"Hills Like White Elephants," written by Ernest Hemingway, is a captivating fictional story that is filled with hidden messages, themes, and symbolism. Hemingway's short story dates back to almost ninety years ago, initially appearing in a collection titled "Men Without Women" in 1927. In "Hills Like White Elephants," the reader finds themselves eavesdropping in on a younger man and woman communicating at a train station in Zaragosa, Spain. Focusing on the dialogue between the girl "Jig" and the man identified as "The American," conflict begins to arise and brings the reader to the conclusion ...

• Word Count: 1134
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Since the beginning of Industrialization, between European and American countries/states, in the 19th century, a dramatic change from modernization reflected in society's methods, ideas, and lifestyles. For example, when the first American train was developed it eventually led to cars and buses. Also, women had a standard position at home, but now they are allowed to have any freedom reflected on their clothes, jobs, and identity overall. Having said, Americans began to focus so much on the modern world and neglect tradition. In the short story "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner, emphasize...

• Word Count: 1189
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... the story would really deter a commercial reader away from the story. The in-depth character descriptions really pull the reader deeper into the characters and what they represent in the story. The description of what they wear from black silk masks and roquelaires to tight-fitting parti-striped ... and skillfully wicked character. The descriptions of what chracters wear and how they act makes the story more realistic and easier to picture the characters as realistic people. In depth scene descriptions including carnival as well as the Montresor cellar really engulf the reader in these r...

• Word Count: 557
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... events, medieval history, forgotten tombs, ruined abbeys. Around these interests grew a whole body of literature [That] provided Poe with a literary milieu perfectly adapted to his taste and talent."3 Besides frightening subjects like death, disease, dark setting, haunted locations and others, characters who exhibit madness4 are the gothic elements incorporated in number of his stories, like for example in, "The Fall ... addiction to addictive substances. Although his addiction to opium is questionable, Poe certainly had problems with alcohol which could provide him with more intimate u...

• Word Count: 1406
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... cause indications of society's downfall to be merged into her stories. One author explains, "Her writing has been called the fiction of the grotesque. The word is descriptive of her characters who are often unlovable, caricatured, and deliberately distorted. O"Connor is, of course, presenting us ourselves." (Baumgaertner, 24) Flannery remained devoted to Catholicism throughout her life, and this ... Baumgaertner, 19) Flannery O'Connor put mindful contemplation into her double role as both a Catholic and fiction author. Her written thoughts on the subject disclose that she had devised a ...

• Word Count: 1784
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... , "Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway, and the novella, "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka, both contain covert alternate meanings that emanate from the authors' literary style preferences. The alternate meanings can be considered "hidden meanings" as they do not directly convey any information that overtly states the hidden meaning. The information that does ... Kafka's and Hemingway's works are similar in that they both stray from the grander narrative. Analyzing different aspects of each narrative reveals information supporting the hidden meanings. Both of the literary wor...

• Word Count: 3072
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... whose Zoroastrian religious beliefs set its members on the edge of Hindu society. After a few years in Canada, he started writing stories and gained immediate attention, receiving two Hart House literary prizes and Canadian Fiction Magazine's annual Contributors' Prize in 1985. Two years later, Penguin Books Canada published a collection of eleven stories titled Tales from Firozsha Baag, which appeared in 1989 ... appear in Tales from Firozsha Baag lack the immediacy that Mukherjee and Divkaruni attain. Even though Mistry seldom goes back to India literally these days, he does persist i...

• Word Count: 4673
• Approx Pages: 19
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... whose Zoroastrian religious beliefs set its members on the edge of Hindu society. After a few years in Canada, he started writing stories and gained immediate attention, receiving two Hart House literary prizes and Canadian Fiction Magazine's annual Contributors' Prize in 1985. Two years later, Penguin Books Canada published a collection of eleven stories titled Tales from Firozsha Baag, which appeared in 1989 ... appear in Tales from Firozsha Baag lack the immediacy that Mukherjee and Divkaruni attain. Even though Mistry seldom goes back to India literally these days, he does persist i...

• Word Count: 4675
• Approx Pages: 19
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... of harsh realities and cynical views. American realism was most commonly a feature of narrative fiction such as in the works of Stephen Crane, although authors occasionally applied its themes and literary techniques to poetry and drama as Stephen Foster did. Stephen Crane was America's first realistic writer who exposed the realities of war and other unfavorable conditions to a very naive American ... , were interested in reaction, logic, and observation. They tried to render reality closely and in comprehensive detail. In realism there are no characters that overcome the impossible to be...

• Word Count: 765
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... her birth, her family moved several times to various Quaker communities in the rural south, which would eventually show through in her somewhat Southern literary style. In 1948 the Tyler family moved into the Celo Community, an experimental shared labor community in the mountains of North Carolina. The ... Tyler's love and deep interest in her family is often reflected in the themes of her works. In most of Tyler's novels, the main characters struggle and, at the same time, depend on their families. The protagonist often has to deal with the internal struggle of wanting to escape and .....

• Word Count: 834
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... all the veneration he feels towards Mr. Roscoe. A quote that easily illustrates this is: "[Roscoe] born in a place apparently ungenial to the growth of literary talent, in the very market place of trade; without fortune, family connections, or patronage; self-promoted, self-sustained, and almost self-taught, he has ... entertain his readers without being didactic. Even more, his short stories employ an imaginative treatment of materials to engage the reader. Irving uses supernatural characters or events to engage the reader and build anticipation to the ending. The three main stories tha...

