Brian Doyle is the editor of the University of Portland’s magazine and the author of many books. “Joyas Voladoras” is a short story in the book, The Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart and in the book it goes through his experience as a father as well as his experience of his son born with a missing chamber in his heart. In “Joyas Voladoras” Brian Doyle portrays that no matter who people are, everyone has their similarities. Doyle represents similarities of different creatures using the liquid movement inside. Doyle explains no matter who or what people are everyone is similar in a way. In “Joyas Voladoras” Doyle states, “No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside” (Doyle). People are constantly
1). Doyle’s metaphor of the “infant’s fingernail” to describe the size of a hummingbirds heart works well because it compares the size and strength of each object which makes it very easy for readers to visualize this comparison (Para. 2). Doyle’s metaphor about the “racecar” to describe the beat of a hummingbird’s heart works well because it helps readers visualize the pace of the bird’s heart in comparison to a very fast racecar (Para. 3). Doyle’s metaphor of the “swinging doors in a saloon” to describe the valves in a whale’s heart works well because the reader can visualize the size of the saloon doors and compare it to the valves inside of the enormous whale heart (Para. 4). Doyle’s metaphor about the “bricks” to describe how strong your heart can be works well because it explains that it is hard to replace the bricks that have fallen out of walls just like when bricks fall out of the wall in your heart when it is “bruised, scarred, scored and torn” it is very hard to replace them because they are filled with those bruises and scars (Para.
In the novel, Bless me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, a boy goes through many more experiences than any child in the hot summer days in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. He witnesses the deaths of his close friends and family. This boy expresses his emotions and grief through his dreams, only to wake up with fear and confusion in his mind. Antonio’s life is filled with dreams that foreshadow future incidents, as well as influences Antonio’s beliefs of religion and ideas of innocence.
Junot Díaz’s Drown, a collection of short stories, chronicles the events of Yunior and his family. Each story focuses Yunior and his struggle growing up as a Dominican immigrant and finding a place for himself within American society. Throughout the progression of the novel, Yunior realizes the stereotypes placed on him and recognizes that being white is advantageous. Yunior’s experience growing up both in the Dominican Republic and the States has shaped his perspective on life and life choices.
Junot Diaz's short story “Fiesta, 1980” gives an insight into the everyday life of a lower class family, a family with a troubled young boy, Yunior and a strong, abusive father, Papi. The conflict, man vs. man is one of the central themes of this story. This theme is portrayed through the conflicts between Papi and his son. Papi asserts his dominance in what can be considered unfashionable ways. Unconsciously, every action Papi makes yields negative reactions for his family. Yunior simply yearns for a tighter bond with his father, but knows-just like many other members of his family-Papi’s outlandish ways hurts him. As the story unfolds it becomes obvious that the conflicts between Papi and himself-along with conflicts between Yunior and himself-affect not only them as individuals, but their family as a whole.
Brian Doyle's Joyas Voladoras first appeared in The American Scholar in 2004 and was later selected for Best American Essays in 2005. Doyle’s intended audience is the general population, though his writing style attracts both the logical reader and the hopeless romantics who seek metaphors pointing to love in any way. The beginning of the essay provides insight to general information about the hummingbird, which holds the smallest, capable, and fragile heart in the world. He then explains the significance of the blue whale’s heart with comparisons, indicating that the blue whale holds a heart the size of a room. He ends his essay by expressing that a human’s heart is always closed due to the fear of it breaking, remaining constantly fragile. In order to prove his point further, he also states that even if a heart defends itself with barriers, those barriers will always break due to the smallest of emotional triggers. Therefore, Doyle succeeds at evoking intense emotions from his audience due to a brilliant rhetorical strategy involving a pathetic appeal approach, emphasizing on the reality of the human heart and the pain of love. His skillful use of metaphors, facts, contrast, and poetic stylized writing methods assist him in successfully inspiring his audience to realize that the heart is more than just an organ.
Chua, John. "An overview of 'The Tell-Tale Heart,'." Gale Online Encyclopedia. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 7 Dec. 2010.
In “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Story of an Hour”, the woman in each story imprisons in the domestic sphere. In “Hills Like White Elephants”, the woman in this story conflicts between keeping the baby or getting abortion although the relationship with her boyfriend would not improve as he said. In “The Story of an Hour”, even though Louise Mallard, an intelligent, independent woman understands that she should grieve for Brently, her husband and worry for her future, she cannot help herself from rejoice at her newfound freedom. The author of this story, Kate Chopin suggests that even with a happy marriage, the loss of freedom and the restraint are the results that cannot be avoid.
