The abrupt shift in position on the soft, jelly like mattress didn’t shake her awake causing her to sit on the bed with eyes fixated on the maroon looking wall. It also wasn’t the sound of the dog, Sebastian, which erupted into loud huff like barking at the foot of her bed, while his unshapely nails clawed on the hard wood floor underneath in an erratic fashion. A normal person heavy eyes would have fluttered open if it was they who had a huge ball in their stomach that created gas bubbles that escaped from their lips during all times at night, but that didn’t seem to have phased her. What has her startled and baffled at two am in the morning? The cool stiff breeze that was escaping through the crack of the closed blue door, which she dreaded to look at but was forced to paint, looked like grayish tint under the dark light, tightened the pores on her skin, making it unbearably itchy. It was her well-tended nails that left long red stripes on her skin that woke her up all at once, almost giving herself a whiplash as she sat startled in bed searching through the room and then finally resting her eyes out in front of her. Another cool gust of wind invaded through her personal space, which gave her an unpleasant feeling of nostalgia of a broken down office building in one of those claustrophobic neighborhoods in the rat, and cockroach infested districts in the Bronx, that had much to do with the growing bump that increased in diameter every second a word was uttered. Initially, she was very intrigued with the poetry of the exterior of the building, if she titled her head to the side and squinted her eyes it would have appeared to look like a wealthy brownstone, fit for the life of an aristocrat that she became so use to for the... ... middle of paper ... ...ll, looking up to him. His face broke out in to a hearty grin that spread across his face that made him look almost like that sweet boy she met in college eighteen before. “Give the baby a drink,” he sang as he handed the bottled to her. “Give the damn baby everything I got, everything we got.” He looked at her with a crooked smile and then turned from her streaking down the block to nowhere she could distinguish. He wobbled like a pregnant person down the street going nowhere. Almost being hit by a car while going nowhere. His flabby buttocks jiggled following him to nowhere. She sat there on the hard pavement with the bottle in her hand with red wine trailing down from the side staining her coat as she sat in the company of a smelly homeless man who cared less about her, while she watched her naked husband running in oblivion to nowhere.
The author illustrates the “dim, rundown apartment complex,” she walks in, hand and hand with her girlfriend. Using the terms “dim,” and “rundown” portrays the apartment complex as an unsafe, unclean environment; such an environment augments the violence the author anticipates. Continuing to develop a perilous backdrop for the narrative, the author describes the night sky “as the perfect glow that surrounded [them] moments before faded into dark blues and blacks, silently watching.” Descriptions of the dark, watching sky expand upon the eerie setting of the apartment complex by using personification to give the sky a looming, ominous quality. Such a foreboding sky, as well as the dingy apartment complex portrayed by the author, amplify the narrator’s fear of violence due to her sexuality and drive her terror throughout the climax of the
...was a desperate act of a lonely, insane woman who could not bear to loose him. The structure of this story, however, is such that the important details are delivered in almost random order, without a clear road map that connects events. The ending comes as a morbid shock, until a second reading of the story reveals the carefully hidden details that foreshadow the logical conclusion.
Very early in the story, the narrator comments toward the uneasy yellow papered walls. She is beginning to enjoy the mansion where they are currently residing, but seems...
Unattainable Love and Time Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" In the story "A Rose for Emily," the author, William Faulkner, recounts the life of a woman from an elite family in the Deep South. Emily Grierson is an eccentric spinster who goes through her life searching for love and security. Due to her relationship with her father, and the intrusiveness of the townspeople in her life, she is unable to get away from her past. Arising from a young woman's search for love, the use of symbolism profoundly develops the theme, therefore, bringing to light the issues of morality.
(75) The Intended’s street is compared to an alley of a cemetery, and the grand piano in the drawing room to a sarcophagus, extending the “ominous, dark qualities of the wilderness” to her home
Utilizing effective diction is key as Welty to put together the mosaic of memories that illustrates the intense presence of reading in her life. Her use of diction pulls the reader into the scenes, it makes them real. When she describe the library the wording allows to hear “the steady seething of the electric fan”, the harsh tone of the librarian’s “normal commanding
Many features of the setting, a winter's day at a home for elderly women, suggests coldness, neglect, and dehumanization. Instead of evergreens or other vegetation that might lend softness or beauty to the place, the city has landscaped it with "prickly dark shrubs."1 Behind the shrubs the whitewashed walls of the Old Ladies' Home reflect "the winter sunlight like a block of ice."2 Welty also implies that the cold appearance of the nurse is due to the coolness in the building as well as to the stark, impersonal, white uniform she is wearing. In the inner parts of the building, the "loose, bulging linoleum on the floor"3 indicates that the place is cheaply built and poorly cared for. The halls that "smell like the interior of a clock"4 suggest a used, unfeeling machine. Perhaps the clearest evidence of dehumanization is the small, crowded rooms, each inhabited by two older women. The room that Marian visits is dark,...
