The book is about a lonely young man, Frederick Clegg, who works as a clerk in a city hall, and collects butterflies in his free time. The first part of the novel tells the story from his point of view. Frederick is attracted to Miranda Grey, an art student who he thinks is very beautiful. He admires her from a distance, but is unable to make any contact with her because of his weak social skills. One day, he wins a large prize in the pools. This makes it possible for him to stop working and buy an isolated house in the countryside. He feels lonely however, and wants to be with Miranda. Unable to make any normal contact, Frederick decides to add her to his 'collection'. After careful preparations, he kidnaps Miranda using chloroform and locks her up in the cellar of his house. He is convinced that the girl will start to love him after some time. However, when she wakes up, Miranda confronts him with his actions. Frederick is embarrassed, and promises to let her go after a month.
The second part of the novel is narrated by Miranda in the form of fragments from a diary that she keeps during her captivity. She is scared by Frederick, and does not understand him in the beginning. At first she thinks that he has sexual motives for abducting her, but this turns out not to be true. She starts to have some pity for her captor, comparing him to Caliban in Shakespeare's play The Tempest because of his hopeless love for her and his deformed way of thinking. She tries to escape several times, but Frederick is able to stop her every time. She also tries to seduce him in order to convince him to let her go. The only result is that he becomes confused and leaves the room. When Frederick keeps refusing to let her go, she starts to fantasize about killing him.
Prior to the meteor, Pfeffer initially characterizes Miranda as an average teenager that embodies selfishness and apathy, but later reveals that these attributes do change. Before life becomes utter chaos, Miranda spends her time worrying about the things in her life like having “enough money for…skating lessons” (8) or “spen[ding] the weekend working on an english paper” (10). When Miranda is of...
Shakespeare uses symbolism in this scene to help create meaning and emotions from the audience, in the form of archetypes. The symbol of Miranda’s virginity, symbolizes Miranda’s purity and innocence. Miranda
In the novel, Hurston utilizes the personal experiences with her family to create complex characters in the story. It centers on John Pearson, a man who lusts after many women. John’s desire for women at times appe...
Contrastingly, Mrs. Darling, his wife, is portrayed as a romantic, maternal character. She is a “lovely lady”, who had many suitors yet was “won” by Mr. Darling, who got to her first. However, she is a multifaceted character because her mind is described “like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East”, suggesting that she is, to some extent, an enigma to the other characters, especially Mr. Darling. As well as this, she exemplifies the characteristics of a “perfect mother”. She puts everything in order, including her children’s minds, which is a metaphor for the morals and ethics that she instils in them. Although ...
Miss. Amelia invites Lymon into her home and comes to love Lymon. Unfortunately for Miss. Amelia, Lymon does not return such love resulting in an unequal relationship in which Lymon takes advantage of Amelia. It is this strange infatuation that compels Lymon to attack Miss. Amelia in her fight with Marvin Macy ruining the match. He runs off with Marvin Macy wrecking Miss. Amelia’s café and heart. She could release her creative efforts when she was together with Cousin Lymon alone she can accomplish nothing. Where love and harmony exist much can be created, sadly enough they exist in few places and for short times human failings quickly frustrate them, and they are often replaced by hate and isolation. McCullers’ other novels demonstrate this condition in the modern social world. The strange ballad of the Café that becomes sad traces the roots of these difficulties in the timeless province of the lonely human
Love: Throughout the Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the audience encounters different kinds of love. Perhaps the most profound of these is the relationship between a father (Prospero) and daughter (Miranda). Because of they are doomed to this island, Prospero raised Miranda and therefore protects her with everything he has. In the play, Prospero describes Miranda as a “cherubim” or little angel who keeps him going (I.ii.155). Their relationship and their love show Prospero’s more humane side, and represents that even though Prospero is an all powerful man, behind his actions is his love for Miranda.
In creating Miranda, Shakespeare broke the mold of his traditional female role by omitting the appearance of additional female characters (Yancey 1). As Prospero's only daughter and the only female on the island, she leads an extremely sheltered and innocent life at the hands of her father, "Here in this island we arrived, and here Have I, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit Than other princess can, that have more time For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful" (Shakespeare 1.2.171-174). As a representative of youth and innocence, Miranda faces difficulty in her attempts to understand the past yet remain dutiful to a father she loves despite the oppression handed down to her. She is intelligent and even headstrong, yet remains ignorant to many issues. In Lorie Jerell Leninger's "The Miranda Trap", "Miranda is given to understand that she is the foot in the family organization of which Prospero is the head. Hers is not to re...
This is Clegg trying to manipulate the reader into thinking that he was in the right of the actions he was doing, and Miranda was just so ungrateful. This stems back to the overarching idea of Clegg trying to paint the picture of him abducting Miranda is completely normal. But through reading the first part of the story there’s this underlying suspense added when he tries to act normal throughout the abduction situation, we know that he isn’t going to treat Miranda with “kindness” for the whole duration of kidnapping her because Miranda isn’t going to want to be kept captive against her will. Miranda tries to escape multiple times through trying to carve her way out, through trying to get attention of a car passing by, and of trying to hurt Clegg with a garden tool so she could escape. This leads Clegg at the end of the story when Miranda feels that she has pneumonia that this is just another of her tricks to escape and he leaves us with this suspenseful line “What I am trying to say is that it all came unexpected. I know what I did next day was a mistake, but up to that day I thought I was acting for the best within my rights” (120 Fowles). This is the most suspenseful line throughout the whole first part and it arises so many questions: What came
... represents his ultimate downfall. By the end of the novel, Nelly, the narrator, is well read, even commenting that she ‘could not open a book in the library that [she had] not looked into.’ (ch. 7). She even manages the finances of the house, which, when this book was written would have been strictly a male-only affair. Having previously only taken over the narration from chapter four onwards from Lockwood, who is condescending about local people, again showing a great challenge to male dominance by narrating almost the whole story.
