... details until the end of the story. The repetitions in the story are constant descriptions of the things each solider carries, Lt. Cross" fascination with Martha and Ted Lavender's death. O"Brien's repetitious structure in "The Things They Carried" is by far the main factor that adds suspense in this story ... too preoccupied with her that he was unable to fulfill his duties as a Lieutenant properly. O"Brien gives us this information about Lt. Cross and Martha constantly to understand that some of these soldiers were still young at heart (Lt. Cross was only 24 years old) and they are thro...

• Word Count: 857
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• Grade Level: High School

... 's death, Jimmy had constructed a bulwark to separate him from the rest of the troop. Jimmy was in his own world, mainly back in New Jersey with Martha, but sometimes in a fantasy world where nothing felt real and he would do amazing things like fly over Vietnam waving the whole madness goodbye. His misconception of ... to occupy his mind with. He needed something to keep his thoughts away from the horrible tragedies going on around him. He was trying to maintain his hope. Martha gave him a goal, something to shoot for, a reason not to give up. "So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to th...

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... tasting the sea salts and moisture." and " but then he would slip away into daydreams, just pretending, walking barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha carrying nothing." Jimmy also carries the weight of command and the responsibility for his men's lives. After one of his men dies the author writes this ... . "Lieutenant Cross felt the pain. He blamed himself." There are two main supporting characters, Martha and Ted Lavender. Martha is a junior a Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. The lieutenant dated her a few times before he left for Vietnam. She is a poet ... quite real a po...

• Word Count: 1022
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• Grade Level: High School

... 's death, Jimmy had constructed a bulwark to separate him from the rest of the troop. Jimmy was in his own world, mainly back in New Jersey with Martha, but sometimes in a fantasy world where nothing felt real and how he would do amazing things like fly over Vietnam waving the whole madness goodbye. His misconception of ... to occupy his mind with. He needed something to keep his thoughts away from the horrible tragedies going on around him. He was trying to maintain his hope. Martha gave him a goal, something to shoot for, a reason not to give up so easy. Go limp and tumble to the ground...

• Word Count: 841
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• Grade Level: High School

... face in the short story lead up to what we know as the plot. The main conflict in this story is the conflict between Lieutenant Cross and Martha, his letter lover. When the Lieutenant doesn't take part in his duties at the war, they loose men. He realizes that his problem is fantasizing about ... Martha all of the time. When one of Jimmy's closest and best men dies he is left to make a difficult or even impossible choice, known as dilemma. This ... focus more directly on his job as the first Lieutenant of the Vietnam War. Instead of letting his mind drift off into a daydream over Martha...

• Word Count: 313
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• Grade Level: High School

... were "things men carried inside" (O"Brien 972), so they were much harder to bear throughout the conflict. Lt. Jimmy Cross had to rely on his memories and fantasies of Martha to get him through this frightening ordeal and he "humped" "two photographs of Martha because he loved her so much" (O"Brien 961). Though, at one point in the story Jimmy Cross "burned ... " (O"Brien 971) to try and relieve the load because he felt that it was an unattainable fantasy as well. Unfortunately, Lt. Cross was focusing on Martha when he should have been concentrating on his men, "Lavender was dead. You cou...

• Word Count: 461
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• Grade Level: High School

... with the feelings of the soldiers. An example of this writing is found when the main character thinks about the women he was after: "Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps Lieutenant Cross remembered touching [her] left knee. A dark theater, he remembered when he touched her knee, she turned and looked at him in ... the pressure of embarrassment and dishonor. Jimmy Cross tires to rid himself his intangible burdens by destroying the tangibles that represented his love for Martha. He does this by burning the letters that were sent to him by Martha. Howe...

• Word Count: 922
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• Grade Level: High School

Women's Intuition What part could women's intuition possible play in solving a murder? In Susan Glaspell's short story "A Jury of Her Peers", the female characters Martha Hale and Mrs. Peters glean many subtle clues from the ordinary surroundings of the accused, Minnie Wright. The women, who are present merely for the purpose of gathering a few things ... as the county attorney discovered the broken preserves, dirty towel and dirty dishes. With their silence, they refused to acknowledge his observation that Mrs. Wright was "not much of a housekeeper" (7). Martha Hale was beginning to sense t...

• Word Count: 871
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... his character as being mad, and the old man in the category of sane. What if however, it was the other way around? In her essay on "Tell-Tale Heart" Martha Womack suggests another theory to the characters murderous ways. In ancient times there were beliefs that if someone possessed the "evil eye" they would have the power to harm people ... the old man does have the "evil eye", justifying the narrator's actions. This is debatable, however the fact that Poe refers to it in capital letters gives implies its importance. Martha also states in her essay that "Poe was a perfectionist who left...

• Word Count: 1340
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... the sexes. "Mrs. Peter, the sheriff's wife, is a slight wiry woman with a thin nervous face" (Mustazza 263). For some reasons, the word "trifles" is truly applied to women. In fact, Martha Hale has no trouble recognizing Minnie Wright as an author whose work she is competent to read. In the latter, readers are provided with no indication of Mrs. Hale's bad ... kind of the same thing!" (Mrs. Hale 35) In the entire investigation, the men and women had vast differences in the way they went about looking for substantial evidence. Mrs. Martha Hale's sympathized with Minnie Foster although sh...

