracized from her town in Puritan New England after her sin of adultery is revealed, although the father of the illegitimate child remains unknown to the town. In The Tell-Tale Heart, a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator murders an elderly man in the middle of the night and attempts to cover up his crime. Hawthorne and Poe use the psychological torment and suffering of Arthur Dimmesdale and the narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart to convey that hiding one’s sinful actions from society leads to the strong emotions of pain and guilt, demonstrating that one can only end their misery, leading to freedom, by accepting and exposing their mistakes to society.

The only other dynamic character is Laird, her little brother. At the beginning of the story he is very young and obeys his big sister, no matter what she tells him to do; at the end, he too has grown up somewhat and no longer accepts her authority unquestioningly. He puts an end to their bedtime singing ceremony when he tells her, "You sound silly," and tells on her when she lets the horse escape. Laird is the only character beside Henry Bailey that is given a name. His name, a Scotch form of the title "Lord," demonstrates his importance to the family, as the only boy, and his place in society, which will have more respect for him than for his sister. Yet, in the story it is evident that the narrator is just as good a worker as her brother-far better, because of her advantage in age. It is only because she is a girl that her mother expects her to be a help inside the house, not outside of it. The other characters are the narrator's father, her mother, and the hired hand, Henry Bailey. Henry is someone whom the children admire for his "ability to make his stomach growl at will, and for his laughter, which was full of high whistlings and gurglings and involved the whole faulty machinery of his chest," and for other characteristics that adults might find vulgar, but that are wondrous and exciting to the children. The father is a creative, inventive man and a hard worker, who keeps his thoughts to himself but, in the narrator's opinion, can be depended upon. The mother is a