Dr. Sabrina Boyer
ENG 131 FON01
10/02/2016
Reliability Journal In Haircut, the author Ring Lardner, placed his story in a small town where a very known barber, Whitey, is the best source of information on the town. He knows everyone very well, and he knows all the town gossip and all the news (146). The reader can see from the beginning of the story that this barber is not a reliable person, because he cannot be trusted in everything that he is telling to readers.. All the time, the barber is on the side of his friend Jim Kendall, trying to give to him all the benefits of the doubt. In the beginning of the story, barber said: “When he was alive, him and Hod Meyers used to keep this town in an uproar. I bet they was more laughin’ done here than any town, its size in America” (Lardner, 145). He believes that the sense of humor of the two friends is a quality. There is nothing wrong with a person to have a sense of humor, but sometimes Jim’s humor was sarcastic and inappropriate. A good example is that night when Jim, changing his voice as a woman, called the barber and asked him to come to her house and shave her husband who just passed
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In Haircut, the narrator, who is the town’s barber, seems to be an unintelligent and insensitive observer who introduces to us one of his friends, Jim, without making any comments on his behavior, except, indicating how amusing his friend was. The barber can’t be reliable. In the second story, The Cask of Amontillado, the narrator tells us a story about himself, story that happened 50 years ago. According with what Montresore said about himself, the reader can describe him as being obsessed with revenge, a person with no conscience, with no guilt for what he has done. This kind of person can’t be reliable,
Everyone faces varying degrees of peer pressure at least once in their lifetime, but what matters is how one reacts. In Bad Haircut—a collection of short stories—the author, Tom Perrotta, examines the effect of peer pressure on the main character, Buddy, in a comical yet informative light. Buddy faces peer pressure consistently and ends up associating with the wrong people, due to a lack of backbone. Yet Buddy is different and a better person than those who he associates with because he is compassionate and able to recognize that he is a follower; therein lies the irony that only the reader sees Buddy’s merit while the other characters only see the results of his friends’ poor judgment.
Should one trust the accounts of the main characters in “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Yellow Wallpaper?” “The Cask of Amontillado” is written by Edgar Allan Poe. In the “Cask of Amontillado,” a man named Montresor tells of a time when he uses deception to murder a man that he perceives has done wrong against him. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is in the format of journal entries that are written by a woman whose mental health is deteriorating. The deterioration of her mental health leads her to suffer from hallucinatory thinking. How reliable are the narrators? Reliability encompases the honesty the narators exhibit twoards the readers,
The Tell-Tale Heart begins with the narrator explaining that he is not mad, rather just very disturbed by about the vulture eye of the old man living in the same house. He seemed to be a bit nervous more than anything. On the other hand, the narrator of The Cask of Amontillado seemed to be quite arrogant. He was very confident that his plan to have revenge on Fortunato was going to work. Although the traits of the narrators are not quite similar, they both had the same idea in mind. That idea was to commit murder on a man they had a problem with. To me, both narrat...
*the narrator is looking back on what he has once witnessed long ago, and it's haunting him, makes him feel guilty and ashamed.
Barbershop the Next cut holds a significant value to American popular culture with diverse social economic references. This movie depicts numerous components of subcultural issues that are faced in the black communities of American more notable Chicago, IL. Within the movie Barbershop: The Next Cut there will be an in-depth analysis of how this movie shows different Popular-Culture concepts for example; Ideology and Institutional power. This movie also shows the cultural “Norms” and the distinct language used in the subculture that is portrayed within the movie. The most relevant aspect of this movie that will be focused on will be the inequality of the black community in both race and gender and also the social stratification.
In Edgar Allen Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” the first person point of view narration is essential to creating the . The reason this is so important in this particular story, is because when a sane killer, Montresor, is allowed to tell the story from his point of view, the reader gets a unique, disturbing look into the calmness of his mind. The audience can more clearly see how he thinks and feels which the audience does not normally get in mainstream, commercial literature. The reason the narration style is so important to the tone of the story, is because it lets the reader become personally acquainted with the thoughts and intentions of the main character, and since the reader somewhat knows the outcome from the beginning, it allows certain ironies to make sense to the reader. Furthermore, were it
In “The Cask of Amontillado,” the reader can tell the narrator is unreliable. The narrator shows this through his lack of reason for killing Fortunato. Also, the narrator indicates that he is unreliable when he laughs as he kills Fortunato; only a madman would laugh while killing someone. The narration of the story makes it so the reader questions why the narrator killed Fortunato. Another question most readers have is, why is the narrator sharing this story? Also, readers commonly ask themselves, what has happened to make him share this story? The narrator says, “For half of a century no mortal has disturbed them” (Poe 113). This statement by the narrator may make a reader feel that Fortunato’s body has been moved or found. Likewise, it may make a reader feel that the narrator is bragging to someone about getting away with murder because he is possibly on his
In Ring Lardner’s short story “Haircut”, the narrator is a straightforward barber, who goes by the name Whitey. The story is about Whitey tells a customer about the well-liked regular at the local barbershop, Jim Kendell. At first the barber makes it seem that Jim is a good old fella, but depending on some people’s views, and on Jim’s actions towards people, they will quickly discover that Jim is a selfish jerk. Keeping this in mind there are two important questions that are brought up throughout the story, which are if Jim’s life actually matter to the town and was Jim an evil person; personally, I believe that Jim was not a completely evil person and that the town did not value his life.