• Word Count: 2209
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... A play is a A short story provides a greater learning experience than a play because through a short story the writer's ideas are easier to interpret, the literary devices in a short story have a more important role in learning, and short stories have a stronger character development than a play. In a short story the ... writer's ideas are easier to interpret because the writer expresses all the characters feelings and actions, therefore the reader has little to interpret on his own. In a play some of the writer's ideas are left out and ... when reading a play each person may have a di...

• Word Count: 364
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... a comprehensive setting, detailing time and place provided a strong backdrop for the poem. They both have distinct fundamental groundwork that provided basis for a compelling and intriguing story line. The first prevalent literary element in both is the setting which is either told or implied. For instance, Ursula Le Guin uses very descriptive methods in portraying the people of the painted utopian. Guin ... literally leaving it to the reader's imagination. You can clearly see the difference in the use of setting when you look at how the groundwork of each literary piece is built. Altho...

• Word Count: 870
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... range of major authors and works of the period To introduce you to key themes, issues and problems To develop a broad historical understanding prose production at this time To develop literary critical skills of contextualization, close analysis, and argumentation To further develop your research skills and to prepare you for the research paper By the end of the module, students should ... unique interests in the classroom. By the same token, their activities are assessed both formally and informally through discussions, presentations, quizzes, sit-down tests and the like. Pros and Cons...

• Word Count: 2530
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... centered all on this major theme, of the quest for a private, inner identity as a major human experience. As the Americans were the first to define the short story as a specific literary form (1842, E.A. Poe), it is self-evident that their attempt to depict their search for identity through it is as important as ours in trying to distinguish its American features ... Mercer , Welcome to the jungle: identity and diversity in postmodern politics in Identity, Community, Culture, Difference, London, 1990).This feature of identity is directly linked to the structure of the literary genre of ...

• Word Count: 2241
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Rip Van Winkle Analyzation encompasses the application of given criteria to a literary work to determine how efficiently that work employs the given criteria. In the analyzation of short stories, the reader uses a brief ... complex emotions. A stock character, also known as a stereotype, fits an established characterization from real life or literature. With these three types of characters leading the reader through the story, the reader learns the events taking place as well as the changes in the character's lives. The author ... keeps the reader informed of the changes affecting the charact...

• Word Count: 1162
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... conjecture the respectable and upright virtues of a character that we cannot help but to feel empathy and compassion for. As in any great literary work, both accounts engage the mind in such a way as to find a suitable explanation for their behaviors and their feelings. Both stories ... draw the reader to look within themselves to find similarities and contradictions that would both relate ourselves to the characters while also placing a separation between the spectator and the performer, but it is the ultimate refusal and rejection of these doppelgangers that ... his introduction to ...

• Word Count: 1660
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... and matter-of-factly tone, Irving's story abounds with irony and satire and there is an all-penetrating sense of Irving making fun of traditional literary forms as well as certain conceptions common in the Puritan past of the country. I shall look at these features of Irving's story in detail later ... not to be only far-attached from the Puritan concept of the world but also to ridicule it and illustrate its bad effects on the characters which is chiefly the case in the representation of Ichabod Crane's personality. The people are under the spell of this quiet place and therefore ... u...

• Word Count: 2890
• Approx Pages: 12
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Marrying Absurd" and "The Night the Bed Fell": More different than similar Although comedy and satire are similar literary styles, they sharply contrast in a few fundamental areas. These fundamental differences are clear in a comparison of the comedic ... ordinary people in difficult but non-life-threatening predicaments. Satire, on the other hand, is a genre that exposes and ridicules human vice and folly. Its characters are usually unsympathetic, often detestable and seldom commendable. "Marrying Absurd" and "The Night the Bed Fell" can be contrasted as representatives of their genre's ......

• Word Count: 974
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... in the South of United States of America, thus; his writings were about people and issues that took place there (Towner 2008). Although the story is fictional, the setting, the characters and the context which are developed are a portrayal of the time and place in which the author grew up. Therefore, the analysis of this story is going to be focused ... and historical approach. According to "A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature: Fourth Edition", the Historical-Biographical approach: "...sees a literary work chiefly, if not exclusively, as a reflection of the author's life a...

• Word Count: 1289
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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... in Poe's stories, in here "The Oval Portrait". Also to explore the inner psyche or the idea behind the creation of the characters in the story and relate them to Poe's own personality and background: The Narrator, The Painter and his Bride. For what particular reason or ... is so obsessed with his job of painting. In other words, the main focal point of the article is on the psychology of the characters in the story. Another important thing to discuss is that, in what ways Poe's writing is a projection of his inner feelings and thoughts ... out on the paper and if possible to argue abo...

• Word Count: 3098
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... story and is desperately searching for luck and money in order to please his unhappy mother. As in My Son the Fanatic', this story also has a reversal of roles between characters. However this reversal is more apparent and dominant. Paul's mother defines luck as what causes one to have money and as a result Paul begins a desperate quest to prove to his ... love. He may have found the winner of the races but the wisdom that he gains through his wooden rocking horse resides in the sobering morale of the story . The literary element of symbolism evident throughout these short stories and s...

• Word Count: 2806
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: Undergraduate