Tex is not a man used to having his routine broken. He enjoys the predictable comfort repetition offers; gets confused when the patterns his flimsy neurons have worked so hard to recognize are interrupted. Without periodic events, his understanding of time dissolves into a continuous string of inexplicable actions, interconnected in some intangible way.
It’s 10:00am and he is sitting, as usual, in his wicker brown chair beneath the fluorescent lights surrounded by the calm, blue walls. But today, the satisfaction his brain usually feels at this point isn’t quite there because, for reasons he can’t understand, he was given an uncomfortable black suit to put on this morning instead of his loose shirt and sweatpants. As he stares at the TV’s flashing images, he becomes aware of a presence on his peripherals. Normally, he processes, someone comes at 11:30am to move him to the cafeteria. A quick glance to the clock above the television confirms the time as 10:00am. Tex ignores the shape.
“Tex, buddy, ya wanna come with me?”
Tex stares at the screen. The shape allows a couple seconds to pass, then pats Tex’s blond head. “Tex, buddy, I gotta take you somewhere, man. Come on,” he says as he pulls gently at Tex’s arm. Tex stands, smiles blankly, and allows himself to be led through a windowed door, then another, into a room that he does not recognize. Things, his brain processes, are not going according to plan.
There are five people in this room and one, an old man, glances up momentarily from scribbling on a clipboard held by the doctor as Tex enters. Tex smiles blankly, his sense of unease growing as this anomaly continues and only a thin, wilting woman returns his rehearsed smile. The doctor turns to him.
“Tex, you’ll be spending th...
... middle of paper ...
...is life becomes physically tangible. Memories burst into his brain like fireworks: a faceless man reaching, the staircase shaking and its wood splintering, a dented wall. The striving neurons seem, for a moment, as if they can connect but they fall short as the sweat dries and the memories become like television to him as he steps forward.
~
Back in his room that night, Tex happily dons the sweatpants and shirt brought to him at the expected 9:00pm. He lies on his bed and his brain returns the strangeness of the past day. He recalls that a frail woman had taken him from his wicker chair, but the specifics had already been lost. He had fragments—a maroon wall, a child reading, his name scribbled sloppily and overwhelming terror above a narrow staircase—but they made no sense, had no continuity, and he finds it easier to forget them and sleep than to continue to dwell.
The short stories of Washington Irving are examples of the literary movement of Romanticism and its characteristics which are evidenced in this author’s works. These characteristics are sometimes found in abundant quantities or limited amounts in each of his short stories. However, no matter what short story Washington Irving wrote, the Age of Romanticism and its defining characteristics are found in each of his selections. So, too, do each of the author’s short stories present a unique study about
any number of closely related and often overlapping genres. As Jonathan Raban notes, Travel writing is a notoriously raffish open house where different genres are likely to end up in the same bed. It accommodates the private diary, the essay, the short story, the prose poem, the rough note and polished table talk with indiscriminate hospitality. (Thompson 11) Commenting on the formal diversity, thematic and to nal range, Patrick Holland and Graham Huggan, surveyed travel writing in the late twentieth
cause you to think. When I first read some of Miss Porter’s work, I came away feeling depressed, empty and wondering why she even wrote. Her stories seemed unfinished, incomplete and pointless. However, I find myself thinking about those works, discovering new things and realizing a deeper meaning in the stories. Katherine Anne Porter’s stories are brilliant, vivid snapshots of lives, and reveal the foolishness of man. Everyone sees life from their own perspective and bases their actions
Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps the best-known American Romantic who worked in the Gothic mode. His stories explore the darker side of the Romantic imagination, dealing with the grotesque, the supernatural, and the horrifying. He defined the form of the American short story. As one might expect, Poe himself eschewed conventional morality, which he believed stems from man's attempts to dictate the purposes of God. Poe saw God more as process than purpose. He believed that moralists derive their beliefs
mother, Shirley began to compose verse almost as soon as she could write it" (Friedman, 18). As a child, Shirley was interested in sports and literature. In 1930, a year before she attended Burlingame High School, Shirley began writing poetry and short stories. Jackson enrolled in the liberal arts program at the University of Rochester in 1934. But after periods of unhappiness and questioning the loyalty of her friends, she withdrew from the university. For the next year Shirley worked night and day
