Champion of the World by Maya Angelou and Fish Cheeks by Amy Tan Narration and description are important literal devices that can be used in expanding the plot of a story. Different authors employ these devices differently to achieve a variety of goals. Narration and description can be used to paint a picture of what the situation was. Through these devices, the audience can get a better view of what the author is trying to describe. The use of narration and description enhances a reader’s experience and makes it easy to relate what the author is trying to express using the literature device. In Champions of the World, Maya Angelou makes use of narration and description in various parts of the story. Vivid descriptions enhance the reading experience …show more content…
The first paragraph is used to describe Robert’s appearance in a way that one can easily picture how he looks like. It is easy to picture the blond hair, the very slim American nose and the very white nature of Robert. Tan goes ahead to describe how noisy his relatives are and how she was scared they would embarrass her in front of Robert of Christmas day. She was scared that being Chinese would be embarrassing in front of the minster’s American family. She was also afraid that the Chinese food that her mother served would not be as good as the American food the minister’s family was used to. In one of the paragraphs, Tan vividly describes all the food that her mother was preparing for Christmas. This description is so vivid that one can easily get a picture of how messy the kitchen was. The narration of how dinner went is also very dramatic and demonstrates how her Chinese family differed from the American family. From the narration, it is clear that there was a discord between the way of eating between the American family and Tan’s Chinese relatives. When Tan’s father offered her the fish cheeks, the embarrassment is evident from the description given by Tan (Tan 117). The embarrassing nature of the dinner continues to be described when Tan’s father belched out loudly as a sign of being satisfied. While in the Chinese culture this was thought to be a polite …show more content…
However, Amy Tan employs these literary devices more effectively than May Angelou. First, when talking about narration and description, Tan tells the story from her own perspective. The constant use of ‘I’ indicates narration and an exploration of what is happening around her. All the happenings in this story are from Tan’s perspective and the audience can really relate to this. In Maya Angelou’s story, a reader is often interrupted from narration and description by dialogue. In fact, it seems that dialogue as a literary device has been used more than narration and description. Secondly, while Tan is describing other people’s reaction, Angelou presents a dialogue that passes the message. For example, before the match begins, there is dialogue where different people are voicing their opinions about the fight (Angelou 111). This is not presented in prose form but in quotes, with the character being named at the end. In Tan’s story, almost every paragraph is narrated with descriptions here and there. For example, in the second paragraph, Tan makes use of narration to explain of how she felt when she learnt that Robert and his family would be coming to visit on Christmas (Tan 116). She vividly describes her emotions indicating that she cried when she heard this news. This kind of narration makes it easy to read and understand how she felt isolated from the dominant
“ The horizon was the color of milk. Cold and fresh. Poured out among the bodies” (Zusak 175). The device is used in the evidence of the quote by using descriptives words that create a mental image. The text gives the reader that opportunity to use their senses when reading the story. “Somehow, between the sadness and loss, Max Vandenburg, who was now a teenager with hard hands, blackened eyes, and a sore tooth, was also a little disappointed” (Zusak 188). This quote demonstrates how the author uses descriptive words to create a mental image which gives the text more of an appeal to the reader's sense such as vision. “She could see his face now, in the tired light. His mouth was open and his skin was the color of eggshells. Whisker coated his jaw and chin, and his ears were hard and flat. He had a small but misshapen nose” (Zusak 201). The quotes allows the reader to visualize what the characters facial features looked like through the use of descriptive words. Imagery helps bring the story to life and to make the text more exciting. The reader's senses can be used to determine the observations that the author is making about its characters. The literary device changes the text by letting the reader interact with the text by using their observation skills. The author is using imagery by creating images that engages the reader to know exactly what's going on in the story which allows them to
Using words and details in a story can provide the main impression by telling rather instead of showing an author’s feelings and thoughts in the childhood memory. In the showing and telling technique and author may use verbs like “felt” or a noun such as “thought” to create the dominant impression.
In Night by Elie Wiesel and Welcome to Hard Times by E.L. Doctorow, the reader witnesses the purpose of hope in one’s life. Wiesel and Doctorow fabricate their works around the trials and tribulations one suffers and what causes one to persevere to continue living. Elie and Blue, characters in the works, experience a life full of suffering and destruction. Even through this, they both live on with a purpose unknown to the reader, and perhaps unknown to themselves. Elie and Blue live on, but to no avail it seems, as both authors end their works with an ultimate destruction of the lives of their characters. However, Wiesel and Doctorow express that Elie and Blue persevere through their lives entirely as a result of hope. These authors suggest that suffering will exist in everyone’s life, and amidst this suffering one often searches for meaning. As Elie and Blue demonstrate, hope determines one’s meaning and purpose in life. Wiesel and Doctorow prove that one’s hope defines one’s existence; however, that hope only masks the futility of life, through the presentation of Elie and Blue’s construction of hope, destruction of hope, and adaptation of hope.
