Social Commentary And Literary Elements In Gallant's The Other Paris

The beauty of the story is about authentically conveying the author’s emotion experience, depicting the true feeling of the characters, and delivering the thought process by putting readers into their shoes, in order to create resonance with the readers, like her emotion for the love of nature, for her struggle towards money, and for the crush she had towards the hunter. Sylvia’s love of nature showed from “As for Sylvia herself, it seemed as if she had never been alive at all before she came to live at the farm. (5)”. She found her real self here, embracing the nature, knowing every life that lived here, and fully enjoying the freedom in the woods, just like a jungle fairy.

The poem “Chevrefoil (The Honeysuckle)” by Marie De France gladly spoke about lovers whose love was “so true, so pure” that it caused them to suffer and die on the same day (De France 167). This lay explores the themes of inseparable love, while keeping true to the underlying meaning of the hazel tree and the honeysuckle, while the speaker of the poem carries a jovial yet melancholy tone throughout the lay.

Love waxes timeless. It is passionate and forbidden and a true head rush. Marriage, on the other hand, is practical, safe, a ride up the socioeconomic ladder. In "The Other Paris," Mavis Gallant weaves the tale of Carol and Howard, a fictional couple who stand on the verge of a loveless marriage, to symbolize the misguided actions of the men and women in the reality of the 1950s, the story's setting. By employing stereotypical, ignorant, and altogether uninteresting characters, Gallant highlights the distinction between reality and imagination and through the mishaps and lack of passion in their courtship mockingly comments on society?s views of love and marriage.

Characterization is the strength of Love Medicine. The humorous, but tragic, exploits of eccentric characters are extremely vivid in her story, and force a constant chnage of viewpoint for the reader as more aspects of characters are revealed. The characters in this novel are a woven pattern of intricacy possibly far surpassing the reader's ability, and especially surpassing the characters themselves. This may be by design, as those things unresolved and disjointed by the end of the story can promote an incomplete and unsettled set of emotions

Opening into the story, Collier uses mood to help the reader focus on the climax. The mood of the story starts out quite dim, dreary, and depressed. The narrator explains how she believes that God wasn’t accommodating and didn’t provide for them in the beginning of the story. Lizabeth says, “But God was chary with miracles those days, and so we waited- and waited.”(Collier 76). Readers learn from this how the narrator was agitated and didn’t believe that it was fair that they were suffering. She believed that God should be merciful and grant them some miracles. However, downstream in the story, Miss Lottie’s marigolds are beautiful and stunning, which is in opposition the mood from the beginning of the story. The whole story doesn’t have a despondent mood. The narrator continues with, “Beyond the dusty brown yard, in front of the sorry gray house, rose suddenly and shockingly a dazzling strip of bright blossoms, clumped together in enormous mounds, warm and passionate and sun golden.”(Collier 79). This advances the idea of a silver lining in a rotten time. Unfortunately, approaching the end of the story, the mood takes a somber and mournful turn again. After Lizabeth gets caught disfiguring the flowers by Miss Lottie, Lizabeth feels shame, regret, and sorrow,

Unfortunately, such a quality is present in many young girls of this generation as they may not receive any attention from individuals in their lives, which leaves them to be fascinated by people, even strangers, who give them such desired attention. Arnold Friend also gets Connie to notice him through his flamboyant gold convertible and his mysterious yet stylish physical appearance. However, with a closer look, Connie realizes that Arnold Friend’s flashy car is just a “convertible jalopy painted gold”, his shabby black hair is likely a wig, his tall stature likely simulated by stilts or heels, and his fashionable clothing articles unlikely his as nothing fitted him properly. Nevertheless, this attribute from the piece demonstrates how not everything is as it seems from its first glance. Such a literary text also highlights how beauty impacts an individual’s impression and actions as Connie notices Arnold Friend’s “beauty”, at first, and Connie’s youthful beauty compels Arnold Friend to want to pursue

Set in 1942 during World War II, Sarah was just a little girl when she and her parents got taken away by the French police. She hid her younger brother in a closet and promised him she’d come back. De Rosnay added the promise Sarah made to her brother to make the reader wonder if she will ever get back to him. The struggles Sarah starts going through at her age gives the audience a sense of sympathy for her. As soon as she gets separated from her parents, the author makes the story take an unexpected turn that the reader should not anticipate. As Sarah begins to be on her own, this makes De Rosnay’s audience want to keep up with the

