The Ballad of the Sad Café is set in a gloomy, isolated, small town in the middle of a rural area. The author immediately starts describing the dullness of the town, which is the location of an old desolated café. A portrait of the town is created in the reader’s mind with such vivid visual details provided. The passage sets the perfect mood for the rest of the story to follow. The author promotes her fierce and unique style with the usage of a strong narrative technique as well as different literary devices as the story proceeds. The passage depicts intricate details that indicate hidden meanings and messages for the reader to determine.
The town is portrayed as a sad, distant place with the usage of a visually rich imagery. Every dark detail
…show more content…
She is described as “a dark, tall woman with bones and muscles like a man.” She has short hair, which also adds to her untraditional masculine qualities. The woman mentioned in present time is defined as sexless and cross-eyed, both of which are qualities also apparent in the description of Miss Amelia. The author also starts describing a café that once existed in the town. The café is, of course the largest building in the town, which in the present time is described as almost an abandoned place. Bit by bit, the author offers visual images that illuminate the, then café, house’s old state. This old ruined house used to have tablecloths, paper napkins, and colored streamers. People even had gatherings in the café on Saturday nights, which almost sounds like a distant …show more content…
The desolate atmosphere and the overall state of the café symbolize Miss Amelia herself. It’s apparent that both the house and Miss Amelia are isolated from the rest of the world. It’s stated that she never showed any affection towards men and chose to be a solitary person in the past, but her current state suggests that she didn’t necessarily chose to be that way. Something tragic must have happened to her in that house. The sadness and the loneliness of the town also allude to Miss Amelia’s depressed mood.
Overall The Ballad of the Sad Café is written in a way that is rich with sub-meanings and open to interpretation. The passage, which is taken from the beginning of the novella, is an indication of how the story is written in a complex way that requires
The author illustrates the “dim, rundown apartment complex,” she walks in, hand and hand with her girlfriend. Using the terms “dim,” and “rundown” portrays the apartment complex as an unsafe, unclean environment; such an environment augments the violence the author anticipates. Continuing to develop a perilous backdrop for the narrative, the author describes the night sky “as the perfect glow that surrounded [them] moments before faded into dark blues and blacks, silently watching.” Descriptions of the dark, watching sky expand upon the eerie setting of the apartment complex by using personification to give the sky a looming, ominous quality. Such a foreboding sky, as well as the dingy apartment complex portrayed by the author, amplify the narrator’s fear of violence due to her sexuality and drive her terror throughout the climax of the
The mentioning of there being only bare horizon between buildings and the farming characteristics help determine the town is what is usually pictured as a small farming town, The road they walk on is dirt, the guilt letters on the bank, and the string of houses with the weathered grey or peeling paint almost represents a lifeless area with little to nothing occurring there and being affected by the dog and the whole situation and how it leads to the trees death eliminates any positive vibes in the town.
The theme of Our Town is that people do not truly appreciate the little things in daily life. This theme is displayed throughout the entire play. It starts in the beginning with everybody just going through their daily life, occasionally just brushing stuff off or entirely not doing or appreciating most things. But as you progress through the story you begin to notice and squander on the thought that the people in the play do not care enough about what is truly important. By the end of this play you realize that almost everybody does not care enough for the little things as they should, instead they only worry about the future, incessantly worrying about things to come.
several ways to create a strange and eerie setting. The first description of the red death paints a
Unfortunately to this day, men view themselves superior to women. All the women in these stories find themselves in the hands of the men in their lives. Only a few of them are able to find happiness and create better lives for themselves.
town miscreant, meeting Amelia made Martin wish to be a better man. He cleaned up his
From the beginning of the story the village is described in a dull and bland manner. The village was described to be made up of only twen...
Symbolism is the first element that comes to play in the story. The writer created a major point reference on bowls which lead us to the main points in the story. Ann Beattie wrote in beginning of her story; “The bowl was perfect. Perhaps it was not what you’d select if you faced a shelf of bowls and not the sort of thing that would inevitably attract a lot of attention at a craft fair”. (Ann Beattie 1985). A bowl is a round open-top craft molded out with clay which is used in many cultures for drinking coffee, water and to serve food. One may ask, what effects does a bowl have on buying and selling of houses? The answers to this question will lead us the thesis statement of this essay; “The mystery bowl and its effects on Andrea’s business”
Ernest Hemingway does not feel the need to give much detail on the setting. The reader knows that it is late and that these men are in a café. The main character is sitting in the shadow and he is drinking brandy. Hemingway leaves out details from the setting but does make it clear that this café is, like the title suggest, clean and well-lighted. He only states important aspects of the setting demonstrating that details are nothing: nada. Through his writing Hemingway implies that this old man feels that little details in the world mean nothing. When the older waiter asks the younger waiter why this drunken man had tried to commit suicide a week before, the younger waiter simply answers “Nothing. He has plenty of money.” In the young waiters mind this old man has everything. Obviously, this old man feels that things like money are nothing and thus not worth living over. Ernest Hemingway, through the lack of deta...
She felt unimpressed and violated by how the vegetable owner treats his assistant. She went to the vegetable’s owner house and got revenge for the assistant who is badly treated by him. I can feel the kindness from this scene that she respects people. In the bathroom she switches the foot cream with the toothpaste, cuts the owner shoelaces, and changes his door lock. I felt funny while watching this scene until it get more funnier when the vegetable owner comes home to find the differences. One part is when he was brushing his teeth to found out it wasn’t toothpaste and he was locked up in his restroom. I felt he deserve this treatment and that Amelia did the right
In Helena Maria Viramontes’ “Cariboo Cafe” she reveals three different experiences her characters face that deals with the nature of fear by describing the domination of foreigners. There is a clash between culture and race throughout the three sections of stories by describing vulnerability through the trauma of two fearful siblings walking on their own through their dangerous environment, discovering the cook’s true personal identity, and endless fight of a mother who loses her child from authority that abuses their power.
Written by Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet follows the life of Henry Lee, a young Chinese-American boy living in Seattle in the 1940’s during World War II, and his reflections on his youth later, in the 1980’s. The novel illustrates the theme that loyalty is important in times of hardship. Henry deals with both loyalty and the absence of it as he copes with his broken relationship with his father, his forbidden, but strong friendship with a Japanese girl, Keiko, and his awkward connection with his son.
There is always silence before the start of the song, much like the town because “there is nothing whatsoever to do” (397). On the night that Cousin Lymon first appears in town, Miss Amelia asked him a question that is like how the “dark voice” which starts the song and “like a question”(457). She asked, “How do you mean “kin”?”, which starts the ballad of the cafe (400). This question allows for the possible connection that Lymon might possible be related to Miss Amelia and starts a new change in her. There was “only a few times in her life had Miss Amelia invite anyone to eat with her”, which then she lets Cousin lymon stay with her and starts the inevitable change in herself(404). After they finished eating, she allowed Lymon to stay in the room above the store.
Short stories have particular settings to supplement their themes. The eerie catacombs during a carnival in “The Cask of Amontillado” supplement the themes of revenge, and deception, which the protagonist takes responsibility in; whereas in “Hills Like White Elephants”, the atmosphere around the Spanish train station emphasizes the themes of miscommunication between characters and their evasion of responsibilities.
One of the main symbols of the story is the setting. It takes place in a normal small town on a nice summer day. "The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full summer day; the flowers were blooming profusely and the grass was richly green." (Jackson 347).This tricks the reader into a disturbingly unaware state,