To Keep from Crying: Reviewing Stories of Love and Marriage by Female Authors

“Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely” (Unknown). People change and grow because of the challenges and conflicts they have in life. A person I know that has changed and grown a lot from a conflict is my mom because a couple years ago she ripped a tendon in her back, and she had to get many surgeries and wasn’t able to walk for a while. She grew a lot from that experience and now she can walk and is still getting better. In “The Street” by Richard Wright the young boy narrator has to overcome his fears and fight some thugs in order to buy his mom groceries. He faces an incredible challenge that makes him have to change extremely quickly. In “First Love” by Judith Ortiz Cofer the girl narrator has a crush on a boy that is a couple

In her short story “Happy Endings”, Margaret Atwood uses different literary techniques that can alter the interpretation of the story’s theme. The story starts off with a generic “fairy tale” ending in which a husband and a wife live a happy life together and eventually die. However, as the story progresses, Atwood’s style and tone makes the alternate scenarios of John and Mary give off a sense of uncertainty of what main ideas she is trying to convey. Good opening and thesis.

Alice Munro’s “How I Met My Husband” is a short story that takes the role of being a poignant tale. Munro 's story is told from the perspective of an older woman, Edie, overlooking a time in her life when she was about 15 years old. Munro purposely writes the tale this way to depict that the narrator has learned much from her experiences from when she was 15 years old. Munro does this to allow the reader to have deeper insight of the theme. In “How I Met My Husband” Alice Munro portrays the theme of "delusion and self-deception" by using an abundance of literary devices such as various forms of irony, characterization, and point of view. Munro is able to craft the emotional complexity of the story by utilizing the literary devices that are important to the creation of the short story.

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

In “Happy Endings,” Margaret Atwood manipulates literary techniques to emphasize how each story can have different plots yet end up with the same ending. She makes the case that, in every ending, the characters finish having a happy ending and “eventually they die” (paragraph 4). She infers that it is the contents between the beginning, and the end that bring interest and challenge to the characters, while the beginnings are more fun. The “true connoisseurs” is an important element because it is what makes up the plot (paragraph 21). The six scenarios of “Happy Endings” introduce differences in the beginning and the middle of the plot but result in the same ending. The plot in each scenario focuses on the significance of understanding how

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.

In both the excerpts from Karen van der Zee 's novel "A Secret Sorrow" and in Gail Godwin 's short story "A Sorrowful Woman," the plots center on ideas of marriage and family. Conversely, marriage and family are presented in very different lights in the two stories. Karen van der Zee presents marriage with children as perfect and completely fulfilling; it is what Faye, the protagonist of "A Secret Sorrow", wants and what is necessary to her happiness. For Godwin 's unnamed protagonist, marriage and family are almost the antithesis of happiness; her home life seems to suffocate hear and eventually leads her to death. "A Secret Sorrow" directly endorses and encourages marriage, whereas "A Sorrowful Woman" indirectly questions and discourages

Happy Endings by author Margaret Atwood is a prime example of the literary device known as “a story within a story”. This short story has six different stories within itself. Due to the broadness of each story within the main story, Happy Endings can be classified as flash fiction. The two main characters, Mary and John have six different scenarios which are labeled A-F.

In the short story “How I Met My Husband,” there are several literary devices used to portray different emotions and twists. There are four of them, however, that stand out a great deal: romance, diction, empathy, and irony. Romance, which is the theme of the whole story, is used to bring a feeling of excitement and is often times relatable to readers in some way. Diction is used to “spice things up” you could say, bringing great word choice into the reading. Empathy, although not used as much as romance or diction, is still vital in portraying emotion in this short story. Finally, the irony is what can bring you the twists, turns, and humor you see throughout the story.

Happy Endings is an oddly structured, metafictional story; a series of possible scenarios all leading the characters to the same ending. Atwood uses humour and practical wisdom to critique both romantic fiction and contemporary society, and to make the point that it is not the end that is important, it is the journey that truly matters in both life and writing.

In the story “Happy Endings” the author Margaret Atwood gives 6 scenarios in alphabetical order from A to F of how a couples life could play out over the span of their lives. In these six scenarios Atwood uses satire to emphasize how interchangeable and simple each couples life is. In this story Atwood uses character, style, and point of view to chastise the desire for the everyday common life and the concern for only the “whats” in life and not “how or why”.

“Hills like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway and “Happy Endings” by Margaret Atwood share a gender-oriented theme. They both show women struggling to attain equality against their male partners. This theme is depicted through the use of symbolism, point of view and plot conflict.

The theme of the two stories revolves around the feminist issue of marriage. A common notion between the two short stories is that love is a failure and a mere comic when there is the failure to recognize the beloved as a person and not a mere convenience. The stories also deal with the 18th and the 19th century American life?declining in their spiritual and emotional lives.

The idea of a happy ending, to the common person, is the cliche ending of a story in which the protagonist gets the damsel, saves the world, and survives near death. However, this is a very simple way to look at the concept of a “happy ending” and neglects the grand scheme of things, just as there are more complicated equations in mathematics as one progresses in school, there are more complicated elements in a story as we look to dig deeper into literature. A story that has a complex happy ending is Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the story of a man seeking revenge on his family that has caused him much despair. If we look at this play in a simple manner, we will probably not look at the ending as happy ending as our beloved characters die,

Aside from issues on racism, which is what is most discussed within the novel Americanah, Adichie focuses a lot on love and marriage in this novel and how it is viewed through the eyes of both men and female, and how each gender in particular react to these certain societal expectations. Throughout Americanah,Adichie the writer holds up a mirror for both men and women in today’s society to view themselves. Ifemelu, Bartholomew, Aisha, Obinze, Ranyinudo, etc, these people are symbols and representations of us and real problems not only immigrants but women face within America.