Lawn Party
Ann Beattie writes her short story “The Lawn Party” as a male narrator. Because men tend to be less emotional than women are, this makes the narrator’s point of view more believable. Although this is a story that moves from one agonizing situation to another, the lack of human emotion leaves one with a somewhat empty feeling. One could infer that the author removed all sensitivity from the narrator in an attempt to make him appear aloof, indifferent, and even somewhat callous.
The narrator lost his arm in a car accident. When asked if he would like a plastic arm or claw, he rejected both. When asked what he would like, he calmly responded “air”. Later in the story, he complained that he has to sip beer because it would be annoying if he had to set the beer down to wipe his mouth. He also received a letter from the college where he worked, stating that they hoped all was well and that he would be back to work in the fall. His only thought was that it would be difficult to teach art with only one arm, but then dismissed the entire issue as if it was unimpor...
In “Girl,” Jamaica Kincaid’s use of repetitive syntax and intense diction help to underscore the harsh confines within which women are expected to exist. The entire essay is told from the point of view of a mother lecturing her daughter about how to be a proper lady. The speaker shifts seamlessly between domestic chores—”This is how you sweep a house”—and larger lessons: “This is how you smile to someone you don’t like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like at all…” (Kincaid 1). The way in which the speaker bombards the girl overwhelms the reader, too. Every aspect of her life is managed, to the point where all of the lessons she receives throughout her girlhood blur together as one run-on sentence.
Recently, I saw a movie about female tennis champion – Billie Jean King, and although I have never been into the feminism (neither can I say that I quite understand it), her character woke up some other kind of sensitivity in me. After this – to me significant change – I could not help myself not to notice different approaches of John Steinbeck and Kay Boyle to the similar thematic. They both deal with marital relationships and it was quite interesting to view lives of ordinary married couples through both “male” and “female eyes”. While Steinbeck opens his story describing the Salinas Valley in December metaphorically referring to the Elisa’s character, Boyle jumps directly to Mrs. Ames’s inner world. Although both writers give us pretty clear picture of their characters, Boyle does it with more emotions aiming our feelings immediately, unlike Steinbeck who leaves us more space to think about Elisa Allen.
Some critics have argued that Richard Wright’s women are “flat, one dimensional stereotypes, portrayed primarily in terms of their relationship to the male character”. (Quote, p540) However, in Uncle Tom’s Children, Wright resents three very distinct types of female characters who did not fit this description. Wright portrays women as an Avenger, a Sufferer and a Mother figure whose actions propel the stories to their final conclusion. In the story “Bright and Morning Star” Wright places the protagonist, Aunt Sue, in a domestic environment. “Her hands followed a lifelong ritual of toil” (pg222) as she cleans and cooks. Interestingly, Aunt Sue is the only heroine in the stories, who shows a different type of bravery than perhaps shown by the male figures in other stories. She is brave in the face of the loss of her two sons; she is brave as she does not show weakness to the white men who attempt to control her and make her do their bidding. She does not allow herself to be bound by the conventions of society. She speaks her mind to the white men who invade her home and states “Ah don’t care who Ahm talking t!” (pg238). Aunt Sue is portrayed as a cunning woman, who hides behind men’s perception of her as weak and uses it to her advantage. Her final act of bravery in the story is to giver herself up to death, before the white men can take her life from her. Wright also portrays women as sufferers in his work. Sarah, in “Long Black Song” suffers from isolation and is stuck in a loveless marriage. The gap between men and women is very much evident in this story. Sarah is very much dependent on Silas for company, security and items of comfort. Silas is allowed to exceed from the isolation imposed on his wife. Even when Sarah flees from ...
Brott, while having a message directed at eliminating discrimination of fathers in literature, is not sending any negative remarks about mothers. He is not blaming mothers in the situation while he uses examples of them in the literature. He uses such examples to illustrate the contrast between mothers and fathers in children’s literature. One example of which is his daughter’s favorite book, Mother Goose and the Sly Fox. Brott writes that while the Mother Goose is presented as a positive character, the father Fox is presented as negative character. In this example Brott is not accusing anyone. On the other hand, Brady is indirectly saying that men do not want to do anything, take responsibility for anything, and blames for inequality. Her list of expectations that men have of wives illustrates her bias towards men. Brady generalizes men as insensitive “pigs” and points them out as the problem in women’s inequality. While her bias may be hidden behind her use of repletion and sarcasm, it becomes obvious with her final remark: “My God, who wouldn’t want a wife?” While the authors’ bias may not be apparent, the differences in their tones may be more
When one faces a traumatic experience, his or true nature often reveals itself. Trauma forces its sufferers to cope. How one copes is directly linked to his or her personality. Some will push any painful feelings away, while others will hold onto pleasant memories. Both of these coping mechanisms can be observed in Katherine Anne Porter’s “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.” In “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” and “A Rose for Emily,” the two protagonists’ prominent characteristics distinctly affect the way they cope with trauma and influence the short stories’ outcomes.To begin, Granny Weatherall is a prideful control freak. In contrast, Miss Emily is delusional and stubborn.
