Everyone dials the wrong number at least one. But in the story “ sorry wrong number” by Lucille Fletcher one wrong number leads to a shocking and twisted end. The story takes place late one evening in New York. Mrs. Stevenson, the main character, is a frantic, demanding and an angry person that just happens to dial the wrong number. Mrs. Stevenson is angry at the start. After listening to the phone call, Mrs. Stevenson was desperate to recall the number. As she called operator 1, she gets angry, yelling at the operator “ you didn’t try to get that wrong number at all. All I asked explicitly and all you did was dial correctly”(114). With her being angry she is snapping at the operator while trying to find the men on the phone. Her anger ties into her demanding trate in the book.The first part of the note “ “ you didn’t try to get that wrong number at all”(114) is her getting frustrated followed by “ All I asked for explicitly and all you did was dial correctly”(114) shows how angry she got at the fact that she dialed the number correctly but still got the wrong number demanding her to redial it. …show more content…
Stevenson and that would be her demanding nature. Half-way through the script, Mrs. Stevenson is on the phone with officer Duffy talking about the murder she heard in the phone call. She has led multiple times at the operator and Officer Duffy. In the story she became highly demanding when talking to Officer Duffy saying” Can you trace it for me? Can you trace down those men?” (115) She is “Highly- Strung demanding” telling the officer to try and trace the call. This leading Officer Duffy to become more Irritated and frustrated at Mrs.
Blackburn’s choice of language is impetrative in positioning the reader to see Button as the Protagonist and Cooke as the antagonist. “The thirteen year old blinked and stammered when he tried to answer the magistrate’s questions about why he was wagging school”. The words “blinked and stammered” describing buttons actions encourage sympathy and an imagery of innocence. “But now he felt vengeful too. He wanted to spoil things a little for those happy people who didn’t suffer like he did”, the words “vengeful, and wanted to spoil” associated with Cooke’s thoughts, encourage a menacing, and revengeful imagery of Cooke.
He opens his talk by giving a story on his own life. He reminisces about his childhood, when he lived in a “typical African American household” with his grandmother as the dominant figure. He talks about who his grandmother his, all of her temperaments and the things he can remember about her. He also discusses the impact she had on his life, and some of the life lessons she taught him. Stevenson most likely opens with this piece to make an emotional connection with the audience, sprinkling in humor and real human emotion. He also uses this piece to provide foreshadowing for the rest of his presentation, as his grandmother’s impact on him is a part of his morals and standards today. I think this is an excellent start to his presentation, it allows him to reveal himself and make his message more meaningful.
Barbara also uses a heavy hand with the allusions in this section – “The whole thing would be a lot easier if I could just skate through it like Lily Tomlin in one of her waitressing skits, but I was raised by the absurd Booker T. Washingtonian precept that says: If you’re going to do something, do it well.” She tries to establish an emotional connection with the reader – it might have worked on me if I knew who Lily Tomlin was, though understandably she wrote this novel for a different age set – that explains a part of her good character. She shows ...
Stevenson then went on to put a scary touch to the story by telling us
...mother realize the identity of her daughter's rapist before the Marquise, establishing irony and advancing engagement between reader and text. It is also clear to the reader that by the conclusion of The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator has become maniacal.
He also creates suspense through the character of Poole. The question raised on Poole’s appearance in the night is why has he come at this time of the night? Poole had come on his own initiative, which a butler under no circumstances would do without his master’s permission. When Utterson questioned him he answered “There’s something wrong.” Stevenson uses withholding information as a technique to create suspense; he does not tell us what is wrong straight away. The sort of questions that arise in the readers mind is: why has he come, what’s wrong, why has Poole come and not Dr Jekyll, what could be possibly wrong that Poole can’t handle alone. “I am afraid” Poole is afraid which makes the reader think that something terrible has happened. Poole says to Utterson that “there’s been foul play” this confirms the readers doubt that something bad has happened. It also raises the question has murder taken place?
