In her fictional works Brokeback Mountain and The Shipping News, author Annie Proulx follows the journey of Jack, Ennis, and Quoyle’s acceptance of themselves as they fight society’s ideals and struggle with a lack of family support. As they adventure into new terrain, Proulx incorporates their emotions and discoveries through the natural landscape surrounding them and expresses them through specific language choices.
The traditional values of Western culture are apparent in many forms throughout Brokeback Mountain. From a young age, Ennis and Jack have been influenced by their own fathers in a way that demonstrates discrimination and violence. For example, Ennis recalls an incident when his father brought him and his brother to see a homosexual
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The mere fact of writing a story about two strong men in love in the West is a radical, yet inspiring move. This story, once delved into reveals that many people are forced to conform to society’s wishes because of their lack of support and confidence. Jack and Ennis, through their actions, ignorance, and opinions, display the conflicting feelings being gay in a homophobic society brings up. Quoyle, a man who struggles with a lack of confidence caused by being overweight and easily manipulated, is forced to find himself. Lucky for him, his aunt, his only family member left, is able to capture him and pull him in the right direction. The constant use of knots exemplify Quoyle’s journey towards love and fatherhood. In all three journeys Proulx’s distinct settings are what sets these stories about from every self-discovery story. Along with these settings, irony causes the reader to second guess the ideas that society has forced into our heads from the beginning. Proulx successfully creates a story that allows the reader to understand the struggle of many minorities while sparking acceptance and equality for all, no matter their body type or their
...ct, detrimental attitudes towards women is still seen in Australian society. They are portrayed as nothing more than mere sexual objects of the male’s desire. Enright wrote this play to reveal to the reader how Australian culture is unrefined, must evolve to keep up with change, and has flaws that are detrimental to the lives of youth and the wellbeing of society. How can be that it’s ok to horrifically rape, a fifteen-year-old young woman, and a community thinks nothing of it? How can it be that a male can murder, a fifteen year-old young women, just because she won’t have sexual intercourse with him? I don’t understand this disgusting mindset of this male youth culture. What I do know is this, if this idea of women as nothing more than mere sexual objects is continued in male culture, than acts such as the gang rape and murder of Tracey will be endorsed.
Everyone including her daughter think of her as being "tangled" , and she has been wanting to present herself as a role model for her. The birth of her daughter was a very significant event in her life which got her to go on a road of becoming a "sweeter person". However, it is always been a habit of her to run away from her problems than actually face them. As, one day when examining a butterfly, she sees "knotted patterning of lines" which reminds her of her own mother who had "tried to teach [her] once" how to knit " before [she] ran away". It is her "job to drive the truck around" but she only does it so she is able to escape from all of her problems. But she "like it just fine". Her certainty to commit to her daughter conflicts with her personality of always running away from her problems which makes her surrender to her own self and letting go of the control of changing her identity
But John Steinbeck creates this novel to fit the “romance” archetype. In this archetype, the hero makes a journey, encounters problems in his path which he overcomes, and reaches his final destination. The hero of the novel must be larger than life, strong, and different from others. He must be a natural leader and greatly glorified. The earth resembles the Garden of Eden, or a ‘paradise.’ He must be in touch with the earth.
In Brief History of my Thumb, Lucia Perillo’s use of structure, metaphors, and illusion invites her readers to recognize the dangers of life. Throughout her text, Parillo tells various stories of hitchhiking, and when she used to hitchhike herself. Every story she tells seems to have its own lesson and value, contributing to its effect on the reader. Perillo structures her text into different periods of her life and life-experiences. This structure informs the reader Perillo’s individual thoughts and emotions during each time of her life. She starts off “in the beginning,” (Perillo 21) when she is in high school, and ends much later in her life. Starting off her text, she talks about her high school days, and how her and her friends would hitchhike. She explains
In Sherman Alexie’s “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” and “Dead Men’s Path”, the reader is given a glimpse into two different stories but share many similar characteristics of traditions. Tradition is the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information and cultures within a group of people from generation to generation. However, these two stories will reveal that the protagonists in these stories, Michael from “Dead Men’s Path” and Victor from “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” will ignore their own traditions that they face throughout the story. In other words, the protagonists are westernized and have forgotten their own culture, which reflects the theory of the melting pot. The ignorance of ancestry and traditions brings the worst fates into the lives of the protagonists in each story.
Throughout a lifetime, one can run through many different personalities that transform constantly due to experience and growing maturity, whether he or she becomes the quiet, brooding type, or tries out being the wild, party maniac. Richard Yates examines acting and role-playing—recurring themes throughout the ages—in his fictional novel Revolutionary Road. Frank and April Wheeler, a young couple living miserably in suburbia, experience relationship difficulties as their desire to escape grows. Despite their search for something different, the couple’s lack of communication causes their planned move to Europe to fall through. Frank and April Wheeler play roles not only in their individual searches for identity, but also in their search for a healthy couple identity; however, the more the Wheelers hide behind their desired roles, the more they lose sense of their true selves as individuals and as a pair.
