The Monkey’s Paw by W. W. Jacobs, The Clubfooted Grocer by Sir Arthur
Canon Doyle, The Red Room by H. G. Wells and The Signalman by Charles
Dickens
Analyse how the writers successfully use aspects of the supernatural
to create dramatic tension in the short stories you have read.
The nineteenth century was an era of general belief in ghosts and
spirituality. This is what made gothic stories even more appealing and
successful during this era – the fact that they would be seen as being
realistic. One major reason for the rise in spirituality during this
era was the fact that many people had started to lose their Christian
faith (mainly because the Church was unable to give an explanation as
to why ghosts existed) and so they started to search for a new way of
understanding and accepting death. I think that the Victorian’s
enjoyed reading horror stories because they offer a challenge – to see
whether the reader can figure out who the “ghost” or spectre
represents and what they are doing. By involving the reader, the
writers were able to keep them interested throughout the story. During
the Victorian era, the short story became a very popular genre and
ghost stories were well-liked with the readers. It was therefore very
important for the authors to build tension and suspense to keep their
readers interested. I will be studying: “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W.
Jacobs, “The Clubfooted Grocer” by Sir Arthur Canon Doyle, “The Red
Room” by H. G. Wells and “The Signalman” by Charles Dickens. In this
essay, I will be exploring the ways in which the writers use the
supernatural to create dramatic tension in the above stories.
“The Monkey’s Paw” is a short story by W. W. Jacobs, written in 1902.
The title of a sto...
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...cause there is a lot of mystery present throughout the
story. The strangest thing is the fact that the Signalman himself is
an educated man, yet he sees strange, unexplainable Apparitions which
eventually lead to his death.
Overall, I believe that these short stories are effective in
entertaining the reader and keeping them interested throughout the
story. The writers use many different techniques such as
personification, metaphors, similes and imagery to create vivid images
throughout the stories. The best technique used is when there are many
questions which are left unanswered at the end of the story. This
makes the readers create their own conclusions about the reasons as to
why certain events occurred. Also, the use of the first person
narrative is effective in ghost stories because they give a clear view
of what happens and how the narrator feels.
Two stories are brought together “A&P” and “Gryphon” to represent the struggles that every character faces. Sammy the main character in “A&P”, and Tommy the main character in “Gryphon” face a struggle that will put them to the test. For Sammy the struggle is, should he stand up to his boss and defend the girls or should he let it go. Tommy faces the conflict of, does he believe the substitute teacher and defend her against everyone else or does he follow what everybody else is doing. In their stories, Tommy and Sammy are put up against a conflict that they have never seen before, and their “job” is to decide what they should do and how they should approach the problem.
Anti-Semitism is the hatred and discrimination of those with a Jewish heritage. It is generally connected to the Holocaust, but the book by Helmut Walser Smith, The Butcher’s Tale shows the rise of anti-Semitism from a grassroots effect. Smith uses newspapers, court orders, and written accounts to write the history and growth of anti-Semitism in a small German town. The book focuses on how anti-Semitism was spread by fear mongering, the conflict between classes, and also the role of the government.
At the beginnings of the 1900s, some leading magazines in the U.S have already started to exhibit choking reports about unjust monopolistic practices, rampant political corruption, and many other offenses; which helped their sales to soar. In this context, in 1904, The Appeal to Reason, a leading socialist weekly, offered Sinclair $500 to prepare an exposé on the meatpacking industry (Cherny). To accomplish his mission, Sinclair headed to Chicago, the center of the meatpacking industry, and started an investigation as he declared“ I spent seven weeks in Packingtown studying conditions there, and I verified every smallest detail, so that as a picture of social conditions the book is as exact as a government report” (Sinclair, The Industrial Republic 115-16). To get a direct knowledge of the work, he sneaked into the packing plants as a pretended worker. He toured the streets of Packingtown, the area near the stockyards where the workers live. He approached people, from different walks of life, who could provide useful information about conditions in Packingtown. At the end of seven weeks, he returned home to New Jersey, shut himself up in a small cabin, wrote for nine months, and produced The Jungle (Cherny).
Michael Ondaatje is very much like the narrator of his novel. Both share similar aspects of their lives beginning with the fact they share the same name: Michael. It is perhaps because Ondaatje himself experienced the same voyage as eleven year old Michael that the novel seems so very realistic. Both are born in Colombo, Sri Lanka and each, at age eleven take the voyage of a lifetime by boat from Sri Lanka to England. It seems appropriate that as the narrator of the book recalls his past as a journalist deep in adulthood, the same may be said of the novels true real author. Only Ondaatje himself knows how connected the two journeys are and this blend of truth and fiction are married perfectly to create a dreamlike quality to young Michael’s story.