Nobody Ever Dies “The Complete Short Stories of Earnest Hemingway” contains many kinds of stories, with themes ranging from the comic to the serious and the macabre, among which “Nobody Ever Dies” is my favorite one. The story is about a young man named Enrique, who had been away at war for 15 months. His comrades-in-arms secretly sent him back to a house, without knowing it was being watched. Enrique was all the time listening. Someone was trying the two doors. Keeping himself out of
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s All the Sad Young Men F. Scott Fitzgerald’s All the Sad Young Men was his sixth book. The work was composed of nine short stories that had been published in magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post over the course of the previous year. The work was Fitzgerald’s third short story collection and followed the Great Gatsby in publication on the 26th of February 1926. To most, this book signaled Fitzgerald’s staying power as many of his seniors had believed that his initial
can predict the future (Dick 72). Such a crime free world exists in Philip K. Dick’s famous short story, The Minority Report. Using the adaptation made by screenwriters, Scott Frank and Jon Cohen, DreamWorks was able to release the film version of Dick’s short story in 2002. Furthermore, this futuristic age film was directed by the famous director, Stephen Spielberg. The main focus of the short story and film surrounds the lead character John Anderton and his efforts to understand the minority
writes her short story as a means to tell her passage into adulthood. Growing up in the capital of Mississippi, Eudora lives only a few blocks from the capitol. She remembers from many different trips to the Little Store various moments of her childhood and compiles them into one trip. She encourages the reader by bringing realism to the work through the use of sensory writing. During each leg of her travel, some object creates a tangent in her mind of other memories. Although the story begins
comes from the beginning of this short story when the Grandfather (Mr. Head) is on the train with his grandson (Nelson). Mr. Head utters this quote to the man sitting next to him on the train. Mr. Head decided to take Nelson to Atlanta to see the city where Nelson was born and to teach him some things along the way. There are countless instances in the text that show that Nelson indeed has not seen anything before and that he is indeed very ignorant. Early in the story, Mr. Head feels the need to warn
Environment in Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses I found the short stories in Go Down, Moses to be long, boring, and hard to comprehend. As usual Faulkner writes his stories with no regard to punctuation. His run-on sentences are confusing and unnecessary. However, I did notice the theme of man and his interactions with the environment stressed throughout these stories. “Was” starts us off with ‘Uncle Ike’ McCaslin in his old age and tells the story of his elder cousin (and surrogate father) and his childhood
Faulkner’s Dry September and That Evening Sun William Faulkner’s “Dry September”, and “That Evening Sun” have to very obvious things in common; they leave many unanswered questions. There is no real ending to either story, and the reader is left to imagine what happens in the end of each story. In “Dry September”, I was left wondering whether or not Will really did anything to Minnie Cooper. My intuition tells me no, that she was just an old lonely woman who wanted attention, or who construed this offense
that art should be political. I would like to examine Grace Paley and Phillip Roth's short stories and Toni Morrison's novel, The Bluest Eye. Each of these works can be considered political, and I believe they fit Morrison's idea of what literary fiction should be. In both Paley and Roth's work, strongly political themes emerge. Paley's short story, "Faith in a Tree", deals with the Vietnam war and Roth's short story, "Conversion of the Jews", treats religious and moral questions in a public setting
misrepresent who they truly are: the seemingly innocuous lottery in Jackson’s short story is in reality a gruesome gathering for the town’s annual stoning whereas O. Henry’s narrator is not as aloof as he portrays himself to be. Although such extreme contrasts between appearance and reality are understandably confusing — multiple readings of the texts are required for the readers to fully appreciate what is going on in the stories — they ultimately help accentuate the crucial theme of good and evil that
the author is that of a typical town on a normal summer day. Shirley Jackson uses this setting to foreshadow an ironic ending. First, Jackson begins by establishing the setting. She tells the reader what time of day and what time of year the story takes place. This is important to get the reader to focus on what a typical day it is in this small town. The time of day is set in the morning and the time of year is early summer. She also describes that school has just recently let out for summer