I’m a Fool – Sherwood Anderson Question 1 Anderson tells the story, “I’m a Fool”, through the voice of its main character – the swipe. The narrator’s voice enhances the story because his language reinforces his character. The swipe says that he “got [his] education”, not at college, but though working in the stables, traveling with Burt, and going to horse races. When he refers to people as “dudes” (83) and uses phrases such as “most bitterest” (81), he confirms that fact. He uses improper grammar and many slang expressions; his language shows that he is uneducated and disadvantaged. The narrator calls himself a fool for trying to impress Miss Wessen; his lack of foresight caused him to make himself into someone richer and more important than he really is. The swipe’s limitations of understanding and comprehension are revealed through his incoherent, long-winded narration. The swipe’s story, combined with the way in which he tells it, reveals him to be an uneducated, immature person. The narration provides a direct presentation of the character of the swipe; he blatantly labels himself as an uneducated “fool” (89). The narrative voice provides an indirect presentation of the swipe; readers understand him through his language and through processes. Question 2 The swipe is ambivalent in his attitude regarding education and social distinctions. At first, the swipe wants nothing to do with education. He believes that the “fellows” who “go to high schools and college…don’t know nothing at all” (82). The swipe got his education at the stables, the races, and the saloons; he does not care to be properly educated. The swipe also disregards social distinctions. He detests people who dress up to “put on…airs” (83). He looks down on people who don’t steal, drink, or swear. When he meets the Wessens and Miss Woodbury, the swipe’s views are changed. He describes Wilbur Wessen as a “nice guy” and the “kind maybe that goes to college” (84). Miss Elinor Wessen is “the nicest girl” who “could talk proper grammar” (84). The swipe begins to admire these educated people. The swipe begins to wish that he were more like the Wessens than like those he formerly associated with. During dinner, he is so glad that his mother “made [him] learn to eat with a fork at the table” and that he is not “noisy and rough like a gang you see around a racetrack” (88). The swipe begins to appreciate his education and have a regard for social distinctions.
In the essay “The Man at the River,” written by Dave Eggers is about an American man who does not want to cross the river with his Sudanese friends because of the fear of getting his cut infected.
A video is put on, and in the beginning of this video your told to count how many times the people in the white shirts pass the ball. By the time the scene is over, most of the people watching the video have a number in their head. What these people missed was the gorilla walking through as they were so focused on counting the number of passes between the white team. Would you have noticed the gorilla? According to Cathy Davidson this is called attention blindness. As said by Davidson, "Attention blindness is the key to everything we do as individuals, from how we work in groups to what we value in our classrooms, at work, and in ourselves (Davidson, 2011, pg.4)." Davidson served as the vice provost for interdisciplinary studies at Duke University helping to create the Program in Science and Information Studies and the Center of Cognitive Neuroscience. She also holds highly distinguished chairs in English and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke and has written a dozen different books. By the end of the introduction Davidson poses five different questions to the general population. Davidson's questions include, "Where do our patterns of attention come from? How can what we know about attention help us change how we teach and learn? How can the science of attention alter our ideas about how we test and what we measure? How can we work better with others with different skills and expertise in order to see what we're missing in a complicated and interdependent world? How does attention change as we age, and how can understanding the science of attention actually help us along the way? (Davidson, 2011, p.19-20)." Although Davidson hits many good points in Now You See It, overall the book isn't valid. She doesn't exactly provide answers ...
In Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King, King intertwines stories to create a satire that pokes fun at Indian culture compared to European culture. The book attempts to also poke fun at Judeo-Cristian beliefs by examining the creation story. King makes fun of the story of Adam and Eve. He pokes fun at western civilization and government. Although the book made me laugh some of the meanings behind kings writing puzzled me and made me question king's motives. The book is truly a puzzle that can be hard to decipher for most. I found the book to be challenging but entertaining and interesting.
In this story, it is as if the individual is a part of the conversation, but not directly spoken to. It is clear in the language used too that it is country slang and in a way that one is not educated pronounce words clearly. The author writes, “His face had brightened. “I didn’t inraduce myself,” he said. “I’m Manley Pointer from out in the country around Willohobie, not even from a place, just from near a place” (193). The language used in this story can make an evident line between the educated and ones who have not had a chance to receive a good
Wilson, M. & Clark, R. (n.d.). Analyzing the Short Story. [online] Retrieved from: https://www.limcollege.edu/Analyzing_the_Short_Story.pdf [Accessed: 12 Apr 2014].