Myth and history are necessary in explaining the world, and can be depended upon for guidance with one as reliable as the other. The idea of place, with its inherent myth and history, is an important factor in one's identity because place shapes character and events. Robertson Davies' Fifth Business, E. Anne Proulx's The Shipping News, Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion, and Jack Hodgins' The Invention of the World use myth and lore to describe the obstacles which the protagonists and others must get over or confront in order to recover their perspective identities. Place anchors the novels in Canada: Fifth Business in Ontario, The Shipping News in Newfoundland, In the Skin of a Lion in Toronto, and The Invention of the World on Vancouver Island. Because they are different places, different stories develop; but since these places are in Canada, they share the Idea of North in which the dream world is as important as the real world. This paper will demonstrate this typically Canadian characteristic of myth coexisting with reality, showing that explanations of identity given by myth and the oral tradition are at least as powerful as documented history.
Men and Women in The Withered Arm and Other Stories by Thomas Hardy and Men and Women in Turned by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A narcissist is one who believes “he or she is ‘special’ and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special” people. They exploit others for their own advantage, lack empathy, and are “preoccupied with fantasies” or ideals that can be unrealistic. They believe they are the “primary importance in everybody’s life”. (“Narcissistic Personality”) Henry James’ theme in his short story, “The Beast in the Jungle”, is about a man, who is so egotistical and self-absorbed that he misses what life has to offer him, in particular, love, because of the narcissistic behavior he is doomed to live a life of loneliness and misery. John Marcher, the protagonist of “The Beast in the Jungle”, is about a narcissistic upper-class man who believes his life is to be defined by some unforetold event. He focuses only on himself and as a result, he neglects everything and everyone in his life. Marcher meets May Bartram, a woman who knows his secret, and instead of pursuing a romantic relationship with her, or even a genuine friendship, he uses her for his own benefit. Henry James utilizes a variety of literary devices to convey this theme in his story, such as the title, symbolism, dialogue, and the use of a limited third-person narrative. Henry James leaves us our first clue to the theme in the title, “The Beast in the Jungle”. When one thinks of a beast, they typically imagine something big and ferocious; Marcher’s ego was just that.
to carry out the command of The Ghost at the time when it become right.
Like all the best ghost stories, this begins with the most innocuous of introductions: “…life is complicated”, a quote by Patricia Williams that Gordon will remind us repeatedly is “the most important theoretical statement of our time” (3). What obscures, obfuscates, thwarts and yes, haunts us and our work, she argues, is not what is seen but what isn’t, the notable absences out of the corner of our trained eye, those ghosts who may be invisible (especially to the discourse) yet still exact attention from their hidden presence. Perhaps anticipating the confusion of my book’s previous reader, Gordon patiently (and poetically) expands on her conceptualization – ghosts are those whom, through the “complicated relationship between reality and its mode of production” (11) have been relegated to that void between the s...
“The Jungle,” written by Upton Sinclair in 1906, describes how the life and challenges of immigrants in the United States affected their emotional and physical state, as well as relationships with others. The working class was contrasted to wealthy and powerful individuals who controlled numerous industries and activities in the community. The world was always divided into these two categories of people, those controlling the world and holding the majority of the power, and those being subjected to them. Sinclair succeeded to show this social gap by using the example of the meatpacking industry. He explained the terrible and unsafe working conditions workers in the US were subjected to and the increasing rate of corruption, which created the feeling of hopelessness among the working class.
aranormal activity has been a cause of fear and excitement throughout history. The unknown attracts the curiosity from those who wonder whether the supernatural is real or a figment of the imagination. Ghosts are one of the supernatural beings whose existence is questioned every day. Many want to deny the existence of ghosts because they are terrified of other phantoms who may exist and ignore the evidence that has been brought forth throughout the years. However, ghosts are supernatural pheromones whose existence still impacts today’s society.
In the "Gilded Age" immigrants from all over the world became part of America's working nation in hopes of finding a new and better life for themselves and their families. As more and more new families moved to America with high hopes, more and more people fell victims to the organized society, politics, and institutions better described as, the system. The system was like a jungle, implying that only the strong survived and the weak perished. Bosses always picked the biggest and strongest from a throng of people desperate for work, and if you were big and strong, you were more likely to get the job then if you were small and weak. Packing town was also a Jungle in the sense that the people with more authority or political power acted as predators and preyed on the working people, taking their money unfairly because of the their lack of knowledge on the pitfalls of the New World and their inability to speak and understand the universal language adequately. The unjust and corrupt system kept workers from speaking out when they felt they had been wronged and punished them when they did. As a result of the system, men women and even children were overworked, underpaid and taken advantage of. Working immigrants weren't any better off in American then they were in their homeland, as they soon discovered. Dreams that any people had of America were washed away by the corrupt ways of the system.
A.) The ghost dance was originated by a Northern Paiute Indian named Wovoka (Jack Wilson in English), who insisted they were sent to earth to prepare Indians for their salvation. This movement began with a dream Wovoka had during a solar eclipse on the night of Jan 1, 1889. Wovoka’s dream included a vision in which all Native Americans were taken into the sky and the earth swallowed all white folk to revert back it its natural state. He believed that by performing the Ghost dance, this dream (vision) would become reality, and ghosts would return from the dead resulting in the ousting of the whites, and the restoration of the Natives land. The Ghost Dance spread rapidly through Western U.S.
The Walrus and the Carpenter Lewis Carroll The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might; He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright— And this was odd, because it was
my life and I put the belief about ghosts in a new set of beliefs,