Heinrich Böll’s short story, “The Laugher”, reflects a fictional character whose voice is that of a professional laugher. This particular work influenced me to apply a similar approach into writing of my own. As Böll delivered the voice of a person with a particular identity and purpose, I was able to deliver an invention of a particular character as well. Resembling “The Laugher”, I constructed the voice and occupation of “The Twisted Taxidermist” into a short story. “The Twisted Taxidermist” and “The Laugher” are not only connected by the characters sharing their own avowals to the reader, but also by the characters understanding themselves in a better sense.
My first attempt “with allowing my person”, began with the voice of “The Clone.” I generated the clone using a nonfictional character with whose mysterious life I had planned to share in my writing. However, this man’s purpose is such a mystery in real life that I was unable to create an avowal for the clone. His story may establish when I “write for later”. I then adopted another occupation, “The Twisted Taxidermist”, just a title without any background. To my surprise, I realized that imagination and invention is what executed this story rather than planned. “And so, too, today, a certain bird is more likely to find its way into a poem of mine than a train wreck I witnessed (James Tate). It was unexplainable that I was unknowing as to where this story would lead, but was somehow able to become the voice of the twisted taxidermist and not the voice of a writer. “The Twisted Taxidermist” quickly took on a life of it own.
“Poets love words; fiction writers love sentences” (Hardin). In this particular writing, I discovered myself admiring both. “Watched” becam...
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...e”: Allow the voice of this short story to be executed by a person of high status, and a loved individual, but allow them to carry a dark secret that no one else knows about. Allow your person to share their avowals. Invent this character by a particular job using invention.
In conclusion, “The Laugher” displayed by Heinrich Böll and the “Allow Your Speaker” prompt, inspired me into inventing and successfully creating a character and their avowals. Writing the short story, “The Twisted Taxidermist”, not only delivered a voice that was not of my own and achieved a moral premise, but a learning experience as well. I learned to incorporate invention, memory, observation, factual details, and serendipity. I learned to create a story not interpreted, but portrayed. The writer can literally have the whole world in their hands. “Desire is not rational” (James Tate).
"Unit 2: Reading & Writing About Short Fiction." ENGL200: Composition and Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 49-219. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
Sherwood Anderson depicts all the characters throughout his 24 short stories as a grotesque. He prefaces most of the stories with the old writer’s definition of what it means to be a grotesque. This definition frames how the book is to be interpreted throughout the different stories. Anderson paints every character as a grotesque. However, he does not paint them in the same light. What may make one person a grotesque may not make another person a grote...
I frankly confess that I have, as a general thing, but little enjoyment of it, and that it has never seemed to me to be, as it were, a first-rate literary form. . . . But it is apt to spoil two good things – a story and a moral, a meaning and a form; and the taste for it is responsible for a large part of the forcible-feeding writing that has been inflicted upon the world. The only cases in whi...
In his report, “Keeping His Head”: Repetition and Responsibility in London’s “To Build a Fire,” Lee Clark Mitchell shares that most naturalist aficionado quiver at the style. This is in part because the enthusiasts thought London’s plot was “childish” and speed was sluggish (76). Mitchell suggests that these readers are ignoring the style and viewing it as irrelevant but he believes the style should be paid attention to because London does not write in the standard naturalist way. He finds London's style rather “compelling” and “curious” and believes other will too if repetition and tenses are accounted for (80, 78).
In the minds of many, legendary director Alfred Hitchcock’s infamous shower scene in the 1960 classic Psycho brought the phrase “point of view” into the language of the general public. What most do not realize is that those in the many spectrums of entertainment have been taking full advantage of the benefits brought on by an audience being dealt a limited field of vision for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Prior to the advent of film and theater, the best place to find this method in use was literature. The origin of the point of view in literature can be traced back to the earliest forms of literature, where much of what was dictated and recorded was recounted from life experiences. It is of no surprise to most that the idea of point of view stayed, and evolved into many subsections, thanks in full to the fact that every story has a point of view. In the 19th century, point of view hit a creative peak, with the wildly inventive writers of the period finding new avenues to pursue with their works. Stories from that time period authored by individuals such as Edgar Allen Poe and Ambrose Bierce are still read today. What allows Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” and Bierce’s “Occurrence of Owl Creek Bridge” to be taught as shining examples of wonderful literature are not expert characterizations, moody settings, or heart-wrenching themes as one may expect after studying their other works. Instead, it is the point of view methods that both authors employ that make their works so revered.
