... short story writing at Columbia University, taught by professor Whit Burnett, who was the editor and founder of Story Magazine, where J.D. later had short stories published. Salinger was drafted during World War II into the infantry that took part in the invasion of Normandy. During his time in Europe, Salinger ... fictional characters were in the army. Salinger's first short story was featured in Story in 1940, and later on his stories were published in Saturday Evening Post and Esquire. After publishing "A Perfect Day for Bananafish- in the New Yorker, the magazine published almost a...

• Word Count: 1708
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... brought his young daughters, who were sent upstairs to play with O'Hare's kids. The men could not think of any particularly good memories or stories, and the narrator noticed that Mary, Bernard's wife (to whom Slaughterhouse Five is dedicated), seemed very angry about something. Finally, she confronted ... Europe. The Germans captured Billy during the Battle of the Bulge. In 1945 he returned to the States, finished optometry school, and married the daughter of the school's owner. During the engagement, he was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. After his release, he finished school, m...

• Word Count: 7795
• Approx Pages: 31
• Grade Level: High School

... he contacts the Air Force for information, he discovers that the event is still classified as top secret. Around 1964, Vonnegut takes his young daughter and her friend with him to visit Bernhard V. O'Hare in Pennsylvania. He meets Mary O'Hare, who is disgusted by the likelihood that Vonnegut ... had a wet dream about Montana Wildhack. The next day, Billy examines a boy whose father has been killed in Vietnam. He shares Tralfamadorian insights with the boy, whose mother realizes Billy is insane. Billy's daughter is called to take him home. Chapter 6 starts with Billy waking at dawn in his...

• Word Count: 5323
• Approx Pages: 21
• Grade Level: High School

... and there gained early writing experience writing for the high school's daily paper. He enrolled at Cornell University in 1940, and, under pressure from his father and older brother, studied chemistry and biology. He had little real love for the subjects, and his performance was poor. He did, however, enjoy ... and his own childhood. In the book, The Hoenikker family closely parallels Vonnegut's own family, consisting of an elder son who is a scientist, a tall middle daughter, and a younger son who joins Delta Upsilon. The narrator is again a writer who, in this case, is working on a bo...

• Word Count: 1839
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... Belgium London 1915, by L.H.Grondys. It was reported that a sixteen-year-old girl had been killed for resisting rape. The duty of the father is to protect this from happening to their kids and the only way this can happen is for the man to fight. The Parliamentary Recruiting Committee ... family. He was thirty-four and my mother, who had two young children, had been suffering from a serious illness. Soon after this incident my father joined the army." Another argument against the white feathers came from a Compton McKenzie. He argued that these "idiotic young women were using white feat...

• Word Count: 2585
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... executed by a four-man firing squad. Wild Bob - An American colonel from Wyoming who dies from double pneumonia in a German railroad yard. He was slightly delusional. Valencia Merble - Billy's wife, daughter of Lionel Merble, the founder and owner of the Iliad School of Optometry where Billy studies to become an optometrist. She's a very fat and unattractive woman, but with a kind personality ... - An unsuccessful science-fiction writer who lives in Ilium and makes his living as a circulation man for the Ilium Gazette. He and Billy become good friends. Billy's daughter holds him respons...

• Word Count: 1657
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

... any idea of who he is. She initially cares for him so passionately because she believes there is a faint hope that he could be her father. Hana was pregnant during the early months of the war. Once she heard news of her husband's death she decided to get rid of the ... baby by having an abortion. "I lost the child, I mean, I had to lose it. The father was already dead. There was a war- (Ondaatje, 82). Even her lifelong friend of her fathers, Caravaggio is suffering from the war. He turned into a morphine addict ... than protective- (Eder, 202). Hana tends the English patient with supere...

• Word Count: 2010
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

... them, doing nothing to stop his capture. When he tries to tell the world about the Trafalmadorians and their "ideas", he's said to be insane, especially by his daughter, who blames his crazy stories on his head injury received in a plane crash. The antagonist I think is to be Billy himself. He is just too weak. He has the ability to time travel ... . There are really three plots intertwined in the story. One is on Billy's past war experiences, which are grounded in facts; another is his "real" life in Ilium as a husband, father, and optometrist; and the third is his science fiction adven...

• Word Count: 803
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... of Judge Pavy, whom had an ongoing feud with Huey Long, shot him in 1935. Long had spread rumors that Weiss's wife, Judge Pavy's daughter, had a black father, and based the rumor on the lie that Judge Pavy's father-in-law had a black mistress. H. Charles Edward Coughlin was a Catholic Priest, who in the 1930s made radio addresses in which he criticized such groups ... -Semitic remarks directed at Jewish members of Wall Street. The magazine was barred from the mails by the U.S. government for violation of the Espionage Act and ceased publication in 1942. Father Coughlin was silenced by hi...

• Word Count: 8316
• Approx Pages: 33
• Grade Level: High School

... and set just before World War 1 in an upper class family. At the beginning of the play Mr Birling is having a celebration engagement party for his daughter Sheila who is to be married to Gerald. To Mr Birling, This engagement means the joining together of two rival companies. To the audience they all seem ... to be having a good time, they are all listening to speeches by their father and Gerald. They all seem content and excited about the future, not at all unsure. We also get this feeling later on when Mr Birling talks about ... he had had an affair with her. At the start of the play ...

• Word Count: 1442
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

... good things coming. Still today people are finding strength and trying to keep faith by making it through a death of a family member, even living everyday knowing that their son, daughter, mother, father, sister, brother and even husband or wife is fighting a war. Even when their is much faith for most people the feeling of loosing something is natural. The book Leap Into ... history has to be understood. During a time where many people died, at the end, many still had their lives, and as they live today, they make a difference by telling their stories. One man special man, a survivor i...

• Word Count: 1567
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School