Have you ever read something and was so deep in it that you felt inspired and received a connection from it? Gabriel Garcia Marquez does this in the story “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the world.” Marquez gets across two ideas about inspiration and connections through his use of symbolism, character, and setting.
The power to change is man’s greatest struggles, since a strong influence that lead them to where they are now. It is also the price and journey that both Montresor in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell Tale Heart” and the narrator of the “The Cask of Amontillado”, another of poe’s story. In both story the narrators, both indicate that they want to get rid of an addiction they had that is driving them to madness, and in order to do so they, must do it at any cost. Both narrator clearly plan on their instincts and carefully plans out methods in which leads them to their satisfaction. These stories contain many similarities and differences in the use of tone, irony and symbolism, of the protagonist. Through these characters and their actions,
Family is one of the most important institutions in society. Family influences different aspects of a person’s life, such as their religion, values, morals and behavior. Unfortunately, problems may arise when an individual’s belief system or behavior does not coincide with that of family standards. Consequently, individuals may be forced to repress their emotions or avoid acting in ways that that are not acceptable to the family. In the novel The Rain God, written by Arturo Islas, we are presented with a story about a matriarchal family that deals with various conflicts. One major internal conflict is repression. Throughout the novel the characters act in strange ways and many of the family members have internal “monsters” that represent the past that they are repressing. In his article, “The Historical Imagination in Arturo Islas’s The Rain God and Migrant Souls”, Antonio C. Marquez’s implicitly asserts a true idea that The Rain God is a story about repression. Marquez’s idea can be supported from an analysis of secondary sources and a reading of the primary text.
“Los Vendidos,” translated to “The Sellouts” by Luis Valdez is a one act play that draws attention to the prejudice against Mexicans. Salesman, Honest Sancho, is a used Mexican lot owner that sells “robots,” each representing a Mexican model stereotype. The secretary, Miss Jimenez, works for the governor of the town who has sent her to purchase a Mexican to help their votes. Sancho shows the secretary the many different Mexicans they have from a farm worker to Pachuco (a lazy Mexican that causes trouble), to a revolucionario and a Mexican-American. Each Mexican model has a quality that the secretary doesn’t like, represented through a stereotype, which shows the prejudices society holds on the race. Although throughout the play the Mexicans
People do not pride themselves on being like their mother or father. But ancestors traits pass down through families, tying them together. The Buendia family, from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, is a perfect example of the mystical doom that follows through generations. Nobel Prize Winner, Marquez weaves a tale about life in Macadona and the strange and twisted Buendia family line. The story addresses mysterious dark magic, death, and horrifying tales of incest, debauchery, and love. Throughout the story, Marquez creates Macadona as if time was repeating itself. Each generation making the same fateful choices as their relatives. In this story the protagonists have many differences in their fates. However; they all share unifying facts that tie them together in the hundred years of solitude.
Legend says, “What goes around comes back around”. This saying is often used to describe karma, which is clearly illustrated in Nora Zeale Hurston’s 1926 short story “Sweat” and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1955 short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”. These two stories are so different but so similar in many ways. For example, the conflicts and genres of these stories are completely different. The settings and styles of writing are also different. On the contrary, these two stories are told in a similar point of view. More than anything, the conflicts of these two stories are the biggest illustration of karma’s “powers” in their own meticulous ways.
Life is not a singular momentous journey; it is a multitude of experiences and events that shape not only one’s life, but one’s character. In Vida, Patricia Engel manages to construct a multilayered novel that produces a synergistic effect—the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. By constructing Vida in non-chronological order, Engel manages to convey a realistic account of finding one’s self by reminiscing upon distinct life-changing moments and the subsequent realization of the individual self. Although the chapters seemingly have nothing in common, in the sum of their parts they form a complete portrayal of Sabina. In fact, as Engel asserts, it is not the momentous occasions in life that are the most profound to one’s personal development—the most consequential moments are “uneventful, the way most life-changing moments are. You don’t see them happening” (44). Ultimately, by employing a non-chronological narrative—along with other literary elements—Engel skillfully conveys the personal history of Sabina, while fragmenting time and place. Thus, each chapter is a representation of the person who Sabina was at that time—her feelings, her language, her tone—and that is constantly changing as a girl is growing into a women, and attempting to figure out who she is as an individual.
Life is full of obstacles that people must overcome in order to continue. Garcia Lorca uses intense images such as watching preserved butterflies come back to life and where the mummified hand of a boy lies. His use of surrealistic events helps the reader understand Lorca’s emphasis on the brutality and disgusting outlook of life. The struggle in life to survive is a major component i...