I remember reading all sorts of short stories when I was younger, learning the different lessons from the stories. The lesson of the story is basically the theme. The author uses a combination of literary elements to convey the theme. In the story “How I Met My Husband”, by Alice Munro, the theme was a little difficult to figure out. After rereading, decoding, and researching the story, I came to the conclusion that the theme is hoping for true love. I will be explaining how Munro uses plot, point of view, and symbolism to describe the theme of the story.
The plot of a story describes a series of events that lead up to a climax, and eventually the down fall of a situation. In “How I Met My Husband” the plot starts off kind of slowly and speeds up around the middle. In the beginning we learn that Edie, the protagonist, is a hired girl for the Peebles family. She takes care of the children, cleans the house, and cooks for the family. One day, after she gets all dressed up in Ms. Peebles clothes, she goes downstairs and sees a man, Chris, outside the window. This is when all the action starts to occur. They have a small conversation, and Chris goes off to get his water. Edie is afraid that Chris will innocently tell the family about being dressed up so she goes and talks to him. Here is where the audience first gets a glimpse at, what we think, is the start of a true love. It seems as if Chris wants Edie to stay and talk to her longer, but she has to go and watch the children. Than Edie finds out that Chris has a fiancé, which comes as a surprise. When Ms. Peebles and Alice, Chris’ fiancée, go and have a picnic, Edie goes to tell Chris that about the picnic. Edie is sitting on the edge of Chris’s bed and he starts to kiss her with “...
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...at happened. Edie discovers “there were women just waiting and waiting by mailboxes for one letter” and she doesn’t want to be that woman anymore (Clugston, 2010). The hope of love Edie was waiting on eventually did come, but not in the way of a letter. It came from the mailman. It is ironic how the mailman, the guy who was supposed to deliver the letter of love, became the love Edie had been hoping for.
“How I Met My Husband” is a great example of how you never know when true love is going to happen. Edie thought it was going to come from one person, but in actuality that person set her up to find the love. If Edie had not gone to the mailbox and waited for the mail every day she would have never found what she was longing for. Arriving at the theme of love was not easy, but by looking at the plot, point of view, and the symbolism in the story, it all became clear.
On an ordinary day, Leslie opens the main door of her house, when she walked inside she saw her mom and sister Islla sitting on the coach. Islla was crying, and Leslie ask her “What happened?’ Why you crying?’”. Islla told her that she is pregnant and that she wants to keep the baby even if her boyfriend will be against the baby, but she will need to drop out from her University. In a few minutes of thinking, Leslie decided and told her sister “You don’t need to drop out I will help you to babysit with my nephew.”
Imagine a time where every detail about your life (credit score, personality ranking, “hotness” ranking, etc.) was available to anybody around you through something similar to the present-day iPhone. Now imagine this world being reality. In Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, this idea is reality. Everybody in the world has an äppäräti, and everybody knows everything about one another. But is knowing everything about your friends and neighbors really a good thing, especially when the world around you is crumbling because of this knowledge? Perhaps it isn’t. As Bertrand Russell, a British philosopher, once said, “In all affairs, love, religion, politics, or business, it’s a healthy idea, now and then, to hang a question mark on things you have long taken for granted.” The relationship between Lenny Abramov and Eunice Park, the main characters of Super Sad True Love Story, could have used a question mark on how culture, media, business, and technology impacted their personal relationships throughout the book.
These stories are laden with humor, but have, like all other stories, an underlying theme. Both themes of these stories are “implied,” and provide an excellent stage to compare and contrast a story on. Theme is the underlying power beneath a story; the “force” that makes the whole experience worthwhile. Theme is “an idea or message that the writer wishes to convey” (Holt 874). A theme can be either stated or implied.
Marriage can be defined as an everlasting bond between two people. Two souls joining to form one. However, sometimes this bond can fade and the love that each person felt for one-another can dissipate and manifest into something uglier and darker than the warmth of love. In Elizabeth Stoddard’s poem The Wife Speaks, the speaker ponders her relationship and wonders what could be done to mend the void in her marriage to make it as it once was. Although the speaker’s current relationship is posing it be a challenge, though the use of a non-traditional structure, vivid imagery, and the emotional tone in this poem, the speaker coveys to the reader that though the sacrifices for marriage, the strive for perfection and the hope that things can get better, love will overcome and the unity with her husband will return.