In the story the author portrays the protagonist differently from the other characters because she talks about the physical appearance of other characters and when it comes to the narrator we have no idea what she looks like but she is developed partially through her relationship with other characters, although we the readers do come the find out that the narrator is around the age of 15-17 years old and we can assume that she has a bad relationship with her parents because first of all she talks about them maybe once or twice in the whole story and second of all we know that they sent her to boarding school so that alone proves that her relationship with them is lacking. As readers we also know that she has trouble opening up in the story she say “To open your heart. You open your legs but can’t, or don’t dare anyone, to open your heart” (237). This is a prime example of how author characterizes the protagonist as broken and emotionally damaged. And as the story progress the author becomes more honest with us the readers and herself, she starts the reveal the pain she is in and how lonely she feels. The narrator gives us an example of how she feels after sex by saying “After sex, you curl up like a shrimp, something deep inside you ruined, slammed in a place that sickness at

The poems are inspired by the love that a man has for a woman and in many instances how the scenery reminds him of his love. The thirteenth tale depicts a man who was torn between whether or not he should write to his lover. The first poem shows the woman’s feelings when he did not hear from the man for a long time and shows her in a heartbroken tone (78-9). It also shows that the woman too has conflicting emotions about her partner as she strongly dislikes not hearing from him, yet she it would not be very appealing for him to write her either. The man writes a poem in response to her, and as it says he is distraught and rushed the poem. He says to her that her requests are difficult for him to take and that it would be hard for him to heal his wounds of love lost (79). This tale and the poems from it show that there is much more that can be incited than if it were just the narrative. Without the poems, the emotional impact in the tale would not be as strong since there would not be the voice of the woman and her feelings towards the man and the man’s response to her. There easily could be a description of their interaction, but it would not be as powerful since it would not display the voices of the lovers and their views of their relationship.

Carol Anne Duffy presents love and romance in a unique way that differentiates valentine from any other love poem. Throughout this poem carol expresses love though the original metaphor of an onion. This essay analyses how she does this so effectively and how she presents a range of ideas about love and romance.

In the sociopolitical novel, A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens analyzes the events of one of the bloodiest revolutions in history, the French Revolution, characterized by its violence after no less than 40,000 people were sentenced to death. The violence of the revolution put irreversible change into motion, helping to bring greater equality between French citizens as a result of the upheaval, and causing political changes that affected millions. Through his changing tone, Dickens conveys that rebellion is necessary to amend the ever-growing divide between the social classes, but the mindless nature of the violence, as a result of mob mentality, is excessive, and blood is unnecessarily spilled.

The French Revolution mainly took place in the city of Paris during the late 1700’s. The Revolution did not only affect the people of France, but also the citizens of England as well. The French Revolution is known as one of the most brutal and inhumane periods of history. If one studied the beliefs and views of the people involved at the time, one would see a reoccurring theme of “ being recalled to life”. Born from the world of literature, Charles Dickens’ novel, A Tale of Two Cities takes a deeper look at the culture of the late 1700’s, in both England and France. Dickens uses the character of Lucie Manette to further examine one of the major themes presented in the novel, consisting of the belief of one being

With each letter in Les Liaisons dangereuses, Choderlos de Laclos advances a great many games of chess being played simultaneously. In each, the pieces—women of the eighteenth-century Parisian aristocracy—are tossed about mercilessly but with great precision on the part of the author. One is a pawn: a convent girl pulled out of a world of simplicity and offered as an entree to a public impossible to sate; another is a queen: a calculating monument to debauchery with fissures from a struggle with true love. By examining their similarities and differences, Laclos explores women’s constitutions in a world that promises ruin for even the most formidable among them. Presenting the reader glimpses of femininity from a young innocent’s daunting debut to a faithful woman’s conflicted quest for heavenly virtue to another’s ruthless pursuit of vengeance and earthly pleasures, he insinuates the harrowing journey undertaken by every girl as she is forced to make a name for herself as a woman amongst the tumult of a community that machinates at every turn her downfall at the hands of the opposite sex. In his careful presentation of the novel’s female characters, Laclos condemns this unrelenting subjugation of women by making clear that every woman’s fate in such a society is a definitive and resounding checkmate.

The first conflict between the two cities occurs during Dr. Manette’s imprisonment. Lucie’s secret escape to London by Mr. Lorry and Charles Darnay’s parallel refusal to accept his inheritance in France represent the victory of London’s individualist society over the unjust, feudalistic society of Paris.

The newlyweds sail off to Europe where they continue their earnest, joyless attempts at parenthood. No luck in Paris so it's off to Dijon "where a number of people who crossed on the boat with them had gone"(87). In all this time the reader is no closer to knowing these people than they seem to be knowing each other. Cornelia begins typing his very long poems for him, crying when he is "very severe about mistakes"(87).