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... understand the story. His characters are very interesting to analyze as they are mysterious.1 Many critics have written many articles on his writings and also biography about him. After reading some of his short stories and his biography I found his characters more interesting and I decided to write my paper on a few of them. In my paper I will focus on some of Edgar ... ...

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... being too explicit and unproper (Kimbel 95). Some critics say that her novel was taken off the library shelves and she was not allowed into certain Louisiana social groups ("The Biography" NP). Other critics argue the contrary that her rejection was not to that extreme. In spite of such criticism, The Awakening has become a source of inspiration for women even to ... Chopin's death, her fame slowly began to increase within the changing of our society. Women were becoming more independent and read her works as a source of motivation and strength ("The Biography" 8). The Awakening was not...

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... , Where Have You Been? Joyce Carol Oates is no doubt one of the greatest authors of her time it is obvious that her writings endure even today. Upon reading her biography and descriptions of her works it is inferred that Oates is a bit strange in the way she chooses to write. For example, the author explains that: There have been changes ... . Oates seems to be a very deep thinker and she incorporates this into her writing when she writes of the murders in Tucson. It is decided from this research of Oates biography and study of her story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" that Oat...

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Shirley Jackson (1919-1965) Biography Shirley Hardie Jackson was born in San Francisco on 14 December 1916 to Leslie Hardie Jackson and Geraldine Bugbee Jackson. She spent her early childhood in Burlingame, California. She started ... James Harris (1949). Two more children were born: Sarah in 1948 and Barry in 1951. Jackson died of a heart attack when she was 48. "Shirley Jackson," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 234: American Short-Story Writers Since World War II, Third Series. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Patrick Meanor, State University of New York College at Oneon...

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... his journey with the arrival of light. Works Cited Doubleday, Neal F. Hawthorne's Early Tales, A Critical Study. Durham: Duke University Press, 1972. Grant, William E. and Bobby E. Kimbel, eds. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 74: American Short - Story Writers Before 1880. The Gale Group, 1988. pp. 143-163. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Young Goodman Brown." Literature for Composition: Essays, Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Barnet, Sylvan ... ed. et al. New York: Longman, 2000. pp. 1207-1215. Martin, Terence. Nathaniel Hawthorne. London: Twayne Publishers, 1983. Mott, Wesley T., ed. Dict...

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... his own separation in 1974. Right after his separation John Updike moved to Boston to teach at Boston University and in 1977 a year after his divorce was finalized he married Martha Bernhard and settled with her and her three children in Georgetown, Massachusetts....

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... "Lost Generation". In 1927 when Hemingway returned to the United States, he married Pauline Pfeiffer, mother of his two younger sons. He divorced her in 1940 and married the writer, Martha Gellhorn. Hemingway wrote a series of short stories called the Nick Adams stories. These stories were written about Hemingway's life. The first one in this series was called "Three Shot". In ... ...

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... -56. Van Dulmen, Richard. "Rituals of Execution in Early Modern Germany." The Social Dimension of Western Civilization. 4th ed. Ed. Richard M. Golden. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999. 112-25. Womack, Martha. "The Cask of Amontillado." ...

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... join the party in order to give Mrs. Peters, the sheriff s wife, some companionship. In the story, Mrs. Hale leaves cues of guilty feelings. As an example, the narrator states, Martha Hale had a moment of feeling that she could not cross that threshold. The reason being given that she had been too busy to come by but now she could come ... ...

• Word Count: 1262
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... plot comes when Ted Lavender is shot and killed. Boom. Down. After Lavender dies, Jimmy Cross has a profound change and is all business. Cross sacrifices his love and fantasy for Martha for the protection and safety of his men. Everything that fantasy represented is lost. At this point, Jimmy Cross understood. "It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried ... ...

• Word Count: 459
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... to work out his own inner conflicts and psychological struggles. This can relate to mood in that the readers are experiencing a taste of his own life. In a critic written by Martha Womack, she explains how the narrator's "nervousness" is a frequently used literary device of Poe to establish tone through heightened states of consciousness (Womack, Poedecoder). Womack also speculates that the narrator ... ...

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... . 2007: 2827). Consequently, we found it interesting to analyze the story literarily and support our discussion with evidences from the context and the critical opinions about Carver and his works. Biography Born in Clatskanie, Oregon, Raymond Carver in 1938, at the age of three with his parents moved to Yakima, Washington, where his father found a work as a sawmill worker. In his ... ...

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... humanized into Tong's amnesia. The loss of Tongs family could also be viewed as a reference to China's Cultural Revolution, comparing the change of culture to a loss of uniqueness and heritage. A biography of Ha Jin sates "Jin's plans for returning to China changed in 1989, however, when he saw Chinese protesters confronting army troops in Tiananmen Square in Beijing; the results ... ...

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... Ireland. Two thousand years ago when druidry was at its peak, High King Cormac mac Airt was highly respected by many Celtics and druids as a nonviolent and wise king. In a biography from The Druid's Egg, he is described as, "absolutely the best king that ever reigned in Ireland before himself[He was] wise learned, valiant and mild, not given causelessly ... ...

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America is a multicultural nation. This fact is undeniable. We are a mishmash of people from all parts of the globe, each with a unique story to tell. One of the struggles of being such a diverse nation is that different ethnic groups often fail to understand one another. I believe that cross-cultural writing is a powerful tool that dispels ignorance and fosters greater multicultural understanding. Writing has the power to bring people together. There are many prominent cross-cultural writers in the history of American literature. Each of them has added to a growing genre that explores what it...

• Word Count: 1573
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• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School