The Progress of Love by Alice Munro Plot: Woman gets a call at work from her father, telling her that her mother is dead. Father never got used to living alone and went into retirement home. Mother is described as very religious, Anglican, who had been saved at the age of 14. Father was also religious and had waited for the mother since he first met her. They did not have sex until marriage and the father was mildly disappointed that the mother did not have money.
After the two lovers had met, they made many hasty decisions and actions that only made their circumstances worse. The night the two sweethearts met the decided to get married:
One example of the theme occurs when the author first introduces the story. “But the summer I was 9 years old, the town I had always loved morphed into a beautifully heartbreaking and complicated place.” (pg. 1). The author is saying that the year she turned nine, she found out something about her town that broke her heart and changed the way she saw it. This quote is important because it supports the theme. It shows that now she is older she has learned something about her town that made her wiser than when she was younger. She is now more informed because the new information changed her and caused her to begin to mature.
In short story “The Cheater’s Guide to Love,” written by Junot Diaz, we observe infidelity and the negative effects it has on relationships. Anyone who cheats will eventually get caught and will have to deal with the consequences. People tend to overlook the fact that most relationships are unlikely to survive after infidelity. Trust becomes an issue after someone has been unfaithful. Yunior, the main character in this story, encounters conflict as he struggles to move on with his life after his fiancée discovers that he has been unfaithful. Over a six-year period, the author reveals how his unfaithfulness has an effect on his health and his relationships.
Although their love has endured through many years, it has come to an end in the story. All throughout the story the couple is reminiscing about their life and while they are there are some odd details that are strewn throughout.
Theme plays a very important part in this short story. Theme is the idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character and action. The great example of theme that is evident throughout the entire short story is the duty to perform certain acts. We can see here that the Irishman Donovan is very big on obeying his duty to carry out orders that have been authorized to him.
The theme in a story is the message or big idea that the author is trying to reveal in his or her narrative. If there was no underlining theme in Sherman Alexie’s short story, “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” then readers would have no interest in reading the fictional story. Understanding the message that Alexie is trying to display to his readers can vary in many ways and depends on the reader 's understanding of the story. Strong themes that are presented in the fictional tale are man versus self conflict, family, and tribal identity. Victor is a tribal member that has had a rough life and has to deal with his father passing away. Not only does he have to come to terms with his father 's death, but he also has to face his
"Your girl catches you cheating" (Diaz 1) and from the first line readers are thrown into the chauvinistic tendencies and sexist point of view of one Yunior de Las Casas. Readers are guided through Junot Diaz’s “The Cheaters Guide to Love” by the misogynist Yunior who sees women in an exclusively sexual sense, some of whom he does not even give the honor of naming. Feminists might look at Diaz's story and be skeptical of the themes presented, seeing as Yunior sexualizes and demeans all women. So then, how can readers understand the story to be anti-sexist if the only point of view presented in "The Cheater's Guide to Love" is a discriminatory one? The ultimate horizon for anyone with this much bottled up machismo is an empty sexual relationship with a parade of objectified women. Diaz, however, does not give Yunior the what the reader expects as his desired ending. He rather shows the reader that Yunior's behavior results in persistent unhappiness because what he really wants is a true human connection. Therefore, Diaz provides a sexist character
The novel, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (2011) written by Sherry Turkle, presents many controversial views, and demonstrating numerous examples of how technology is replacing complex pieces and relationships in our life. The book is slightly divided into two parts with the first focused on social robots and their relationships with people. The second half is much different, focusing on the online world and it’s presence in society. Overall, Turkle makes many personally agreeable and disagreeable points in the book that bring it together as a whole.
The purpose of the article “Navigating Love and Autism” by Amy Harmon is to emphasize that autistic people can achieve love, even though the struggles of autism are present. In this article, Jack and Kirsten both have autism and are working to build a dating relationship. For Kirsten and Jack, being comfortable is a huge aspect in their relationship. After their first night together,
So how transition was made from stable marriage to the demolition as the story approaches its end in the last paragraph?