Written stories differ in numerous ways, but most of them have one thing in common; they all have a narrator that, on either rare occasions or more regularly, help to tell the story. Sometimes, the narrator is a vital part of the story since without him or her, it would not be possible to tell the story in the same way, and sometimes, the narrator has a very small role in the story. However, he or she is always there, and to compare how different authors use, and do not use, this outside perspective writing tool, a comparison between Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, Henry James’ Daisy Miller, and David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly will be done.
Edgar Allan Poe was a crazy man; however, he was one of the best story and poetry writer in the world history. He wrote the short stroy “The Tell-Tale Heart” one of the most widly known literature pieces he wrote. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is one of the most suspenseful storyies I had ever read. Just saying that made me want to write this: Edgar Allen Poe keeps the reader in suspense in “The Tell-Tale Heart” through the use of great detail, use of first person narrating, and the noise he uses to create atmosphereic pressure.
A successful writer is he who is able to transmit ideas, emotions, and wisdom on to his readers. He is cable of stirring emotions and capturing the reader's attention with vivid descriptions and clever dialogues. The writer can even play with the meanings of words and fuse reality with fiction to achieve his goal of taking the reader on a wonderful journey. His tools are but words, yet the art of writing is found in the use of the language to create though-provoking pieces that defy the changing times. Between the lines, voices and images emerge. Not everyone can write effectively and invoke these voices. It is those few who can create certain psychological effects on the reader who can seize him (or her) with inspiring teachings, frightening thoughts, and playful games with the language. These people are true writers…
In many short stories, characters face binding situations in their lives that make them realize more about themselves when they finally overcome such factors. These lively binding factors can result based on the instructions imposed by culture, custom, or society. They are able to over come these situations be realizing a greater potential for themselves outside of the normality of their lives. Characters find such realizations through certain hardships such as tragedy and insanity.
Tan, Amy. “Two Kinds.” Exploring Literature: Writing and Arguing About Fiction, Poetry, Drama and The Essay.4th e. Ed. Frank Madden. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. 253-261. Print.
Strand, Mark and Evan Boland. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New
The two short stories that I have chosen by Edgar Allan Poe are The Tell Tale Heart and The Black Cat. These two stories in particular have many things in common as far as technique goes, but they do have some significant differences between the two. In this paper I will try to compare and contrast these two short stories and hopefully bring something to the readers attention that wasn't there at first.
In making stories: Law, Literature, Life, Jerome Brunner drives one to contemplate about the characteristics of stories, but also to consider the various ways one uses them to sail across the predicament of a human beings experiences. Narratives are set to be congenital and one understands allegedly how they work. We hardly take the time to think on how our narratives or whoever’s, constrain us, and why chronicles have the power to overhaul our beliefs as well as get in the way of our intellect, or how they brunt our humanoid institutions. In addition, it’s contended that stories are the “building blocks” of human experiences and are also a very important piece to what we call “Self” along with the emblem to our interactions with society, it also distinguishes one apart from the exceedingly assertive humanoid institutions, in spite of, Law. Making Stories drifts in the argument that narrative is crucial for our soundness, reason and education in explaining and understanding human experiences.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) pioneered many of the most enduring forms of American popular culture, including detective story and the Gothic or sensational tale. I will compare and contrast five short stories of Poe: The Gold-Bug, The Purloined Letter, “Thou Art the Man”, The Cask of Amontillado and The Pit and the Pendulum. The genre, the purpose and role of the narrator and the parallelism between all of the stories will be examined.
Arthur Ashe once said, “From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however makes a life.” Such is the case in Nikolai Gogol’s short story The Overcoat. Gogol takes a man without a friend in the world and gives him a new overcoat. The new overcoat represents a new life and a new identity for the man and instantaneously he is much happier. The man, Akaky Akakievich, basis his “new life” upon the love that he gives to his overcoat, and what he feels it gives him in return. Before long, Akaky begins to care more about his beautiful coat and less about the people around him. Thus is the theme of the story. Often material things are more important in our lives than people, resulting in the emptiness of one’s heart and soul. One cannot be truly happy with his possessions alone. He needs more than that. He needs people his life, whom he can call friends.