In the story, "Fish Cheeks" it talks about how Amy Tan's Chinese family invites an American boy's family over for dinner. Amy Tan wants to impress him and thinks that he wont like the food her mother made even though it is her favorite food. She can tell that he doesn't like the food and she is embarased. So, Amy wants to fit in.
“On the Pulse of Morning” by Maya Angelou. "On the Pulse of Morning," is a poem written by Maya Angelou. In this poem, Angelou depicts personification. Personification is an element of literature in which an object or animal is given human characteristics. Angelou uses personification to give the rock, the river, and the tree the ability to speak to the reader. In "On the Pulse of Morning", Angelou writes, "But today, the rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully, Come, you may stand upon my back and face your distant destiny, but seek no haven in my shadow.
There are many aspects for my mind to conceive while reading the articles why I write by George Orwell and Joan Didion. There are many different factors in triggering an author’s imagination to come up with what they want to write, and why they want to write it. In most writings a purpose is not found before the writer writes, but often found after they decide to start writing.
and make fun of black elders. And would talk to them any kind of way.
Short stories are temporary portals to another world; there is a plethora of knowledge to learn from the scenario, and lies on top of that knowledge are simple morals. Langston Hughes writes in “Thank You Ma’m” the timeline of a single night in a slum neighborhood of an anonymous city. This “timeline” tells of the unfolding generosities that begin when a teenage boy fails an attempted robbery of Mrs. Jones. An annoyed bachelor on a British train listens to three children their aunt converse rather obnoxiously in Saki’s tale, “The Storyteller”. After a failed story attempt, the bachelor tries his hand at storytelling and gives a wonderfully satisfying, inappropriate story. 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.
Originally the narrator admired her father greatly, mirroring his every move: “I walked proudly, stretching my legs to match his steps. I was overjoyed when my feet kept time with his, right, then left, then right, and we walked like a single unit”(329). The narrator’s love for her father and admiration for him was described mainly through their experiences together in the kitchen. Food was a way that the father was able to maintain Malaysian culture that he loved so dearly, while also passing some of those traits on to his daughter. It is a major theme of the story. The afternoon cooking show, “Wok with Yan” (329) provided a showed the close relationship father and daughter had because of food. Her father doing tricks with orange peels was yet another example of the power that food had in keeping them so close, in a foreign country. Rice was the feature food that was given the most attention by the narrator. The narrator’s father washed and rinsed the rice thoroughly, dealing with any imperfection to create a pure authentic dish. He used time in the kitchen as a way to teach his daughter about the culture. Although the narrator paid close attention to her father’s tendencies, she was never able to prepare the rice with the patience and care that her father
Throughout the story, “Fish Cheeks,” by Amy Tan, the author speaks of her “worst” Christmas dinner when her family invited Amy’s crush and his family for christmas dinner. Overall, the story was actually telling of her best Christmas dinner ever where her parents taught her to respect her culture and not be afraid to be who she was. The author and narrator, Amy Tan, used tone to convey this message to the audience in a few different ways in the story.
“Dead Men’s Path” by Chinua Achebe. In this short story “Dead Men’s Path,” Chinua Achebe gives the protagonist an exciting chance to fulfill his dream. Michael Obi was officially headmaster of Ndume Central School, which was backward in every sense. He had to turn the school into a progressive one, however the school received a bad report when the supervisor came to inspect.
Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”
Piper’s use of imagery in this way gives the opportunity for the reader to experience “first hand” the power of words, and inspires the reader to be free from the fear of writing.
The change from differing mediums, novel and film, reveal characteristics and possibilities of narratives. Through the advancement of technology, modern writers
Literature is rarely, if ever, merely a story that the author is trying to tell. It is imperative that the reader digs deep within the story to accurately analyze and understand the message the author is trying to portray. Authors tend to hide themselves in their stories. The reader can learn about the author through literary elements such as symbolism, diction, and structure. A good example of this is Robert Frost’s poems The Road Not Taken and Nothing Gold can Stay in which he uses ordinary language unlike many other poets that became more experimental (Frost, Robert. “1.”).