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More handpicked essays just for you.
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“Devils Trill”
Before the Spring Festival of 1973 the narrator’s mother brought him his violin; it was a fine German model. The narrator received the violin from his great uncle who bought it from a poor Russian musician for fifty silver dollars. His uncle was on his deathbed when he gave the violin to the narrator, and gave it to him because none of his sons our grandsons played the violin. The narrator aspired to be a musician for much of his young life; he attended a music school, but later abandoned the dream. The narrator is now in a camp for political prisoners, recently one of the prisoners was executed, and many prisoners were scared they were going to be killed. The narrator was made a prisoner of a fellow prisoner named Old Cop, and the narrator could not stand him. Even though he did not like him, the narrator tried to be on good terms with the Old Cop, but he just ignored him. On the eve of the Spring festival the narrator was playing his violin on his bed and a fellow prisoner was trying to hide cakes his wife had brought him. After a while a crowd of inmates were gathered abound his bunk listening to him play the violin. The Old Cop was annoyed when The Big Boss of the barracks came over to listen to the narrator play so he told the narrator to go outside. As he as going outside to the courtyard he started to recall past spring festivals before he was a prisoner, and how he learned to play the violin. He then entered the bathroom and saw a couple of his friends and started play the violin for them. They were very pleased. Later that night he went to the Big Boss’s barracks, and they talked about the Big Boss’s upcoming release, and how he was arrested. When the narrator returned to his barracks, he witnessed the Old Cop trying to steal the one of the inmate’s cakes and started to fight with him. He eventually won the fight and was rewarded by one of the officers. He was to be one of the waiters at the festival, a job that the Old Cop would have had. The narrator was excited to receive the job because he would be able to hear rumors from the outside world. When they got to the festival they were to help the butcher slay another pig because there were more people coming than expected.
In the short story, “Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin uses diction and syntax to demonstrate that as much as one yearns for freedom, it might not be everlasting.
In Tobias Wolff’s novel Old School, the narrator, a young and aspiring writer, plagiarizes a story that he views as his own in order to win his high school writing competition and impress his hero, Ernest Hemingway. “Summer Dance,” the story that he plagiarized—where “nothing was okay”—ends with the words, “Everything’s okay” (p. 125). The narrator’s truth, complicated and elusive, proves a challenge to admit as his own. As he considers writing someone else’s story, the narrator realizes how concealing his identity compromises the value of his writing and places his personal truth in question. The narrator uses others’ stories as an outlet for personal reflection, self-expression, and self-discovery without realizing
The novel: A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (written by Alexander Solzhenitzyn), tells the story of a Russian soldier’s life in a Siberian labor camp around the time of World War II. The protagonist in the story, Ivan, better known as “Shukhov”, is wrongly accused of committing treason and is sentenced to full 10 years of imprisonment in the camp. Throughout the story, the author makes vivid references to help the reader identify with the setting, climate, and overall feeling of what Ivan must deal with on a day-to-day basis. This helps the reader to better understand the points and the reality of what it was like living in one of these camps.
If people in Warsaw wanted more of the pianist's music they could hear his arrangements in cafes, "...behind the darkened walls of cafes and bars where the costumers drank [and] danced (Szpilman 22)." The escape, for the Jewish citizens became a place for business as well as pleasure. Some men used the café where the author worked as a testing ground for gold. The costumers became irritated when Szpilman played his piano. The gold, we all know, at its purest, makes a distinct sound. The sound was not heard well in the mists of the narrator's music. The businessmen praised Wladyslaw for his break in performance. The author was not fazed by the unrehearsed break. He realized it was a place of business where Jewish Poles could do business without worrying about their identification cards or their new arm bands.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Approaching Literature: Reading + Writing + Thinking, Third Edition. Ed. Schakel, Peter J, and Jack Ridl. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012. 233-234. Print.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” An Introduction to Literature. Eds. Sylvan Barnet, William Burto, and William E. Cain. 15th ed. New York: Longman, 2008. 193-199
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Eds. Elizabeth M. Schaaf, Katherine A. Retan, and Joanne Diaz. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1997. 12-14. Print.
Back in 1990, a man named Gary Soto decided to write an autobiography about himself, titled A Summer Life. One of the more interesting portions of the book was when Mr. Soto described a summer day back when he was six years old. On that day, young Gary found out what it felt like to be a true sinner, as he stole an apple pie from the local bakery. Some readers found this as one of the more interesting parts, not because of the plot, but because of the literary devices used, such as detail, imagery, and pacing. The three aforementioned literary devices are almost a backbone to the story, because without those three, the story would be shortened and fairly bland. The following three paragraphs will each describe a literary devices used by Mr. Soto to enhance the quality of his story.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour”. The Seagull Reader: Stories. Ed. Joseph Kelly. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2001. 65 – 67.
The story's first encounter with music is after the narrator has learned of Sonny's arrest. He is thinking about the boys he teaches, and how they could all be "sucked under" (419) just as Sonny has been. He hears their laughter in the schoolyard and notes its "mocking and insular" quality, a noise made by disillusioned youth rather than the untainted, joyous sound one expects of children (410). One boy whistles a tune, a cool and moving, complicated and simple melody, "pouring out of him as though he were a bird," and the music manages to soar above the harsh sounds of disenchantment (410). Clearly this music is joy and salvation. Because he concentrates on this simple music, one boy does not curse and den...
Wilson, M. & Clark, R. (n.d.). Analyzing the Short Story. [online] Retrieved from: https://www.limcollege.edu/Analyzing_the_Short_Story.pdf [Accessed: 12 Apr 2014].
The story starts on a dark autumn night, an ominous setting that appears in many stories. A banker is pacing back and forth in his office remembering some night 15 years ago which is obviously important. The story transitions into a flashback to that night. A party is underway hosted by the banker at which the hot topic was capital punishment. The banker and a lawyer at the party eventually settled on a bet that the lawyer could not stay in solitude for 15 years, and if he did, the banker would give him 2 millions. The rest of the first half of the story goes over what the banker sees the lawyer doing during his imprisonment, and the second half takes you to the present just before the lawyers time is up. Something is odd about Chekhov’s writing throughout the entire story, his description is almost non-existent. It does not seem likely that 2 people would descri...
Chopin, Kate. The Story of an Hour. 11th . New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013. 476-477. Print.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Eds. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 3rd ed. New York: Pearson, 2010. 261-263. Print.
“The Story of An Hour” by Kate Chopin, is a story that has been controversial since its publication in 1894, with reviews ranging from highly critical to great acclaim. The story follows Chopin’s character Mrs. Mallard who is introduced at the same time she is receiving news of her husband’s death. The story is largely a mixture of radical views for its time, subtle meanings, and symbolism. While modern day readers read this story with an open mind, many men - of the 1890’s and much of the 1900’s - would have been outraged at its surface meaning. However, even today Chopin’s story receives criticism for being a gross portrayal of a woman's loss. This is due to the fact that many individuals continue to view the story at face value. Nevertheless, readers of Chopin’s story will find themselves reacting either one extreme or the other. But it is this reader participation that is crucial in determining what the story will be. Despite all beliefs, Mrs. Mallard is a woman who is stuck in her time trying to escape society’s constraints, develop her own identity, all while “coping” with the loss of her husband.