Bryan, James. The Psychological Structure of The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Modern Language Association, 1974.
John Hollander’s poem, “By the Sound,” emulates the description Strand and Boland set forth to classify a villanelle poem. Besides following the strict structural guidelines of the villanelle, the content of “By the Sound” also follows the villanelle standard. Strand and Boland explain, “…the form refuses to tell a story. It circles around and around, refusing to go forward in any kind of linear development” (8). When “By the Sound” is examined in regards to a story, the poem’s linear development does not get beyond the setting. …” The poem starts: “Dawn rolled up slowly what the night unwound” (Hollander 1). The reader learns the time of the poem’s story is dawn. The last line of the first stanza provides place: “That was when I was living by the sound” (3). It establishes time and place in the first stanza, but like the circular motion of a villanelle, each stanza never moves beyond morning time at the sound but only conveys a little more about “dawn.” The first stanza comments on the sound of dawn with “…gulls shrieked violently…” (2). The second stanza explains the ref...
In Tobias Wolff’s novel Old School, the narrator, a young and aspiring writer, plagiarizes a story that he views as his own in order to win his high school writing competition and impress his hero, Ernest Hemingway. “Summer Dance,” the story that he plagiarized—where “nothing was okay”—ends with the words, “Everything’s okay” (p. 125). The narrator’s truth, complicated and elusive, proves a challenge to admit as his own. As he considers writing someone else’s story, the narrator realizes how concealing his identity compromises the value of his writing and places his personal truth in question. The narrator uses others’ stories as an outlet for personal reflection, self-expression, and self-discovery without realizing
The poem “We’re not trucking around” (2003) by Samuel Wagan Watson presents the important idea about the marginalization of Aboriginal culture and the idea that Aboriginals do not try to mimic the ‘Invaders’. These ideas represent an aboriginal perspective on Australian national identity which explores the marginalization of aboriginal culture and the mistreatment of Aboriginals in Australia. Watson reinforces his arguments with poetic techniques including the creation of an atmosphere, use of dialect and empathy. The composer uses roads and, in particular, trucks as examples of his ideas.
The poem America by Claude McKay is on its surface a poem combining what America should be and what this country stands for, with what it actually is, and the attitude it projects amongst the people. Mckay uses the form of poetry to express how he, as a Jamaican immigrant, feels about America. He characterizes the bittersweet relationship between striving for the American dream, and being denied that dream due to racism. While the America we are meant to see is a beautiful land of opportunity, McKay see’s as an ugly, flawed, system that crushes the hopes and dreams of the African-American people.
Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”
Love has many definitions and can be interpreted in many different ways. William Maxwell demonstrates this in his story “Love”. Maxwell opens up his story with a positive outlook on “Love” by saying, “Miss Vera Brown, she wrote on the blackboard, letter by letter in flawlessly oval palmer method. Our teacher for fifth grade. The name might as well have been graven in stone” (1). By the end of the story, the students “love” for their teachers no longer has a positive meaning, because of a turn in events that leads to a tragic ending. One could claim that throughout the story, Maxwell uses short descriptive sentences with added details that foreshadow the tragic ending.
In the book by Carl Rogers, A Way of Being, Rogers describes his life in the way he sees it as an older gentleman in his seventies. In the book Rogers discusses the changes he sees that he has made throughout the duration of his life. The book written by Rogers, as he describes it is not a set down written book in the likes of an autobiography, but is rather a series of papers which he has written and has linked together. Rogers breaks his book into four parts.
While writing, authors use a variety of literary devices to allow the reader to comprehend the main idea that needs to be taken from the story. Included in these literary devices is diction, and diction is crucial in the author’s development of the tone and theme that is produced. Without precise word choice, the reader would not know what kind of emotions to feel or what kind of ideas to think about the piece of writing. In the futuristically set short story, television runs everybody’s lives, and nobody can be who they are anymore due to their sitting in front of a television screen. The use of Bradbury’s selective wording throughout his story leads the reader to step into an eerie, yet strangely familiar setting. In the short story, “The Pedestrian”, Ray Bradbury uses diction to emphasize the morbid tone displayed throughout the story line and to emphasize the overall theme that technology can replace individualism.
Charlotte Gilman s manipulation of language and syntax in her prose is crucial to the overall effect of the story. What the reader is presented is a story that uses language and syntax to portray a woman s changing mental state. The reader experiences the narrator s deteriorating mental state as she succumbs to her condition and eventually loses her sanity.