Then Lieutenant Blandford saw her, Hollis Meynell. She was about 50 years old, and had graying hair. She was a short happy looking lady, not even close to his height. She had a green dress on and the red rose they had agreed on. As they got closer to each other Lieutenant Blandford didn’t know how to feel. He thought she would be much younger, closer to his age, or a little older. Finally they were together, Lieutenant Blandford’s heart was beating at a thousand miles per hour. Then stammered and then said, “How-how are you Hollis.” He was surprised when she said, “He didn’t tell you about me?” At this point he was very confused because he didn’t know what in the world she was talking about, so he asked her, ‘What are you talking about.
“When Mr. Payne was alive…” “Mrs. Payne, a pain in the butt, a punch line of the joke to every fifth grader. Yesterday she’d been as flat and clear as a pane of glass. Today I gazed through her sagging breasts and jowls and saw her as a young woman, as young as Ms. McDaniel, a mystery slipping out of her nightgown and into the arms of her beloved” (Perabo) It is 8:30 on a Wednesday night at Dunkin Donuts in North Haven. I am sipping my latte as I finish Susan Perabo’s “The Payoff”.
... treats Piney as her own child, and is moved with the couples love. After ten days of living in the cabin, she died from starvation. She requested to Oakhurst to give the rations she has been saving to Piney. He felt all them were already hopeless, so he ordered Tom to hike to Poker Flat and try to get some help. After a couple of days, when the help arrived in the cabin, the found two women huddled together, frozen to death, and close by Oakhurst was found with a gun near him, a bullet right through his heart, and a suicide note saying “Beneath this tree, Lies the body of John Oakhurst, who struck a streak of bad luck on the twenty third of November, 1850, and handed in his checks on the seventh of December, 1850.” (Harte 458). This story shows that people can change their life when they want to, and that anyone can develop feeling despite whatever they did before.
...display how the average citizen would see war for the first time. Colonel Kelly sees her as “vacant and almost idiotic. She had taken refuge in deaf, blind, unfeeling shock” (Vonnegut 100). To a citizen who even understands the war process, war is still heinous and dubiously justified when viewed first hand. The man who seems to have coldly just given away her son’s life without the same instinct as her has participated in this heinous wartime atrocity for so long, but it only affect her now because she cannot conceive of the reality of it until it is personally in front of her. That indicates a less complete political education of war even among those who war may have affected their entire lives. The closeness and the casualties of this “game” will affect her the most because she has to watch every move that previously could have been kept impartial and unviewed.
Upon reading the story we really don’t learn much of anything about the characters. Really there are only five characters that we know nothing about. The author did a great job with the two themes in this story. The first is that war reduces human beings to mere objects. He does a great job with this because he offers no information about the characters in the story. They are just pawns in the grand scheme of things. Used as tools of destruction in favor of whoever is in power over them. Even if they are killing their own family. O’Flaherty refrains from naming any of his characters for this purpose. The second theme is that war doesn’t know boundaries. The age, sex, location, etc, mean nothing in war. The sniper sees that the old woman is an informant who is collaborating with the turret gunner to take away his life, and he takes his shot and kills her to protect himself. This is a great example in the story to...
The novel shadows the life of Janie Crawford pursuing the steps of becoming the women that her grandmother encouraged her to become. By the means of doing so, she undergoes a journey of discovering her authentic self and real love. Despise the roller-coaster obstacles, Janie Crawford’s strong-will refuses to get comfortable with remorse, hostility, fright, and insanity.
...racelets. Smelling her aroma, feeling the air stir from her passing, mesmerized by the serpentine grace of her body, he could do nothing but acknowledge her power. When Maud dies, Major Plunkett makes his home on the island where he commemorates the life of the woman he loves, Helen.
illustrated through looking at the parallels of the intertwined relationships between three separate individuals. Miss Amelia Evans, Cousin Lymon Willis, and Marvin Macy, are the players involved in this grotesque love triangle. The feelings they respectively have for each other are what drives the story, and are significant enough that the prosperity of entire town hinges upon them.