Deviating from the norm within her time, Aphra Behn’s, “The Disappointment,” tackles the concept of sex from the female perspective, something still relatively taboo in the modern world. Behn offers readers a glimpse into the confusion and anxiety that accompany a woman’s loss of virginity, in addition to the heightened expectations of masculinity enforced on the man. By creating sympathetic and pitiable characters out of both Cloris and Lysander, Behn imagines a narrative in which there are no winners or beneficiaries in this uncomfortable exchange, directly resulting from societal expectations. During the specific instance in which Cloris gives into her desires only to discover that Lysander is unable to perform, the narrator illustrates
...s important both symbolically and literally within the novel. Since manhood and masculine features are so heavily valued within this society, the challenge of one’s personality or actions can completely change them and push them to drastic measures.
“This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona” discusses the physical and mental journey of Victor, a Native American man in the state of Washington, as he goes to Phoenix, Arizona to claim his father’s remains and his savings account. While on this journey, Victor learns about himself, his father, and his Indian culture with the help of his estranged friend, Thomas Builds-the–Fire. The author, Sherman Alexie, plays on the stereotypes of Native Americans through the characters of Victor and Thomas. While Thomas is portrayed as the more traditional and “good” Native American, Victor comes across as the “bad” Native American. Through the use of this binary relationship, Alexie is able to illustrate the transformation of these characters as they reconcile with each other, and break out of these stereotypes in the process.
Imagine reading a short story and have two or more different views of what you think the text is about and cannot decide on which one you believe to be right. The ideas are so similar and yet so different in their own way that it is nearly impossible to decide. This is clear in both works, “Orientation” by Daniel Orozco, and “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid. The two stories both possess different issues including: issue of fact, pattern, social policy, historical and cultural context, and theme.
Within every story or poem, there is always an interpretation made by the reader, whether right or wrong. In doing so, one must thoughtfully analyze all aspects of the story in order to make the most accurate assessment based on the literary elements the author has used. Compared and contrasted within the two short stories, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, and John Updike’s “A&P,” the literary elements character and theme are made evident. These two elements are prominent in each of the differing stories yet similarities are found through each by studying the elements. The girls’ innocence and naivety as characters act as passages to show something superior, oppression in society shown towards women that is not equally shown towards men.
“Into The Wild” by John Krakauer is a non-fiction biographical novel which is based on the life of a young man, Christopher McCandless. Many readers view Christopher’s journey as an escape from his family and his old life. The setting of a book often has a significant impact on the story itself. The various settings in the book contribute to the main characters’ actions and to the theme as a whole. This can be proven by examining the impact the setting has on the theme of young manhood, the theme of survival and the theme of independent happiness.
Many short story writers have written about the gender and role of woman in society. Some of these stories express what Barbara Walter calls, “The Cult of True Womanhood” meaning the separation of both man and woman in social, political and economic spheres. In order to be considered a “true woman” woman were to abide by the set of standards that were given to her. Women were expected to live by the four main principal virtues - piety, purity, submissiveness, and domestication. In Kate Chopin’s short story, “The Storm,” Calixta the main female character breaks away from “The Cult of True Womanhood” when she has a sexual encounter with her past lover Alcée. The storm goes through many twists and turns that tie with their adulterous actions. Although she breaks away from the four main principal virtues, she in the end is considered to be pure innocent of heart because the action in which occurred happened instantly, and as white as she was, she was taken away from her innocence.
In the story “Two Kinds”, the author, Amy Tan, intends to make reader think of the meaning behind the story. She doesn’t speak out as an analyzer to illustrate what is the real problem between her and her mother. Instead, she uses her own point of view as a narrator to state what she has experienced and what she feels in her mind all along the story. She has not judged what is right or wrong based on her opinion. Instead of giving instruction of how to solve a family issue, the author chooses to write a narrative diary containing her true feeling toward events during her childhood, which offers reader not only a clear account, but insight on how the narrator feels frustrated due to failing her mother’s expectations which leads to a large conflict between the narrator and her mother.
Several different elements are necessary to create a story. Of all the elements, the conflict is most essential. The conflict connects all pieces of the plot, defines the characters, and drives the story forward. Once a story reaches its climax, the reader should have an emotional connection to the both story and its characters. Not only should emotions be evoked, but a reader should genuinely care about what happens next and the about the end result for the characters. Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace” is the perfect example of how a story’s conflict evolved the disposition of its characters.