When a narrator is deemed unreliable, there is conflict between the narrator’s presentation and the rest of the novel that makes readers suspect his sincerity and reliability. Readers often read between the lines and come to the conclusion that the narrator is either withholding the true version of the story or lacking the ability to tell the truth. There are three specific sources of unreliability according to Rimmon-Keenan they are the narrator’s limited knowledge, his or her personal involvement, and his or her questionable morals (100-101). Factors that could contribute to a narrator’s unreliability is that the narrator is young and inexperienced, old with failing memory, or has a low IQ. These are all cases of limited understanding and knowledge on the part of the narrator. When narrators are personally involved in the story, they tend to portray events or characters i...
Firstly, at the end of this story, the narrator’s illusions are the most powerful pieces of evidence for his madness. It is his two illusions that betrays him and imposed him to confess the crime. His first illusion is the beating of the old man’s heart which actually did not exist. Initialy, exactly as he portrayed "My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears, it continued and became more distinct", the ringing he heard haunted him ceaselessly. Then he "found that the noise was not within his ear", and thought the fancy in his ear was the beating of old man’s heart. Because of the increasing noise, he thought the officers must hear it, too. However, in fact, everything he heard is absurd and illusive. And it proves that the narrator is really insane. Next, his second illusion is the officers’ "hypocritical smiles" which pushed him to completely be out of control. Losting of his mind, he called the officer "Villains". Apparently, he was confused and falsely thought "they were making a mockery of his horror" which irritated him intensively. Consequently, he told all the truth and "admitted the deed" in order to get rid of the growing noise. Therefore, the above two pieces of evidence both reveal the truth that the narrator is absolutely insane in contrary to what the narrator tried to tell us.
In the Edgar Allan Poe stories "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" the most prominent and important themes that are used are death, logic, and irony. The characters of the narrator and Montresor in these stories are both coldblooded murders who kill for selfish and inane reasons who firmly believe that their actions are justified even though their justifications only make sense in their own minds. They both try to convince their audience that they are sane by explaining to them their reasons for killing their victims and admitting how they did it, which only helps to prove their insanity. The narrator and Montresor are similar in that they both have impaired senses of judgment encouraged by perverse morals and believe that the horrible things that they do are justifiable.
...us on deadly revenge. In each case, a retribution that is carried out in a cruel and callous fashion. The men fulfilling these actions are cold, calculating, and contemplative. They have painstakingly endeavored to seek retribution against what has plagued them: Fortunato and his insults to the Montresor and the old man’s piercing, chilling eye for the man from “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Driven to the point of madness by their own obsessions, they plot to murder their offenders. The tales are told each by the man who has indeed committed the crime. Each man’s insanity becomes more and more clear as they narrate confession; the Montresor with the unfailing ease with which he dictates his account and the man from “The Tell-Tale Heart” with his jagged and rough delivery. Their distinct mental instability calls into question to reliability of the report they give.
The disturbing description of the serial killer is recited without any waver whatsoever away from the intent only to divulge information. The narrator makes no personal comment and expresses no opinion about Howard. After the narrator has given the information to the listener, the narrator leads the train of thought right back to the work environment. The idea of a horrible mass murderer is interrupted by his typing ability. This continued contrast now goes past unstable and borders on psychotic.
In the “The Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor believes Fortunado is his greatest enemy and in return for revenge he must kill him. He achieves his goal through a depraved plan, in which he manipulated Fortunado to drink until he lost his senses for the amontillado. In “Tell-Tale Heart,” Poe depicts the murderer has no valid reason to kill the old man. The murderer’s sanity comes into question many times when the story takes place. The first sentence in the story proves this statement: “TRUE! – NERVOUS – VERY, VERY DREADFUL nervous I had been and am; but why will you say I am mad?” (Charter 1127). The narrator himself questions the audience before telling the incident that has occurred. In this story, the murder plot is not planned and takes place all of the sudden when the insane man decides to kill the fragile old man who is on the alert
Edgar Allen Poe’s tale of murder and revenge, “The Cask of Amontillado”, offers a unique perspective into the mind of a deranged murderer. The effectiveness of the story is largely due to its first person point of view, which allows the reader a deeper involvement into the thoughts and motivations of the protagonist, Montresor. The first person narration results in an unbalanced viewpoint on the central conflict of the story, man versus man, because the reader knows very little about the thoughts of the antagonist, Fortunato. The setting of “The Cask of Amontillado”, in the dark catacombs of Montresor’s wine cellar, contributes to the story’s theme that some people will go to great lengths to fanatically defend their honor.