The Theme of a Story

Paul Newman once said, “People stay married because they want to, not because the doors are locked” (74). There is no such thing as the perfect relationship, however, being involved in a healthy relationship is essential for a person to feel valued, safe, and happy. Unfortunately, in the situation of Kelly Sundberg’s personal essay “It Will Look Like a Sunset,” and Kate Chopin’s short story “The Story of An Hour,” include extreme examples of unhealthy relationships. The essay “It Will Look Like a Sunset,” shares painful experiences of Sundberg’s physical and emotional abusive relationship with her husband Caleb, while “The Story of an Hour,” shares a rare reaction of a married woman, Louise Mallard, who explores her emotions cautiously when hearing about the death of her husband. Each woman faces their own prison created by their husbands. The two marriages represent the figurative meaning of doors being locked in a marriage. Both pieces of literature convey the theme of confinement by using the literary devices of foreshadowing, imagery, and conflict.

Many people also by reading, author’s memories are able to relate to what they experienced in a similar fashion. In addition, writer often feel a sense of

Memories are important, they are a personal record of our past experiences, and could be called the history book for our life. In the poem "The Heroes You Had as a Girl", author Bronwen Wallace tells the story of a woman who meets her high school hero later in her life, reflects on her memories of him, and ultimately decides not to talk to him. The effect that this topic has on everyone is the knowledge that we can be captivated and let our memories control us, and by knowing that our memories hold that much power, it may make it more mentally efficient to make accurate, and personal decisions in a fraction of the time. The topic and overall meaning that this idea holds convey a message that resonates with the idea that memories are in fact the central hub of our decision making. People remembering memories can affect their perspective on their lives to such an extent, that they prefer to immerse their mind in their past memories rather than the current reality.

Alice Munro’s “How I Met My Husband” uses the themes of secrecy and love just about throughout the entire story. In this story Edie is a fifteen year old girl who is employed by the Pebble’s family. She initially succeeds at

Television psychologists and pop culture self-help gurus tell us that marriage is hard work; marriage is compromise; marriage is a choice between being right, and being happy. All of these statements are true. What these experts don’t tell us, however, is that marriage is also about putting on blinders, or looking on the bright side, or one of a hundred other trite phrases to explain the art of self-deception. In marriage, there are times when we may find it necessary to look the other way from our spouse’s faults or indiscretions, in the interest of self-preservation. For if we examine these problems too closely, our darkest, most secret fears may come true. Therefore, it can seem easier to focus on the positive. In her poem “Surprise,” Jane Kenyon uses denial, selective perception, and fear of betrayal to illustrate the self-deception that can occur in marriage.

Moreover, writing about memory which is the groundwork of the traditional autobiographical genre is a problematic endeavor, since it is a project of conflating memory, imagination, and sometimes a conscious misrepresentation of the past. Likewise, it is a way to inscribe the discursive selves that they envision as “true” representations of their selfhoods.

Alterations: Comparing the Changes Caused by Marriage of the two Bessie Head Short Stories, “Life” and “Snapshots of a Wedding”

The story How I Met My Husband shows the expansion that takes place for Edie in her life. Edie started at the beginning of the story as a young girl with a very naïve sense of the world. Towards the middle of the story, she starts to grow into someone who

Sally is not even eight grades and she gets married. Her husband is a marshmallow salesman that she meets at a school bazaar. She moves to another state where is legal their marriage. Sally tells Esperanza about her house and domestic objects that she owns. Sally says that she is in love, but Esperanza believes that Sally just gets married to escape. Sally 's husband gives her money to buy things, and she enjoys this aspect of being married. Sally claims to be happy, except when sometimes her husband gets angry and one time he kicked a hole through the door. Her husband doesn’t let her go out, talk on the phone, see her friend or even look out the window. Sally spends her day sittings at home, looking around at the pretty things she owns: the towels, the toaster, the alarm clock and the drapes.

Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark” examine the complex relationship between a husband and wife. The two works take two different approaches to convey the same message: Marriage is not a fairytale, it requires sacrifice and unselfish behavior in order to work. Relationships are difficult to begin and harder to maintain. Mr. and Mrs. Mallard and Aylmer and Georgiana are two relationships that shatter the surreal perception of marriage and expose readers to the raw truth, marriage is not a fairytale.

certainly connect with the narrator’s story of I Want a Wife. This is a narrative essay, in which

In the poem “Stalker,” Vahni Capildeo describes a reflection on marriage commitment by a presentation of the past, present, and future of a relationship. Incorporating syntactic devices and comparison, the speaker describes the nature of their changing relationship in different stages. Starting as strangers, the man and the speaker grows closer as the poem progresses described by image patterns; however, the speaker ends in fear of the future of their relationship through tone and alliteration. The progress of the relationship has a sense of uncertainty, explaining that the future is unpredictable, so there is always a sense of fear and anxiety.

  Memories are works of fiction, selective representations of experiences actual or imagined. They provide a framework for creating meaning in one's own life as well as in the lives of others. In Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, memory is a dangerous and debilitating faculty of human consciousness. Sethe endures the tyranny of the self imposed prison of memory. She expresses an insatiable obsession with her memories, with the past. Sethe is compelled to explore and explain an overwhelming sense of yearning, longing, thirst for something beyond herself, her daughter, her Beloved. Though Beloved becomes a physical manifestation of these memories, her will is essentially defined by and tied to the

After Chris leaves, Edie pines away for Chris’ promised letter. Eventually Edie faces a pivotal moment: “I imagined me making this journey day after day year after year… I was not made to go on like that (Mondoe 146).” Edie consciously makes the decision to not meet the mail and lament over Chris Watters, choosing to go on independently as a woman instead of a girl. Eventually, the maiman phones for Edie, taking her by surprise. They eventually marry, and Edie concludes the story as an older and more mature narrator who is able to look back on her immature ways in the past and see how she has

The author suggests that all his writing is an attempt to achieve that state of perfect correspondence, ‘against the whole of our cultural history’ (Kavanagh 1986 p. 253). Malouf points out in the same interview that Western culture considers a mature point of view as being the point at which a person is most aware of himself/herself in a hard and clear way, separate from the rest of creation, and therefore having power over it. Through an attentive choice of words and use of language devoid of mere communication purposes, Malouf attempts to rehabilitate the primeval magical function of language. He individuates in art, the task of the restorer of the magic correspondence of language.