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In Joseph Addison’s “The Dissection of a Coquette’s Heart,” he satirizes the frivolous personality of some young women at the time of the article’s publication. The heart of the coquette contains two distinct areas: the pericardium, or outward case, guarding what ultimately lies in the midst of her heart, her only love. The Pericardium of the coquette’s heart guards her emotions from the extravagant and gregarious life she lived. Upon inspection of this case, the group of observers find it covered in countless tiny scars of points, darts, and arrows, but not one of them “had entered and pierced the inward Substance.” By the sheer multitude of scars that attempted to pierce her heart, it seems reasonable to conclude that this woman served
The story of Love Medicine revolves around a central character, June Kashpaw, and the many threads of relationships surrounding her, both near the time of her death, and in what has gone on before. The novel is an exploration of a family web that June was a key component of. Her character is a pivot point that all other characters revolve around: a love triangle, illegitimate children, life and death, and other issues involving religion, marriage, fidelity and sex. Erdrich uses a method of disjointedness to isolate the various threads as they unravel to shed light on other threads.
Chua, John. "An overview of 'The Tell-Tale Heart,'." Gale Online Encyclopedia. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 7 Dec. 2010.
The. 15 March 2014. http://xroads.virginia.edu/drbr/wf_rose.html> Poe, Edgar Allan. The "Tell-Tale Heart." Skwire, David and Harvey S. Wiener.
..., “on her wedding day she wept” and at its setting. She endured “better” and “worse” and at last, “she fell down…to the realization that she did not have to be brave, just this once.” Her tears functioned to honor the sacrifices of “her body… twenty years permanently fat,” of her sewing machine, the emblem of her livelihood, to pay her daughter’s “Senior Cambridge fees,” but also to purge “the pain she bore with the eyes of a queen.”
“How We Wrestle who we are” by Brian Doyle is a vivid short essay about the trials of his son’s heat condition. In the essay Doyle discusses the physical and mental damage not only done too his son but the pain Doyle was left to deal with during the time of destruction. In my essay I will discuss how Doyle’s essay is his indirect interpretation of the heart, how he physically writes about the heart and how he writes so that the story will remind you of a heart.
This is a story about freedom, a story that exemplifies what it truly means to live freely, to be able to express one’s self throughout life, and that sometimes we may only find that freedom in death. Our main character, Mrs. Louise Mallard, is first introduced to us as the wife of Brently Mallard, not as herself, not as Louise. It begins by informing us that Mrs. Mallard, as she is referred, has “a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death” (236). Initially the deeper meaning of this statement is not obvious. We assume, at least on the surface, they mean simply that her cardiac health is questionable, and so great care must be taken not to cause her distress.
When a person becomes fascinated with a certain object or thing, their attention is irresistibly drawn towards it. They become enticed and overly interested in the object, trying to study it more, in hopes of learning and gather more information from it. However, when this fascination violently preoccupies every second of our time then it is no longer just a captivating interest but now an obsession. When someone is obsessed with something they are devoted and completely infatuated with the idea of that object, becoming powerless to resist the temptation that the object compels over them. It becomes an aggressive fixation and in some cases they may even lose themselves or their own sanity in the process. This idea that obsession leads to insanity is furthermore explored in Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” in which the narrator becomes so enthralled with the eye of his old neighbor, that when he kills his neighbor in attempts to get rid of the eye, he cannot keep himself together and reveals to the authorities his secret, which in turn can be assumed to result in the narrator’s own death. In “The Tell Tale Heart,” Poe uses great symbolism and a distinct style to reveal that obsession ultimately leads to insanity.
“She lay awake, gazing upon the debris that cluttered their matrimonial trail. Not an image left standing along the way. Anything like flowers had long ago been drowned in the salty stream that had been pressed from her heart. Her tears, her sweat, her blood. She had brought love to the union and he had brought a longing after the flesh. Two months after the wedding, he had given her the first brutal beating. She had the memory of his numerous trips to Orlando with all of his wages when he had returned to her penniless, even before the first year had passed. She was young and soft then, but now she thought of her knotty, muscles limbs, her harsh knuckly hands, and drew herself up into an unhappy little ball in the middle of the big feather bed. Too late now to hope for love, even if it were not Bertha it would be someone else. This case differed from the others only in that she was bolder than the others. Too late for everything except her little home. She had built it for her old days, and planted one by one the trees and flowers there. It was lovely to her, lovely.” (Hurston 680).
More often than not Poe loves to delve deep into human terror and draw the line between what is real and what is not while also exploring the extremes of two opposite emotions between love and hate. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Poe explores the human complexity of one who experiencing these emotions and fusing them together
Gustave Flaubert incorporates and composes a realistic piece of literature using realistic literary techniques in his short story, “A Simple Heart.” Flaubert accomplishes this through telling a story that mimics the real life of Félicité, and writing fiction that deliberately cuts across different class hierarchies; through this method, Flaubert is able to give the reader a clear understanding of the whole society. Flaubert makes the unvarnished truth about simple hearts clear by exposing a clear replica of a realistic story, therefore, allowing the reader to clearly understand the society and the different classes of characters. The story, “A Simple Heart” focuses on the life of a naive, simple-minded underclass maid, Félicité, and her encounters with those around her.
McDowell, Deborah E. "Philosophy of the Heart." Women's Review of Books 21.3 (Dec. 2003): 8-9. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 194. Detroit: Gale,2005.Literature Resource Center.Web. 13March. 2011
Not only are Mrs. Mallard’s heart problems a physical hinder on her health, but the heart troubles expand to the emotional level. For the most part, she loved her husband. However, their marriage has taken a toll on her. After the news of her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard’s heart is torn. She is devastated about the death of her husband but enlightened by the idea of being independent and free. As the idea of being free entered her mind the heart once again becomes the focal point of the story. After Louise continually repeats the word “free” to herself, “Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body”, expressing her desire to be independent (Chopin, 477). When someone experiences great joy it is said that they experience the warming of the heart. As soon as Mrs. Mallard thought about her newfound independence she was overcome by this warm sensation. Her heart was pumping wildly and any pain she was suffering from the loss of her husband, dissipated. Her problematic heart was now at full strength and she was relieved of any worry she once had. While her physical heart still posed a threat, she was free from her emotional
When she came to, Katherine’s body was racked with an insurmountable amount of pain. She felt like she’d topple over at the slightest gust of wind. The girl knew she’d have to call 911. She’d have to explain that her mother had attacked her, that she’d tried to gut her with a bread knife. Her movements were slow, jerky, and painful, and every breath, every step she took caused a wave of searing pain throughout her
In conclusion, there are several different psychoanalytic criticisms throughout “The Tell Tale Heart.” The most common psychoanalytic criticism that is used is Freud’s archetypes. The archetype Id brings out the narrator’s animalistic tendencies, Ego is used by planning, and Superego as he feels
Mallard’s heart condition is quite significant, given the way that it ties in with the story’s rather abrupt finish. It is a difficult question, to which we return at the end of the paper, what precisely to make of the heart issue. But in any case there is arguably a clear sense in which both the first mention of the heart condition, and also the story’s termination, are of secondary importance in understanding the author’s message. What is more important, it will be argued, is the almost overwhelming sense of liberation that Mrs. Mallard comes to experience when she is told about, and has had some time to process, what appears to be the fact that her husband has been