Hands is a story that takes place in 1919, in the outskirts of Winesburg, Ohio. It is the story of an amiable elderly man who goes by the name Wing Biddlebaum. His real name is Adolph Myers, however changes his name due to a series of unfortunate events that take place within the small town. Wing is the story’s main character and protagonist, who is depicted as an anxious and timid man. Once a passionate school teacher, the story focuses around the events leading up to Wing’s change of behavior, as well as the aftermath of emotional trauma. The story introduces a Mr. George Willard, Wing’s only friend and reporter for The Winesburg Eagle. It is George whom Wing confides in, and tells his story to. Although there are not many characters presented …show more content…
The story begins expressing how Wing had been the town’s mystery for twenty years- a mystery of Wing’s timidity, and the story that unfolds about his hands. A shy Wing Biddlebaum watches a group of rambunctious berry pickers from his veranda near the town of Winesburg. Wing Biddlebaum talked much with his hands, and studied the actions of other men’s inexpressive hands with amazement. In this small town, Wing’s hands attracted a great deal of attention due to their unusual dexterity. Wing’s hands were the source of his fame. Their activity fascinated the town’s people and became his eminent feature. Wing’s hands are comparable to wings of a captive bird, thus giving him his nickname. For with his hands, Wing had picked as much as a hundred and forty quarts of strawberries in a day! The people of Winesburg had been proud of Wing. Conversely, sometimes when George and Wing exchanged conversations, Wing would beat his fists on a table or a wall. This peculiar action made Wing feel more comfortable, and out of respect for Wing, George never questions him. Many times George Willard had wanted to ask Wing about the remarkable behavior of his hands and his inclination to keep them hidden away. One summer …show more content…
“You must try to forget everything you have learned” Wing recited. A nostalgic Wing frantically puts his hands in his pockets, and hurries home; tears mounting in his eyes. George grows curious as to why Wing feels his hands are responsible for his indisposition. The look of horror on Wing’s face filled George with sorrow and decided he would never ask about the hands again. This leads the narrator to tell the reader about the story of Wing’s hands. A young Wing Biddlebaum, once addressed by his real name, (Adolph Myers) was a loving teacher at a boy’s school in Pennsylvania. His students admired him, for Adolph was a very gentle and kind man. His delicate demeanor allowed his students to trust him, and often he would accompany the boys after class. Many times Adolph had joined his students talking to each other upon the schoolhouse steps, instilling his teachings about dreams. Every now and then, Adolph’s hands would innocently caress the shoulders of the boys, or even tousle their hair. With his hands and soft spoken voice, Adolph expressed himself to the boys, to where they felt comfortable. “And then the tragedy”. A whit less young boy became utterly
In Beloved, this incident is the moment that Sethe slits Beloved’s throat when Schoolteacher arrives to take her, and her children, back to Sweet Home. This event triggers most of the novel’s plot, making it both illuminating and inciting. However, there are three important aspects that surround this event. First,
“Greg sat in the small, pale green kitchen listening, knowing the lecture would end with his father saying he couldn’t play ball with the Scorpions.” This made Greg very sad, causing him to go for a walk when he broke into the house where he met Lemond Brown and he encountered some new things such as the neighborhood thugs. “They banged around noisily, calling for the rag man. “We heard you talking about your treasure.” The voice slurred.