The prolonged wait for the release of the final book in the phenomenal Power of Five series – Oblivion was tedious but definitely worth. This was a fabulously gripping and enticing book. From the chilling and mysterious events of Raven’s Gate onwards, each book was in stiff competition with its predecessors. According to me, the series peaked with Oblivion, the taut, fiery and breathless narrating; the menacing, dark atmosphere; and the almost unbearable, nail-biting tension were breathtaking. The reader was spread across a number of viewpoints: a unique writing technique which worked well in the context of the book. The switching points of view never allow the story to lose its pace. Right from the very beginning, story hurtled along at a relentless speed without mercy, crushing the breath out of the reader. Oblivion is a book which twists and turns like a rattlesnake in a sock and one never knows which way the story is going. Although there are foreboding clues throughout, the tension is ever-present.
She woke up at 6:00 am one morning to the sounds of loud banging on the door, but she was used to it as that was just her morning alarm. She got out of bed and changed into her baggy, worn-out red dress that didn’t fit her right anymore. She then made her bed, making sure to keep the crisp white sheets straight
Like the real-life apartment, the impossibly wealthy setting of her daydreams about owning a mansion strengthens her unhappiness and her avoidance of reality. All the rooms of her fantasies are large and expensive, draped in silk and filled with nothing but the best furniture and bric-a-brac. M...
David staggers into the kitchen of the old wooden home where his wife is washing the dishes. As she scrubs a pot he can see that she is raw with exhaustion and jittery with coffee. David holds the letter out to his wife, not wanting to meet her eyes. He stammers that it’s time to move and sell the farm, ashamed that there is no other option. When his wife lifts her head from the notice, the turmoil he was feeling was not reflected in her face.
Our eyes locked, as tears streamed down her sullen face. She was a petite woman with heavy dark eyes, revealing her struggle, her pain, and a hope for a better life. She cradled her infant gently, yet firmly as if it was her last breath. With every sway, she kissed her child’s head as a promissory note that she would take care of her and provide for her the world.
The story begins as the boy describes his neighborhood. Immediately feelings of isolation and hopelessness begin to set in. The street that the boy lives on is a dead end, right from the beginning he is trapped. In addition, he feels ignored by the houses on his street. Their brown imperturbable faces make him feel excluded from the decent lives within them. The street becomes a representation of the boy’s self, uninhabited and detached, with the houses personified, and arguably more alive than the residents (Gray). Every detail of his neighborhood seems designed to inflict him with the feeling of isolation. The boy's house, like the street he lives on, is filled with decay. It is suffocating and “musty from being long enclosed.” It is difficult for him to establish any sort of connection to it. Even the history of the house feels unkind. The house's previous tenant, a priest, had died while living there. He “left all his money to institutions and the furniture of the house to his sister (Norton Anthology 2236).” It was as if he was trying to insure the boy's boredom and solitude. The only thing of interest that the boy can find is a bicycle pump, which is rusty and rendered unfit to play with. Even the “wild” garden is gloomy and desolate, containing but a lone apple tree and a few straggling bushes. It is hardly the sort of yard that a young boy would want. Like most boys, he has no voice in choosing where he lives, yet his surroundings have a powerful effect on him.
Another cause of this conflict is the fact that Baker forgot about the position that Rennalls father occupied and acted as a foreign that only tries to prove that Barracanians are inferior.
The sound of the wheels from a skateboard on the pavement rattles my head. The only thing stopping the pounding noise was the slight breeze of air that flew through cooling down all the noise. Blowing through the blue curls in my hair the wind covered my ears. No worries could reach me in this moment. The excitement to get to the library kept me flying down the road. I could already imagine the smell in the air of old paperback books enveloping my nose. Getting to run my fingers over new books hard spines that hold the forever stories together.