Ira Levin's A Kiss Before Dying Ira Levin was twenty-two when he wrote his first novel, the award-winning thriller “A Kiss Before Dying”. He was twenty-five when he, fresh from military service, wrote his first play; the smash-hit adaptation of Mac Hyman’s “No Time for Sergeants”. In the years since, he has continued to work both sides of the literary street. His plays include the comedy hit “Critic’s Choice”, the musical “Drat!”, “Cat!” and the thriller “Veronica’s Room”.
Eric Rauchway’s Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt’s America is an examination of the events, social conditions and dramatic political changes taking place in America immediately prior to and during the birth of the 20th century that led to the assassination of William McKinley and the rise of progressivism. It is furthermore an investigation of the motives behind the assassination, and an analysis of the events leading up to what made possible “Roosevelt’s America,” arguably the first recognizably modern period in American history from a 21st century perspective: the progressive era.
A short, fat man who owns a little band of sheep on the flats at
This book talks about the immigrants in the early 1900’s. The book describes how they live their daily lives in New York City. It helped me a lot on Riis photographs and his writings on to better understand the book and the harsh reality this people lived. This comes to show us that life is not that easy and it will cost us work to succeed.
Anse Bundren is one of the most exceptional characters in “As I Lay Dying”. He was the husband of Addie Bunden. In the Story, he portrayed himself as being a very selfish individual.
In As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner uses the characters Anse and Cash, and a motif/symbol in "My mother is a fish," to reveal the psychological and societal problems of the twenties and thirties. Written as soon as the panic surrounding the stock market in 1929 started, Faulkner is reported as having, “took one of these [onion] sheets, unscrewed the cap from his fountain pen, and wrote at the top in blue ink, 'As I Lay Dying.' Then he underlined it twice and wrote the date in the upper right-hand corner"(Atkinson 15) We must take care to recognize Faulkner not as a man of apathy, but one of great compassion and indignation at the collapse of the economic foundation of the U.S. This is central in appreciating the great care with which he describes the desolation and poor landscape of Yoknapatawpha County, which is where As I Lay Dying takes place.
Of course I do not consider myself to be a racist, or a bigot, but I am aware of socially conditioned stereotypes and prejudices that reside within. That awareness, and the ability to think for myself, has allowed me to approach issues with clarity of mind and curiousness at the social interactions of various movements. Buried in the Bitter Waters, by Elliot Jaspin, has easily awakened my sensibilities and knowledge of modern era race relations in the United States. I read each chapter feeling as if I had just read it in the pages before. The theme of racial cleansing - of not only the colonizing of a people, but the destruction of their lives and livelihood – was awesome. The “awesome” of the 17th century, from the Oxford English Dictionary, as in “inspiring awe; appalling, dreadful.” Each story itself was a meditation on dread and horror, the likes of which my generation cannot even fathom. It is with that “awe” that I reflect in this response paper.
Reunion, by John Cheever, is a story told through the eyes of a young boy, Charlie, who is recalling a meeting with his father who he hasn’t seen for more than three years. It is set in New York where Charlie’s father lives. He meets up with his father during a stop over between trains.
William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, with its multiple narrators and hickish language, can sometimes prove to be convoluted and rather confusing. The narrators, unfortunately, are no less confusing. Their language aside, each individual personality serves to put a spin on the bias that the information is delivered with, and, in speaking to each other, they further confuse the reader, as their individual motives are, generally speaking, unmentioned. However, there is one character who manages to cut through the fog of individuality and communicate to us what is happening in this novel. Vardaman, who is the youngest narrator, gives us insight into the goings-on of the Bundren family with a much lesser degree of confusion. He also gives us a look into the characters of the other narrators in this novel; his childish attempts at emulation reveal the actions of characters that we may not otherwise see. It is his childish mind that provides us with this viewpoint; he is innocent and unbiased. Although this is never directly said by Faulkner, we can infer it from Vardaman’s dialogue, which is the revealing aspect of all of the characters in this book.
In Mitch Albom’s, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, the author centers the story around Eddie’s life, beginning with his death. “It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time” (1, paragraph 1). The most important thing in this story that we must all understand is that although we may not know it, somehow our lives all have a common intersection. “No story sits by itself. Sometimes stories meet at corners and sometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river (16, paragraph 8).
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. DiYanni Robert. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. 38-41. Print.
Richard Peck’s book, The Best Man, is a humorous, thoughtful, family oriented novel of a character named Archer Magill who has spent five lively years of grade school with one eye out in search of grown-up role models. Archer begins to get to grips with what growing up, and being grown up, mean. Overall, the Peck builds an idyllic, yet realistic, slice of one boy’s life, with it’s up and downs, while gently slipping in a message of tolerance. In a comfortably middle-class white suburb of Chicago, sixth grader narrator, Archer starts the story as white velvet beshorted ring bearer at a wedding, and closes it as the Ralph- Lauren clad best man at the wedding of his Uncle Paul to his teacher Mr. McLeod. Between the two, Archer gives vignettes
Love, as with all other things, brings pain and suffering. Suffering is an emotion individuals encounter everyday, some more than others. “How to Watch Your Brother Die”, Michael Lassell uses point of view, dialogue, and contrast of language to better exemplify the challenges of homosexuality in today’s society through the eyes of an orthodox straight man, and how the death of a homosexual brother has influenced the main character’s attitude towards his brother, his brother’s lover, and life itself.
As playwright, writer, and director, Asghar Farhadi has shown natural instincts for building tension through deliberate pace. Films such as “Fireworks Wednesday”, “A Beautiful City”, and “A Separation” have gained him dozens of awards from all across the globe. His latest, “The Salesman”, is no exception to his talents. Farhadi crafts a meaningful blend between a classic American play and an Iranian couple whose marriage is tested and stressed by a traumatic incident. Through this, social aspects of class, patriarchy and honor are shown to be a big part of Farhadi's landscape.
Love is essentially the key that unlocks all aspects that are carried throughout friendships. Friendship without love is like having an imaginary friend because it is not actually there. Rat Kiley and Curt Lemon's companionship was a prime example of how love is disturbed in friendship. They were two peas in a pod and would do everything together so when Lemon died Kiley took it hard. He had wrote a letter to Lemon's sister explaining how good of a man Lemon was as a way of trying to show that he really loved Lemon. He also killed a harmless animal as his way of retribution to show that he had not forgotten about his best friend. Love in Friendship is having that other person with you even when they are not actually present. Lt. Cross had a
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Eds. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 3rd ed. New York: Pearson, 2010. 261-263. Print.