While staying at Mel’s home, the adolescent female narrator personifies the butterfly paperweight. The life cycle begins with the narrator “hearing” the butterfly sounds, and believing the butterfly is alive. The butterfly mirrors the narrator’s feelings of alienation and immobility amongst her ‘new family’ in America. She is convinced the butterfly is alive, although trapped inside thick glass (le 25). The thick glass mirrors the image of clear, still water. To the adolescent girl, the thick glass doesn’t stop the sounds of the butterfly from coming through; however, her father counteracts this with the idea of death, “…can’t do much for a dead butterfly” (le 31). In order to free the butterfly, the narrator throws the disk at a cabinet of glass animals, shattering the paperweight, as well as the glass animals. The shattering of the glass connects to the shattering of her being, and her experience in fragility. The idea of bringing the butterfly back to life was useless, as the motionless butterfly laid there “like someone expert at holding his breath or playing dead” (le 34). This sense of rebirth becomes ironic as the butterfly did not come back to life as either being reborn or as the manifestation of a ghostly spirit; instead its cyclic existence permeates through the narrator creating a transformative
At the start of the play, all of the characters enter the abandoned farmhouse of John Wright, who was recently hanged by an unknown killer. The Sheriff and County Attorney start scanning the house for clues as to who killed Mr. Wright, but make a major error when they search the kitchen poorly, claiming that there is nothing there ?but kitchen things.? This illustrates the men?s incorrect belief that a kitchen is a place of trivial matters, a place where nothing of any importance may be found. Mrs. Peters then notices that Mrs. Wright?s fruit froze in the cold weather, and the men mock her and reveal their stereotype of females by saying ?women are used to worrying over trifles.? The men then venture to the upstairs of the house to look for clues, while the women remain downstairs in the kitchen where they discuss the frozen fruit and the Wrights. Mrs. Hale explains that Mrs. Wright, whose maiden name was Minnie Foster, used to be a lively woman who sang in the choir. She suggests that the reason Mrs. Wright stopped being cheerful and active because of her irritable husband.
(Hook 0x01). In the historical fiction, The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd is set in the 1800s in Charleston South Carolina. The story is based on the struggle that Charlotte, Hetty Handful Grimke and Sarah Grimke, a daughter of a wealthy land owner, face in their fight to abolish slavery and to bring equality to women's rights. These characters express their desire for equality by taking the green silk cloth, participating in a slave revolt, and converting to the Quaker religion.
P encourages Arnold to be better in life. Mr. P is responsible for Junior’s fight against hopelessness and his wish of not giving up hope and realizing dreams. Mr. P, at first, appears to be your average teacher who hates their job, stuck in the middle, and can’t achieve a higher level job. Everyone thought that Mr. P looked really weird. He was only 4 feet tall, had no hair, but had dandruff, there would be food stains on his shirt, visible nose hair, and weighed maybe 50 pounds but only when he’s carrying his 15 pound briefcase. But the strangest thing about Mr. P is that sometimes he forgot to come to school. He tried to start a reservation Shakespeare Theatre Company, but failed miserably. Oftentimes, students would have to be sent down to the housing compound behind the school to wake Mr. P, who is always napping in front of his television. He sometimes teaches classes in his pajamas. He is fairly popular among the students, as not much is asked out of the students. On Junior’s first day back to school, he is given a Geometry book. But on the first page of the book, he sees the words “This book belongs to Agnes Adams.” Agnes Adams is his mother, which meant that the book was over 30 years old. Enraged by this thought, he threw his book at Mr. P. Consequently, Arnold is suspended for a week. Mr. P goes to talk to him. He talks to him about his sister, and how she used to write romance novels, but then suddenly stopped, and telling Junior things about
Squint asserts that there are “warnings . . . throughout Russell’s novel, that Florida’s wetlands are as vulnerable as now – extinct dinosaurs” (Squirt 3). When the Bird Man arrives in Ava’s life she is in an extremely vulnerable state. Her father has left for business in the mainland, Kiwi has runaway and Osceola has deserted her on the island alone. There are warnings of the Bird Man’s evilness; although Ava says he was not what she expected she describes a Bird Man’s visit as being “like a dark Christmas” (Russell 169). The Bird Man, his coat with “a layered ruff of black feathers,” also looks like the buzzards that kill Louis Thanksgiving (Russell 185). Bird Man has further similarities to the melaleuca
And I was there and I watched his face and I kept looking for a handle, looking for something to grab, to keep him from going. But there was no handle,” (Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, 00:51:00).
Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters found the pieces, one patch the sewing was different. Mrs. Hale noticed note it appeared her mind had been somewhere else while completing the block. The stitching showed her emotional state, as upset or worrying about something. While Mrs. Hale was looking for the pieces for the quilt they found bird cage, where is the bird? The thought was maybe a cat got the bird. The bird found in a box with here sewing things, dead. The neck had been wrung. The symbolism of the bird, Minnie was a great singer, and canaries known for singing. The cage was a symbol of how she felt in her marriage. Trapped, in a cage no escaping. How the bird died is very important. Mrs. Wright husband had a rope around his
Annie Dillard portrays her thoughts differently in her passage, incorporating a poetic sense that is carried through out the entire passage. Dillard describes the birds she is viewing as “transparent” and that they seem to be “whirling like smoke”. Already one could identify that Dillard’s passage has more of poetic feel over a scientific feel. This poetic feeling carries through the entire passage, displaying Dillard’s total awe of these birds. She also incorporates word choices such as “unravel” and that he birds seem to be “lengthening in curves” like a “loosened skein”. Dillard’s word choice implies that he is incorporating a theme of sewing. As she describes these birds she seems to be in awe and by using a comparison of sewing she is reaching deeper inside herself to create her emotions at the time.
Mrs. Hale’s keen wit and patience contributes to her embodiment of The Fate sister Clotho the Spinner, which is even more evident in her correcting of Minnie Wright’s improper stitching (Russell). Mrs. Peters begins the process of investigation deeply devoted to keeping the law. She doesn’t want any disruption in the house, saying, “I don’t think we ought to touch things” (Glaspell p. 666) when Mrs. Hale began searching for clues. Upon finding the dead canary, Mrs. Peters view on the situation changes drastically, and she decides with Mrs. Hale to hide the tiny dead bird from the men. They both figure that if the dead canary was discovered, Mrs. Wright would be thought to be a mad woman, though it was likely Mr. Wright who killed it.
The book is Anderson's form of expression, not unlike the hands of the main character in his most acclaimed piece: "Hands". In this story, a little man, Wing Biddlebaum, lives isolated from the town of Winesburg. His solitude is a result of a tragic experience years before. He had been a gifted schoolteacher who motivated young boys with his hands until one young student spread wild rumors about him. The Pennsylvanian town was qui...
The birdcage represents how Mrs. Wright was trapped in her marriage, and could not escape it. The birdcage door is broken which represents her broken marriage to Mr. Wright. It also represents Mrs. Wright escaping her marriage from Mr. Wright. When the door is open it allows Mrs. Wright to became a free woman. At one point in time the cage door use to have a lock that locked the bird inside the cage. This represents how Mr. Wright kept Mrs. Wright locked up from society. Mr. Wright knew that by keeping Mrs. Wright locked up, she would never be able to tell anyone how he really acted. Mr. Wright was very cruel to his wife.
Mr. Hale found his neighbor, John Wright, strangled upstairs in the Wrights’ house with Minnie Wright, John’s wife, sitting calmly downstairs. With John Wright dead and his wife in jail, Mr. Hale, the sheriff, their wives, and the county attorney all crowded into the Wright’s house to try to find clues about the murder. While the men go upstairs, they leave the women downstairs “.worrying over trifles.” (“A Jury of Her Peers” 264) Unbeknownst to the men, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find clue after clue that would convict Minnie Wright of the murder. Instead of telling the men about the clues, the women hide the clues and the men have no idea what the women have found.
Wright was described as a beautiful women filled with such joy and life until she married John Wright. Mrs. Peter’s and Mrs. Hale feels sorry for her because her husband treated her so bad. Due to female bonding and sympathy, the two women, becoming detectives, finds the truth and hides it from the men. The play shows you that emotions can play a part in your judgement. Mrs. Peter’s and Mrs. Hale felt sorry that Mrs. Wright had one to keep her company no kids and she was always left alone at home. “yes good; he didn’t drink, and kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his debt. But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters just to pass the time of day with him. Like a raw wind that goes to the bone. I should of think she would have wanted a bird. But what you suppose went with it?” Later on in the play the women find out what happens to the bird. The bird was killed the same way Mrs. Wright husband which leads to the motive of why he was killed. Mrs. Wright was just like the bird beautiful but caged no freedom not being able to live a life of her own. Always stuck in the shadows of her husband being told what to do and