This play portrays the women as fragile and pathetic beings. When Miranda is speaking to Ferdinand she is allowing him to see her as quite vulnerable, which will allow him to view here exactly as that.“At mind unworthiness, that dare not offer/What I desire to give, and much less take”(3.2.77-78). She goes on to say, “If not, I’ll die your maid. To be your fellow/You may deny me, but I’ll be your servant/Whether you will or no”(3.2.83-86). This play is portraying Miranda as a pathetic woman who would rather be a servant to a man that won’t marry her; she would rather be his maid than live without him.
The boy is haplessly subject to the city’s dark, despondent conformity, and his tragic thirst for the unusual in the face of a monotonous, disagreeable reality, forms the heart of the story. The narrator’s ultimate disappointment occurs as a result of his awakening to the world around him and his eventual recognition and awareness of his own existence within that miserable setting. The gaudy superficiality of the bazaar, which in the boy’s mind had been an “oriental enchantment,” shreds away his protective blindness and leaves him alone with the realization that life and love contrast sharply from his dream (Joyce). Just as the bazaar is dark and empty, flourishing through the same profit motivation of the market place, love is represented as an empty, fleeting illusion. Similarly, the nameless narrator can no longer view his world passively, incapable of continually ignoring the hypocrisy and pretension of his neighborhood. No longer can the boy overlook the surrounding prejudice, dramatized by his aunt’s hopes that Araby, the bazaar he visited, is not “some Freemason affair,” and by the satirical and ironic gossiping of Mrs. Mercer while collecting stamps for “some pious purpose” (Joyce). The house, in the same fashion as the aunt, the uncle, and the entire neighborhood, reflects people
It’s not the discovery one makes that shapes its worth, rather the way in which their perspective and values change as a result. Whilst Prospero is calling the storm that sinks his enemy’s ship in The Tempest, Miranda exclaims “If by your art…you have / Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them”. The imagery used and connotations of “allay” convey Miranda’s reaction to the discovery of her father’s power and the penned up anger within. With this discovery in mind, Miranda undergoes a change in values; specifically her undying loyalty to her father as the situation positions her to side against him. This highlights how new contexts and situations can stimulate discovery, as well as encourage one to engage and adapt their values. At the time Shakespeare’s plays were being written and performed, England was an emerging global superpower, focused on expanding its borders. Colonialism and the philosophy behind it are explored by Shakespeare through Prospero and Caliban’s relationship; that of a European colonizer and a native inhabitant. Prospero believes Caliban should be grateful towards him for assuming rulership of the island and educating him, raising Caliban above his ‘savagery’; “A thing most brutish, I endowed thy purpose”. The dramatic irony of this statement expresses the ignorance of Prospero’s attitude towards Caliban. The audiences knows that in reality, Caliban feels that his rulership has been stolen and soon realises Prospero views him as an inferior. Similar to Prospero on the island, in Life of Pi, Pi finds himself stranded on a small boat with only a Bengal tiger, Richard Parker as company. Bereft of any human companionship and facing the harsh reality around him, Pi discovers what he believes to be his lowest point in life. The morning after the storm and shipwreck, a wide shot depicts Pi drifting across the clear ocean, before fading into another, almost identical shot with
Stranded on the same deserted island for twelve years, the former duke of Milan tries to explain the situation to his daughter, Miranda. He tells her the story of his brother and the king, who arranged for he and Miranda to be lost at sea, so his brother can have his title. He explains also that he conjured up the storm by magic and ensured that no one was harmed. Prospero then charms Miranda and to sleep, and summons his spirit servant, Ariel, to hear about the results of the storm. Prospero awakens Miranda and decides to visit another of his slaves, Caliban. The slave tries to get out of his enslavement, but because of previous crimes he’s committed, Prospero threatens him into labor. Ariel makes sure that Ferdinand, the prince of Naples, runs into Prospero and Miranda. The young ones fall instantly in love, and in order to keep them so, Prospero enslaves Ferdinand.
The reader can tell that Miranda did not want the friendship to end by the following quote, “Sal played basketball more and more and talked to me less and that. I asked him four hundred times times weather he was mad at me, or what was wrong, and three hundred and ninety-nine times he answered Yes, No, Nothing.”(Stead 33) Since Miranda was so concerned about Sal, the reader can
Secondly, Miranda also serves as the ultimate fantasy for any male who (like Ferdinand) is a bachelor. She is extremely beautiful, she is intelligent, and she has never been touched (or even seen) by another male. Shakespeare makes Miranda even more desirable by including the fact that she has never seen or even talked to another man (with the obvoius exception of Prospero). Miranda personifies the ultimate source of good in the play, and provides the ultimate foil for the evil character of Caliban. When Ferdinand is forced to chop wood by Prospero, Miranda offers to do it for him. Finding a woman this humble in the world of Shakespeare is almost impossible. One does not have to look farther than her last line in the play to realize her purpose in the plot. Miranda states "O wonder! / How many goodly creatures there are here! / How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world / That has such people in't" (Tempest,5.1,185-7) Through this passage and many of her others Miranda shows a positive attitude which is almost uncanny when compared to the other characters.