Stevenson discusses his journey as an attorney for the condemned on death row. He speaks of
Throughout the story Stevenson portrays the prisons, prison guards and the prison system through his use of word choice. The structural style of the prison described through the use of gothic language, conjuring up dungeon type location, often times embellishing the actual conditions of the prison. He also used partial language describing the demeanors of the guards as harsh and uncaring. Stevenson also employed a series of shocking facts to appeal to the reader’s emotion, having them overlook his stylistic choices in language. These stylistic word choices retracts from Stevenson’s ideas of necessary reform, portraying him more as a story teller rather than an expert, which is detrimental to a his cause when an expert is clearly needed for a complicated subject like prison reform. His overuse of subtle prejudices, through his word choice was ineffective devaluing his argument as a
The author begins the story with a strong statement, “I found myself in a Chinese funeral parlor because of a phone call I made to my cleaning lady” (Schmitt); it takes the reader right into the funeral parlor and draws the reader into the story: how she got to the funeral parlor and what she doing there was the question I had. She starts the story with some background about how she got to China. Then moves on to the funeral that was happening in her neighbors’ home. She describes how the family was grievously weeping as she was walking toward her apartment. She noticed what happened and wonder why they were weeping. “Do you know why the neighbors are very sad?” she asked her cleaning lady.
To begin, Stevenson uses several characters in the book to show human nature by how
..., and also used subtle contrasts between characters and places to create in depth detail and to portray the popular secrecy that bound the Victorian era. His feelings and thoughts are cleverly wound into his writing. The morals of the story, it is thought that he wrote the books as an allegory, however discreet are very important. Stevenson believed that gentlemen were hypocrites with outward respectability and inward lust and greed, and in this novel there are several occasions where hypocrisy is brought into the lime light.
Stevenson's choice of certain words in the novel is extremely pertinent to a homoerotic reading of the text. In some Victorian circles (and most certainly not in others), certain words had very explicit homosexual connotations.
Most women in Mrs Mallard’s situation were expected to be upset at the news of her husbands death, and they would worry more about her heart trouble, since the news could worsen her condition. However, her reaction is very different. At first she gets emotional and cries in front of her sister and her husbands friend, Richard. A little after, Mrs. Mallard finally sees an opportunity of freedom from her husbands death. She is crying in her bedroom, but then she starts to think of the freedom that she now has in her hands. “When she abandoned herse...
Her character is portrayed as being anxious through the author’s choice of dialogue in the form of diction, which is “waves of her [the mother] anxiety sink down into my belly”. The effect of this is to allow the readers to establish the emotions of the narrator, as well as establish an the uneasy tone of the passage, and how stressful and important the event of selling tobacco bales for her family is. Additionally, the narrator is seen to be uncomfortable in the setting she is present in. This is seen through the many dashes and pauses within her thoughts because she has no dialogue within this passage, “wishing- we- weren’t- here”, the dashes show her discomfort because the thought is extended, and thus more intense and heavy, wishing they could be somewhere else. The effect of the narrator’s comfort establishes her role within the family, the reason she and her sister does not have dialogue symbolizes that she has no voice within the family, as well as establishing hierarchy. The authors use dictation and writing conventions to develop the character of the narrator herself, as well as the mother. The narrator’s focus on each of her parents is additionally highlighted through
The first reader has a guided perspective of the text that one would expect from a person who has never studied the short story; however the reader makes some valid points which enhance what is thought to be a guided knowledge of the text. The author describes Mrs. Mallard as a woman who seems to be the "victim" of an overbearing but occasionally loving husband. Being told of her husband's death, "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance." (This shows that she is not totally locked into marriage as most women in her time). Although "she had loved him--sometimes," she automatically does not want to accept, blindly, the situation of being controlled by her husband. The reader identified Mrs. Mallard as not being a "one-dimensional, clone-like woman having a predictable, adequate emotional response for every life condition." In fact the reader believed that Mrs. Mallard had the exact opposite response to the death her husband because finally, she recognizes the freedom she has desired for a long time and it overcomes her sorrow. "Free! Body and soul free! She kept whispering." We can see that the reader got this idea form this particular phrase in the story because it illuminates the idea of her sorrow tuning to happiness.