Events in history have influenced writers’ style, and the importance in their stories. Alice Walker wrote a novel which was very much subjective by the time period of the 1940’s. There was a great deal of bigotry and tyranny during that time, particularly for Women of color. Women were mentally and physically abused and belittled by man purely because of their race and femininity. Women were considered as ignorant individuals that simply knew how to handle housework and care for the children.
In the short story “A Rose for Emily,” the main character Emily stays stowed away in her home while the community watches her every move. Throughout the story Emily has multiple events that raise questioning in the community, but are never truly brought to her attention. Emily ends up murdering her assumed fiancé, Homer, and keeps his body hidden in her house until his remains are discovered. In this essay, “He liked Men: Homer, Homosexuality, and the Culture of Manhood,” Thomas Fick and Eva Gold argue that reading gendered behavior is difficult in stories written before a time where a dominant female and queerness was accepted. Fick and Gold believe that Homer shows sign of being homosexual. Fick and Gold also consider truthful that the community
Social gender separations are displayed in the manner that men the view Wright house, where Mr. Wright has been found strangled, as a crime scene, while the women who accompany them clearly view the house as Mrs. Wright’s home. From the beginning the men and the women have are there for two separate reasons —the men, to fulfill their duties as law officials, the women, to prepare some personal items to take to the imprisoned Mrs. Wright. Glaspell exposes the men’s superior attitudes, in that they cannot fathom women to making a contribution to the investigation. They leave them unattended in a crime scene. One must question if this would be the same action if they were men. The county attorney dismisses Mrs. Hale’s defenses of Minnie as “l...
The story “The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket”, written by Yasunari Kawabata, is a children’s fiction story that is written in a third person narrative point of view. The author, who sets himself as the narrator, is describing what he sees as he stumbles upon a group of young, neighborhood kids as they frolic along the bank of a stream near dusk time. He points out the extreme care that the children take in creating their lanterns, and he sees the passion and enthusiasm they have while apparently searching for bugs along the bank and in the bushes. As the story goes on, the author moves from a tone of describing and being literal, to a more serious tone that causes some serious thought. He seems to be attempting to convince the audience of something emotional.
When a wife surprises her husband on his birthday, an ironic turn of events occurs. Katherine Brush’s “The Birthday Party” is a short story about relationships, told from the perspective of a nearby observer. Brush uses the words and actions of the married couple to assert that a relationship based on selfishness is weak.
Many of the short stories within the collection The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, can be compared and contrasted in regards to elements including theme, characters, and technique. In “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” the character Mary Anne Bell appears to be apparently similar to the character Martha from “The Things They Carried,” in that both are young women who have relations with a soldier in the war. Though upon further analysis of Mary Anne, it appears she is far from alike to Martha. Rather, an unexpected parallel can be drawn between the characters Mary Anne and Elroy Berdahl, from “On the Rainy River,” in that both appear to be epitomes of masculinity. The peculiar connection between these characters developed by Tim O’Brien shines a light on the ambiguity of conventional gender roles of men and women.
The reason is revealed by Margret Fetszer that “the audience of a Hollywood picture cannot be expected to confront mere ordinariness when going to the cinema” (80). More ironically, Virginia Woolf, who aims at “illuminating the richness and complexity of ‘an ordinary mind on an ordinary day’” (Sim 62), in this film is disengaged from and turns opposition to the mundane life, run by her maids. Instead, she is portrayed to be a sick, eccentric woman, who holds the vain hope of escaping from her everyday life, which is also the case of Laura Braun, for whom, things like making cakes are overwhelmingly difficult and harmful for her ego. Clarissa’s enthusiasm on details like schedules and parties is spurned by Richard and his boyfriend, too, and finally she herself is threatened by Richard’s death to give up the party. The story then becomes “eventfulness” with significant and memorable events, but loses the spirit of everyday life in feminist
The well-acclaimed poem “Suburban Sonnet”, written by the talented author Gwen Harwood successfully portrays the disillusions that 1950s Australia has us to believe about their culture. Harwood addresses the past ethical issue of misogyny and patriarchy with a variety of techniques to meet her goal of sharing her experiences as an Australian mother. One instance of the text which captured this is in the poet’s dejected tone as she conveys to the reader. This has identified in the quote, “She practices a fugue, though it can matter to no one now if she plays well or not.” Lines 1-2. By using the example above, the author effectively implied to readers that in reality women faced oppression in society through a common neglect towards their role
Within every story or poem, there is always an interpretation made by the reader, whether right or wrong. In doing so, one must thoughtfully analyze all aspects of the story in order to make the most accurate assessment based on the literary elements the author has used. Compared and contrasted within the two short stories, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, and John Updike’s “A&P,” the literary elements character and theme are made evident. These two elements are prominent in each of the differing stories yet similarities are found through each by studying the elements. The girls’ innocence and naivety as characters act as passages to show something superior, oppression in society shown towards women that is not equally shown towards men.
Most writers of the first half of the century focused on the characterizations of men and their motivations (Hughes 154). However, Steinbeck differed in this approach; he continuously wrote works that shined a heroic light on women. The relationships he ...