“Straining his eyes, he saw the lean figure of General Zaroff. Then... everything went dark. Maggie woke up in her bed. “Finally woke up from that nightmare. Man… I miss my brother. Who was that person that my brother wanted to kill?” she looks at the clock and its 9:15am “Crap I’m late for work!” Maggie got in her car and drove to the hospital for work.
According to Dunning's analysis, "Appointment with Love" follows the structure of a well-written narrative by using many literary elements. The plot of the story is suspenseful, it has a shocking double twist ending that leaves the reader wondering what happened next, the characters seem very real and the reader can easily identify with them. The story also uses flashbacks to construct a background for the story's climax. If the reader values a tight plot structure he/ she will believe that "Appointment with Love" is the superior short story. The writer uses meager stereotypes to describe the story's characters. Dunning points out that this story is extremely flawed, both in the type of language it uses and the descriptions of the characters seem to contradict themselves. An example of these contradictions is the young pilot Mr. Blandford inability to see the correct time on a very large clock that he was close to. Military pilots must have 20/20 vision or better in order to fly an aircraft, so there should be no need for the pilot to squint. Dunning wonders how Blandford knew that Hollis was a woman's name seeing as how the Webster's dictionary lists Hollis as a man's name. Dunning also questions the moral value of the story, and wonders how Hollis could be so self-righteous and conceited that she tampers with Blandford's psyche by giving him the test. Dunning also believes that it is unrealistic for Hollis to ask Blandford to suspend his primal animal urges and search for a type of love that is deeper and more fulfilling.
him he was tired. She then asked him if he wanted supper but he said
Mary Anne is initially introduced to the audience, narrated by Rat Kiley, as an innocent and naïve young woman present in Vietnam solely to visit her boyfriend, Mark Fossie. She arrives in “white culottes” and a “sexy pink sweater” (86), and is deemed by the other soldiers as no more than a happy distraction for her man. As Mary Anne settles in though, her abundant curiosity of Vietnam and the war heighten, and she soon enough possesses as much interest in the war as many of the men. Forward, Mary Anne’s transformation into a soldier begins as she leaves her sweet femininity behind. No longer caring for her vanity, she falls “into the habits of the bush. No cosmetics, no fingernail filing. She stopped wearing jewelry, [and] cut her hair short” (94). Mary Anne’s lost femininity is also evident when she handles powerful rifles like the M-16. Not only does the weapon literally scream out masculi...
is married he tells her "Consider how natural and how plain it is, my dear, that
In “The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong,” Rat Kiley recounts the time when Mark Fossie brought in his girlfriend, Mary Anne Bell, from Ohio to Nam. Mary Anne is a curious and very friendly seventeen-year- old girl who just graduated from high school. She constantly asks questions about the war. Tension grows between Mary Anne and Mark when Mary Anne starts to become more involved in the war. She helps with taking care of the injured soldiers and learns how to operate an M-16. Mark suggests that the two of them go back home, but Mary Anne refuses. She begins to return to the camp late at night, or not at all. One day in the early morning, Mark cannot find Mary Anne and panics, only to discover that she is out on an ambush with the Green Berets. Mark has a talk with Mary Anne in which they make plans to get married. However, over the next several weeks, an undeniable tension grows between the two. Mary Anne suddenly disappears after Mark starts to make plans for her return home. After about three weeks, Mary Anne returns to the camp and disappears into the Special Forces area, and Mark waits for her there. He hears a woman, Mary Anne, chanting along with strange music and bursts into the hootch to confront her. O’Brien uses disturbing imagery to emphasize how the war takes away one’s innocence and changes one forever.
In the middle of his story he starts talking about where they should go to eat and about how he would like to come back as a knight (335). Through Mel’s inability to stay on topic Carver shows that a human mind is too simple to expound on love. Mel finally finishes his story of the couple in the wreck saying that the man and his wife will live, but the man was depressed because he, “couldn’t see her [his wife] through his eye holes” (337). Mel’s story is heartwarming with no definite point. When Mel finishes his story about the old couple his friends just stare at him (337). His friends do not know what he means by his story.